We Were Watching The Glass Blowing Competition Show On Netflix Because It's Really Cool To See Those

I bought a nice storage box at an estate sale without looking inside, and it was full of 8mm home videos.

It should be the start of a horror movie, and it kind of is, in the way that we see the past.

The films were made by a young, rural father throughout the 40s-50s filming in excessive and loving detail his baby son and homely but sweet-looking wife. The things that he chose to film belie this idea of “traditional family values” and masculinity, especially in the American and Canadian West (it’s unclear what side of the border they were living on.)

This young man was trying creative and artistic ideas with his hobby (his camera), like filming his wife doing her hair through the mirror, lots of landscapes, and flowers growing in their tiny garden.

The thing that struck me so much was the complete adoration of his family, in a way that might not be “50s Dad-Husband.” He’s spending hours of film taking care of and documenting teaching his son to garden. He sets up the camera to film himself and his wife laughing while doing the dishes. He gives her a gag gift of an apron for Christmas and she throws it at him while laughing. Her real present was a pair of hiking boots, which she is adorably delighted by.

This family was working poor, with a tiny rural house, and the home films capture warts and all. Instead of “Leave It To Beaver” dynamics, we have a family who should embody what people think of as the worst (or best) of 50s families, but absolutely do not.

The 50s weren’t the glossy advertising version that conservatives want to “return to”. This family was poor, and the camera was clearly the one hobby that the husband allowed himself. The young parents are delighted but exhausted. They are sharing housework. The homely but adorable young mother has terribly crooked teeth and wears overalls in the garden. Dinner parties include a surprisingly diverse group of friends.

I think the estate sale was after the death of the (now elderly) little boy in the films.

We can’t go back to an era that didn’t exist in the way that we assume it did. Even the 50s were full of complex and interesting people who weren’t just Suzy Homemakers and Pipe-smoking Fathers.

My point is that history is more complicated than we think. We can’t go back to a world that only existed in advertisements, and there were people living and loving each other throughout history.

I was struck by how much this young father loved his family and was so invested in his child and partner. He wouldn’t fit into any “traditional masculinity” molds, but he was delighted by his camera and capturing the things important to him. I’m so glad that I got to see his life through his eyes.

“When the handle has snapped off the basket that held all your eggs…” gone girl tier monologue

The oppressive Ivy League strata are fucking losing it in their desperation to keep us subservient to employers

Honestly, part of why it irritates me when people act performatively shocked at the homophobia in 2000s media is it wasn't just media. "Can you believe this aired in 2008" buddy, in 2008 I was having shit thrown at me from moving cars for having long hair, and you wanna get worked up about sitcoms?

Just reminder:

Fuck ICE

Death to Trump and his billionaire buddies

Always punch Nazis

Welcome to Women in Transformers Week 2025!

WiTFW is a week to create fanworks celebrating all of the wonderful leading (and not-so-leading) ladies in Transformers, run by @nielsthecat and @termagax . Here's this year's schedule:

February 9: Prompt submissions open.

February 22: Prompt submissions close.

March 1: Prompt list is released.

March 23-29: Event week!

Reblog, tell your friends, and tag your posts with "women in transformers week 2025" or "witf2025"!

op made the post unrebloggable, can you repost what you wrote about the christan anti sex work group?

Sure thing! I don't blame them for turning off reblogs. I had to block some antisemitic creep who reblogged it from me with a rant about how actually it was feminism's fault, so clearly it had broken containment into the gross side of tumblr. Here it is with OP's handle and icon removed so they don't have to be connected to it anymore.

It's not just the advertisers- that's definitely also part of it, but this is also the direct, targeted action of a specific christian fundamentalist group, the "National Center on Sexual Exploitation," previously "Morality in Media" and "Operation Yorkville," a political lobbying organization that campaigns against pornography, who claim "Pornographers are committing the biggest crimes of the century!"

It was*this group specifically* (accompanied by another Christian anti-porn org, Exodus Cry) that put pressure on mastercard and visa to stop facilitating electronic payment for sites that hosted nsfw material. Faced with the risk of losing their ability to process payments, the sites partnered with visa and mastercard had no choice but to agree to porn bans.

They were behind Onlyfans flirting with banning sex workers last year, and they were one of the principle supporters of FOSTA/SESTA. I can not understate just how much influence this one well connected, well funded group has.

From their about page:

NCOSE convinced mastercard and visa to cut ties with porn not for the sake of advertisers, but because they convinced them that they could be potentially liable for facilitating illegal activity- the exchange of CSAM, prostitution and human trafficking- happening on the porn sites they were partnered with, which in NCOSE's opinion is all porn sites, and all porn period, since they believe all porn is human trafficking.

NCOSE has been around since the 60's, but hasn't seen much success until the last decade. Their previous campaigns, focused on pushing for the enforcement of obscenity laws from the 1800's and fabricating blatantly nonfactual research about porn as a mental health crisis, were not as widely received. But they've had much more success since they've started weaponizing concern for victims of abuse and trafficking, appropriating progressive language and trading in on the white moral panic about child sex trafficking that grew directly from the "Stranger Danger" and "Satanic Ritual Abuse" moral panics of the 80's and 90's- both themselves the result of a right wing reactionary movement using concern trolling about the safety of children to rail against drugs, loud music, and tabletop rpgs.

Blaming the sanitization of the internet solely on the vague specter of "advertisers" ignores the real, nameable groups and their extremely straightforward christofacist goals. It promotes apathy, pointing at an ambiguous target that feels as impossible to combat as the machine of capitalism itself. When it's literally just these specific guys, and like two or three similar, equally identifiable organizations!

I'm not saying sites like facebook don't have a vested interest in looking squeaky clean and family friendly, but tumblr, pornhub, onlyfans, patreon and gumroad did not move to ban porn because of advertising. Tumblr has never attracted the kind of advertisers who care, and pornhub, onlyfans, patreon and gumroad don't make the bulk of their money from ads, but from user transactions, which MUST be facilitated by an electronic banking platform in order to be safe and reliable.

Tumblr's porn ban was due to FOSTA/SESTA meaning the could not continue operating unless they either dumped nsfw content or went adults only and implemented costly and draconian age verification protocols that, frankly, no one was going to put up with for a mediocre blogging platform. The others folded under pressure from the electronic banking platforms, which threatened to drop them as partners due to the pressure *they* were under from NCOSE weaponizing public opinion to create a flurry of anger and condemnation towards these companies "facilitating human trafficking."

The enemy is not hiding, we know their names! They come not in the name of capitalism (who merely rides their coattails when convenient) but in the name of puritanical Christian Fascism.

So no, it's not the puriteens. It's their parents and grandparents, on an open crusade to enforce Christian anti-sex beliefs on as much of the world as they can manage.