May we rage when we must & rest when we can. May we build the peace we so desperately need. May we turn our hands, in all things, to the justice that peace requires. The only liberation is a shared liberation. May we have courage sufficient to build it. Shabbat shalom ❤️ Get some rest :)

Thank you! I was always dogpiled on r/politics if I pointed out we should be complaining about the Press Secretary's actions and not her eyes. The 'appearance = morality' is just another form of the 'just world hypothesis' that implies if you're poor you deserve it.

So much this. So much.

Not to mention the fat phobia, forever waiting in the wings

I see that a lot with making fun of short men. There's plenty to hate and make fun of without body shaming. A shitty guy might happen to be short, but there's also plenty of really cool dudes who also happen to be short, and you don't need to drag them into it just to drag one dude.

In the era when political FB groups were a thing I was once viciously insulted for my appearance, and told that I looked the part for someone with that opinion, by someone who then realised that she'd misinterpreted my comment (which agreed with her) and rather unconvincingly tried to row it back.

Agreed! One of those ideas the Ancient Greeks gave us that’s weirdly persistent in sticking around thousands of years later— that idea of καλλος (beauty) and αγαθος (goodness) going together and being intertwined. Some ideas cast LONG shadows…

Steve Bannon being fat? Not a fair target. Steve Bannon wearing three shirts and never washing? Fair. Steve Bannon saying horrible things? Really a better target. Steve Bannon lying about climate change when he used to run Biosphere II? Obscure :-)

I think there are very few among us who haven't fallen into this trap at one point or another. I certainly have. It's easy. It's lazy. It's also been programmed into us since birth in every media imaginable that virtue is beautiful and evil is ugly. We can all do better at not passing that along.

the feminist blog I once helped moderate had a strict no-appearance-based-insults policy, and it was (and remains) quite depressing how many commenters, and how many other leftist bloggers, insisted "but it's OK if they're a bad person!" Missing The Point Award, we'd sometimes say of that argument.

THANK YOU. I always use this example to say that hate doesn’t age you, life ages you

Lombrosoism was supposed to have been made obsolete like a century ago: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cesare_...

BOOM.

The use of appearance as an insult has kept women away from the mic and out of leadership roles - at every level- in our male-dominated society. Men’s preferences for specific female appearances have shaped career success in almost every field. Think about that for a sec.

As I've been on a roll with Star Trek threads today, let's continue with this one: you know one of the best parts of Geordie's visor? 90% of the time, nobody fucking mentions it.

3. If you are actually revolted by the person's physical traits is a YOU problem and if you want to solve that problem consider talking to a therapist for guidance instead of harming your friends or strangers by projecting evil traits onto them because of their physical characteristics.

2. Is it possible that you have seen this damn person so much on TV for years and have come to associate their appearance and voice and you never want to see their damn face or whatever. Sure! But is their evil actions the cause of revulsion or their face?

I would really like people to take this into account. Yes, arguably some of the worst people are not conventionally attractive in some way or another, but focusing on that and not their behavior, lack of empathy and compassion, only tears down everyone around you who shares that physical trait.

Thank you it makes me insane when people include how someone looks in their critique of their politics. "And they look just like how I'd expect someone with ~those views~ to look" hi yeah that's actually a fucked up thing to say even if it's about a basic white dude.

Not least because of what @sorokti.bsky.social says here ⬇️

seguimos aquí, desde el primer día, y para siempre hip-hop

This idea that visual appearance is a reflection of inner worth goes back to Plato, who thought what a person looks like was reflective of their soul. The root of all Western ideas of social hierarchy go back to this, which is bonkers and wrong.

the misogyny really comes out when people feel they have permission

The person you hate won't read it, but nice friendly people here on Bsky who share that characteristic will read it, and be hurt.

I see "hate ages you" a lot, about fascists and transphobes who are looking old. You know what else ages you? Aging.

I'm on a train, will be picked up by my oldest friend, our long-weekend destination the cabin her father built with his own two hands. The electricity, if she was able to get the panels fixed, is solar (if not: candles!), the plumbing is rudimentary, & the neighbors are trees. I'M SO EXCITED.

I feel this deeply and it hurts the our cause. Attack their terrible ideas, not their looks.

for folks out of town - Central Ave runs north through Northeast Mpls to Columbia Heights to Fridley to Blaine. Dense and then less dense suburbs with lots of working class families (Blaine also has some mcmansion complexes and even the occasional farm). Occupation spreading out.

Physiognomy is bad, even when you’re targeting someone you don’t like!

1. Are the far more numerous yell-y MAGA men... also having spotty & irregular periods? 2."Irrational moods"? Oh I see, some lady's critique was a little too spot-on. 3."Temper tantrums." Maybe someone should do a wellness check on the women in this man's life. (Also, not the point, but she's 60.)

Hello! I see you've decided to conflate a human being being an evil fascist apologist committing crimes and perpetuating fraud with (checks notes) being a woman. Perhaps you would like to not do this.

A thing that cannot be said enough ... until Goddness willing it no longer needs to be said.

You can't... repeal... a scientific finding. At that point it's just called lying about it.

I'm just going to say a thing. What a person looks like is not reflective of their soul. Insulting the appearance of bad people who do bad things as an outcome or indication of their rotten hearts perpetuates the notion that conventional beauty = virtue, a myth that's led to untold human damage.

Love Is Political

NEW: "We — as people in an ever-changing D.C. that is not at all reflective of where we grew up — occasionally see these special glimpses and you're like, 'Oh, shit, it's still there.'" Meet two co-founders of The Pack World, who work to capture how the D.C. that raised them is still alive:

I have a friend who said, of Starfleet Academy, that this took them out of it - that seeing a person in a wheelchair in the 32nd century seemed unrealistic, since medicine in Star Trek "should be able to cure whatever was wrong with them." That's not the case, for any number of possible reasons.

“The court focused on property rights after the relationship ended, but neighbors’ testimony revealed the power imbalance, including accounts that when the couple fought, she threatened to sell him.”

“One vivid example in the book comes from a legal case in North Carolina around 1840 involving a white woman and a Black man who lived together.”

“Black men enslaved as body or man servants placed them within closer proximity to their enslavers, which increased their vulnerability and exposure to sexual scrutiny and likely abuse.”

“I situate this account within a broader discussion of Black men who were enslaved as valets or body servants, a group that one can view as having greater autonomy or improved living conditions than Black men who were forced to labor in fields.”

“...but her coded language — typical of 19th-century moral discourse — points clearly in that direction. She describes Luke as being chained to his enslaver’s bed and depicts the enslaver as sexually degenerate, engaging in “freaks of despotism” and “of a nature too filthy to be repeated.””

“As scholars have noted, Harriet Jacobs’s autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, contains an account that strongly suggests the sexual violation of an enslaved Black man by a white man. Jacobs never names the assault explicitly…”

“Scholarly attention has rightly focused on the forced reproduction of enslaved Black women, but that focus need not come at the expense of understanding the position of enslaved Black men, who were also denied sexual autonomy, including the ability to choose with whom they would have children.”

This is Oakley. He has an injury that requires physical therapy and at-home massages. Luckily, his cat sibling River has been training his whole life for this. 14/10 for both

This dog is being called a "real-life Lassie" after helping find a missing 3-year-old boy in Kentucky. “I don’t know where the dog came from,” one officer said. “But it was a blessing from God that day.” We think the dog deserves some credit too, so we're awarding him our highest honor, a 15/10

5. Abraham Lincoln's birthday was also the reason James Wheldon Johnson wrote "Lift Every Voice & Sing," otherwise known as the Black National Anthem in 1900. The first time it was performed as a song was at a Lincoln birthday celebration in a segregated Black school

4. Most of us absolutely loathe this statue today, The Emancipation Memorial was requested and mostly paid for by the Black veterans and freedpeople Without our support, it would have never been built. Although not only Black people liked what the statue conveyed

3. While most out of favor today, Lincoln's birthday was celebrated as a high holiday for the Black population. As most of us were located in the South until around 1920, Blacks celebrated Lincoln while the white South absolutely detested him. He's the reason we supported the Republican party