The Dopest Thing About Horses Is That They’re Basically Grass Engines

A GUIDE FOR YOUNG LADIES ENTERING THE SERVICE OF THE FAIRIES, by Rosamund Hodge

I.

This is the lie they will use to break you: no one else has ever loved this way before.

II.

Choose wisely which court you serve. Light or Dark, Summer or Winter, Seelie or Unseelie: they have many names, but the pith of the choice is this: a poisoned flower or a knife in the dark?

(The difference is less and more than you might think.)

Of course, this is only if you go to them for the granting of a wish: to save your father, sister, lover, dearest friend. If you go to get someone back from them, or—most foolish of all—because you fell in love with one of them, you will have no choice at all. You must go to the ones that chose you.

III.

Be kind to the creature that guards your door. Do not mock its broken, bleeding face.

It will never help you in return. But I assure you, someday you will be glad to know that you were kind to something once.

IV.

Do not be surprised how many other mortal girls are there within the halls. The world is full of wishing and of wanting, and the fairies love to play with human hearts.

You will meet all kinds: the terrified ones, who used all their courage just getting there. The hopeful ones, who think that love or cleverness is enough to get them home. The angry ones, who see only one way out. The cold ones, who are already half-fairy.

I would tell you, Do not try to make friends with any of them, but you will anyway.

V.

Sooner or later (if you serve well, if you do not open the forbidden door and let the monster eat you), they will tell you about the game.

Summer battles Winter, Light battles Dark. This is the law of the world. And on the chessboard of the fairies, White battles Black.

In the glory of this battle, the pieces that are brave and strong may win their heart’s desire.

VI.

You already have forgotten how the mortal sun felt upon your face. You already know the bargain that brought you here was a lie.

If you came to save your sick mother, you fear she is dead already. If you came to free your captive sister, your fear she will be sent to Hell for the next tithe. If you came for love of an elf-knight, you are broken with wanting him, and yet he does not seem to know you.

Say yes.

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I’d really like structural critiques to move away from using words like “scum” in general. Individualist moralizing doesn’t belong in discussion of systemic forces; in fact, the two are directly at odds. And it’s a mindfuck of a double-bind for people who are prone to taking ideas seriously: “this issue is very large and touches many aspects of society, and you personally are directly responsible for it.” Structural problems will not be solved by obsessively purifying your own heart. 

Kitty trio

ok but, this was around 13 years ago so my parents would have been around 68 years old. They’d been to Maritzburg to visit my gran, and they got home and my mom was complaining about my dad, how, when they’d had a flat tyre and he was messing with it putting in the jack to change the wheel - he said to my mom “just lift the car for a moment”. So she did that, and he got the jack in, and then she was complaining about how he’d just casually ask her to lift the car, but...

okay this reminded me of the strongest human being (I use that label with some reservation) I have ever met and I still think about him like once a week because about 4 years ago on Thanksgiving night my sister, cousin, and I were going to pick up a friend about a 40 minute drive from home, and I got lost and tried to turn around on a little gravel pull-off on the side of the road, but my front tires got stuck in the snow.

we were in the middle of nowhere with no cell reception, and the only sign of life was a single, completely dark house across the road from us.

We all did our best to push the car out, and we’re strong people, but we couldn’t make it budge. Cold and stuck, we climbed back and wondered what to do. A car full of men pulled over beside us and asked if we needed help, but getting out of our locked car on a backroad at night with strange men felt like a bad idea, so we said a tow was coming and waved them along. We did that twice before finally deciding our only option was to accept the next offer for help and just risk it,

when a man came out of the house across the street.

He’d clearly been watching us and figured out why we’d been lying to people, which really surprised me & he said “it’s okay, you can stay in your car and keep the doors locked. Just start backing up when I say so.”

I had the window cracked and told him “it’s too stuck. There’s no way we’re getting out. Could you call a tow?”

And he said “just back up when I say so.”

So he walked around the front of the car, squatted, and said “okay back up,”

and I did, and

he lifted

the front of the car Into The Air. Off its front wheels, and we backed up while he essentially wheel-barrowed us back onto the road.

And we were honest to god yelling. We couldn’t help it. We just yelled until all four wheels were back on the ground and he was waving us off while we thanked him.

And then I looked at my sister and cousin & said “he REALLY told us we can KEEP our doors locked as if THAT WOULD’VE FUCKING STOPPED HIM!!!! As if he couldn’t have just RIPPED EM OFF THE HINGES.”

I later looked up the weight of my car, and it’s 3200 pounds without anything or anyone in it.

This haunts me.

"may this great plague pass by me and my friends, and restore us once more to joy and gladness"

Feeling a powerful kinship with this scribe from 1350 today.

Is anyone else forever frustrated that hearting a single post in a long and vicious argument on here means every previous iteration is hearted too and how will people know which side I’m rooting for? I dunno

Me, a disgraced academic turned farmer, surveying my crops: Finally... I am out standing in my field

this is a harvest mouse appreciation post

literally the cutest animal ever in history look at this lil fuzz

tiny bean ! friendly bean

they climb on basically everything. probably to get closer to kiss u

if this mouse gets any more disney than this it will probably break out into song

just look at this tiny nugget !!!

harvest mice use their tails for stability while climbing but also to be unnecessarily cute. this deters predators

tiny feet !!!!! tiny toes !

momma with itty puffs

kisses !! 1 hit KO

they are literally too small how dare

harvest mice !!!

harvest mice !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

harv e s t  m i c e  !! ! !!!

thankyou for your time

The rules about responding to call outs aren’t working

Privileged people rarely take the voices of marginalized people seriously. Social justices spaces attempt to fix this with rules about how to respond to when marginalized people tell you that you’ve done something wrong. Like most formal descriptions of social skills, the rules don’t quite match reality. This is causing some problems that I think we could fix with a more honest conversation about how to respond to criticism.

The formal social justice rules say something like this:

You should listen to marginalized people.

When a marginalized person calls you out, don’t argue.

Believe them, apologize, and don’t do it again.

When you see others doing what you were called out for doing, call them out.

Those rules are a good approximation of some things, but they don’t actually work. It is impossible to follow them literally, in part because:

Marginalized people are not a monolith. 

Marginalized people have the same range of opinions as privileged people.

When two marginalized people tell you logically incompatible things, it is impossible to act on both sets of instructions.

For instance, some women believe that abortion is a human right foundational human right for women. Some women believe that abortion is murder and an attack on women and girls.

“Listen to women” doesn’t tell you who to believe, what policy to support, or how to talk about abortion. 

For instance, some women believe that religious rules about clothing liberate women from sexual objectification, other women believe that religious rules about clothing sexually objectify women. 

“Listen to women” doesn’t tell you what to believe about modesty rules. 

Narrowing it to “listen to women of minority faiths” doesn’t help, because women disagree about this within every faith.

When “listen to marginalized people” means “adopt a particular position”, marginalized people are treated as rhetorical props rather than real people.

Objectifying marginalized people does not create justice.

Since the rule is literally impossible to follow, no one is actually succeeding at following it. What usually ends up happening when people try is that:

One opinion gets lifted up as “the position of marginalized people” 

Agreeing with that opinion is called “listen to marginalized people”

Disagreeing with that opinion is called “talking over marginalized people”

Marginalized people who disagree with that opinion are called out by privileged people for “talking over marginalized people”.

This results in a lot of fights over who is the true voice of the marginalized people.

We need an approach that is more conducive to real listening and learning.

This version of the rule also leaves us open to sabotage:

There are a lot of people who don’t want us to be able to talk to each other and build effective coalitions.

Some of them are using the language of call-outs to undermine everyone who emerges as an effective progressive leader. 

They say that they are marginalized people, and make up lies about leaders.

Or they say things that are technically true, but taken out of context in deliberately misleading ways.

The rules about shutting up and listening to marginalized people make it very difficult to contradict these lies and distortions. 

(Sometimes they really are members of the marginalized groups they claim to speak for. Sometimes they’re outright lying about who they are).

(For instance, Russian intelligence agents have used social media to pretend to be marginalized Americans and spread lies about Hillary Clinton.)

The formal rule is also easily exploited by abusive people, along these lines:

An abusive person convinces their victim that they are the voice of marginalized people.

The abuser uses the rules about “when people tell you that you’re being oppressive, don’t argue” to control the victim.

Whenever the victim tries to stand up for themself, the abuser tells the victim that they’re being oppressive.

That can be a powerfully effective way to make victims in our communities feel that they have no right to resist abuse. 

This can also prevent victims from getting support in basic ways.

Abusers can send victims into depression spirals by convincing them that everything that brings them pleasure is oppressive and immoral. 

The abuser may also isolate the victim by telling them that it would be oppressive for them to spend time with their friends and family, try to access victim services, or call the police. 

The abuser may also separate the victim from their community and natural allies by spreading baseless rumors about their supposed oppressive behavior. (Or threatening to do so).

When there are rules against questioning call outs, there are also implicit rules against taking the side of a victim when the abuser uses the language of calling out.

Rules that say some people should unconditionally defer to others are always dangerous.

The rule also lacks intersectionality:

No one experiences every form of oppression or every form of privilege.

Call-outs often involve people who are marginalized in different ways. 

Often, both sides in the conflict have a point.

For instance, black men have male privilege and white women have white privilege.

If a white woman calls a black man out for sexism and he responds by calling her out for racism (or vice versa), “listened to marginalized people” isn’t a very helpful rule because they’re both marginalized.

These conversations tend to degenerate into an argument about which form of marginalization is most significant.

This prevents people involved from actually listening to each other.

In conflicts like this, it’s often the case that both sides have a legitimate point. (In ways that are often not immediately obvious.)

We need to be able to work through these conflicts without expecting simplistic rules to resolve them in advance.

This rule also tends to prevent groups centered around one form of marginalized from coming to engage with other forms of marginalization:

For instance, in some spaces, racism and sexism are known to be issues, but ableism is not.

(This can occur in any combination. Eg: There are also spaces that get ableism and sexism but not racism, and spaces that get economic justice and racism but not antisemitism, or any number of other things.)

When disabled people raise the issue of ableism in any context (social justice or otherwise), they’re likely to be shouted down and told that it’s not important.

In social justice spaces, this shouting down is often done in the name of “listening to marginalized people”.

For instance, disabled people may be told ‘you need to listen to marginalized people and de-center your issues’, carrying the implication that ableism is less important than other forms of oppression.

(This happens to *every* marginalized group in some context or other.)

If we want real intersectional solidarity, we need to have space for ongoing conflicts that are not simple to resolve.

Tl;dr “Shut up and listen to marginalized people” isn’t quite the right rule, because it objectifies marginalized people, leaves us open to sabotage, enables abuse, and prevents us from working through conflicts in a substantive way. We need to do better by each other, and start listening for real.