I Haven't Any Other Words

Save my life 🩸🙏

I am Kawthar Zeyad Ramadan from Gaza, I am 29 years old

I live every day war, destruction and fear, a feeling that can only be described by those who live it.

War is not easy, as I lost part of my family, my home and my work.

I graduated from university with a high grade and worked as a fashion designer and opened my own project because it was my hobby from the beginning.

I developed and succeeded in my field, but the war came and I lost everything in a moment.

My work was my source of livelihood for my family, so because of it there was no longer any source of income.

Also, my mother has been suffering from kidney failure for years and needs dialysis 3 times a week.

Because of the war, she suffered from going to the hospital in danger and long distances.

Also, the lack of adequate care caused her severe fatigue and hospitals became an unhealthy place because of the large numbers who needed treatment.

I had many ambitions and dreams that I wanted to achieve and succeed and become a famous fashion designer.

All we wanted was to survive the war. We were forced to be displaced more than 10 times at least.

We suffer a lot from the tent as we lived the summer with its extreme heat as it is made of poor quality nylon

And from insects and diseases

And now winter has come and we are drowning in the tents and the extreme cold

We fear death every day, we love life

Your help by donating even a small amount is able to save my life and my family's from death

Every €15 or €20 will contribute to saving

my family

https://gofund.me/4eadb983

Vetted by @gazavetters, my number verified on the list is ( #145 )

vetted by 90-ghost

Vetted by @gaza-evacuation-funds

Captain o captain

1/31 (guestlog by @clowncarpal)

Leon's atrocious driving 😭

"save me, substance abuse!" i cry. before you can moralize to me about the dangers of addiction, a noble and powerful steed gallops into the room - my horse whom i have named "substance abuse". you learn an important lesson about making assumptions. i snort a line off its back

It was Christmas Eve!

hey i was wondering something and i wanted to know your opinion on it

Why is it problematic to say i hate men but not white people or straight people

(i'm a trans south east asian man btw)

I'd say on, like, a casual exasperated level, its not problematic to say "I hate [x]." It gets problematic when your venting about a group becomes your sole lens of viewing + interacting with that group.

Like, its entirely alright to be frustrated with behaviors common to cishet white men and express that in a vent by saying you hate them. But... its like how people make the correct point that they shouldn't be expected or obligated to give all their energy to coddling people with power over them, but translate that into "i never have to care about a member of this group at all" which directly conflicts with just. being in a community? Like women should not be expected to be caretakers for men, but people in a community need to take care of each other. When the only way you engage with a group of people is by expressing hatred and asserting how much you aren't obligated to care about them, its easier than people think to find yourself dehumanizing them.

Which does not mean "you are just as bad as a racist/misogynist" or "you are oppressing them"; you are An Individual whose biases are not necessarily backed up by powerful systemic powers. But, for one, its very easy for those biases to be used by systemic forces: with men, misandry is very easily used to justify all kinds of violence towards marginalized men & people perceived as men. You also have situations where people will say the Holocaust "wasn't as bad" as, say, US slavery, because it was "white on white violence," or saying the Armenian genocide also wasn't that big of a deal because "it was done to Christians and Christians are always killing people" (two real things I have seen been said). And, again: if you are going to care about community and restorative/transformative justice and all that, you need to be able to give a shit about all kinds of people who you live with. You need to be able to see them as whole beings you are capable of connecting with on some level. You don't personally need to date or befriend men, but you do need to be able to give a shit about men in your community.

Its fine to feel annoyance and anger and use "hatred" to express that. But the problem occurs when people take "its okay to be angry with your oppressors and not spend all your energy coddling them" and make that the end-all be-all of their relationship with people of whatever group; revolutions can't accomplish compassionate goals when they are run on hatred. Very hooksian concept but "love" (as in "a combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect and trust", not in a strictly emotional sense but as an action) is a skill that is as vital as understanding class dynamics and protest tactics. Maybe you don't need to love everyone, but try to have the capacity to love anyone; the ability to physically care for someone you don't emotionally like is, I think, a vital step towards truly challenging and bringing down the kyriarchy.

Basically its about recognizing when your venting stops being an outlet and starts being a way for unproductive feelings to shape how you view other people.

there's a discussion on Twitter about lesbian love being somehow different than the way that straight men love women but sooo many of these people are just parroting terf and radfem talking points and being quietly transphobic. either by implying that men or amab people are just biologically incapable of love on a deeper level either because of their minds or hormones (transphobic) or by saying it's just the way men are "socialized" in a patriarchal society and it's more about shared experiences (transphobic)

the following statements can be true at once:

there is no real difference between the way men and women love, because men and women are human beings and we are all capable of love and complexity. love as an emotion or experience is not ingrained or influenced by our sex or gender. love between women is beautiful and pure, and it can be abusive too. love between men and women is also beautiful and pure and it can also be abusive. it is sexist to say that women are less prone to committing abuse or violence, even if it seems like a positive stereotype.

the way that patriarchy puts men in a higher social position than women does lead to a higher rate of abuse from men towards women. many men are raised to believe they are innately better than women and this is a mindset that needs real work to unlearn. solving this requires building a society that raises sons to be compassionate and respectful, not to seek dominance over women.

when you insist that abusive or unloving behavior is ingrained within men or it is part of the male experience, what you do is reinforce the patriarchal expectation of men as inherently domineering and violent beings. gender roles are made up, and do not hold truth to what we really are in the genders we associate with. it is a self fulfilling prophecy. if you tell a boy that he's incapable of truly loving a woman without owning her, he will grow into a man that believes you, and become a man that believes control is how you show love