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mayatommasi.bsky.social
Maya Tommasi
@mayatommasi.bsky.social
260 followers 440 following 220 posts
Opinion Columnist @ubyssey.ca Political science student @UBC Researcher @Kwantlen Formerly @ubcpsych.bsky.social | B.A. @UBC | Vancouver. BC. https://linktr.ee/maya.tommasi 🏳️‍🌈Bi | 🏳️‍⚧️Trans | 🇧🇷Immigrant | ♀️She/Her
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mayatommasi.bsky.social
Maya Tommasi @mayatommasi.bsky.social · 5d
My latest article on how separating identity based politics and economic based politics isn't the way forward, despite how some NDP'ers seem to think.
Powers that be: The NDP needs to learn that ‘identity politics’ are working class values
Don’t think so? Read up on what unions across Canada have been supporting.
ubyssey.ca
mayatommasi.bsky.social
Maya Tommasi @mayatommasi.bsky.social · 5h
Seeing right wingers celebrating the decrease in people identifying as trans is so revealing. They literally want to bully kids into hiding their true identity regardless of what cost.

This is what violently enforcing patriarchy looks like.
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mayatommasi.bsky.social
Maya Tommasi @mayatommasi.bsky.social · 4d
The escalation of authoritarian rhetoric happening in the US is insane. Labelling your opponents as terrorists is literally big-time authoritarianism. The fact we escalated to this in under a year is insane.
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mayatommasi.bsky.social
Maya Tommasi @mayatommasi.bsky.social · 4d
The fact that important and influential members of Canadian politics and media are still pretty much exclusively on Twitter concerns me.
That website has such a right-wing bias it inevitably warps people's perception of what the median person thinks.
mayatommasi.bsky.social
Maya Tommasi @mayatommasi.bsky.social · 5d
My latest article on how separating identity based politics and economic based politics isn't the way forward, despite how some NDP'ers seem to think.
Powers that be: The NDP needs to learn that ‘identity politics’ are working class values
Don’t think so? Read up on what unions across Canada have been supporting.
ubyssey.ca
Reposted by Maya Tommasi
olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social
Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 22d
"Common decency stigmatizes people that do not participate in it—removes them from voluntary association. We indeed have to live with one another, but terms and conditions apply."

me on why Ezra Klein should be ashamed / why shame is Good Actually

www.bostonreview.net/articles/how...
How Can We Live Together? - Boston Review
Ezra Klein is wrong: shame is essential.
www.bostonreview.net
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mayatommasi.bsky.social
Maya Tommasi @mayatommasi.bsky.social · 27d
... same permission structure that itself encourages political violence.
You are right. We must go further than just condemning political violence. It's necessary for democratic survival, but in doing so, we need to recognize all political violence and not legitimize the one that is easy to ignore.
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mayatommasi.bsky.social
Maya Tommasi @mayatommasi.bsky.social · 27d
On those most vulnerable. Those who unlike you and Kirk never had a megaphone to tell their stories, who too often weren't given the opportunity to be humanized in the first place. Words carry power, both yours and his; when you legitimize him further, you legitimize his permission structures the...
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mayatommasi.bsky.social
Maya Tommasi @mayatommasi.bsky.social · 27d
I will probably never agree with conservatives, but many conservatives, including some current Republicans, engage in politics that doesn't legitimize violence against people like me. Kirk was not one of those figures. And to say he was doing politics the right way ignores the effect his work had...
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mayatommasi.bsky.social
Maya Tommasi @mayatommasi.bsky.social · 27d
... the most vulnerable in our society from the few protections they had. All this has material consequences, this too is political violence. The connection between the actions of Kirk and the lives cut short is not as obvious as that of the shooter and Kirk's, but they are also deadly. ...
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mayatommasi.bsky.social
Maya Tommasi @mayatommasi.bsky.social · 27d
... increase trans suicide. This political change is attributed to the cultural shift brought by the political speech of Kirk and others like him. The internet is now filled with hate speech, against, Jews, Muslims, latines, black people, and every other minority. Anti DEI measures are stripping ...
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mayatommasi.bsky.social
Maya Tommasi @mayatommasi.bsky.social · 27d
... I feel this even outside the States. Here in Canada, the gender affirming care I take — the care that saved my life, bringing me back from the brink of suicide, into becoming a mostly happy and functional human — is under attack. Removing this care will, as has been shown to drastically ...
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mayatommasi.bsky.social
Maya Tommasi @mayatommasi.bsky.social · 27d
... this violence is committed sometimes by political administration (e.g. ICE), but it also occurs in subtle, more pernicious ways that are harder to detect. Ways which are allowed to happen as a direct consequence of the permission structures created by Kirk's speech. ...
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mayatommasi.bsky.social
Maya Tommasi @mayatommasi.bsky.social · 27d
... was it demonstrated a certain blindness to what political violence is. Sure, headline political assassination of prominent political figures are reprehensible, but they are also hard to ignore, unlike the vast and continuous violence that is committed to unnamed everyday minority people. ...
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mayatommasi.bsky.social
Maya Tommasi @mayatommasi.bsky.social · 27d
Ezra, I understand and applaud the sentiment that more than just opposing political violence is necessary here. The increase in political violence requires a deeper soul-searching of how we got here, and we will need to learn to communicate with each other to heal. The issue I had with the piece ...
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mayatommasi.bsky.social
Maya Tommasi @mayatommasi.bsky.social · Sep 13
If you are concerned with this normalization of violence. It's time we address the failures of our politics; not simply by pearl clutching or handwringing about unsavoury posts from anons.
We must intead face the insufficiency of modern liberalism and the violent instincts of modern conservatives.
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mayatommasi.bsky.social
Maya Tommasi @mayatommasi.bsky.social · Sep 13
This is all happening in the keg fire that is social media, where conspiracy theories, proliferate, irresponsible actors jump to conclusions, and their owners are either passive or actively inflaming violent political discourse.
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mayatommasi.bsky.social
Maya Tommasi @mayatommasi.bsky.social · Sep 13
Meanwhile liberals sorely failed to adapt to the moment, be it from lack of meaningful societal change or an insistence in legitimizing an increasingly authoritarian right; both with politicians who fail to raise to the occasion or commentators chastising those who are more forcibly push back.
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mayatommasi.bsky.social
Maya Tommasi @mayatommasi.bsky.social · Sep 13
On the right, the rhetoric that started as fringe 4chan ideology has taken the mainstream. An ideology that glorifies violence, from incels to groypers, conspiracy theories of western decline, or the stochastic terrorism of libs of tiktok and elected politicians like Trump.
This is the consequence.
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mayatommasi.bsky.social
Maya Tommasi @mayatommasi.bsky.social · Sep 13
The concern of normalizing political violence is appropriate, but the pearl clutching about online rhetoric is counterproductive.
The normalization of violence is a symptom of our politics. Coming from both the right's violent rhetoric and the liberal failure to address the issues of our age.
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mayatommasi.bsky.social
Maya Tommasi @mayatommasi.bsky.social · Sep 11
Kirk's murder today and the reactions to it are a sombre marker of our times. Both the normalization of political violence and the violent rhetoric of retaliation by some right-wing figures. This doesn't bode well for any democracy. Unfortunately, these attitudes are also present here in Canada.
Reposted by Maya Tommasi
mehdirhasan.bsky.social
Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan.bsky.social · Sep 10
Judging by the shamefully opportunistic & politicizing rhetoric of some rightwingers on Twitter, & their cynical use of Charlie Kirk’s horrific murder for political point scoring, it’s almost as if Minnesota Rep. Melissa Hortman wasn’t murdered by a Trump-voting MAGA maniac just 12 weeks ago.
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mayatommasi.bsky.social
Maya Tommasi @mayatommasi.bsky.social · Sep 10
Oof my condolences, ahaha. 💛
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mayatommasi.bsky.social
Maya Tommasi @mayatommasi.bsky.social · Sep 9
Going to the bad website to check the Blue Jays lineup and being confronted with the most vile gross takes ever is my sissiphean sacrifice to being a baseball fan.
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mayatommasi.bsky.social
Maya Tommasi @mayatommasi.bsky.social · Sep 7
I fear the recognition of global democratic backsliding in recent years has blinded us to how authoritarian what is happening in the states rn is.
Trump's use of violence & the repression of basic liberal rights is a massive escalation from what happened last time! We should be aware of it.
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mayatommasi.bsky.social
Maya Tommasi @mayatommasi.bsky.social · Aug 20
Something missing in the analysis of the Poilievere by-election is that despite him doing well — he did! — we all knew he was strong in Alberta. His challenge is to win moderate voters in the East. Winning Alberta isn't enough. This result won't quell anxieties about his party's electability in a GE
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