Https://archiveofourown.org/works/52349689/chapters/132428347

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site for when you can only remember part of a word/its definition 

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I’d never really gotten a chance to look before, but I had the urge to look at the AIDS quilt after remembering Duane Puryear, and I was just browsing around when one caught my eye in particular on block #2336.

I’m a sucker for the night sky, and upon further inspection…

Greg Kyper would have been 70 years old today, February 2nd 2024, if not for AIDS, and ohhhhh I’m gonna cry. I can't believe the chances of me stumbling upon his name today of all days. I'm going to try finding out more information about him and his life if possible.

I never met you Greg, but I love your quilt design. It's beautiful.

FREEBIES

Hello hello, it's me!

Before listing all my freebies so far, I want to announce the new image of Souls Collide! After over two years, I've decided to give it a makeover and changed the color palette, the fonts, the logo, and the banner! I hope you like it. Also, I am organizing my posts and trying to make them as easy as possible to be found if you're searching for a specific item or master post. (That's one of the reasons I'm making this post, to list all my freebies so far.)

Pro tip: search for #2scfreebies to find out more about my freebies!

THE WRITER'S WORKBOOK

Grab it here

PLOTDECK - CARD GAME FOR WRITERS

Grab it here

AUTHOR'S CORNER - NOTION TEMPLATE

Grab it here

WRITING GAME - 7 DAYS

Grab it here

MY LIBRARY - READING JOURNAL

Grab it here

Disclaimer: all of these items are digital products! As soon as you grab them, you'll have access to them.

That's everything for now! Feel free to reblog or recommend this post to a friend who'd love to grab one of these freebies (or all of them!).

Source: 1 2 3 4 5 6 If you want more facts, follow Ultrafacts

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Video of Tama

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Israel and Palestine, History, Politics, Confirmation Bias and the Hypocritical Racist Saviourism of the Western Left

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Confirmation bias

"im doing a paper on antisemitism and it so difficult to find sources that aren't pro-isreal. They're all going on about how saying that Israel shouldn't exist is antisemitic. no how is thinking something should not exist if genocide is a part of its creation antisemitic? The Israeli state itself is antisemitic and has continuously failed to support its population of Holocaust victims.

any help on finding decent sources would be much appreciated."

When all of your references are telling you that your starting external point of reference is Antisemitic, that is because it is... You can't unpack your biases and unlearn them by searching for references that confirm your biases. Learn that your assumptions are likely bigoted and you need to learn what you don't know instead of seeking validation of what you believe.

To specifically address "saying that Israel shouldn't exist is Antisemitic", Israel DOES exist and more than 40% of all Jews live there, and no matter your opinion of its founding or the conduct of its government.... unless you intend to conquer Israel by force, and believe me it's been tried, it will not cease to exist by political pressure. So the expression that Israel shouldn't exist is tacit war mongering. There is more to be said on the topic, but that will come later.

More below the cut, very long

But Israel is an "Ethno-State" and that's bad! Isn't it?

First, at least this canard recognises Jews as an ethnic group, but the accusation of Israel as an "Ethno-State", is a deeply uncomfortable canard levelled against a Parliamentary Democracy where the third largest national political party is an Arab Party and 10 Arabs currently hold office in the Knesset. Arabs hold office, serve as judges, they Serve in the IDF as General's and Major's and make up 21% of Citizenship.

SAR-EL - Volunteers for Israel

Israel’s Highest Ranking Muslim Soldier Speaks Out - SAR-EL - Volunteers for Israel

Last week I was privileged to be at a Manchester  ((UK) Zionist Council meeting where two IDF Officers

Where Do Israeli Jews Come From, aren't they western colonisers?

No Israeli citizen and certainly not the vast majority of Jews around the world would want Jews to be a stateless people again. Particularly not the Majority of Israelis who are refugees from the Genocides, Pogroms and Expulsions against the Jewish people across the Middle East and North Africa, their children and grandchildren.

We are painfully aware that after the last century of genocides and expulsions in South West Asia Jews stand on the edge of extinction on the continent of our origin. My family had to flee the Libyan Pogroms and Partition in Pakistan under threat of forced conversion or death... Today there are no Jews in either country, you either fled or you died. Many Jewish communities and traditions that have endured for millennia would be extinct today if not for the safe haven provided by Israel.

the Guardian

The tragedy of the Yemeni Jews | Lyn Julius

Lyn Julius: The government has stood by and let jihadist gangs drive Jews out of Yemen. Now their community is on the brink of extinction

[The above article states that approximately 400 Yemenite Jews remain in Yemen, at time of writing only one remains as a Houthi prisoner.]

Importantly Jews can't colonise our own indigenous homeland, and comments on the skin colour of light skinned Jews is colourist and Antisemitic.

What do you mean Jews are indigenous people?

Jewish civilisation has conservatively at least 3000 years of archeological history in the city of Jerusalem alone, a people can't colonise their own indigenous homeland. That DOESN'T mean the people who came after us have to leave at all... Palestinian culture has been developing in the region for at least 1400 years. The promise of a Jewish state was the promise of self determination of Jews as Indigenous people displaced from our home by the colonising Roman Empire in the First century, arriving in Europe as slaves to build great works like the Coliseum and monuments to our own dispossession like the Arch of Titus.

After 2000 years confined to the ghetto, 2000 years of always waiting for the shoe to drop, we needed to come home.

The colonisation of the Jewish people and our homeland also isn't a one note affair. The Sassanians, and the Crusaders, the British Empire, The Ottoman Empire, The Mamluks, and pivotal to the current discussion The Arabs... Arab Colonisation of MENA/SWANA is uncontroversially the historical record... They are the majority population across MENA because of their centuries of privileged social and economic placement in society even among Muslims. Pan-Arabism is Arab Supremacism.

en.m.wikipedia.org

Early Muslim conquests - Wikipedia

Morrocco speaks Arabic because of Arab Colonisation, Ctesiphon was renamed Baghdad by Arab Colonisers, the subjugation of pre-colonial religion and culture such as Jews, Zoroastrians, Shabaks, Assyrians, the continuing collusion between ME states to deny the Kurdish people a state.

Recognising Arabs as colonisers doesn't mean demanding they be expelled, nor does it make anti-arab violence acceptable... But it is necessary if you intend to understand the historic social power dynamics of MENA social issues.

If Jews are indigenous and Arabs are colonisers... What does that make Palestinians?

People, it makes them human people who are seeking a state of their own and should have one post haste. Most people agree on this, I hope we agree on this..

Didn't Israel kill lots of people to be established?

People often have a habit of using their intuition rather than research to learn about current and historical circumstances. This leads to the exaggeration or minimisation of events by those who don't understand.

This isn't to say that violence wasn't present in the founding of the State of Israel, because it was, but in all of the wars Israel has ever been involved in, the combined death toll has never even come close to one million let alone the millions, even the Nakba which was a human tragedy worthy of recognition forever had a Death toll of 15,000...

It is worth remembering that the Nakba took place against the backdrop of invasion by the Arab league (including Palestinian Arabs) of the newly declared State of Israel within these borders as defined by the United Nations...

On the day of the expiry of the British mandate for Palestine the forces of the Arab League (Egypt, Trans-Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and the Palestinian Holy War Army) invaded, and the Israelis/IDF counter attacked... And somehow even without any allies were not only successful in defence but the victor. This was the second refusal to accept an Arab majority state, this time that rejection came as war.

But Palestinians still deserve a state!

Palestinians absolutely deserve a state, historical rejection of the peace option at one time or another by any party in a conflict is no reason not to establish peace now. This is something we can hopefully agree on, the endless cycle of violence and retribution is neither desirable nor sustainable... and to that end in 1994 the Palestinian National Authority was Established as a Part of the Oslo Accords, which is a multi stage state building project agreed between the Palestinian Liberation Organisation and the State of Israel, which immediately formalised the recognition internationally as an institution in principle of the Palestinian State as declared by The Palestinian Liberation Organisation in 1988.

The eventual state borders of the Palestinian State would be the Territories of the West Bank and Gaza which came under Israeli Administration during the 1967 6 Day War, and which the kingdom of Jordan and Egypt refused to accept return of due to the expense of security in the region.

Regions of Palestinian National Authority Civil and Military Administration were established in the West Bank during stage 1. (Areas the Palestinian National Authority were supposed to be expanded each decade assuming the continuing stability of the PA) During stage 2 in 2005 those areas were expanded and the Palestinian National Authority assumed Civil Administration over most of the remaining West Bank except for Israeli majority settlements. Also as Part of Stage 2 Israel forcibly repatriated all Israelis living in Gaza and passed Civil and Military Administration to the Palestinian National Authority.

en.m.wikipedia.org

West Bank areas in the Oslo II Accord - Wikipedia

Unfortunately 2 years later Hamas seceded Gaza in its entirety in a coup and suspended democracy to establish an Islamist Autocracy in opposition to the Fatah dominated Palestinian National Authority and all attempts at reintegration have failed stalling the Palestinian Nation Building project.

en.m.wikipedia.org

Battle of Gaza (2007) - Wikipedia

Throwing a wrench in the "is able to preserve stability and territorial integrity" thing.

Ok, that's interesting, but wasn't the country already Palestine before?

At no point in history until the establishment of the Palestinian National Authority has there been self government of Palestinians by Palestinians. Even the name "Filistin" was a colloquial one in the Ottoman period. Under Ottoman rule the area of Israel and Palestine was made up of many feudal estates with a non-palestinian aristocracy.

Once again, this doesn't mean that Palestinians shouldn't have a self governing state now, today. But Jews should also have self government because.... we are indigenous to the Region, and second we have seen ourselves be betrayed by our neighbours too many times to not hold our defence in our own hands. In Europe, Africa, and Asia we have seen the repeated attempts to destroy us completely.

If you deduct the population of Israel the combined Jewish population of all three continents is less than 2 million, because you killed us.

The territory people are referring to as historically Palestine right now is the British Mandate for Palestine, which included the area East of the Jordan River where the Kingdom of Jordan was established by British Partition.

What is being done to advance Palestinian National Liberation?

The Palestinian Liberation Organisation have made multiple attempts at political normalisation with Hamas, as have the Israeli government... In the hope of reuniting the Palestinian National Authority administered territories in the West Bank and Gaza. Unfortunately with both authorities, Hamas and their affiliates like Palestinian Islamic Jihad use talks as an opportunity to re-arm, regroup, and relocate personnel and equipment. The Palestinian Liberation Organisation were in the closing stages of political normalisation talks, and Israel were in the midst of a (permanent) ceasefire and disarmament discussions at the time of the Simchat Torah Pogrom (Oct 7)

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We are in the present day from here on.... Things get complicated and messy-er from here, say goodbye to neat sections.

The attack on October 7 was a betrayal of West Bank Palestinians as well, and attacks by Hamas affiliates like Palestinian Islamic Jihad in areas of the West Bank where Israel is treaty obligated to act as security guarantor has been spun by people in the west who don't understand the treaty arrangements as an invasion of Palestinian Territories.

timesofisrael.com

Palestinian, Arab officials urge Hamas to disarm before it is destroyed – report

Terror group said warned by various figures of influence that it will not survive the Israeli offensive, and should prevent further destruct

Continued in reblog

Micropenises and Early Life Medical Abuse

CW: discussion of genitalia, childhood surgery, medical abuse

What is a micropenis?

A micropenis is any penis which at birth is under 1.5 inches/3.8cm Stretched Length (length measured by gently pulling the penis to its maximum length), pre-pubescent age 2 inches/5.1cm SL or an adult penis of 3.65 inches/9.3cm SL.

What else is there to know?

A variation that occurs more often in people born with micropenises than the general population is Hypospadias, which is when the Meatus (urethra hole) terminates somewhere other than the tip of the glans.

It is more likely than not, regardless of the gender a person was raised, that a person with a micropenis and Hypospadias has been subjected to early childhood surgeries to move the meatus, among other possible surgeries.

What surgery? aka, paediatric urologists have earned my disdain

If assigned male the urethra is artificially lengthened and the meatus is made to terminate at the tip of the glans. (typically the option chosen today for children with true testes.)

Why is this done?: the assertion that it is better to subject a child to genital surgery, than risk the specific placement of the meatus interfering with standing urination.

If assigned female the meatus would be relocated to below the base of the penis to more aesthetically match a large clitoris.(the penis and clitoris are homologous structures, there is no significant difference between the two).

Why is this done?: this may be claimed to be necessary by medical professionals for a number of reasons, but it all ultimately revolves around enforcing a sex binary on a spectrum. The child may have a vagina or vulva, and this surgery is aesthetic. The child may have no vagina or vulva but because of the discovery of ovotestes, ovaries, streak gonads, or no gonads, it is decided that this child should undergo more radical "sex assignment", usually involving the removal of gonads often resulting in the sterilisation of children who were not born sterile.

In only recent decades it was still the norm for all children born with micropenises to be at risk of being forcibly assigned female, sometimes including penectomy (amputation of the phallus) because it was assumed their penis was not functional.

Change Society, Not The Child

The majority of the reasons given by doctors for you to consent to surgery on an intersex child are social. That the child will be bullied, or struggle romantically, or struggle sexually... And these procedures are "early intervention".

The only early intervention your child needs, is your advocacy... Advocate for their bodily integrity and autonomy, and once you've brought your baby home you can advocate for a better shame free world.

What can you do, day to day?

I was originally going to write a post on micropenises and sex, but I'll have to do that another time

Push back against the stigma associated with micropenises. Remember that there is no community where it is appropriate to use their physical features as knee-jerk assault on a person's character. The culture that uses intersex bodies as a way to cut at those they feel "deserve it", is the same culture that insists we raise the scalpel against those that possess them. These are two faces of the same coin.