#“you never accuse other whites of being racist!!!!” actually we do but you seemingly had your head in the sand long enough to come back n

[maggot-baggage]

[caelumsnuff]

i want to hear your recent opinions ^O^

Thank you for soliciting my opinions lol

So! With the resurrection of the whole “making characters a certain race” discussion, I have had So Many Opinions about the entire situation.

I feel like a significant amount of people from both sides have come at the discussion in bad faith and that’s only caused more tension and halted any meaningful dialogue we could have been having from this whole thing. On one hand we have people who are rightfully suspicious about the entirety of someone’s cast being white/seemingly only making characters poc when they fit stereotypes associated with those races, and on the other hand we have people who did such a thing and refuse to analyze their own mannerisms.

To be very very clear: we are correct to be suspicious when white people do these things!!! But i think where many go wrong is walking into discussions having already let their suspicions turn into assumptions; if you show up to a discussion already having made up your mind about someone, you’re never going to get anywhere! You cannot have productive discussions whilst attacking another person for being racist when you don’t even know if they are actually a racist, they’re only ever going to go on the defensive. And you know, when you think someone may have a little bit of implicit bias, you want to actually get them to analyze and deconstruct those biases, not immediately get defensive and shut down criticism because they feel attacked.

And also, i think it's ridiculous that almost every single white person has just automatically ignored why we may be uncomfortable with a cast suspiciously missing any people of color, or only making characters of color when they seem to fit into stereotypes. They ask "why?" and then disregard any of our explanations. I understand when someone comes and accuses you of something you can end up feeling attacked, but as an adult it's your responsibility to 1) assess whether you're actually being attacked and if you're not, 2) whether or not their assumptions are true. If you want to be an anti-racist person, you should actually be analyzing the things you do that might be born of implicit bias instead of going "nope! not racist! therefore i am incapable of doing something racist!" because thats just blatantly false.

Theres so many reasons that someone could have made every character played by Erik white, the easiest of which being that Erik's white. People associate voices with faces sometimes, and we all know what that white guy looks like, his face is everywhere. I wouldn't be surprised if some people cannot imagine characters Erik voices as looking drastically different than him. The appearance of his characters are supposed to be for you to decide. I can imagine that for some people not being give a face to associate with a certain character they just automatically see Erik or someone who looks similarly.

I also find the idea of looking for representation from random artists in the fandom pretty iffy, especially when its from characters that are all voiced by a single white boy. Please please please, go find and support VAs and ASMRists who are actually POC instead of relying on fan-artists and a single white boy for representation.

All in all just.... treat each other kindly and with grace, do some introspection on your own subconscious actions and decisions, and stop spitting straight vitriol at one another because of something in a fucking boyfriend roleplay asmr fandom. Give others the benefit of the doubt, and give yourself the chance to grow and unlearn some things growing up in a racist society may have taught you.

[banhchao]

Around last year, I had a white girl here impersonate an infamous blog with a disgusting Asian men fetish and racist and misogynistic hate of Asian women (because she too shared the same disgusting views) and beg for my forgiveness on her behalf. When I refused to (as the og blog said vile and dehumanizing shit about Asian women because she was jealous), this girl proceeded to cry crocodile tears and said that I should be happy cause nonexistent ppl threw rocks at her and her nonexistent asian bf. She lied and made herself the victim when she was pretending to be someone that had said harmful shit about ppl like me because she thought the og person deserved forgiveness and that I should feel bad if I didn’t give it. What’s even worse was that she was continuing to post the most racist and misogynistic shit about Asian women on her impersonator blog (ex. Slut-shaming, calling us ugly, dumb, arrogant, angry bitches) while she was talking to me, an asian woman.

This white girl would also constantly ask me if white women or men were worse. When I told her that both as a class were just as bad as each other just in different ways, she refused to take no as an answer. She already had determined in her mind that white women were the ultimate victims (mind you, she said awful things about asian women out of probable jealousy). When she couldn’t convince me, she pretended to be a white man with an Asian fetish and sent me hate about white women to drive home her point. I saw thru it obviously. She even went so far as to call me fat (which isn’t an insult tho I know she meant it as one) and bitch under this false pretense not giving a shit about my boundaries because she would rather that I be insulted by a pretend white man and at least convince me white women as a class suffer than me refuse to sympathize with her white women tears. her victim complex outweighed all.

She would ask me about racism against asian ppl and Kpop but never listen to me, an actual asian person when I disagreed with her. When I called out her asian male fetish she wouldn’t listen and constantly denied it even tho she was constantly infantilizing and generalizing asian men off of stereotypes. She would pretend she cared about our issues and our ppl but would still send triggering shit, caring only about herself and not the person on the receiving end. She would even pretend to be a poc just to add more “legitimacy” to her points.

I told her to stop using the c-slur and she wouldn’t. she once tried to bait me into checking out an asian women fetish blog when I had previously told her I got anxious when I was seen as a fetish - all to convince me of this false claim that asian women were more desired than white women, thus more seemingly more privileged. She would complain that white men shat on white women and uplifted asian women and would be blatantly racist and misogynistic to asian women that dated white men (like an MRAsian). She would constantly lie and try to twist the narrative sending me stories about the marginalized groups she hated doing outlandish shit to her to justify her hate of them. She would accuse ppl of being racist and xenophobic when ppl called out the Kpop industry for antiblackness, cultural appropriation, islamophobia, homophobia, racism, misogyny etc. and claimed white Kpop fangirls were the most oppressed for being called out for their fetishes. cause that’s what white women do; they constantly centre themselves.

I knew who she was and blocked her but for some reason the asks kept coming in. I checked on her blog one day to discover she became a TERF. She became one after learning it was the only movement of feminism that truly saw white women as poor little victims even tho we all know that radical feminism benefits white women primarily. It was the only ideology that saw her as the oppressed victim she so DESPERATELY wanted to be. She wanted to be the victim so badly that she would rather spew toxic, vile hate about trans ppl (who are very much marginalized and oppressed, especially when taking into account intersectionality) than just admit her white cishet girl self wasn’t oppressed. After she turned full TERF I finally figured out how to block her asks and got rid of her for good. at that point I knew there was no use of helping her and refused to give any sort of platform to a literal bigot. She now regularly vomits the ugliest transphobic and racist rhetoric... all to victimize her “uwu I’m such a dainty poor white Kpop fangirl and all of the evil trans ppl and poc hate me!” Self.

This white girl cared only about herself and did not give a shit about how her words could impact me. She laid all of her white guilt into me, an asian person, expecting me to carry her burden. And you know what was even more wild?!? I bought into her tears. I was so kind to her and actually used my efforts to be as empathetic as possible to her feelings and yet she still had no respect for my boundaries or feelings despite that. And sometimes she would apologize and insisted she was learning only to turn around and say something racist again. And I know you may be wondering “why didn’t you just turn off Anon?” but at times, she sounded like she needed help as a young person and I actually cared enough to provide what I could. She was a minor so I tried my best to tread carefully and to be empathetic knowing how being young can be difficult. Sometimes I thought I was actually doing some good and that she was actually taking my words to heart. She took advantage of my kindness instead and even felt entitled to it despite me being a total stranger on the internet.

Trust me when I say, white women will go to any length and measure to weaponize their tears and drive home their victim complex to anyone that will fall for their bullshit. Do not trust them.

[dramarising-replacement]

About the Crow drama...

...I am really getting annoyed by the people clamoring that it's racist and so on. I am throwing my hat in the ring and trying to see it from both sides but I truly find the whole thing one big problem of co-opting r*cism to harass people. But that is my opinion, everyone is allowed their own but I find it highly problematic that this whole thing has led to people actually faking screenshots to claim they are at fault. This is not ok. Neither is harassing. Please stop. 

Either way, onwards. Keep in mind, this is my view on the whole thing and I just want to give a perspective of someone who is fairly removed from the whole thing and decided to use critical thinking. I will state that I have had not much interaction with any person involved, I shared spaces in discord in the past and of course also on FR but not to say that any side is my friend. 

Do you know what my biggest problem with the aforementioned statement is? That it's mostly made by the non-Asian people that are stuck on Orientalism. You are projecting your racist stereotypes on a subspecies that was created by actual Asian people. What is the problem with people having fun with their own cultures? I can understand if some Asian people (and I am using Asian because I do not know enough about the subspecies to say which ethnic/culture it is mostly based on) do not like it. That is normal, everyone has different likes and dislikes. Using slurs is not ok but honestly, I haven't seen any proof of these alleged slurs so I can't say anything about it. Show me actual slurs thrown around and it would be different but for now the only thing I could find was the rat thing and honestly? Looking at those screenshots given showed rat used in the context of a beloved character. Who here has never talked about their bastard character being some kind of trashy raccoon or rat before? 

Back to the fact that some people of the same nationality say they don't like it. Like I said, that happens, god, there are many times I don't like what people are doing with my culture. But guess what? I don't say that they are forbidden from playing with it. What gives one person of a culture the right to demand from others to stop how they interact with it? If you start doing that, we have to apply that to everything and imagine how uniform everything would be. For example Christianity: there are so many different branches and they have often problems with their different interpretations of the bible and their practices. Would you say we have to stop all Christian beliefs now? Sounds kind off dumb, right? 

If you do not like how these people interact with their culture then stop interacting with them and the subspecies. It is that easy. FR is not here to take you by the hand and make everything go away that you don't like. It doesn't work like that, we are a pluralistic world with many many different views on things. And that is great. But it also means in spaces like FR we have to moderate ourselves. See something that doesn't confirm your view? Block it or, in case of truly problematic things like outright r*cism/r*pe/m*rder/p*dophilia or whatever else, report. Saying that you don't like how some people interact with your culture while they are of the same culture does not give you the right to call these people racist. Turn it around and these people could call you also racist because you interact differently with your culture. This does not help anyone. 

Now, to my biggest problem with this mud throwing (I would love to call it a discourse but let's be honest here: the people starting to falsify information made this into some kind of contest to harass some people): 

the fact that most people involved are espousing their own racist views under the veneer of "calling out" racism. 

Like I said, I have not specially much knowledge about the subspecies but I did take a look at it, so here we go. But what I read is quite away from that "fetishing" you guys are accusing the people playing around with the dragons. For me it seems like they mixed bird facts, plague aesthetics and cultural aspects together. If you start interpreting r*cism into everything you read, congrats, then you should really think about what that says about yourself. 

For me this seems much more a problem of co-opting anti-racist movements to harass specific people. You use the "right" language to make the "right" accusations and take advantage of white/western ignorance. I am specifically harsh here because this is all that I am currently seeing from all these people: they call members of the subspecies out, in the recent cases C specifically, C actually answered and showed proof that there were actual lies used and so someone decided they needed to remove authenticy from C so they created fake screenshots that say they are from Korea. This whole interaction screams of someone calling r*cism only to realize that, oh no, C actually is Chinese, so they did their best to make it seem like C lied. This is insidious and bullying. I do not know the people involved, I have only written a few times with C and shared discord spaces so I found the Korea screenshot very weird, it's just not how C normally writes. 

I think this isn't about r*cism anymore, this is all about power. This is manipulation at its finest. Really, take the claims of r*cism away and then look at the subspecies again. What is your first thought? Man, that subspecies screams of Plague. 

Here is a thought for all of you: there is unfortunately much r*cism to be found since we are living in a world that is flooded with r*cistic undertones. This means we have to educate ourselves on these issues and to think critically about them. This does not mean "to criticize" but to actually analyze, evaluate and examine so we can reconstruct our perspectives on these issues. And I beg of the people just going after these "call-out" posts, think about this again. Did the subspecies really scream r*cism to you or did you maybe rather think Plague aesthetic before you read these posts? If so, you really have to examine why your view changed. 

One more thing, we have here two groups in the recent posts, one side is "calling" out C and C answers, making sure to openly discuss their culture and background as much as they did. So we have one side seemingly manipulating "evidence" to further their story and one side giving as much information as they can about their background without revealing their whole identity. Yeah, sorry, but I think I know who is more genuine here. Instead of making FR a more informed space it seems it was easier to use progressive language to further their own ideas of what r*cism is. (I am still more sure that this is all about power than anything else.)

This whole thing makes me very salty because it seems like everyone in the notes threw out their critical thinking just so they would not appear as r*cist. 

As an older person that had to take more than one class on colonization and Orientalism this whole thing just makes me wish more people would use critical thinking. Please stop blindly following pretty "progressive" words without seeing the actual problem here. This is actually my biggest problem here, I do not claim to be knowledgable enough to know where the subspecies furthers stereotypical views but for me all the posts I was shown and then read myself speak of different problem.

If you read until now, congratulations, feel free to discuss my points but I am honestly so tired about seeing people just ignoring the bigger issues. I won't answer to anything because I do not want to spend my time here arguing about these things but seeing that my major during my studies involved big chunks of literature and cultural sciences this whole thing just rubbed me wrong when someone told me about it. 

[subjecta5newtella]

thoughts on newtmas :) go on :) i’m listening :)

sami rly said ok time for violence. this is going to be so long sorry everyone.

if we’re talking newtmas itself as a ship in itself, outside of any other influence (and specifically in the movie version, which is generally what people are talking about), I think it’s a good ship. I would have to be the most unobservant motherfucker alive to not see what people see in it, and I am not, in fact, the most unobservant motherfucker alive. it’s a good dynamic with good chemistry and realistically I think if I’d started with the movies rather than the books, I would’ve gone all in for it.

however. I personally am incapable about talking about it in isolation.

I realize from that segue it sounds like I’m about to lead into some grand moral point, but mostly I just liked how dramatic it sounded. anyway. I feel like I need to start with a disclaimer that the easiest, simplest part of this is that you tend to get attached to your first ships in a fandom, as well as your initial feelings about the characters. obviously you can change your mind about any of those things, but it does stick with you. if we’re going to be kind and skip my internalized homophobia era (please be kind), I shipped thominho and nalby because that’s what was big at the time. I also just... did not like book thomas very much, so I wasn’t about to ship him with my favorite character.

(complete and utter tangent: it’s interesting to me that people read the books now and overwhelmingly see newtmas. I recognize that every time I start a sentence with “it’s interesting that” it automatically sounds shady, but i genuinely just love Analyzing. anyway some of it’s definitely people seeing the movie first or having fandom content as a first exposure even in passing, all of which are valid ways to engage, but I do kind of find it fascinating when people talk about book!newtmas as some massive presence because then... theoretically we all should’ve seen it pre-movies? the ship existed, usually among people who hardcore multishipped, but it wasn’t anything like it is today. not at all to say that reading it like that is invalid, it’s just interesting to me the way some people talk about that interpretation, rather than the interpretation itself)

anyway. with that all out of the way, i do have some actual issues with newtmas, although it really doesn’t have anything to do with the characters or the ship itself. these are things that surround the ship and affect my feelings about it, meaning that I never bought in despite, like I said, Seeing It. my main issue with it is how much the roles of other characters have been reduced to create the ship in its current form. I’ve talked at far too much length about the way minho was adapted and honestly will probably talk about it more, because that’s the big one to me (that post can be found here, for those who don’t keep up with every rant I’ve ever gone on for some reason). I will not go so far as to say that’s required reading to fully understand this post, but I would recommend it since I don’t want to just repeat myself. so much of newtmas being the major ship feels like it’s predicated on minho not being there and not having anywhere near as strong a relationship with thomas and newt as he did in the books, and that will never sit right with me.

newt’s relationship with alby is his other most significant dynamic outside thomas and minho, and i feel like it might be surprising to hear me say this, but i get why that one was reduced for the movie. there’s only so much time in the film, so you want to focus on the characters who are going to make it past the first one. I do have a problem here, but it has more to do with dashner and with some fandom bullshit. with dashner, i think the crank palace is the worst of it (I could’ve just stopped that sentence at “I think the crank palace is the worst” but whatever). since all my rants lead back to each other, I’ll link the relevant one here, but the general gist is that my biggest problem was that newt does not seem to have any more of a post-swipe past than thomas does despite theoretically having two more years of memories. given that fact, I don’t know about you, but I would kind of expect alby to be more of a presence in his consciousness. that’s true of pretty much any of the original gladers, but newt and alby are clearly very close in the first book, and again, alby saved his fucking life. he’s literally mentioned once. dashner prioritized the newt/thomas dynamic so much that newt seemingly had no meaningful relationships with anyone else. tcp isn’t immune to treating minho badly either; like I said in that post, it sounds like newt read the wikipedia page on minho. is any of this the fault of the ship itself? does this change anything that came before it? no, but the whole thing feels massively disingenuous, and also kind of disrespectful to people who actually, like, gave a shit about the other characters. also, the way he’s retconning makes me real nervous.

the other part, like I mentioned, is the fandom more than any of the actual content. I’m aware that part of this is just a statistics game and also that’s it’s not representative of all newtmas shippers, but most of the alby bashing I’ve seen comes from newtmas people. it’s... baffling to me, honestly. what’s the point in putting down a ship being kept alive by me and like 3 other people? what do you gain by misrepresenting a character to the point of maliciousness when you could easily just not engage with them? again, I know it’s not everyone and it doesn’t have anything to do with the ship, but I’d be lying if I said things like this don’t color my perception. if someone goes out of their way to put down a ship I like, I’m not really gonna want to associate myself with their ship. I’m gonna cling to my own harder out of spite, actually.

also.... okay. so I peaced out to go do other shit between earlyish 2015 and mid 2019. and it was very weird to temporarily leave the fandom while the two main (in my recollection at least, which could be biased by who i was friends with) mlm ships each included one of the explicitly non-white characters, and come back to find it almost entirely dominated by white boy/white boy... like. I don’t wanna make a statement as simple as “the fandom is racist” because a) it’s not my place to say that, b) if we want to go into that, there are other examples of fandom racism where it’s Blatant and there really is no excuse, whereas this is a bit more complicated imo because c) like. that’s the dynamic the movies gave us. the movies focused very heavily on the newt and thomas dynamic, so of course that’s what the fandom is going to focus on. there’s a lot to say there, but that’s a different issue. it does.... still contribute to the bad taste in my mouth, though, and also contributes to me feeling like I need to keep those ships alive. it’s not about who has the Most Progressive Ship, I just feel weird about the particular shift I’ve seen here.

on a note that sounds less like I’m leveling accusations, New Relationships just aren’t my vibe. you look at my ao3 and it’s like. friends of many years to lovers. established relationship. friends to lovers to exes and back again. just from a dynamics perspective, there are other ships that are more interesting for me to explore. there. this is a lighter reason.

idk overall I don’t wanna sound like I’m on some Moral Crusade here, even though i know some of my points made it sound like that. this is really just me putting all of my thoughts that I can currently round up in one place in order to... idk, explain myself? and like it’s stupid that i feel the need to explain myself, but I know it’s weird not to ship it at this point, and I know if I did I would have so much more content to choose from and a much wider audience for my own content. there’s just baggage there thats entirely separate from the ship itself, having seen the shift and knowing what had to change in order to center newtmas. I’m not trying to sound like I’m better than anyone; I just think maybe I have a different perspective on things having been here for long enough to qualify it as a new mental illness, and that’s ultimately why I feel the way I do.

[florencesmachine]

tell me what's going on

Why tumblr user donottearmedown/luciequeenofelfame/luciehvrondaie is an embarrassment: a Masterpost

Hi if you’re here it’s because you’ve heard that tumblr user donottearmedown is an embarrassment and you’d like to know all the details! Let me break it down. It all started with this post by @minacarstairs (Tessa (yes @minacarstairs’s name is Tessa sorry if that makes this post confusing)), in which donottearmedown originally reached out to Tessa by sending her something along the lines of “Do you ship heronstairs/herongraystairs?” And Tessa replied with something along the lines of “Yeah lmao herongraystairs rights!”

(I wanna note that Tessa was being very polite, and continues to be very polite to people who disagree with her opinions on heronstairs/herongraystairs. She even began her original conversation with dont tear me down by saying it’s a matter of personal interpretation :) it’s donottearmedown who made the conversation mean-spirited)

(Also Tessa pls correct next if I’m wrong on any of this thnx)

And then sometime later, the conversation above ensues in which donottearmedown, seemingly perfectly reasonable at first, disagrees with the ship and offers a link to look at. (She throws this link around any chance she gets. She really fucking loves this link.) I got involved because in her answer, Tessa replies back with a link from a post I made from my own blog starting back in 2018, and then continued to add to it until my account got terminated (long story). You can read through both posts and check out all the replies! But basically we realized during this interaction that donottearmedown wasn’t looking to have a friendly conversation and was, in fact, batshit crazy. They were saying some absolute brain dead shit like that people shipping heronstairs is the same as people shipping Alec x Clary. Here’s the screenshot:

donottearmedown came back the next day to reply on several of Tessa and mine’s post which she wasn’t even tagged in, such as this one, and this one that had absolutely nothing to do with her because I make that same post every year. Here’s a screenshot from my old account last year via Instagram:

(there are more posts she replied to but I can’t be bothered to look for them, I’m sure you can find them on their blog if you can spare the braincells)

Racism by donottearmedown:

So, Tessa received this anon which tipped us off to some of the other tomfoolery on donottearmedown’s blog. We decided to look for ourselves and lo and behold, here’s the post of donottearmedown accusing Cassandra Clare of having a “Chinese kink” for writing Jessa:

Which, first of all, makes no sense because there’s like 2 Chinese characters in TSC total. If anything CC has a straight white boy kink lmao. But by saying this she was basically implying that the ONLY way Tessa (book!Tessa), or anybody who loves Jem, can love him is if they have a “Chinese kink”. Which donottearmedown can’t seem to be able to understand is an incredibly racist thing to say and think.

They also reblogged this BLM link and proceeded to tag it with absolute nonsense like “#smoke weed #lose weight #wessa”. I don’t know if her intentions were to mock the BLM movement but I still found this to be so incredibly disrespectful and tone deaf.

I also feel like I should mention this ask sent to Tessa in which donottearmedown implies she ~could be~ Asian, but it’s “none of her business anyways” (as if being Asian would absolve anyone of being racist akjsksjsj), but based on the fact that she has a track record of lying and pretending to be a person she’s not (as you will soon see :)) I call bullshit lmao:

I think that was the last of our interactions until today? Tessa and I were distracted because we have, you know, real lives.

But anyway, that brings us to today.

donottearmedown started replying to posts from mine and Tessa’s blogs which she wasn’t tagged in, again, and made several days ago. This one literally wasn’t even about her, it was about someone else that had engaged with one of Tessa’s posts. I made that post over a week ago and had already forgotten about it, but clearly donottearmedown never stops thinking about us 😳

NOW I WOULD LIKE TO POINT OUT THIS POST SPECIFICALLY.

Why? Because donottearmedown and luciequeenofelfame (now luciehervndaie) interacted on this post, as 2 seperate entities. luciequeenofelfame had also interacted with Tessa and I’s original posts at the beginning of June (you can check the replies on the posts!) coming to donottearmedown’s defense, and praising her for her opinions and other shit like that.

Here’s the screenshot. As you can see here, luciehervndaie reblogs from donottearmedown and adds on to their opinion:

Now here’s the kicker: donottearmedown and luciehervndaie are the same person.

As in, this bitch literally made up a second blog so that she can pretend to be someone else agreeing with her own opinions and cheering herself on.

Here’s the proof:

I made this post calling out donottearmedown on their racism. I didn’t bother tagging her in the original post because I knew she was stalking my blog and would see it eventually anyway. 😌 And they took the bait, as you can see.

AND THEN I got the notification that luciequeenofelfame had replied to my post. Here’s the reply:

Now here’s where donottearmedown/luciequeenofelfame made an oopsie! 😳

Notice where luciequeenofelfame says “1. I didn’t delete it lmao”. She’s responding to my tags on this post where I’m calling out donottearmedown on her racist post, and my tags read:

“#the fact you went and deleted this post because you KNEW you were about to get slammed #comedy”

(context: @wilhelminacarstairs looked on donottearmedown’s blog recently looking for the post I screenshotted in the link above, and he couldn’t find it so I assumed she deleted it so that I wouldn’t call her out on it. Although she claims she didn’t delete it, so! Maybe it’s still up! Feel free to look for it and let me know lmao)

Now, in the tags I am obviously talking to donottearmedown, correct? So then why is luciequeenofelfame replying that she didn’t delete anything? 🤔 AND JUST AS IM ABOUT TO REPLY-

Wow, looks like I can’t reblog the post. Why? Because luciequeenofelfame has deleted it, and then IMMEDITALY changed her url to luciehvrondaie, hoping it would cover her tracks. Little does she know, tumblr notifications are forever:

As you can see, donottearmedown/luciequeenofelfame/luciehervndaie realized they made an oopsie, so she deleted her first response and posted it again from the blog she actually MEANT to post it from. Damn if only she knew that @minacarstairs @wilhelminacarstairs and I keep screenshots of e v e r y t h i n g :/ Then she might have gotten away with it! 😩

But yeah lmao here are the posts I made about it immeditaly afterwards calling her out on it because I thought it was funny: X X X X

She defends herself on some of them saying shit like “wow so I’m just making up blogs for support wessa? The majority of the fandom supports Wessa so I’m all of those blogs according to you? I’m thousands of people?!” Or just trying to change the topic back to heronstairs and ignoring the allegations altogether. Like, no luv we’re not saying you’re every single Wessa blog ever. We’re just saying you’re these 2, and we’re right lmao. If you look through both their blogs they also post about the same fandoms, and more damning, make a lot of the same spelling errors. Seriously their speech pattern is exactly the same. Feel free to look through them if you want, and if they don’t start mass-deleting post trying to cover their tracks.

BONUS:

I don’t know how true this is, but according to @fair-but-wilde-child on this ask, donottearmedown is ALSO the infamous twitter stan that complained to CC about TLH having too many gay characters.

EXTRA BONUS:

luciequeenofelfame/luciehvrondaie (donottearmedown’s second account 😌) is the account responsible for that wessa vs jessa comparison chart that went around a while ago LMAOOOOOOOO embarrassing

tl;dr: donottearmedown/luciequeenofelfame/luciehvrondaie is a biphobic racist who’s opinions are so bad she has to make a second account to agree with herself

🥺 tragic

Also I wanna say for the record, as @minacarstairs ans @wilhelminacarstairs will testify, I guessed a while ago these accounts were the same person when I noticed their speech patterns were eerily similar, and how luciequeenofelfame always seemed to reply to donottearmedown’s posts IMMEDITATELY after they were posted. 

So the lesson for today? Cinthia is always right. 😤

[uncloseted]

my mom keeps badgering me about the capital event bc i really hated it but i support the blm protests and she says it’s hypocritical of me bc the protests were just as “violent” as the capital and “caused lots of deaths”. i never really have anything to say back to justify what went down, do you have any info i could use to explain myself? i know they were for completely different causes and one actually matters, but i don’t know how to justify the “violence” (i personally don’t think a majority of them were violent, all the ones where i lived were routinely peaceful and i think the extreme ones were sensationalized for the news). anyway sorry if it’s dumb i’m 14 and just trying to get into politics and stuff so i’m not super well informed and just trying to learn.

I’m sorry this has taken me a few days to get to.  What happened at the Capitol is complicated, and I want to make sure I give you as full of an answer as possible.  I also want to just quickly say that it’s awesome you’re getting involved in politics at such a young age and trying to help your parents understand these issues.  I would love to answer any questions you have about politics or social issues (or just kind of anything in general, I’m not picky).  Last thing and then I’ll get into the meat of this post- I’m a huge supporter of the BLM and police abolition movements and was a protestor over the summer, so I’m maybe a little bit biased.  This situation makes me really angry on a personal level, but I’ll try to stick to just the facts as much as possible in this post and let you know when I’m showing my own opinions.

So the first thing I want to talk about is language.  The Black Lives Matter protests were protests- a public expression of objection, disapproval or dissent towards a political idea or action, usually with the intention of influencing government policy.  In the US, protesting is a constitutional right protected by the First Amendment.  The storming of the Capitol was not a protest, and it wasn’t intended to be.  It was planned several weeks in advance with the explicit intention of disrupting the counting of Electoral College ballots.  Their stated goal was to overturn Donald Trump’s defeat in the presidential election, an election that is widely considered to be the freest, fairest, and safest election in US history (ironically, in part due to Trump’s insistence that there was voter fraud in the 2016 election).  Storming a public building is not a form of protest protected by the US Constitution.  Further, an attempt to overturn a democratic election is an attempt to carry out a coup.  The Capitol rioters will likely be charged with sedition (conduct that incites rebellion against the established order) and/or insurrection (a violent uprising against an authority or government).  The Black Lives Matter protestors were not attempting to carry out a coup against the US government, and none have been charged with offenses as big as those.

Next, I want to touch on motivation.  The Black Lives Matter protesters were protesting against police brutality towards minorities, particularly Black people.  There has long been a documented history of police misconduct and fatal use of force by law enforcement officers against Black people in the US.  Many protests in the past have been a response to police violence, including the 1965 Watts riots, the 1992 Los Angeles riots, and the 2014 and 2015 Black Lives Matter protests in response to the murders of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Freddie Gray.  By contrast, the Capitol rioters were not motivated by fact.  They were called to action by the President of the United States, Donald Trump.  They were told that the election had been “stolen” from Trump, and were encouraged to march over to the Capitol to “take back our country”.  The idea that the election was stolen from the president is demonstrably false.  They weren’t motivated by a social issue, a concern for their own lives, facts, or even really principle.  “Our president wants us here...we wait to take orders from our president,” was what motivated them. The affiliations of those rioters are varied, but many of them are affiliated with either the far-right, anti-government Boogaloo Boys, the explicitly neofascist Proud Boys, the self-proclaimed militia The Oath Keepers, or the far-right militia group Three Percenters.  Many are also on the record as being QAnon followers (followers of a disproven far-right conspiracy that started off as a 4chan troll, which states that an anonymous government official, “Q”, is providing information about a cabal of Satan-worshiping, cannibalistic pedophiles in the Democratic party who are running a child sex trafficking ring and plotting against Trump.  Yes, really).

The intentions of BLM were largely peaceful.  BLM protest documents encouraged protesters to be peaceful even in the face of police violence, because the BLM protesters knew what the price of being violent would be.  We were encouraged not to bring weapons or anything that could be misconstrued as a weapon.  Even non-violent protests were met with tear gas, rubber bullets, and riot gear.  A reported 96.3% of 7,305 BLM protests were entirely peaceful (no injuries, no property damage).  The 292 “violent incidents” in question were mainly the toppling of statues of “colonial figures, slave owners, and Confederate leaders”.  There were also several instances of right wing, paramilitary style militia movements discharging firearms into crowds of protesters, and 136 confirmed incidences of right-wing participation at the protests (including members of the aforementioned Boogaloo Boys, Three Percenters, Oath Keepers, and Proud Boys).  It was also rumored that off-duty police were inciting violence (although to my knowledge, that is unconfirmed).  There is no evidence that “antifa” (a decentralized, left-wing, anti-racist and anti-fascist group) played a role in instigating the protests or violence, or even that they had a significant role in the protests at all.  People who were involved in crimes were not ideologically organized, and were largely opportunists taking advantage of the chaos for personal gain.  

By contrast, the “Storm the Capitol” documents were largely violent; messages like, “pack a crowbar,” and “does anyone know if the windows on the second floor are reinforced” were common on far-right social media platforms.  One message on 8kun (formerly 8chan, a website linked to white supremacy, neo-Nazism, the alt-right, etc) stated, "you can go to Washington on Jan 6 and help storm the Capitol....As many Patriots as can be. We will storm the government buildings, kill cops, kill security guards, kill federal employees and agents, and demand a recount."  The speakers at the Trump rally encouraged attendees to see themselves as foot soldiers fighting to save the country, and to be ready to “bleed for freedom”.  The Capitol rioters were mostly armed; rioters were reportedly seen firing pepper spray at police officers, and pipe bombs, molotov cocktails, and guns (including illegal assault rifles) were found on the protesters. One protester was filmed saying, “believe me, we are well armed if we need to be.”  Some protesters arrived in paramilitary regalia, including camo and Kevlar vests.

I quickly want to touch on scale.  The George Floyd BLM protests are thought to be the largest protests in US history, with between 15 and 26 million (largely young, sometimes children, minority) people attending a protest in over 2000 cities in 60 countries.  There were around 14,000 arrests, most being low-level offenses such as violating curfews or blocking roadways. 19 deaths have been reported, largely at the hands of police.  Only one death is known to have been a law enforcement officer.  The number of people who stormed the Capitol is still somewhat unclear, but it seems to be between 2,000 and 8,000 (largely older white, cis, straight, Christian men) people.  80+ people have been arrested for federal crimes, including 25+ who are being charged with domestic terrorism (something nobody associated with BLM is being accused of).  There have been five deaths reported.  One was a police officer, and the other four were rioters.  Of those deaths, one was a police related shooting (a female Air Force veteran).  The other three died of unrelated medical emergencies.  One reportedly had a history of high blood pressure and suffered a heart attack from the excitement.  

Now I want to look at government response.  During the BLM protests, there was a huge response from law enforcement.  200 cities imposed curfews, 30 states and Washington DC activated over 96,000 National Guard, State Guard, 82nd Airborne, and 3rd Infantry Regiment service members.  The deployment was the largest military operation other than war in US history, and it was in response to protests concerning, in part, the militarization of police forces.  The police were outfitted in riot gear.  They used physical force against BLM protesters, including batons, tear gas, pepper spray, and rubber bullets, “often without warning or seemingly unprovoked,” per the New York Times.  Anecdotally, everyone I know now knows how to neutralize pepper spray, treat rubber bullet wounds, build shields out of household items, how to prevent cellphones from being tracked, and how to confuse facial recognition technology to prevent being identified (as six men connected to the Ferguson protests mysteriously turned up dead afterwards, and the police were using cellphone tracking technology).  Amnesty International issued a press release calling for police to end excessive militarized response to the protests.  There were 66 incidents of vehicles being driven into crowds of protesters, 7 of which explicitly involved police officers, the rest of which were by far-right groups.  Over 20 people were partially blinded after being struck with police projectiles.  When the BLM protests were happening, Trump said that, “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”

In contrast, the response to the Capitol protesters was relatively tame, especially given that the US Capitol’s last breach was over 200 years ago (when British troops set fire to the building during the war of 1812) and the rioters weren’t being shy about their aspirations to conduct an armed insurrection incited by the sitting president.  There was (widely available, able to be found through a Google search, everyone saw it) prior intelligence that far-right, extremist groups were planning on (violently) Storming the Capitol on January 6th, with the intention of interrupting the Electoral College ballot counting and holding lawmakers hostage.  However, the US Capitol Police insisted that a National Guard presence would not be necessary for the protests, and Pentagon officials reportedly restricted DC guard troop from being deployed except as a measure of last resort, and restricted them from receiving ammunition or riot gear.  They were instructed to engage with rioters only in self-defense, and were banned from using surveillance equipment.  Despite prior knowledge of the “protests”, Capitol Police staffing levels mirrored that of a normal day, and no riot control equipment was prepared.  The Capitol Police weren’t in paramilitary gear the way they were for the BLM protests.  The mob walked in to the Capitol with little resistance.  Some scaled walls, some broke down barricades, some smashed windows, and one video even seems to show Capitol Police opening a gate for the mob. Rioters traipsed around the Capitol (one of the most important government buildings in the country) with little resistance, looting and vandalizing offices of Congress members.  Some rioters felt safe enough to give their names to media outlets, livestream their exploits, and take selfies with police officers.  One man was (ironically) carrying a Confederate flag, a symbol of a secession attempt on the part of the South (and of racism). It took 50 minutes for FBI tactical teams to arrive at the scene, and the National Guard were initially directed by Trump not to intervene.  Pence later overturned that ruling and approved the National Guard.  Police used finally used riot gear, shields, smoke grenades, and batons to retake control of the Capitol, but notably no tear gas or rubber bullets.  Video showed rioters being escorted away without handcuffs.  Trump’s response to the riot was, "we love you. You're very special ... but you have to go home." 

This is where I’m going to get a little editorial, but I think it’s important to say.  If the people storming the Capitol Building were Black, they would have been met with a large, pre-coordinated military presence, violent restraint, arrests, and quite possibly would have been shot.  They wouldn’t have made it inside the Capitol, much less been given free rein to wander around without immediate consequence. Hundreds of people during the George Floyd protests were arrested for just being present- 127 protesters were arrested for violating curfew on June 2nd in Detroit alone, twice the number of arrests made during the storming of the US Capitol.  It turns out that the police do know how to use restraint, after all.  What an absolute shock.  It’s almost like they’re a corrupt and racist institution we should get rid off...

The last big thing I want to talk about is the outcome.  The BLM protests were meaningful, but the outcome from them has been tame.  Nobody has been accused of domestic terrorism. State and local governments evaluated their police department policies and made some changes, like banning chokeholds, partially defunding some departments, and passing regulations that departments must recruit in part from the communities they patrol.  Only one city, Minneapolis, pledged to dismantle their police force.  The response has largely been localized.  I think the biggest impact it’s had is introducing people to the concept of police abolition and getting more people involved in the movement.  By contrast, the Capitol riots have resulted in over 25 people being accused of domestic terrorism and the second attempt to impeach Donald Trump, something that has never happened before in the history of the US.  

But what really concerns me is the precedent this sets.  Donald Trump is an idiot, and he’s gotten this far.  We can’t count on the guy who takes his place to be an idiot, too.  The next guy could be clever, strategic, well-spoken, well-mannered... not to invoke Godwin’s law here, but people liked Hitler.  He was a persuasive speaker and capitalized on conspiracy theories about World War 1 to gain support.  His 1923 attempt to overthrow the Bavarian government failed, but sympathy for his aims grew.  He painted himself as a good, moral man who loved dogs and children and was trying to do right by his country (by, among other things, arresting communists and leftists, and then eventually all minorities).  Trump isn’t Hitler.  He’s not even a Hitler analogue.  But Trump has already done this much damage to the fabric of our society.  He’s worn down our relationship with the media, with one another, with democracy, with morality, and with truth itself.  We have to be prepared for the idea that the next guy might be a much better politician.  Getting rid of Trump isn’t the end; it’s the beginning of a fight against fascism that’s only going to grow from here.

There are other differences you could point to.  BLM protesters wore masks to prevent the spread of COVID (and indeed, researchers have reported that the protests did not drive an increase in virus transmission), for example, while the rioters were largely unmasked.  But I think the bottom line is that the millions of BLM protesters were doing their best to be responsible citizens fighting peacefully for an evidence-based, human rights cause, even though they knew that as a primarily minority group of people, they would be met with violence.  The thousands of far-right, white, Capitol insurrectionists were doing their best to overturn a free, fair, safe, and democratic election because of a call to action by Trump and a stringent belief in disproven conspiracy theories, which they knew would be met with minimal resistance despite the severity of their actions.  The insurrectionists are fascists, full stop, and we should call them what they are.  The BLM protesters were by and large just people, of all different political views and motivations, who wanted to fight against something they saw as unjust.  

I’m sorry that this is such a long post. This topic has been on my mind all week, and I wanted to give it the nuance it deserves.  All we can do from here is to keep fighting- for justice, for truth, and, hopefully, for peace.

[theunderdogwrites]

If you have a problem with Cookie Monster, then I have a problem with you.

Someone recently asked me how I come up with things to write about and post. Well, these posts are bona fide dumps of random thoughts that sneak in when I’m not engaging any part of my brain. I love them because they’re unpolished and exactly how my mind endlessly prattles on in conversation with itself. Truth be told, it’s usually in the shower. And the dumping of these words here is comparable to spring cleaning. It helps to declutter the mind too from time to time.

Last week my Mom and I were talking about the recent decision by Dr. Seuss Enterprises to stop publishing six of their books because of racist and insensitive imagery. For all the people screaming out there – THE COMPANY MADE THIS CHOICE. They were not forced by cancel culture, but rather listened and took feedback from audiences including teachers, academics and specialists in the field as part of a review process. This is called being responsible and allowing for growth through intelligent conversations. The company recognizes that certain depictions of Asians and Black people are hurtful and wrong and have taken steps to acknowledge these facts. They are NOT banning these books and have said they’re committed to listening and learning going forward.

Here is the list of the six book titles and the year they were first published:

- And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street (1937)

- McElligot’s Pool (1947)​

- If I Ran the Zoo (1950)

- Scrambled Eggs Super! (1953)

- On Beyond Zebra (1955)

- The Cat’s Quizzer (1976)

Have you ever stumbled upon a journal or something you wrote 10 years ago and it made you cringe? Anyone who says NO to this is probably in possession of some of the worst poetry by their hand, in the world. I know that if I was to release some of the stuff I wrote down from a number of years ago (and in reality, some stuff as recent as 3-4 years ago) I’d be embarrassed by their level of absolute lameness. I write with emotion and unless you’re Tucker Carlson or stunted inside from your head to your toes, you know what it means to evolve. It is what we’re supposed to do, otherwise we are simply stuck in one place forever and I for one can’t think of anything more grotesque than remaining the same.

“You are being presented with a choice: evolve or remain. If you choose to remain unchanged, you will be presented with the same challenges, the same routine, the same storms, the same situations, until you learn from them, until you love yourself enough to say “no more”, until you choose change.

If you choose to evolve, you will connect with the strength within you, you will explore what lies outside the comfort zone, you will awaken to love, you will become, you will be. You have everything you need.

Choose to evolve. Choose love.”

Creig Crippen

It is OK to make mistakes, especially when you don’t know any better. Applying how we have grown as a society to the way we behaved 80 years ago is absurd. We are allowed the opportunity to become better before an angry mob comes along and without discussion wants to rip our character to shreds. There are so many chances for real conversations to promote development that are not happening because people are being so quick to condemn and cancel. Fucking stop it! You’re not a crusader. You’re not the moral authority. You are not the Universe’s gift to man/womankind placed here to draw red circles and X’s on every little thing you deem ‘incorrect’. What you are, I suspect, is empty. And I do not know what it is you’re missing, but you won’t find it in a state of ‘over-wokeness’ and tumbling around looking to smite Cookie Monster for passionately enjoying baked goods.

There have been calls to tear down statues and eradicate movies and people for basically what is THE PAST. If you have an actual working time machine, I suppose you can go back to the set of ‘Dirty Harry’ because apparently:

“The film mocks liberal judges and do-gooders, and the villain claims police brutality, planting the seed that other such charges are fake moves to get sympathy.”

I can’t even with that one.

The removal of statues… ok, I understand this one. But I am not of the mind where these statues should be destroyed and essentially erased from history. I am fully onboard with placing the offending bronzed individuals into a museum with a plaque stating something along the lines of: ‘Once upon a time many of us had some crazy fear-based ideas and poor ethics that marginalized large groups of our fellow human beings and created negative stereotypes resulting in a great deal of hurt. We are trying to be better than those placed before you behind the velvet ropes.’

The past cannot be expunged. But it can be a teaching tool. And in some cases, the past can be used to say – “We still suck, but we’re at least trying to evolve into improved people!”

Sadly, instead, we’re taking down Pepé Le Pew. Let’s not believe women when they come forward with claims of sexual abuse, but let’s ban together and get this cartoon skunk with perceived rapist qualities, cancelled. Bravo. Has Pepé Le Pew been a naughty guy? Well, if you break down his actions through the lens of adults – he is incredibly aggressive and borders on being a pervert. I also suspect he’s a chronic masturbater. I grew up watching Looney Tunes (which should surprise NO ONE) and I never liked that skunk. But not because he was overly persistent in his search for love, rather because he was so obnoxious. Worst character on the show. If anything, the French should be offended because I grew up believing all French people were smelly, forceful jerks.

I am flabbergasted at what we are finding urgent and of significance these days. We allow ourselves to become distracted with the stupidest things; revealing exactly where our priorities are placed. Now do not come at me and accuse me of saying racism is not important. Sit your little crusading ass back down because that is not a thought I’d ever possess. This post is not about racism.

I do not give a flying fuck if you hate Megan Markle, love Megan Markle or think Oprah practices her reactionary facial expressions daily in the mirror, but the fact a pregnant woman went on TV in front of MILLIONS of people and admitted to being suicidal while pregnant with her first child and was met with indifference, ridicule and hate… is fucking disgusting.

The mental health status of a pregnant mother is less important than going after Oscar the Grouch from Sesame Street because he is misrepresenting homelessness. Oscar is NOT homeless. He lives in a garbage can and if you knew anything, you’d know that garbage can is spacious and in terms of square footage, it is probably the most expensive home in the neighborhood. See? I can distract with silly things too.

I am going to end all this randomness with a warning…

Victor Frankenstein created his monster from old body parts and strange chemicals and it was brought to life by a mysterious spark. The monster is large and strong but with the intelligence of a newborn. Victor abandons the monster, leaving him confused and when he tries to integrate himself into society, he is shunned. Seeking revenge on his creator, he kills Victor’s younger brother. Then after Victor destroys his work on the female monster meant to ease the monster’s pain and solitude, the monster murders Victor’s best friend and then his new wife.

Ok, I think it is wonderful that our society is taking inventory of certain items and doing our best to right some wrongs… even though I believe many people are being persnickety assholes. But what has been created recently… let’s call it ‘cancel culture’, where “THEY” (please someone tell me who all the THEY people are because I’d like to know who is this organized) seemingly go in search of people, places and things to ostracise… is starting to create a monster of a backlash. (Again, this is not about race/racism so don’t start chirping about white privilege etc.)

If you listen carefully, you can hear the groaning. And the frustration. This isn’t about going after history or childhood memories and bleaching them clean of inappropriateness by today’s standards, it’s about trying to control what people are allowed to think, feel and speak. And the people are getting annoyed. Just like Frankenstein’s Monster when his grotesque appearance wasn’t accepted by society. And we all know what happened next.

[shermandelux-blog]

HOW TO NEVER EVER OFFEND ANYONE ONLINE...EVER!!!

***spoiler alert....it's not possible!! so HERE's what to do when the internet  TURNS ON YOU!

So I'm walking out the front door of the brewery the other day and there at the bar was great friend and fellow brewery owner from down the block Damon Moreau of Common Crown Brewery. "How's it going buddy?" I blurt out, happy as always to see fellow brewers in our taproom. The somewhat fatigued look on his face said everything but yet he replied "Well our new beer just launched and social media is EXPLODING right now!!" Well, that's GREAT news I begin to attempt to congratulate him but he stops me in my tracks with a "yeah but NOT in a good way!" The reaction to the name "Cherry Karen Sour” hit fast and hit hard.  Some people were clearly offended by the use of the Karen meme on their cans and accusations of ignorance and racism began to fly. 

From my viewpoint, I thought it was a clever play on a sour beer being named after a sour personality. I've seen enough of the Karen meme vids and GIF's online to get the connection and was truly surprised to see such anger and attacking comments towards them. Of course, I'd witnessed the Karen meme developing over the years since seeing #FuckYouKaren on Reddit YEARS ago. I'd heard the many tales of  "the Karen in the dental chair" when my wife comes home from work. I'd just simply never EVER associated this meme with anything racist. My thoughts on the worst part of the Karen meme was the unfortunate effect on the poor ladies who, despite being incredibly nice, respectful, lovely ladies who DO NOT need to speak to the manager and simply happen to be named "KAREN"!

Growing up a redhead I've certainly dealt with my share of being the TARGET of the internet's "less than flattering" meme's that range from my obvious lack of any semblance of a soul, all the way to people celebrating "kick a ginger day" (thanks south park) essentially mobilizing the world towards an entire day of the year promoting actual ASSAULT on myself and my fellow soul-less Gingers. 

To be clear, I do not think my personal experiences as the target of the latest internet meme excuses ignorance towards other internet meme's. I do wonder, however, how much responsibility we are to shoulder for keeping up to speed with the latest EVOLUTION of a meme? From my ignorant line of sight "Karen" had not yet manifested herself into a racially charged concept causing fear and possible harm to people of colour. 

"Karen" had been making us laugh since 2017 on Reddit but a quick search of Karen on "Know Your Meme" cites that a pretty significant change happened in 2020! May 25th, 2020 to be precise! That day saw the global pandemic collide violently with the killing of George Floyd AS WELL AS the Amy Cooper Central Park incident. Dr. André Brock, associate professor of Black digital culture at Georgia Tech stated "..the viral widespread resonance of “Karen” footage now is the result of an interest convergence where the coronavirus pandemic intersected with collective outrage over police brutality. The weekend that the video of Amy Cooper in Central Park went viral was the same weekend that George Floyd was killed after now-former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck, suffocating him. The Central Park video only highlighted the extreme violence — and potentially fatal consequences — of a white woman selfishly calling the cops out of spite and professed fear."

That happened May 25th, 2020. 50 days ago at the time of writing this. My point about the timeline of the evolution of the meme is that, as a fellow brewery owner, I can say with certainty that ‘50 days ago’ our friends at Common Crown Brewery would have still thought Karen was funny! They also would have already ordered beer cans labeled with Karen based artwork and they would have been so head down, consumed with keeping their business alive during the pandemic that they would have most likely missed the significance of Karen’s shift over the past weeks. I know i missed it. There's simply no way anyone could convince me that any of the fine folks at Common Crown would ever intentionally offend anyone with their branding and I'm positive that every single person who has ever met them feels the same way. So WHY such a violent and angry outcry towards them? I think Ricky Gervais from his time eating vegan wings on "hot ones" has some relevant insight! 

 The video above is obviously an overgeneralization of this new world we live in but it's also hilariously accurate. When did we become a generation of people swiping endlessly through other people's lives, waiting eagerly for OUR turn to be offended and stoke the internets mob justice flames? In today's day and age, I wouldn't feel safe announcing ANY kind of beliefs online be it political, religious, medical, sexual, etc. The internet is now a terrifying place, ready to attacknat a moments' notice and bully you for announcing that you wanted the Olympics in Calgary, or that you voted for Nenshi, or that you drive a Tesla, or, or, or,....

So NOW what!!?? Imagine you're a small business owner and despite your best efforts to make your customers happy, to make a living doing what you love, and to create a great environment for your staff to call home, you find yourself on the receiving end of the angry internet? Recently my good friend and fellow business owner James Boettcher of Righteous Gelato (the artist formerly known as Fiasco Gelato) found himself in this similar situation. After releasing a Black Lives Matter Gelato the internet backlash was swift. I watched terrified from the sidelines as my good friend and true Canadian LEGEND of an entrepreneur battled his way through a minefield. What started as criticism quickly turned into a pretty savage attack with people assaulting him as a person and as a business owner. It was brutal. And knowing the incredibly high level of intentions that both Righteous Gelato AND Common Crown Brewery uphold in every decision they make, I'm sure more and more people are thinking "when is it going to be ME who makes a mistake? When will I be the target of the internet's wrath? And what will I do when it happens to me?" 

Having caused a few controversial nationally viral stories myself, I'm no stranger to picking a fight and I'm no stranger to spending 24 hours a day for up to a week at a time responding to every single engagement, every single opinion, every single review, and every single media request during these times and I have a few suggestions for you if your turn ever DOES come around!!

1. Take a Deep Breath - Right or Wrong, Good, Bad or Ugly when you find yourself staring down the loaded barrel of an angry internet, the first step is to recognize that these situations are INCREDIBLE opportunities to let the world see who you really are! What you do next will be a defining moment in the history of your business, so take a deep breath and think "how do I let the TRUE spirit of my company's DNA shine through." 

2. Decide COLLECTIVELY on your position - We often react quickly with anger or defensiveness towards a seemingly unjustified criticism aimed at ourselves or our business. And why WOULDN'T we? NO ONE knows how hard we've worked as business owners to get to where we are right?? But that type of thinking is like a biased parent who's kid can do NO WRONG!! Anyone with kids on a sports team knows those parents! They are the WORST and usually have the worst kids! haha. But by involving your entire team to address the situation cooler heads can often prevail and can help a business see the situation from another position. Compassion, sympathy, and understanding of how others see our actions differently than we do is a hard skill to master. It's also perhaps the most important first step in admitting that we may, have truly made a mistake and need to genuinely make things right. Collectively Involving your team members with a less emotional connection to business is a great way to show them your level of respect for their insight as well as arrive at a position that the entire business believes and OWNS!

3. OWN your position...GENUINELY! - The internet can spot a fake a MILE away. Bullshit meters these days are finely tuned to sniff out shallow apologies, or disingenuous attempts to make the situation "go away". As Ricky Gervais stated above, it's OK if people don't agree with your decisions, even if they're MAD at your decisions. But don't waffle. If you were wrong...OWN IT! Apologize and mean it! Here's a sniff test example of whether you own an apology or not: If you apologize online for your actions and then someone posts in support of you that they thought your actions were justified....and you don't CORRECT them? then guess what? YOU'RE NOT SORRY so don't say that you are.

4. Don't delete the thread! - I love reading other business' reviews online! But I never waste my time with the 5-star reviews. I always feel they're either fake or the business owners' parents! either way, there's no value to me reading them. It's the ONE-star reviews that show me how a business responds to the challenges of business and most of THOSE are BS as well. When a bar gets a one-star review because some jackass felt vindictive towards the bartender who "cut him off" for the night. I laugh at the drunk idiot who thinks that bad review of this nature makes ANY negative impact on the business. On the contrary, a witty, clever response to a one-star review of this nature can do wonders for letting the world see your business's personality. And when a REAL one-star review comes in. It's a TRUE opportunity to show how your business is managed and you "right the wrongs". But somehow as business owners, we FEAR the one-star review!! Don't! Trust that the public will read between the lines and make their decision based on all the information. Again, we all have highly tuned bullshit meters, and deleting threads of this nature not only stop the public from gaining the full context of the situation you may find yourself in. It also, more often than not, creates a perception of guilt. If I hear about a company experiencing something similar and I look them and can read the threads I can make my OWN decision on where I stand on the matter. But if the threads have been deleted, I instinctively assume "boy they must have really screwed up!"

5. Don't be intimidated by the volume of the angry - People who "oppose" are ALWAYS louder that those who "support". Just because you've never had this much attention on your social channels and it ALL appears to be negative. You have to know that in general people who support you are much less likely to dive into shark-infested waters with you. However other SHARKS smell blood and are MUCH more likely to join in on the feeding frenzy. I guess it's just not as fun to stick your neck out there when you can safely watch the attack from the shore. Have faith, however, that despite the feeling of helplessness and the isolation of feeling totally alone in these times, there are TONNES of people who will read the posts, perhaps see both sides and potentially send you some support on a private DM, email, or phone call in support of what you're going through REGARDLESS of whether you're right or wrong. OTHER business owners are the friends you need to lean on, or shoulders to cry on during these times. The “swim in the deep end with me” quote from the video above is awesome to me as I’ve sent up the bat signal in my business before and called upon my pal Jim button of Village Brewery to wade into deep waters with me on issues in the past. It meant EVERYTHING to me that he dove in, headfirst with me!  It’s incredibly important to have people around you who, when they believe in your cause, are willing to stand with you on the front lines taking fire while  helping keep the flag in the air! Have those people around but also BE that person when YOU’RE called upon.

6. LEARN, LEARN, and LEARN SOME MORE- Regardless of the situation you've experienced, if you come away without learning and actively attempting to be better moving forward than you're an idiot. The entire WORLD is receiving a crash course on what acceptable behaviour looks like from all corners of humanity. The last few years have exposed a lot of mistakes humanity has made. The #MeToo movement, #BlackLivesMatter, and LGBTQ issues (to name a few) have allowed the world to learn how our past behaviours, past stereotypes, and even past ways of thinking are just not enough anymore. Being truly open to learning about what matters in the lives of those around us is truly eye-opening and incredibly important for loving forward progress of humanity. And without willing hearts, open to the opportunity to LEARN we'll all just be s bunch of angry internet trolls looking for people to attack who don't think the exact same way WE do or vote the same way WE do, etc!!

Finally, My hope for this blog is a call for PASSIONATE understanding and forgiveness. It's OK to be offended and it's OK to let a person or a business know how they've offended. The piece of the puzzle I've seen missing for some time now, however, is understanding and forgiveness. UNDERSTANDING that the initial outward appearance of a can of beer named after "KAREN" does not reflect the INTENTIONS of the great people trying to do great things for our community. But also the FORGIVENESS towards them once the issue has been raised. Most businesses today would stand stunned, eyes wide open, paralyzed in fear, and totally unaware of what to do next when faced with the attacks I've witnessed over the past year. Forgiveness is LIBERATING. It feels GOOD! But it takes empathy and compassion.

Imagine a thread someday where the offender realizes their mistake after reading criticisms they receive online. They regret it. They genuinely apologize. They learn a tonne, become more culturally aware, and the offended parties empathize with them, show them compassion, and openly forgive them for their mistake? Jack Handy probably said it best..."I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world because they'd never expect it"

[adeliriouswanderer]

American Fascism, Racism, and the Trump Cult

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything on policy or politics. Quarantine has left me with what seems like an infinite amount of time to reflect on our countries current state of affairs—and as cliché as this sounds, it feels as if we are living in dark times indeed.

Since our current regime began in 2016, all of the progressive policies of the Obama era have been eradicated by an egotistical fascist. Far-right and white supremacist ideologies are being pushed as the new normal by those who fear that their position of power is being threatened by minorities and anyone left of center. A center that is very quickly skewing farther and farther right on the political spectrum. Folks who hold these far-right ideologies have historically been threatened by people of color, folks who identify as LGBTQIA, feminists, women’s rights champions, and others who voice opinions that are different than the rights self-absorbed narrative. Especially when these folks attempt to find seats at the decision-making table.

Our current regime fears these opinions so much that they attempt to silence anyone who speaks out against their clearly fascist policies and statements by convincing their base that our voices and opinions are being incited by “fake news” or as Trump loves to call it, the “lamestream media”. This regime has convinced it’s cult-like followers that any media coverage that does not stroke the ego of the POTUS or any coverage that speaks out against his archaic, and often false views/statements, are untrue accusations and that he is being unfairly targeted. Trump continuously lies to his base and the American people, and when he is called out on his lies, both he and his base scream fake news. The POTUS has convinced his base that democrats are sheep to the media who are trying their best to undermine all of the “great” work he is doing for Americans. Despite Trump not keeping his promises to his base, they still follow him with what feels like a Jim Jones cult mindset.  Take this video where trump easily brainwashes his followers into ignoring how his he is lining his and other billionaires pockets by attempting to convince his base, who largely consist of poor/working-class white folks, that they are the “elite”:  

They see no wrong in Trump's behavior. How is that Trump has convinced millions of people to blindly follow his every whim? You see, as badly as it pains me to state this, Trump is not the cause of these deeply rooted, bigoted, ideologies. They have been around since the founding of America. Like a festering cancer that sometimes quietly goes into remission, but is still there, waiting for the body to become weakened so that it can make a reappearance. Folks have long held onto their bigoted ways, Trump simply gave a platform where these ideologies could be voiced and he emboldened those who held them to speak out louder than ever. After having a president in office that championed for the rights of minorities, the right was fearful of being forgotten and worried that their ideologies would be silenced. This fear ultimately led right-wing voters to vote for and blindly follow anyone spoke out in favor of their bigoted beliefs. And trump happened to be the loudest and most aggressive at the time. The right touted his down to earthiness and non-political way of speaking. Trump is praised for “telling it like it is” because for a while, at the turn of the century, white folks seemed partly scared to fully voice what they really thought about anyone who wasn’t white and straight. That’s not the case anymore.

I find it appalling that in 2020, I can scroll through the comment section on any article related to race and find a plethora of comments written by white right-wings and conservatives insinuating that there is no race problem in America. They state racism does not exist; they unquestionably believe that there is a level playing field between white folks and people of color, and that white privilege does not exist.  Much like Social Darwinist, these folks believe that people of color and folks experiencing poverty are inherently responsible for their less than status in society. That they’re lazy and unwilling to pull themselves up by the bootstraps because it’s more convenient for them to live off of the government-- like the infamously stereotypical welfare queen, a term coined in 1974, by George Bliss of the Chicago Tribune in his articles about Linda Taylor.

These folks fail to realize that people of color and people experiencing poverty are a result of systematic and institutional racism designed to enslave people of color and keep them from sitting at the decision-making table. Further, they don’t understand how poverty rolls off the back of parents and onto children—how hard it is for children to break intergenerational cycles. Take Kaitlin Bennet, the infamous gun girl of Kent State. She hosts a youtube channel where her main “goal” is to “expose the corruption and demoralization” of the “liberal left.” In this following clip, Kaitlin states that there is no racism in America because she is surrounded by people of color on a daily basis, as if their very existence is somehow justification as to why racism doesn’t exist. She states that some lives are inherently more valuable than others and that those who are experiencing homelessness should get a job. When Kaitlin realized she had couldn’t win a baseless argument against two obviously educated college students, she had to resort to personal attacks against James's sexuality. She’s edited out the word racist or racism from her videos because apparently those words demonetize her youtube videos and she loses money for including those words. 

Let’s break down one of the systems that these folks so eagerly deny and blindly ignore-- the prison industrial complex. In the 80s, Reagan turned the metaphorical “war on drugs” into an actual initiative that was put forth by a seemingly racist governmental body whose aim was to create a caste system to ensure people of color would never rise out of poverty. While Raegan solidified these new forms of discrimination against people of color, it was Nixon who set the stage for the systematic incarceration of black and brown people through his Southern Strategy. As civil rights activists worked to dismantle the Jim Crow laws of the south, Nixon and other politicians began to create a strategy that would ensure votes from whites who aligned with both the conservative republican party and the left-leaning democratic party.

The “Southern Strategy” was ultimately a political movement that aimed to garner votes from white Americans from both sides of the political spectrum by antagonizing racialized fears in the white populace. The campaign painted an image that portrayed people of color as deserving of being poor and uneducated-- it pathologized them as criminals and deserving of their second-class place in society because they simply could not rise above their uncivilized ways. Michelle Alexander states:

The racialized nature of this imagery became a crucial resource for conservatives, who succeeded in using law and order rhetoric in their effort to mobilize the resentment of white working-class voters, many of whom felt threatened by the sudden progress of African Americans.

This campaign ultimately led to Reagan’s 1982 War on Drugs, and his later establishment of mandatory minimum sentencing laws, which were enacted through his Anti-Drug Abuse Act of1986. After Raegan’s enactment of AABA, the numbers of incarcerated black and Hispanic men skyrocketed creating an overpopulated prison system that led the way for privatization. Republicans laid the foundation for mass incarceration of people of color, and democrats solidified the systemic discrimination and oppression that would soon follow a person who was formerly incarcerated throughout their life.

The Clinton (D) administration enacted laws banning drug offenders and felons from receiving public assistance in the form of financial aid or food stamps, denying them the ability to public housing, and stripping them of their right to vote. These combined laws on part of both democrats and republicans led to the creation of a caste system that created a populace of second-class citizens, who were stripped of their most basic rights—this group was disproportionately made up of people of color. Less than 5% of the world's population, has nearly 25% of the world's incarcerated population. Black people make up about 13 percent of the U.S population and 31 percent of those incarcerated for drug use—Latinos make up an additional 18 percent of the total U.S population and account for 20 percent of those incarcerated for drug use. It is important to note that crime is equally distributed between all races, but the impact of policies of the 1980s and 1990s has been anything but evenly distributed-- black men are eight times more likely to be incarcerated than white men and nearly a third of young black men are under criminal justice system control.

These laws have persisted throughout the last three decades and allow for a system that systematically discriminates against an entire sub-group of individuals. When formerly incarcerated people are released from prison they have very little support from institutions designed to provide help to the most vulnerable populations in the U.S. They typically can not get into public housing and private landlords can legally turn them away citing their criminal history as a reason. Formerly incarcerated persons cannot receive federal financial aid to further their education-- and if they do manage to pay for school, most jobs will not even look at their resume, much less hire them because of their felon status. Further, formerly incarcerated persons cannot receive public assistance benefits such as food stamps. A lack of social support leaves these individuals at a high risk of reoffending just so they can survive in the outside world, which ultimately locks them into a brutal cycle of flowing in and out of the prison industrial complex.

It seemed like during the Obama era, there was hope; a hope that our country could heal from our divisive history of viewing anyone other than white straight cis men who are most valued, followed by white straight cis women, as something other than less than. Because, let’s be honest, many folks along all lines of the political spectrum have never fully respected the opinions and lives of people of color, LGBTQIA folks, immigrants, etc. We have been and still are, just tolerated. That’s why Obama was a breath of fresh air. He attempted, and sometimes succeeded, in eradicating archaic policies like the militaries don’t ask don’t tell policy, championed for the rights of minorities and immigrants through bills like DACA, attempted to ensure those who were poor had access to health care. President Obama launched the My Brother’s Keeper initiative on February 27, 2014, to address persistent opportunity gaps faced by boys and young men of color and ensure that all young people could reach their full potential. These were just a few of the many ways Obama worked to level the playing field for those who were not born into the western version of the genetic lottery. 

What is it going to take to heal our country and end these systems of violence against black and brown people? When are we going to step up and not give media attention and not vote in folks who are so clearly bigoted to positions where they can continue to marginalize already vulnerable populations? When will this hate for those viewed as other, less than, die out? Is this our new reality for the unforeseeable future? The biggest question of all is: when will the right figure out that Trump doesn’t have any of their best interest in mind? When will they realize that he’s sitting on one of his many gold toilets and shitting on America?

I want to live in a country where equity is at the forefront of our minds; where people strive to ensure all of their neighbors have equal opportunity regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, or class. We must continue to use our voices to speak up for the oppressed and vulnerable, and VOTE for folks who believe in an equal and just society. Will 2020 usher in voices into the political sphere that are representative of folks from all walks of life, or will it be the same bullshit we’ve had for nearly 244 years since America was founded? 

[thesaltminers]

The Curious Case of Megan Derr

Megan Derr is the co-owner of Less Than Three Press, an indie LGBTQ publishing house--and she’s also their most prolific author. Before LT3’s founding, Megan posted her slash fiction on LiveJournal and Fictionpress, epicenters of older wank that unfortunately went unrecorded.

Over the years, Megan has been embroiled in several dramas, none of which impeded LT3’s growth. When juxtaposed with similar controversies, this lack of fallout becomes curious.

Was she just Not That Bad, comparatively? Did people not care? Or had Megan's navigation of the drama de-escalate any chance at a larger blow up? We investigate.

Why does Megan matter?

As visible co-owner of a successful and award-winning LGBTQ press, Megan is officially a gatekeeper. Her personal opinions matter and her voice reflects on her business… theoretically. Of course, in the past Megan has implied she was a martyr for the community, working so hard for them, whilst neatly minimising that her profit also comes from that same community

Nonetheless, she has a direct hand in what gets published, which is her right as co-owner. LT3 proactively publishes trans, bi, ace, and other less-exposed areas of the queer spectrum.

While this is obviously wonderful in a lot of ways, LT3's prominence in this particular publishing sphere becomes concerning when you realize that Megan Derr's personal beliefs and ethics drive the majority of the publishing decisions, and thus, what representation is produced. Given her avowed dislike of #OwnVoices (which will be expanded upon further in this report) and her insistence that the subject of a genre is not the audience for that genre, the implications are troubling.

We posit that Megan skirts the line of actionable offences, but works to "poison the well" or create a toxic environment. This is more ephemeral than other infamous instances of wank, but it is a long-running pattern of behavior with real consequences for both individuals and the community as a whole.

Social Media Climate

Recently, we compiled reports on Santino Hassell and Riptide Press, the latter of whom is still attracting attention for bad decisions.

Social media is primed for another explosion. The match was lit when the Bi Book Award finalists were announced and several Twitter users took umbrage with the two competing publishers of the year: Riptide Publishing and Less Than Three Press.  

The current call out

Twitter user BrookieRayWrite reacted to the Bi Award announcement with a threaded post, which included screenshots of Megan's past behaviour. They referenced two incidents: Megan’s dislike of #OwnVoices—a movement in publishing to uplift authentic minority experiences so that people could find content they felt connected to—and her blog post declaring M/M is for women.

However, this was not the first time someone tried to call out Megan. Heidi Belleau, an author LGBTQ romance, posted a comprehensive thread in 2016.

The rest of which, can be found here.

Nothing came from this Twitter call out. But now Heidi has resurfaced with her complaints about Megan, and with her comes an old wank standby to defend Megan--Aleksandr Voinov.

Yep. He called her crazy. In case you missed it, Heidi Belleau takes on this moniker to analyze its silencing and delegitimizing function. In short, Voinov is not only being ableist, he is actively working to create a hostile landscape to voices critical of Megan Derr.

Moments of Note

“No Gay Aces”

In an incident that went unrecorded, but that we witnessed at the time, an author published a book with a character who identified as “gay ace.” Incensed, Megan declared that there was no such thing. This conflict is worthy of note because its exemplifies Megan’s confidence in her own rightness and her refusal to ever back down from a position, a character trait that shines through in following events.

However, perhaps it also showcases Megan’s reaction when she knows she’s incorrect—as of now, the conflict seems to have been scrubbed from GoodReads. We hesitate to include unsupported facts, but feel it is important in Megan Derr's case to establish her pattern of behavior, in order to examine her tactics and strategy.

“Rose Lemberg”

At the height of #OwnVoices, Megan was becoming increasingly irritated over what she interpreted as a movement to outlaw people writing outside of their identity. She replied to a Tweet by Rose Lemberg—

Apparently Megan needed a reaction, because she Tweeted at Rose twice.

Megan's interpretation of “you are not doing us a favor,” as “don’t do this,” has the unfortunate implication that she believes writing outside of her identity is doing someone a favor.

When Rose removed themself from the conversation, Megan reacted thusly:

She steamrolls over Rose's "no spoons" comment, a clear signal in the disabled community that further engagement would be literally damaging to the respondent. The fact that she ignores that signal is incredibly ableist—and if she's ignorant about that, it just shows how unprepared she is to write disabled characters, thus proving Rose's point.

After confronting Rose, and not getting the response she wanted, Megan unfollowed.

Megan apologized for misgendering Rose, and we do not believe she would intentionally misgender someone. However, it does illustrate her "shoot first" nature.

“M/M Is for Women”

Turnabout is fair play, in a sense, because Megan had her own opportunity to open a discussion and then immediately block responses to it.

Megan lobbed quite the cannonball across the community’s bow with this fascinating retort against white cis gay men, prompted by a gay man who had called out the M/M genre for its fetishism of its subjects. Out of all her altercations, this one may be the most ill-advised (in a PR sense). It is also one where she found her audience not only unreceptive, but actively accusatory.

Whatever her point may have been, Megan said M/M wasn’t for gay men. Yes, Yaoi, BL, and slash fic was, on the surface level, fueled initially by a female audience. Yes, they fall under different genre conventions than the works of EM Forster and other literary authors. But there’s something undeniably and offensively entitled about declaring ownership of a genre over the actual subject of that genre.

When Megan felt that people were ignoring her reasoning unfairly, she shut down comments.

Friend/Colleague Exodus

If one were to casually take note of the comings and goings of Megan’s friends and colleagues, they may notice a gradual change in the cast of characters. The common denominator of this situation, of course, is Megan. There is a track record of Megan and her sister, Sam, saying oddly misguided and downright offensive comments to their authors, usually trans authors, at which point the relationship is ended and the author quietly moves on.

Water off a duck’s back

People in Megan’s sphere have probably noted that, controversy after controversy, nothing sticks. Even after years of wanky drama all throughout M/M’s history, with the inevitable apologies and flounces from the authors and readers at the center of each crisis, Megan keeps on trucking. The question is, what makes her different?

Leaving the realm of screenshots and facts, there’s only theory to go on. For instance, maybe the conflicts Megan faces are small enough, and far enough apart, that no one can exactly put into words why they think she should be called out. Or perhaps the people who dislike her realize some hypocrisy would come with accusing her of something. (Those in glass houses, etc.)

From a more practical angle, she almost never apologizes. Typically, the subjects of wank quibble, apologize several times, and release statements. Megan usually just posts a few accusatory tweets and then moves on after blocking anyone who could possibly question her worldview.

As evidenced by the more recent wanks, there is generally tangible evidence of harm with multiple victims stepping forward to detail their abuse. However, this takes years and momentum for this to occur. We know that Megan has her share of victims as well, and we know that they have experienced mental and emotional harm that has had real impact on their ability to work. Yet if people were to inspect why they don’t like her, would they only find several blog posts and Tweets that are abrasive and tone-deaf?

Her Modus Operandi has always been to aggressively confront someone she disagrees with (ex. Rose Lemberg) and then flounce/block when she’s challenged. Mirroring that, when someone confronts or disagrees with her, she immediately shuts down discussion (ex. M/M is for Women blog post).

As the co-owner of LT3, she also partly controls the narrative of indie LGBTQ publishing. Her choices and attitude influence the community tone and acceptable in-group culture, and, arguably, add toxicity. However, to pin down specific instances (and therefore confront and address them), is incredibly difficult—which is possibly why every call out thus far has dwindled without fanfare.  

In Summation

The overarching, and fascinating, truth about Megan is sometimes she makes sense. Unfortunately, she also says a lot of bullshit. This may come from a lack of ability to grasp nuance.

Does #OwnVoices put pressure on people to out their life circumstances for the sake of credibility? Probably, yes. But others feel confident in self-reporting, wanting their voices out there for others to hear them. Do people mispronounce white people’s names? Yes. But that doesn’t negate the racist undertones and microaggressions minorities face when people mock their names. These, among other situations, are odd hills Megan chooses to die on seemingly because she doesn’t want to understand them.

The current call out is in reaction to the Bi Awards. Certain authors have stepped forward to Tweet their protest of LT3's nomination. They argue that Megan, as the owner of LT3, has promoted an environment that does harm to bi voices, and they feel it is inappropriate for her to be celebrated in this specific context.

The situation is still developing. From here, we can see only two branching paths. Either those running the Bi Awards rescind LT3's nomination, or they do not.

But this event is dredging up old salt. As with any wank, one is left wondering what the conclusion should be; Exile? Apology? Loss of sales? What does a successful call out look like? Megan is a real person with a wife and a business that she has worked hard to develop. She publishes minority representation because she believes in that effort.

But her belief does not exculpate her.

She has managed to repeatedly dodge accountability. Whether this is through calculated tactics or a magical formula she managed to stumble upon doesn't change the fact that she has actively contributed to making the community hostile to marginalized people. It doesn't change the fact that her status as a major publisher among LGBTQIA online presses shields her, especially as those who would ordinarily call her out for bad behavior must hesitate and consider the economic ramifications of doing so.

Now, to guess what Megan might pull from this to deflect responding to the salient points? Probably that we mentioned her mom voted for Trump.

Interesting links: 

Heidi

http://archive.is/Aio1f

http://archive.li/1IknD

http://archive.li/SsQ41

Maria_Reads

http://archive.li/zPqGa

http://archive.li/kCInK

[queensofrap]

Most Misunderstood: Iggy Azalea's American Dream    

he early reality of Amethyst Kelly is difficult to imagine. There was once a small home in the tiny Australian town of Mullumbimby, made of red brick, cemented by mud and laid by her father's careful hands. Her mother would spend her days emptying trash bins at a motel as a vacation rental cleaner, a path Amethyst would eventually follow at age 14. Water didn't always run, clothes were never new, and bathrooms were separated from the home by a muddied path. It's a tale of immensely humble beginnings, a hemisphere away from the life she would come to inhabit as Iggy Azalea a decade later. And while her origins are unfathomable for some, it's Amethyst's American dream that remains universal.

I first witnessed a glimpse of that dream in the fall of 2011. It was through a cracked iPhone screen, held casually by my friend. "You have to see this bitch," she announced, flicking her perfectly coiled locs and turning up the volume. "She's every-fucking-thing!" There, on the screen, was a tall, curvy woman with ice-blonde hair and creamy incandescent skin. She was surrounded by two brown cheerleaders in matching green uniforms, strutting in towering heels and rapping furiously: My world, rhyme vicious/ White girl team, full of bad bitches. Immediately, I recognized her: this confident, eccentric girl who didn't fit into preppy white hierarchies. While others girls were quoting lines from Mean Girls, imagining themselves Regina George, she appeared as someone I knew. A girl unruly and self-possessed, always late to class, always blasting D4L. I could see her crafting beats with her knuckles and strolling into class hours late, another detention slip placed on her desk. We were sold.

If "My World" was the bait, "Pussy" was the hook, line and sinker. Iggy, Iggy/ Pussy illy/ Wetter than the Amazon/ Taste this kitty! Her accent was thick and affected, reminiscent of our cherished childhood favorite Diamond from Atlanta's Crime Mob. The "Pussy" video was a Boyz N The Hood homage with ATLien pastiche. There were ice cream trucks and babysitting, front porch posing and concrete runways, sherbet-colored pants and shredded shorts. And we weren't the only ones taking notice of Iggy and her ways. Seemingly overnight, our private cafeteria secret had become a viral phenomenon.

“ Here I am at the darkest period of my life, contemplating suicide, and I'm singing "Switch.“

Press came quickly, grand and bold. The New York Times suggested that "all this proximity to blackness characterizes Iggy Azalea as a person who is no stranger to black culture and communities, suggesting it's no anomaly for her to rock the mic." The Los Angeles Times described her flow as "brash and aggressive," while Complex decided that she was ready to "really make her mark on the game." Classmates had her image as their screensavers and sprawled across their Tumblrs, and were dropping her name in new music debates. She performed at small venues in Atlanta and cars across the city boomed with Never not better/ Law should ban it! A few months later, when "Murda Bizness" featuring T.I. dropped, her dream was actualized. She was not a one-hit wonder. She was a star, poised to rise.

There are many forgotten Iggy freestyles from that era. In one, she raps over Chris Brown's "Look At Me Now," prophesying her divisive nature. In another, titled "Home Town Hatred," she reflects on her time in Australia and her desire to leave. Over Kanye West's ominous "Hell of A Life" beat, she details how industry executives told her to dumb it down. But it was her 2011 "D.R.U.G.S." freestyle that first illuminated the parameters of her ignorance.

Reflecting the industry's tendency not to look at things too deeply, at first the song went unchallenged. (It would be a year before its lyrics were critically examined). In fact, Complex covered the freestyle, commending her craft and comparing her to fellow white rapper Yelawolf. The following January, Iggy signed to major label Interscope, tweeting, "Get used to me + Jimmy [Iovine] smashing shit, cause that's the plan."

In February of 2012, she landed the coveted cover of XXL's Freshman Class issue: an annual declaration of hip-hop stars poised to break big. Between up-and-comers French Montana and Future stands Iggy in a lush green fur. She was the first woman to ever grace the cover — a backhanded achievement. For many, XXL is a bastion of hip-hop excellence. To be a cover star and stamped with their approval was to suggest an imminent dominance. If Iggy could be shot, styled, and photographed for her buzz, where were the black women who broke the boundaries, paved the lanes, and inspired her craft?

It was Harlem-born musician and artist Azealia Amanda Banks who first articulated concern about Iggy's image and her space within hip-hop. On Twitter, Banks wrote, "Iggy Azalea on the XXL freshman list is all wrong. How can you endorse a white woman who called herself a 'runaway slave master'? Sorry guys, I'm a pro black girl. I'm not anti white girl, but I'm also not here for any1 outside of my culture trying to trivialize very serious aspects of it."

Media outlets immediately crafted Bank's criticism into a heavily publicized rap beef, thrusting Banks into the insidious stereotype of bitter black woman. The line Banks referred to was a re-interpretation of a Kendrick Lamar lyric on Iggy's "D.R.U.G." freestyle. In Kendrick's 2010 track "Look Out For Detox," he raps, When the relay starts/ I'm a runaway slave. In Iggy's version, she says, When the relay starts/ I'm a runaway/ Slave master/ Shittin' on the past/ Gotta spit it like a pastor.

Conversations surrounding the lyric lacked necessary context. Journalists missed questions and painted simple proclamations. In October of 2011, Banks had tweeted, "how sexy is iggy azalea?? It's kind of ridiculous…*tugs collar to let out steam*." In January, she wrote "Iggy Azalea's hair looks really great in her new video. How long do you all reckon that hair is? 40" in? By March 2012, the dream was dented, with Iggy being called out as misappropriating at best, racist at worst.

She issued a heartfelt apology, which fell on mostly unsympathetic ears. Two months later, Iggy was dropped by Interscope. Her debut album, The New Classic, stalled indefinitely. But still, there was room for redemption. In April 2013, Iggy signed with Mercury Records, a UK subsidiary of Universal Music Group. After recording new music in England, she returned stateside, armed with a completed album and a firmly set 2014 release date. During press runs she's tested: asked if she's an imposter; if her body is enhanced; if the cringe-worthy assumptions about her mentor T.I. are true. Old tweets were dug up, which made the disdainful murmurings worse. She's asked to freestyle on Sway, but instead inexplicably recites a line from her own album. Her music begins to change, becoming less lyrically explicit and trap-influenced, and more poppy and prim. Now a Complex cover star, she fumbles when asked about her divisive rapping accent. She's quoted saying, "This is the entertainment industry. It's not politics." Soon enough, that statement would no longer be true.

In 2012, political discussions had begun to dominate all forms of media. The slain lives of Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis became proponents of combustible change. Movements like Black Lives Matter materialized, refusing silence or forgetfulness of the innocent and slaughtered black people, churning hundreds of American murders into global narratives. Each case, though singular and specific, represented the transgressions of America's not-too-distant-past and its perpetual present. If there was once a time when innocent victims could be smudged from history and their murderers left unscathed, that clock no longer ticked. Images of callous violence circulated more than music. Cellphone and camera footage displayed women being beaten, children being shot, and men being strangled. Language seemed to shift, relegating all ignorance to silence; expanding itself to capture the expansive feelings of others. And at the top of the same year, "Fancy" was released. Like lightning, Iggy's dream merged seamlessly with reality. She was now a star with a verifiable hit.

With her Clueless themed video for the inescapable track, 2014 became the year of Iggy's art. She held the number one spot on Billboard's Hot 100 for seven consecutive weeks. She luxuriated in the second spot too, appearing as a featured artist on Ariana Grande's "Problem." Billboard claimed Iggy tied with The Beatles and attached her name to the legacies of Mariah Carey, Missy Elliott, Lauryn Hill, and Nicki Minaj. She was now booking prime-time television spots — appearing on Good Morning America with Charli XCX — and on the covers of grocery store aisle magazines. Forbes declared her "Hip Hop's New Queen of Rap" and she was nominated for four Grammys. Simultaneously, America's racial rhetoric and division began to feel claustrophobic. In early February, Yvette Smith was murdered on her front porch. In August, Michael Brown Jr. and Ezell Ford were shot and killed. November was the month Laquan McDonald and Tamir Rice became portraits of unfinished lives. In July, Eric Garner was placed in an illegal chokehold, his last words becoming a symphony of unbearable sadness. The dichotomy between a world callously slaughtering black people on one end and rewarding a white rapper with success and visibility on another was dizzying.

What is it like to attach oneself exclusively to a dream, to pursue it even as the odds are stacked against you?

By 2015 the dream dissolved completely. Iggy was accused of racism, cultural appropriation, minstrelsy, and ignorance, becoming the perfect conduit for whiteness and all of its horrors. Her silence during racist events was considered complicit. A world tour was canceled, and neither a follow up album or a Top 10 hit reappeared. In 2016, she announced Digital Distortion, her sophomore album that was ultimately held after three singles — "Team," "Mo Bounce," and "Switch" — and a leaked music video. This year, Iggy released "Savior" with hopes of a refresh.

To some, she was an untalented white supremacist Barbie, infiltrating a space crafted by black people and laughing to the bank. Her dream — an innocent one of music, money, and acclaim — had become grotesque. To others, she was an iconic legend who was just easily projected upon. Now a refracted mirror for public opinion, a line was permanently drawn: black or white — no in-between.

But for me, there's always been a gray area. In art, in music, and in life, there is a space where the eye can shift inward to ask and answer questions. What might it look like for a young girl in Australia to re-discover life through hip-hop? What did it look like to want to manifest a world of make-believe, to create art once unseen? What is it like to attach oneself exclusively to a dream, to pursue it even as the odds are stacked against you? What do you do when you can't separate criticism from hate? When each day you're bombarded with projections based on media machinations? What does it look like when your dream comes true, when it's finally real, only for it to be mocked? To me, it's a perfect portrait of America.

At The Roxy Hotel, in New York City, I sat with Iggy Azalea. We spoke about her life, her dream, her craft, and her upcoming music. She was thoughtful and articulate, eyes glinting with Gemini humor and intellect, deeply apologetic and severely misunderstood. This is what transpired.

Can you take me back to your childhood? I read that your hometown is called "The Biggest Little Town in Australia." What was it like?

I still don't know why the fuck they call it that. It was a really small town, incredibly rural, but there's a looser, less stereotypical element to it. There were a lot of crystals and hippies, weed smokers, and horoscopes. The town was split between this hippie, carefree fairy spectrum, or conservative farmers and their crops. My parents were on the fairy spectrum, but I went to public school. Everyone there was straight-laced with names like Amber and Stephanie and there I was as Amethyst, with platform shoes, and immediately it was like, Okay, bitch prepare to get bullied.

What were the students like?

There were two schools. One was private and more artistic, and that's where all the people that could be considered carefree and more imaginative were able to go. The public school was very sterile, very conservative. The private school was expensive and my family had no money for that, so I went to the public school and I was miserable. These were the children of bricklayers whose parents drove tractors and guys who played football on the weekends. I got teased for everything. Literally everything, there was no winning with those kids.

I'm ignorant to Australia — I've never been — but there is the classic stereotype of the tanned, athletic, white Australian. When we think of whiteness, we often forget its specifications, even the types that are lauded and coveted. For instance there's the archetype of the popular blonde. You were tall, pale, and curvy…

Oh my goodness, yes! And I was never that girl. Not even anywhere near that girl's posse. I never fit in and there was a time I really tried to fit in. I remember getting teased because I hadn't shaved my legs yet. I was only in sixth grade and I had never even thought of something like that. They would call me "monkey" everyday. One day I got my mom's razor and shaved my legs thinking it would finally be over and it wasn't. There was always a new thing. My hat. My mole. My weight. All of these things now seem so dumb, but I didn't do anything like them and there was no appeasing those kids.

When did you first think of leaving?

I always knew I was going to leave because I knew I didn't belong with any of the people that lived there. I only decided I wanted to go to America when I visited the states with my grandparents. I was 11, and I remember seeing all the showgirls in Las Vegas, all their sparkles and rhinestones. They were the most fabulous girls I had ever seen. I had only seen something like that on TV, and it blew my mind. Then we went to Hollywood, and there were all these wig stores and the Star Walk, and just seeing all the ways people dressed, how they styled their hair, the color of their wigs, I wanted to be able to do all of those things. When I wanted to dress like this in Australia, I'd get shitted on. But coming to America and watching people put on a show, watching them being ridiculously fabulous, no one was doing that where I was from. Nobody was even wearing high heels in Mullumbimby.

When did you put the plan in action?

That happened when I really started to get into music. I was insanely confident, with the kind of deluded grandeur that I think you need when no else believes in you. I thought I was good at it even though in retrospect I was bad still. I was about 14 and that's when I started writing music. I'd go to open mic nights and take the bus all over the city. I'd go to battle raps, I'd get booed. There was a sound audio engineering school, called SAE, and the first music I ever recorded was there. From 14 to 16, that's when the plan formed. As soon as I started writing, I knew music was what I had to do. Even if I wasn't a rapper, I thought I could be a sound engineer or a writer. I just knew I wanted to be involved in music. And I knew I had to get the fuck out of where I lived. It was suffocating me. I wanted to live in a place where the sky was the limit, a place where my dreams weren't strange or weird, where others had even crazier ideas than me. I knew all of that was in America, and that's where I had to go and that's where I thought people were going to accept my wild thoughts. I tried Sydney and Melbourne and they just weren't it. Nothing else was.

"I wanted to live in a place where the sky was the limit, a place where my dreams weren't strange or weird, where others had even crazier ideas than me. I knew all of that was in America."

Why Miami first?

They had a SAE campus in Miami. I thought I would be able to get in and get a student visa. I saved up enough money to live there for a couple of months, but I didn't have enough to live and go to school, so I ended up not going.

Next was Houston. What was that like?

I only lived there for a year. This producer found my music through Myspace, and he said if I was ever in Houston to let him know. Then he told me all the people he produced for, and I was so excited because I really loved Rap-A-Lot records, so I went. I met him and he was really cool. We recorded a bunch of songs and we would go to Metropolis. It was in a strip mall and everyone would just hang out in front of their cars, and inside one side was reggaeton and the other was a Slim Thug record chopped n' screwed. The plan was to give the DJ your cd and hopefully he'd play it, which they never do. Then you'd hangout in the parking lot until someone has a fist fight and then you go home. Those were my nights there. Just absorbing everything. I made some friends and then Hurricane Ike hit. Most of my friends were moving to Atlanta because their homes were destroyed. I went too.

How were you making money?

Two of my friends introduced me to their sound engineer and his girlfriend would come to the studio and drop him off lunch. She and I ended up becoming roommates. I told her how I had gone to Thailand before and how fascinated I was with the hair. How you could get in bundles and stuff. She said we should save up money to go and then bring it back and sell it to salons. So we saved up and went on our last dime. She had just graduated college and was working at Bank of America and we went out there and got a bunch of hair. When we came back we sold it super quick, wholesale, to all the salons. It was insane. Technically, even though I didn't have a work visa it isn't illegal if you invest in someone's business. So she registered it as little corporation under her name and I invested in it.

There's this idea that there was "Fancy" and then boom — immediate success! But there were a lot of setbacks.

Obviously there are years that people don't know about. I was in Atlanta for nearly two years just writing for people. I was doing so many writers camps for other known artists, just trying to get my spot. That's why there were a lot of pop demo references that came out. Everyone accused me of wanting to be a pop star and that wasn't something I've ever been interested in. I would write pop music with other people and try to get it placed. I've always rapped. Even the video that came out of the pop song, that was just some shit I did with my friend. We were playing.

The wildest thing is that there are so many reports that I used to be a model and that's always been strange. Just last week on my Spotify profile my bio says, "Iggy Azalea was a high profile model before she became a rapper." When?! I would have loved to be a high profile model, but last time I checked I'm a fucking size eight. What the fuck runway or editorial model do you know that size? There's so much of those kind of rumors that have a mind of their own now.

How did you end up in LA?

The music I was making in Atlanta, I started putting a couple of songs online. They didn't have anymore than 300-400 views. I still don't know how the fuck they found me, but an A&R at Interscope messaged me. He told me he had asked his girlfriend at the time, "Who do you think is cool?" And she played him my music. I was skeptical but he ended up being legitimate. He said I should move to LA and as soon as my lease was up, I went.

When I moved there they put me with a bunch of people. They were trying to help me make connections, but they didn't really understand what I was doing. I met these guys who make up "D.R.U.G.S." about a year after I moved to LA. We'd record in their garage. YG was there. Mustard was there before he was DJ Mustard. Ty Dolla $ign was there all the time. That's where I made Ignorant Art and put out "Pussy."

That song was such a success, Interscope must have been happy.

I had gotten to the end of things with Interscope and was at the point where I felt like since they didn't understand me, this would be a "fuck you." As soon as I put out "Pussy," they called me and said they totally understood the vision. It was a "what the fuck" moment. For nearly a year I had been trying to explain it to them, and suddenly when I did it on my own they want me? I don't think they truly got it, I think they just saw the numerical element to it.

Were you signed to Interscope yet at that point?

I finally had my meeting with Jimmy Iovine after that, and they wanted to sign me. The problem was my A&R wanted to manage me. Interscope, at the time, was working on an in-house management team with LMFAO. They wanted me to sign a document that literally detailed how signing would be a conflict of interest. They gave me two options: sign or leave. I had so many potential deals with other labels but in the end I chose Interscope. We got all the way down to the agreement and, the day of, the deal was dead. Completely done. I had bigger offers, better offers, and I stayed to be loyal to the people who helped me when I was in Atlanta.

What happened?

That was a Jimmy situation and it had a lot to do with Azealia Banks. They wanted to sign her and it became a conflict of interest. Once that happened, everyone wondered why I wasn't signed, why Jimmy didn't want it, and it brought into question my worth as an artist. No one wanted to fucking touch me at all. I couldn't get a deal anywhere after that. Before this I could've asked for a fucking elephant, a Ferrari, four monkeys, and a million dollars — after there was nothing. People wondered, What was wrong with Iggy Azalea? That's how it works with these things. I was done.

What'd you do next?

I had to go to England. I got new management based out of the UK and went and recorded a bunch of music in Wales with a few producers from America. I recorded "Work" and most of The New Classic there and went and shopped a deal in England. They were the only place that didn't give a fuck about what had happened in America. I signed to Mercury Records and after putting out my music there, I came back to America to get upstreamed through Universal Records. I put out five singles through Def Jam before I ever had "Fancy." I toured with Nas before "Fancy." I toured with Beyoncé before "Fancy." I toured my own tour in Europe and North America before "Fancy." I had done five tours before I ever made "Fancy." "Fancy" was truly the last attempt. Not for me to quit music, but for the label to quit me. They had given me four video budgets, none of them exceeded their expectations, and "Fancy" was their last hurrah. For them it was like either this works or it doesn't, but we're gonna put the album out and see if it sells. I decided to do something left and do Clueless, and it worked. Luckily, we had so many attempts before that with the label and this one worked.

What was that moment like?

I was really happy and surprised. I've always known the art I make is pretty left. I didn't expect it to connect. Music has changed a lot from when I first started, but at the time, my music was considered left. There was a lot of monumental success from "Fancy" that I didn't anticipate. All these people were discovering my music and suddenly I'm doing shows with 6,000-7,000 people. It was way more than I ever imagined. I thought I'd be doing basement shows or college parties and even that was so cool to me. I thought I had fully made it! I didn't think beyond that. To see brands that I knew, magazines, all of these mainstream fixtures, people, and media embrace my music, I never could have dreamt that.

When "Fancy" gained such visibility, the media seemed to adore you. Billboard said you tied with The Beatles and bested Michael Jackson. Forbes declared you "Queen of Hip Hop." What were your thoughts during that time?

It was very strange. I never said I was the queen of rap, I've never even thought that. I truly think it was like a great white hope, similar to the film Rocky. All of these people were championing me and branding me these things because of their own projections and not only were they outlandish, they were all incredibly premature. I had just started and there was this influx of, "Queen of rap! Queen of the world! Best record ever! Song of the century!" And so everyone starts saying, "No she's not, fuck her! She has some fucking nerve!" And all of those are things I never said.

What were your thoughts when you were then nominated for four Grammys, including Best Rap Album and Best Record of the Year?

I remember sitting at the Grammy's praying to God I didn't win, literally crossing my fingers, hoping there was no media frenzy. I didn't ask to be nominated. I don't even think I deserved nominations. People were so frustrated with those headlines and all those articles became attached to me personally. People assumed that's how I saw myself, or how I thought of my music. It's never been that. There was this element of trying to humble me, a moment where it seemed like, "Oh this bitch thinks she's this? We're gonna fucking show her that she ain't shit."

Did you ever anticipate that side of fame?

I've always known that I'm controversial. I love to move the needle. Things like "Murda Bizness," yes — I'm going to put toddlers and tiaras in a music video and I know many won't understand it. Or with "Pussy," yes there is a child and I know it pushes buttons. But I think that the best things in pop culture are polarizing. I knew I would always come with controversy, but that was a different kind of controversy. I didn't anticipate that. I didn't even anticipate the success. I didn't think that would be the thing that made it all come crumbling down.

"I think that the best things in pop culture are polarizing."

What is your biggest regret during that time?

I wish that I would've handled criticism better in the beginning. I knew I was polarizing. I aim to be polarizing, sometimes too polarizing where I've pushed the limit too far. When I first got here, there was so much I thought I understood that I really didn't. I've really had to learn a lot of things by being here and having friends and seeing things play out in real life. Especially in the last few years in culture and how far conversations have come, I look back and cringe.

Like what?

Things like the Kendrick lyric, something I profusely apologized for and have learned from. That wasn't okay. It was insanely ignorant. That wasn't an experience to toy with. Sometimes you have to learn the hard way, specifically with that line, like fuck, I hate that I said it. There was so much criticism that came with "Fancy" and I wish I would've handled it better, but it felt very thick.

Everything was coming from every angle. My success. Being worn out. Having lawsuits. I had five different court cases and all of that factored into my responses. It was hard to decipher what criticism was valid and what criticism was just hate. Even with Azealia, we've since spoken and in retrospect, I'm sorry that I trivialized the way she felt about her experience as a black woman navigating the music industry. She and I have our own history and beef about other shit, but when she went on the radio and spoke there was validity to it. Those were her experiences that many others could relate to and I can't take those away, but at the time I thought it was her saying 'fuck you' and trying to hate on me.

You felt what she said was valid in the end?

There were so many critiques she made that were valid. I wish I hadn't been so defensive and emotional, but it invalidated important conversations that shouldn't be overlooked. It created a situation where it looks like I'm unable to be accountable, or I'm unable to accept criticism, that I'm tone deaf, and a fucking idiot. I felt like I had to defend myself against everyone, and that attitude didn't work in my favor. I wish I didn't give impulse responses and say things that made it worse. I was just popping off shit, and I wish I would've thought before I spoke. The problem got so big that I didn't know how to handle it, and I just thought I'll just go away and wait until it blows over or gets better. But it won't just get better, I have to acknowledge it and have conversations about it because otherwise it seems like I don't give a fuck or I'm not ready to take accountability.

Why do you think you weren't able to hear the criticism at the time?

I think when you're an artist and you're just starting out, especially as someone who isn't American, there's a difficult line to walk. I came here when I was 16 and people don't seem to understand that that time period truly defines who I am. They don't get that a lot of these things are my genuine influences, the same way they were informed and influenced by their surroundings. I really did live here. I lived in apartment full of people from Jamaica and after work we'd battle rap by the pool. I really did have friends that were involved in illegal activities. I was actually in the south, recording with Dem Franchize Boyz, listening to Outkast, Dungeon Family, Field Mob, Crime Mobb. And that seems incredibly hard for people to swallow. People think I should rap about Australia in an Australian accent but I'm 28-year-old woman now. I can't rap about being 10 and living in Australia. That never inspired me. My time in America, my time in those cities, were when I really started having life experiences that were worthy of going into my music. It all happened here in this country.

"I wish I hadn't been so defensive and emotional, but it invalidated important conversations that shouldn't be overlooked."

On some of the leaked tracks for Digital Distortion you didn't seem afraid to acknowledge it. Tracks like "Middle Man," "7Teen," and "Elephant" were incredibly aggressive and direct. What happened with that era?

For the record I love Def Jam, there are a lot of people that I truly respect and like. The problem I had during this time was that I was preparing to address how I felt. I had gotten so pop, and when you have success as a pop artist it makes the label a lot of money, so they pushed me to keep churning out hits. They pushed for more branding money, more endorsements — that's their job. And I made the conscious choice to go along with it because I was making a lot of fucking money.

But in doing that I think I isolated a lot of my original supporters. I also stifled myself creatively because I wasn't making the kind of music I wanted to make. If I wanted to make endless hits, I would have been making pop music from day one. I just lost my passion. I didn't feel motivated in the studio. When I told them I was going to make an album, I sat there with the president of the label and told him that his 10-year-old daughter is probably not going to like the songs. I said, "She's not gonna want to come to the concert," and I could see a look of pure horror etched on his face. The expression of, "Fuck, the money maker is going to make some weird, non-radio album."

They weren't backing you up.

There was no support in my decision. They couldn't understand it unless it fit into a radio format, but I knew I would never have success again unless I connected with my original fans. That's what I knew I needed for me to have authenticity and for me to feel passionate. Not only that but for me to just endure life. Everything was falling apart and I need to love the music I'm making and truly believe in it. When I delivered the album, they wanted to know where the radio hits were. All they wanted to create were songs like "Switch." And those songs are great, but pop records don't work without a foundation. Those big songs are supposed to be cherries on top, not just a roof with no house. Pop records are like Skittles, they taste really good but if you eat too many you'll feel sick. They're not a creative meal. Here I am at the darkest period of my life, contemplating suicide, and I'm singing "Switch."

Can you tell me a bit about this new era — Surviving The Summer?

Releasing "Savior" was incredibly therapeutic for me. It felt good to have a record where I can talk about depression, and just let down all my cards. It's completely different from a lot of the other tracks which are heavily rap.

Who are you collaborating with?

I'm working with Detail. I'm working with Pharrell. There's still going to be those unexpected Diplo elements like my early mixtapes. I'm really taking it back to that place. I started with Digital Distortion, but that was really aggressive and angry. I'm not in that place anymore. I'm happy. I know my fans want me to rap and I want to give them that. I want to give them the hard shit that they love, the shit that's different, that moves the needle. I hope people will support it.

From your rapping accent, to your pop accolades, you're constantly criticized for being inauthentic — specifically within the hip-hop realm. What do you think, ultimately, of those debates?

The way I've always felt about music is that I never approached anything as partial to a genre. There's never been a sense of this is a pop record, this a rap record. Even with the way music is today, there are so many melodies and variations to any song, any genre. I think a big part of the judgement in those things — not exclusively for me, but for most women in the music industry — is misogyny. Do you know how many men are on pop records? When they do it, it's rewarded and they're considered smart for reaching a bigger audience.

People like to pick and choose the rules. We bury things that don't give our theories sense. Everyone does it, it's human nature. I feel like with me, there's a lot of reasons why people are trying to invalidate me. Is it not authentic because I make pop music? Or is it because I'm from Australia? What about the fact that I've been here for 12 years? What about white rappers who are saying the most absurd things about hip-hop, but in the club everyone's singing their songs? Other rappers are allowed to do the things that I do — even things I would never even think of doing — but it's okay because they have likability, or a different perception attached to their image, or a fucking dick. People are misogynistic. It is what it is.

"Fuck what I was doing before, I'm doing new shit. It's exciting."

Do you feel like you're a new artist now?

Yes, 1000 percent! It's almost harder now because when you're new people have no preconceived notions about what you are or what you represent. When you become mega successful and you go mainstream, no longer is the sky the limit. It becomes, "Oh she's mainstream, she's had a Steve Madden deal, she's on Cosmo," and the art becomes dissected in a new way with more eyes. But I like it. Sonically, when I'm in the studio, it's fun approaching music as a new artist. Fuck what I was doing before, I'm doing new shit. It's exciting.

[alwaysaprille]

Hi Friends:

I hope you’ll reblog this, not in an attempt to keep the drama going, but in an attempt to help me defeat the libel that @sometimesrosy is currently spreading about me. I was not going to respond, and in fact did not even know she’d tailored an attack on me until someone else alerted me to the fact.

 I’ve been attacked numerous times, by many people and I very rarely respond because I know myself to be the bigger person, but I do not take kindly to being accused of racism, upholding racist systems, and trying to take away someone’s “POC identity”, so I’d like to show you guys what actually happened and hope that you can see that lies are being spread with malicious intent. 

I hope that after reading this post you all will begin to see that Rosy @sometimesrosy uses lies, manipulation and deceit in an effort to make herself appear to be the victim when she is in no way that. Please stop giving this woman your time and effort, she is not worth it. 

This will be a long post. Thank you for any time you’ll spend reading it.

It began when Rosy posted a meta about Thelonious Jaha that I did not agree with. The meta is linked above. I posted a vague post linked here but seen below:

Later in the day I received an anonymous ask that I responded to. Linked here but I will post below in it’s entirety for convenience (the beginning of the ask that’s “grayed” are screencaps of Rosy’s original Jaha meta):

If you managed to stick around through all of that ^^^ Thank you! I really appreciate your patience. As you can see (if you read everything), I never mentioned the person who wrote the original meta in my response. I never singled her out in any way. I made sure to crop out her URL in my response to avoid confrontation. 

I did not use any personal or emotional support for my response and made sure that I based my response in facts and evidence provided within the canon of the show and it’s creators. Nothing I did was an attempt to lambaste Rosy for her views. Even when I point out the anti-Black racism so prevalent in the entire fandom’s view of Jaha, I was not singling out Rosy. That’s why I said “y’all” meaning “you all” meaning a group of people. 

At some point, someone decided to tell Rosy that I had written a response to her meta. I assume she read it. I hope that she read it before composing the response that she did, because it’s always best to have an informed opinion.  I’m now going to share with you all Rosy’s response to my meta rebuttal (which is a full on written attack on me), linked here and posted in screenshots (which I will respond to as necessary):

In this screenshot, her 4th point is the age old “I have Black friends!” excuse, only applied to fictional characters. “I like these 2 Black characters, therefore my disdain for this other black character can’t possibly be rooted in anti-Black racism!!!

In the 2nd screenshot, Rosy attempts to imply that my only possible perspective could be from the Black perspective ( ”Her perspective is, and has always been from the Black perspective.”), as Rosy knows nothing of my personal background she can not make the assumption that my analysis of Jaha is only valuable “from the Black perspective”. 

She then goes on to say that her “interpretation of Jaha, is explicitly about class. I say it again and again. Privilege, Elitist, Civil Uprising, Inequality, Injustice, Classism.” as if I did not mention in my own analysis of Jaha that he comes from a place of privilege:

She then goes on to say that: “I got a scholarship to go to college and got educated, (something that April is seemingly offended by) and I learned how to speak up.” 

I also received a scholarship to go to college, a full ride for all 6 years (I have a Bachelor’s and a Master) on my (educational) merit. In fact, most people I know require some sort of financial assistance to obtain a higher education now.  My only problem with Rosy’s education is that she consistently behaves as if her English degree means that her analysis/meta/theories/etc are in anyway better/more adept than anyone else’s. 

Her next paragraph segues into the definition of intersectional feminism. She correctly points out that it was a term coined by a Black woman (although she does not mention her name:  Kimberlé Crenshaw) some 30 yrs ago and that it is about more than just the intersection of racism and sexism, but all women who have an additional minority label (LGBTQA, disabled women, immigrants, etc.). I don’t know why this topic was relevant as, again, in my original commentary on Rosy’s post, I never mention her name, URL or any other information that would enable you to immediately identify the poster as Rosy. 

In this 3rd screenshot we have a continuation of what intersectional feminism means (which is again, irrelevant to my response to her meta as, in my original commentary on Rosy’s post, I never mention her name, URL or any other information that would enable you to immediately identify the poster as Rosy.)

She, for whatever reason, brings up the major descriptors of my identity that most of you are aware of (that I am Black, and bi, and a proud single mother) and then brings up her own descriptors. She states that I can not understand her intersection (when what she means is her perspective), even while she attacks the points I make as a Black woman speaking about a Black character. 

Her next paragraph is, I assume, an attempt to convey the seriousness of her message. 

“We don’t have to talk or read each other’s meta at all.  But you don’t get to slander my name. You’re the one who has been doing this in public. “

As to the first sentence: I do not speak to Rosy and do not actively read her meta, nor do I search it out, because 10 times out of 10 I know that I will not agree with her opinions as they tend to not be based in the facts and evidence of the canon. As to the second sentence: I can not “slander” her name via tumblr or Twitter posts as slander is a false spoken statement. The proper noun to use would be “libel” (written defamation) which again, would have to be proven false in order to actually be called libel. As to the the third sentence: I have been doing what in public? As noted I wrote one response to Rosy’s post and in my original commentary on Rosy’s post, I never mention her name, URL or any other information that would enable you to immediately identify the poster as Rosy.

She further states that I have been “vague blogging, and let’s stop trying to build a case against my ethnicities and identities, hmm? The worth of my POC identity is not yours to decide. My existence as an oppressed minority is not yours to erase.)”

In going through my blog, my last tumblr post about Rosy was on June 26th, 2017, post linked here (the last reblog mentioning her was on July 31st, 2017): 

Prior to that it was sometime in March (which you can verify by going to my blog and searching “rosymamacita”

If by “trying to build a case against my ethnicities and identities” she means the times I have (rightfully) pointed out when her feminism wanders into the white feminism zone she is again mistaken. White feminism can be upheld by WOC as all it is is a form of feminism that focuses on the struggles of white women while failing to address forms of oppression faced by women of color and women lacking other privileges. White feminism also comes into play when you excuse the treatment of MOC by white women, something Rosy does often. 

She says that the worth of her “POC identity is not yours to decide.” First, she has used POC as an adjective here, when “POC” short for Person of Color is a noun and thus should not be used in this form (something an English major should know), and then attempts to say that I have ever attempted to strip her ethnicity from her. I have never spoken of Rosy’s ethnicity on my blog in any capacity because her personal identity is not mine to discuss. 

In this screenshot, she states (In all caps) that I “ignored everything that she said about class and injustice” (when again I did not, you can see that I addressed the privilege that Jaha, Abby, Clarke and Wells have in my response to her meta) in an attempt to invalidate her experience as a poor person. 

She then says “I don’t know April’s background” and she’s right, none of you do. Maybe I should inform you of some of it:

My name is April, I was born on January 13th, 1990 in Detroit, MI to a single mother, who was born to a Black mother and an abusive White father (this makes my mother a mixed race person, and myself a quarter White.). For the first year of my life my mother did not have a job and my father refused to support me. My mother enrolled herself in law school, she went at night and took me with her, because there was no one else that she could ask for help. I have gone to private school my for most of my educational career (I went to a public high school and a public university), but it cost my mother (what it cost I will not add here, because that is her story). At some point, my relationship with my mother became toxic and unhealthy. She has been at times, both physically and verbally abusive. I have been involved in an emotionally and physically abusive relationship (which resulted in my child), I raise him alone, with no financial help from his father who continues to work hard to ensure that he maintains some form of control over my life (through our child). I struggle with depression daily. I am blessed in that the career path I chose was one that pays well, but that was my choice, as it was Rosy’s to choose an English degree, which might not have been as lucrative. I am blessed that I am able to take care of my son with no financial, emotional or physical help from the vast majority of my family. I do not delight in my privilege, nor do I wave it in people’s faces. 

She presumes that I think the Black/White divide is most important, when I know, and you know if you’ve ever taken any time to peruse my blog, that I do my best to draw attention to all issues, even if I can only speak directly to my own experience as a Black woman in a white dominated world.  She states that I have actively tried to erase her voice every time she speaks up, but I have never done this. If you go to my blog and type “Rosy” in the search bar, you can easily verify this yourself. I believe in facts and concrete evidence and so I am striving to provide it for you today.

In this screenshot she has gone to my blog and found this post, linked here: 

and attempts to...somehow, make this about her? Somehow, this anon’s question and my answer (eight days before today’s incident and four days before her meta was written) are an “attack on her personally.” even though Rosy is not mentioned by name, URL or otherwise. She claims that I am not “using the correct terms.”, that I am “using ‘Mexican’ to be interchangeable with ‘Hispanic’” even though I am only using the anons wording (I do this as a courtesy to all anons because I do not like to assume that someone’s first language is English and want to make sure that my response is easier to interpret. She assumes that I have not done “any research to understand the situation.” This is false. I always research asks about racial and ethnic identity. As an aside: I did check in with my Cuban friend Mik ( @octanakin​) to be sure I was not being offensive or racist in any way, and she advised me that I was not. 

She says that I am “wrong and severely simplistic in my understanding.” It’s a two word answer, of course it’s simplistic. 

She then states: “When I fill out my taxes. There are two boxes. “white–non latino or hispanic” and “latino or hispanic.” I can NOT choose white, because I am latinx.” 

Just so everyone knows....when you fill out your taxes there is no box where they ask you to racially self-identify (source: my mother is a taxation and real estate attorney and also):

She says that “Latinx is not a race. We can be ANY race, white, black, indio, asian.” If you go back to the anon ask she’s referencing you’ll clearly see the part where I say: “But not all Hispanic and Mexican people are white.” soo...her argument here in a non-sequitur, as we’ve said the exact same thing. 

She goes on to say that I told her and other Latinx and disabled people that Raven Reyes was bad representation, this is laughable, because it is widely known that Raven is my 2nd favorite character on The 100, with that said, I’m sure she is referencing this post, linked here:

or this post, linked here, where I clearly give “ownership” or Raven to disabled and Latinx people while maintaining my stance that constant physical torture does not equal good representation. I think it’s laughable that me saying “Raven Reyes is tortured too much outside of natural pain originating from her disability” somehow equals “Raven Reyes is bad representation”:

In this screenshot she states, even though she admittedly has no knowledge of my own family history, decides that I am speaking over mixed race people (even though my mother is a Mixed Race individual herself). She says that speaking up about Octavia’s constant abuse of the Black people in her life (Lincoln and Indra) and the Asian men in her life (Bellamy and Ilian) is somehow invalidating her mixed race family and interracial relationships, even as I staunchly defend Bellarke (an interracial ship), Briller (an interracial ship), Marper (an interracial ship), etc, etc, etc. 

She implies that I was the person who told her that she was “speaking over darker skinned people and I should be quiet”, when in fact she received that message via an anon (and I have only ever sent one anon message in my entire tenure on this site-it was not to Rosy). With this statement: “ I am still not sure how April was seen as more of an authority on my history, my ethnicity, my identity and my experience because she is darker skinned.” she handily types out a lie, as I have never spoken about Rosy’s history, ethnicity, identity or experience. 

More to the point, perhaps people choose my stance over hers on Linctavia and Octillian because they also did not like the ships, and as a Black woman, my voice on topics involving anti-Black racism (like the kind found in Octavia’s relationship with Lincoln and Indra) should be elevated above someone who is not Black? She also handily ignores that I have a mixed-race family (which again, she admitted she had no knowledge of), that one of my grandfather’s was white, that my step-grandmother (My grandfather remarried after my grandmother ran from his abuse) was white, that my cousin has married a white woman (they have a daughter), that my uncle has married a white woman (they have a son), I could go on, but I hope that you all understand that my family is very diverse. 

In this screencap, she states that “It’s a shame that we can’t have a conversation about this, because colorism is absolutely real, as is internalized racism in the POC community.” She makes it seem as if I am the reason that we can’t have conversations about this, when the past proves that every time anyone has ever tried to point out to Rosy that as a lighter-skinned POC she has light-skinned privilege (this is a huge part of colorism) she someone decides that they are attacking her right to identify as a WOC. 

She then tries to sneak in the bit about internalized racism, which she is using incorrectly! I cannot exhibit internalized racism towards Rosy, because as she has made sure to point out many times, we are not the same ethnicity! I am Black and Rosy is Latina. Internalized racism is the internalization by people of racist attitudes towards members of their own ethnic group, including themselves. This means that both Rosy and I would have to be the same ethnicity in order for me to exhibiting internalized racism. 

Then she goes and discusses anti-miscegenation, as if I, the child of a mixed race mother whose parents married in the late 40s and lived in Tennessee would have no idea the effect that could have on people. She says I am being anti-miscegenatic and upholding racist ideals, when I have literally never said anything against interracial marriage or relationships and in fact have numerous posts, linked here, here, here, here, here, and here, (and there are more if you care to search “interracial relationships” on my blog) in support and defense of them. 

She keeps harping on this idea that I have ever said that Rosy is not a WOC:  “That she mocks me for saying I have an english degree, as if I as a POC (because I am April, no matter what you decide counts) didn’t have to work harder than the privileged white folk to get it, as if it wasn’t an accomplishment for someone born and raised in the ghetto “

When again, I don’t mock her for having an English degree, I mock her for pretending as if her English degree somehow makes her meta better than those of us who do not have English degrees. She tries to reinforce how hard she had to work to get her degree, as if I, a Black woman born and raised in Detroit, MI, have no idea how hard it is for POC to get degrees. 

She continues to say that I have ever called her white: “I don’t know if she’s aware that the way she tries to call me white and white feminist and invalidate my heritage is EXACTLY what she called racist when the CLantis did it to Bob. I don’t know if she is aware that she’s following their path of harassment and personal attacks.”

When the truth is that as noted above, white feminism can and is frequently perpetrated by POC!!! She tries to make my pointing out that a lot of her ideas about feminism when it comes to fiction align with those of known white feminists on this site equivalent to Cl/xas actively calling Bob Morley white, when I have never done this. 

She posted these screencaps (which are still on my Twitter, FYI, because I delete nothing and pull receipts on myself all day everyday) as evidence that I harrass and personally attack her, but please note the date (August 13th-over 4 months ago) and conveniently leaves out that this was a blatant full frontal attack because she and her group of white feminist friends attacked several WOC (not just myself in quick succession, over the course of about 3-5 days). 

If you’d like to see the “personal attack on her” it’s in the linked video and amounts to about 30 seconds of time, I have not mentioned or thought about Rosy since. 

She says those tweets (which again have dates) are because she called my theory bad or because she didn’t agree with my meta, when in fact they were because she raged an all out assault on a friend of mine @luisadoliveira because she dared to have a different thought than Rosy. She laughingly states that I can’t separate my meta from my self-worth when Rosy is the one who, every time, without fail, reacts like a nuclear explosion every time someone is too critical of her own meta. I’m beautiful, an excellent mother, loved, and capable of taking care of myself. That’s where my self-worth is. 

I’m not even in the Bellarke fandom anymore, precisely because of people like her, but for some reason she thinks that I care what this fandom has to say about me, lmao. 

Then she says this, let’s run through the check points:

She’s right, I don’t like her.

She’s wrong. I haven’t mentioned her name since September 1st, 2017 in a youtube video. 

I’m stalking her, but she’s the one who pulled screencaps from my twitter (which I did not give her access to and on which she does not follow me), she’s the one who responded to my professional, facts only dissection of her meta with a balls to the walls personal attack (which by the way falls into those handy harassment and bullying claims she’s making). 

She says I’m using ad hominem attacks (for those of you who don’t know that means you’re attacking the person and not their point) when my original reblog of her meta very clearly never mentioned her name and ONLY discussed her points, and this one still does not attack her person, even as she does nothing but attack me.) And one more time: You can’t say “POC” identity, because POC isn’t an adjective!!!

She says that “Calling people racist is my most powerful attack” when I clearly said it was unintentional racism exhibited by the entire fandom, not just her. And then tries to soothe that statement by calling me smart. I am well aware of my intellect, thank you, I did not need a boost from her. More to the point, in my original rebuttal of her meta, I only used factual evidence from the show to make my point, indicating that I was smart enough to tear apart her point without resorting to personal attacks, something you can clearly see that Rosy is not capable of. 

She thinks that I’m afraid because she grew up in the Bronx. This is the internet. We’re never going to meet in real life and it’s really easy to attempt to be big, bold and threatening online. Where you are from is not an indication of how “hard” you are, which is why you don’t see me constantly saying “I’m from Detroit!” as if it will add legitimacy to my claims. 

“I won’t respond to your rebuttal”. I’m fine with that. You’ve been blocked for 6 months and ignored for longer than that. These constant attempts to stir up drama that does not exist reflective poorly on you, Rosy, not me. This rebuttal isn’t about tearing you down,it’s about clearing the name that you have horrible besmirched with your lies and falsehoods. 

I hope you block everyone who agrees with me. Because they don’t deserve to be inundated with the lies that you spread about anyone who disagrees with you. 

She states that I don’t matter to her, but she took the time to compose a 2k word lie-fest about me even though I never mentioned her at all in my rebuttal of her Jaha meta. 

Finally, the last page of this nonsense. She somehow implies that I ever encouraged her to respond to my rebuttal of her meta when I did not! And Rosy, everyone knows that the second someone disagrees with you on a large enough platform you open your laptop and type unabashed lies and hate about that person, just as you have today. 

Be advised: I have documentation to prove that everything you’ve stated in your post today is false, if I hear that you have ever deemed yourself worthy (since you like that word) of typing my name again, I will absolutely pull this piece and present it before a court for a libel lawsuit. I have an attorney, and my mother can put me into contact with several more. 

End this before I have to. 

[toshootforthestars]

From June 2020:

In Chicago last weekend, a man in tactical gear with a long gun brandished it menacingly at protesters. “Open carry” of firearms is illegal in Illinois. The police had a quick chat with him and sent him on his way unmolested. As police departments have everywhere else, this one gassed and beat unarmed demonstrators who were protesting police violence. “We don’t tolerate police misconduct—ever,” the mayor said. But they do. They have tolerated it among Chicago police officers for 100 years.

What would lead a police department—not a few misbehaving officers but every officer on the street, in this instance—to dismiss a heavily armed man as no threat (to either their own safety or the safety of the community) in one case, while, in another, viewing an unarmed local activist as so much of a threat that multiple cops decided to surround and brutally beat him with batons?

The incidents in Chicago and Philadelphia are evidence that American police across the country share a coherent ideology.

Armed white boys don’t code as a threat to them; “anarchists” and angry black people do (even if the protesters are the ones at least attempting to engage in constitutionally protected behavior, while the roving white gangs are flagrantly violating the law).

That disconnect, the galling image of watching the law so obviously tossed aside under certain circumstances, highlights a fundamental truth about what’s happening across the United States. The police are not using brutality to enforce “the law.” They’re using the law to enforce something else: a particular social order that is, to them, worth fighting for.

The words “white supremacy” make some people shut their brains off (especially when so many cops are indeed black and so many people they’re brutalizing during these clashes are white), but the order, and the ideology, that these police departments, from Kansas City to Minneapolis to Philadelphia, are enforcing is one that dates back to the beginning of our country’s history, one that relies on the domination and subjugation of particular classes and groups, often out of the fear that, if given power, they would turn around and return the favor. That is what makes the response to these protests so brutal, so urgent, for the police: In town after town, they seem to ignore any course of action that might de-escalate tensions in favor of the ones that only serve to prolong the conflict.

Make no mistake: Cops have allowed other demonstrations, even very large ones, to play out with minimal or no interference. Heavily armed right-wingers marched on statehouses last month decrying measures to arrest the spread of Covid-19, and the police universally treated them as peaceful and lawful demonstrators, even as they threatened lawmakers and burned at least one governor in effigy. There were no violent crackdowns, no curfews, no brawls on the streets, no kettling or mass arrests. There was no tear gas. No major George Floyd–inspired protest has received the same courtesy, as far as I can tell.

Fifty cops decked out in full riot gear descended on 14 quietly protesting students in Hoover, Alabama, on Tuesday, and arrested them all.

A few weeks ago, in Huntington Beach, a city in Orange County, California, thousands were allowed to gather and demand the reopening of the beaches, in spite of a worldwide viral pandemic, with minimal police interference.

A protest of police violence in the exact same place weeks later was met with the usual displays of force.

This disparity in cop reactions to demonstrations could be seen as a bias against the left and in favor of the right, but that’s not the whole picture.

A wholly unregulated, seemingly impromptu militia is allowed to participate in the guarding of Philadelphia not strictly because it might be more likely to support the Republican president, but because it is white and vocally defending the extant system of dominance and hierarchy against those who seek to upend or even simply reform it.

Those afraid of the complete reimagining of American policing tend to prefer to treat cops as individual and discrete actors, in order to separate the “good” from the “bad”—to say that the majority of them never kill anyone, that hardly any commit the acts of brutality and criminality that capture headlines.

The question then becomes simply finding more of the good and fewer of the bad, or somehow turning the bad into the good.

But none of the good apples arrested any of those white guys with baseball bats in Philadelphia. None of the good apples enforced the curfew against them. They chose to exempt the one group that enjoys special privileges and immunity from state violence for reasons even the squishiest moderate has to acknowledge.

Why each individual cop turned a blind eye doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that good cops don’t seem to police the bad ones. (Unless directly ordered to do so by their superiors, cops simply never arrest cops for committing crimes in the line of duty.) And this means we can judge them for what they do collectively.

Cops aren’t even more interested, as their critics sometimes accuse them of being, in protecting “property” than they are in protecting people.

In Manhattan, New York police allowed widespread looting while gearing up for a prearranged clash with non-looting protesters. Philadelphia cops who put up a huge show of force to protect a statue of a notorious racist aren’t protecting “property” so much as declaring their allegiance. Minneapolis cops, it has been reported, have completely abandoned the largely black north neighborhoods of the city where arsons (not protest- or riot-related fires) have been rampant, forcing citizens and community leaders to organize spontaneously for their own self-defense. (It serves, perhaps, as an accidental trial run for police abolition.)

At one point last weekend, Chicago police responded to a ridiculous claim of a caravan of antifa soldiers streaming over the border from Indiana by dispatching a chopper. Cops react in legitimate and genuine panic at the fantastical prospect of vans full of antifa coordinating violence in their towns, even as they mainly ignore actually extant far-right provocateurs streaming in from the sorts of outlying suburbs where the cops themselves live.

Cops frequently lie to the press, understanding that journalists will disseminate whatever they’re told, but when police in Louisville, Kentucky, told the press that their officers were worried protesters were putting bleach in leaf blowers, you have to understand both that the Louisville Police as an institution did not actually believe this was happening, and that its officers still consider bleach-blowers a far more serious threat to their safety than actual firearms carried by actual anti-government extremists.

Democratic (and occasionally libertarian) politicians, liberal think tanks, and policy shops have produced lots of proposals designed to prevent what happened to George Floyd from happening again: implicit bias training, de-escalation training, body cameras, use of force restrictions. None of these figures have a plan to stop police from allowing a white mob to violate a curfew with impunity while brutally repressing protesters representing the “other side.” What is the reform plan for that, exactly?

What is the reform plan for police choosing to believe deranged conspiracy theories about demonstrators?

It is almost reassuring to believe that the police want peace but are, through ineptness or poor training, bad at achieving it.

They have told us, over and over again, that they are a political force with specific goals. Are we ready to listen yet?

Alex Pareene: The Police Take the Side of White Vigilantes

The New Republic   /   3 June 2020

[agentlereckoning]

What I think about Alison Roman

Any Gen-Z’er with a Twitter account has probably seen the latest Gen-Z Icon Controversy, i.e. the one involving Alison Roman. In case you’re not caught up on its details,  the tl;dr is that The New Consumer (which appears to be a one-white-man show of an online publication steered by a former Vox and Business Insider employee named Dan Frommer) published an interview with Alison last Thursday — an interview where Alison, when asked about the difference between “consumption and pollution” (as if there even is a material difference), said:

“I think that’s why I really enjoy what I do. Because you’re making something, but it goes away.

Like the idea that when Marie Kondo decided to capitalize on her fame and make stuff that you can buy, that is completely antithetical to everything she’s ever taught you… I’m like, damn, bitch, you fucking just sold out immediately! Someone’s like ‘you should make stuff,’ and she’s like, ‘okay, slap my name on it, I don’t give a shit!’

....

Like, what Chrissy Teigen has done is so crazy to me. She had a successful cookbook. And then it was like: Boom, line at Target. Boom, now she has an Instagram page that has over a million followers where it’s just, like, people running a content farm for her. That horrifies me and it’s not something that I ever want to do. I don’t aspire to that. But like, who’s laughing now? Because she’s making a ton of fucking money.”

This is the quote that most people who’ve followed this drama have latched onto, and I’ll come back to discussing it in a moment. I’m really not sure why the interview was published at all, other than for a publicity or financial boost during these times, because I don’t think anything worth hearing was uttered by either the interviewer or interviewee. Moments in the interview seemed either tone-deaf or trivial to the point where I wondered why they were included at all. Early on, for example, Alison laments that she hasn’t been making enough money during this pandemic. (She does not live in want of money.) Later she half-jokingly complains that her public persona has been reduced to “anchovy girl”, ostensibly because she often uses them in her cooking. (She does, and often proudly owns that fact, which makes this complaint pretty uninteresting.) But the point of this interview was meant to be, I think, a rumination on how Alison would turn her belief that she “isn’t like the other girls” into practice.

It’s a common thing to desire, I think — this ingenuity balanced with relatability, and I think seeking this balance is what propels so many people my age. Few things are more embarrassing to us than unoriginality, than being a carbon copy of someone else, yet few things are scarier than social rejection. We don’t want to like the same things as everybody else, but we want at least some people to like the things that we like. I think it’s what drives certain subcultures to exist in the first place, the way that subsections of people can congregate around something or someone, reveling in each other’s presence but also in knowing that they are, in fact, just a subsection of the greater population. 

This mentality is, admittedly, sort of what drove me to like Alison Roman in the first place. For background: the first time I cooked a recipe of hers happened unwittingly; in December 2018, I saw the recipe for the salted chocolate chip shortbread cookies that became known as #TheCookies (Alison’s virality can be encapsulated by the fact that all of her most famous recipes have been hashtagged, e.g., #TheStew, #TheStew2, #ShallotPasta or #ThePasta), but I made them without knowing that Alison was the person behind the recipe. The cookies were good (though I think any recipe with over two sticks of butter and a pound of dark chocolate is bound to be good.) At some point about a year later, I watched a YouTube video published by NYT Cooking where she made her white bean-harissa-kale stew, and I thought she was funny and really pretty and, like me (I think), had a fastidious yet chaotic energy that I always thought made me awkward but made her seem endearing. Alison’s recipes taste good, they come together really easily, and you don’t need special equipment or a lot of kitchen space to execute them. It’s why I’ve committed at least three of them to memory, just by virtue of making them so often. I liked her recipes so much that, for over three months, one of my Instagram handles was inspired by one. But I also liked her, or wanted to be like her, or some combination fo both. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to be her friend, or that I didn’t aspire to her lifestyle of Rachel Comey clothes, glistening brass hoop earrings that cost 1/4 of my rent, regular trips to downtown Brooklyn or Park Slope farmers’ markets or small butcher shops where the purveyors all knew her name, an always-perfect red gel manicure, the capacity to eat and drink luxuriously and seemingly endlessly and to have the money for a yoga studio membership to help her stay slim anyways. 

Of course all of those things are signifiers of social class more than anything else. But in oligarchical, consumerist societies, what is expensive and what is good become two overlapped Venn diagram circles, and I have not yet reached a level of enlightenment to be able to fully tease the two apart. And while I would never drop $425 on a jumpsuit, no matter how pretty I think it is, I could crisp up some chickpeas, stir in vegetable stock and coconut milk, and wilt in some greens, and act like my shit was together. I liked Alison because when I first started liking her, she hadn’t yet risen to the astronomical level of digital fame that she enjoys now, and by making her recipes, some part of me believed that I would be inducted into a small group of her fans who, by serving up her dishes, telegraphed good taste.

This idea of “good taste” is a complicated and racially charged one. Alison is white; she lives in one of the whitest neighborhoods in Brooklyn (maybe even all of New York City); her recipes cater to a decidedly young, white audience. I think another reason why her dishes hold so much Gen-Z appeal, beyond their simplicity and deliciousness, is because they sit at the perfect intersection of healthy-but-not-too-healthy and international-but-not-too-international. Her chickpea stew, for example, borrows from South and Southeast Asian cooking flavors, but you wouldn’t need to step foot into an ethnic grocery store or, god forbid, leave Trader Joe’s, to get the ingredients for it. The shallot pasta recipe calls for an entire tin of anchovies, and you get to feel cool and edgy putting a somewhat polarizing food into a sauce that white people will still, ultimately, visually register as “tomato sauce and pasta” and digest easily. All of the recipes in her cookbook, Nothing Fancy (which I received as a gift!), are like this. She doesn’t push the envelope into more foreign territory, probably because she doesn’t have the culinary experience for it (which is totally fine — I never expected her to be an expert in anything except white people food), and probably also because if she did push the envelope any further, her book, with its tie-dyed pages and saturated, pop-art aerial shots, wouldn’t have been as marketable. 

That’s what’s unfortunate — that white people and white-domineered food publications have been the arbiters of culinary taste in the U.S. for centuries. I’m thinking about Julia Child, about bananas foster being flambéed tableside and served under a silver domed dish cover, about the omnipresent red-and-white-checked Better Homes & Gardens cookbook, about Guy Fieri and Eric Ripert and Ina Garten and the Bon Appétit Test Kitchen. I’m thinking about how white women have long been the societally accepted public face of domestic labor when it was often Black women who actually did that labor. It’s Mother’s Day today, and I’m thinking about how, in middle school, I’d sometimes conceal my packed lunch of my favorite dishes my mom made — glass noodles stir-fried with bok choy, cloud ear mushrooms, carrots, and thinly sliced and marinated pork; fish braised in a chili-spiced broth — so that my white friends wouldn’t be grossed out, and so that I wouldn’t have to do the labor of explaining what my food was. 

And I’m thinking of that now-notorious Alison Roman quote. To be fair, Marie Kondo and Chrissy Teigen do have large consumer and media empires, which have become profitable and which require huge teams of people to sustain. Both of them probably do have large amounts of money at their disposals. What’s weird to me is that Alison accuses both Marie and Chrissy of “selling out” because they each branded their own lines of purchasable home goods, yet Alison herself said in that very same interview that she had also done that very thing. It’s just that Chrissy’s line is sold at Target, while Alison’s, according to her, is a “capsule collection. It’s limited edition, a few tools that I designed that are based on tools that I use that aren’t in production anywhere — vintage spoons and very specific things that are one-offs that I found at antique markets that they have made for me.” I suppose it’s not “selling out” if it caters to the pétite bourgeoisie. I don’t know if Alison is explicitly racist, since I don’t know if she called out two women of color simply because they are women of color, or if she genuinely just so happened to select two of them. But that she feels like she has the license to define things as “selling out” based on who the “selling-out” behavior caters to reeks of white entitlement. 

There’s also an air of superiority with which she describes how she would market her product line:

That would have to be done in such a specific way under very intense standards. And I would not ever want to put anything out into the world that I wouldn’t be so excited to use myself.

She says this right before talking about Marie Kondo and Chrissy Teigen, accusing them of being lackadaisical and unthoughtful (”okay, slap my name on it! I don’t give a shit!”; “people running a content farm for her”) when she likely has no idea what the inner workings of either of their business models are. To be sure, it could very well be true that Marie and Chrissy have handed off these aspects of their brands to other people. But for Alison to assume that they have, and that her own business management style would, by default, be better because she would retain control, is egotistical. 

Alison ends the interview by proclaiming that her ultimate goal is to be different from her contemporaries. She says, 

To me, the only way that I can continue to differentiate myself from the pod of people that write recipes, or cookbooks or whatever, is by doing a different thing. And so I have to figure out what that is. And I think that I haven’t ultimately nailed that. And I’m in the process of figuring it out right now.

I expect that her path to “differentiation” will contain riffs on the same iterations of preserved lemons, anchovies, canned beans, and fresh herbs that she’s always relied on. I expect people will still think she’s cool, because that’s easy to achieve when her recipes and aesthetic are a series of easy-to-swallow-pills,  when she tells the cameraman not to cut the footage of her accidentally over-baking her galette, and when being a white creative and working among mostly white colleagues means that she’ll get a lot of latitude. I expect she’ll continue to sell out, which is completely fine, so long as she’ll be candid with herself and actually call it selling out. 

And I want to learn recipes from a chef who looks like me, and I want that chef to be “marketable” enough to achieve Alison’s level of fame. I want people of color to get to decide what recipes deserve their own hashtag. I want Alison Roman to be emotionally okay, because Twitter backlash can be vicious. And I kinda want to buy Marie Kondo’s drawer organizers now. 

[jamaicanswiftie]

Why can’t feminist accept Taylor Swift’s pro-woman heroics?

By: Brooke A. Rogers

TIME’s “Person of the Year 2017” is “the silence breakers”: women and men who had drawn attention to the issue of sexual assault. Yet the seemingly obvious choice wasn’t without controversy. Standing on the cover, next to actress Ashley Judd and Uber engineer Susan Fowler, was Taylor Swift.

Swift earned her place among the other silence breakers. Earlier this year, she was awarded $1 in damages after a jury found that DJ David Mueller had reached up her skirt and groped her during a meet-and-greet in 2013.

In her own words, her fight for victory in a civil court was symbolic — hence her suing for $1 — a gesture for “anyone who feels silenced by sexual assault.” The Rape, Abuse Incest Network’s national hotline, which provides support, information and other help to survivors of assault, saw a 35 percent increase in calls the weekend after the trial.

But according to the Daily Beast’s Amy Zimmerman, Swift didn’t deserve to be heralded as a “symbol of female empowerment” because she’d committed the cardinal sin of 2017: She still hasn’t denounced President Trump.

In a piece titled “Taylor Swift is no silence breaker,” Zimmerman called Swift “an out of touch, ACLU-condemned fair-weather feminist who probably only agreed to do the TIME interview on the condition that they didn’t ask her about Donald Trump.”

Swift, whose political affiliation is unknown, has never publicly said a word in support of the president, but she’s never out-and-out condemned him either — and for that, she’s been drawing think-piece side eye since last year. (“Taylor Swift’s silence on President-elect Donald Trump is deafening,” wrote Mic.com’s Tom Barnes in January, a declaration that soon became a social-media punchline.)

Zimmerman also pointed out that the blonde-hair-blue-eyed Swift has quite a few fans among the alt-right. Swift has never publicly acknowledged this group of creepers but did threaten to sue a blogger “for exploring the ties between Taylor Swift and her adoring Daily Stormer fan base,” ties that, perhaps needless to say, don’t exist.

But Zimmerman misstates the purpose of the blogger’s post, which was trying to make the case that Swift was a closeted racist who was subtly getting the “lower-case kkk in formation.” The blogger accused her of using dog-whistle lyrics to appeal to the alt-right, saying that her new single “Look What You Made Me Do” seemed to “play to the same subtle, quiet white support of racial hierarchy.” Really.

Now, suing a virtually unknown blogger who calls you a racist is ridiculous, which is why the ACLU reprimanded her. But the blogger was making absurd accusations, not “exploring her ties” with the alt-right.

And although Swift showed her support of the Women’s March, tweeting “So much love, pride, and respect for those who marched. I’m proud to be a woman today, and every day,” Zimmerman blasted her for not physically marching in the parade. Who else is being held to that kind of ridiculous standard?

The trouble started in early 2016, when several people noted that Swift hadn’t said much about the impending election. The Daily News called her “notoriously tight-lipped on her political leanings.”

She didn’t endorse Trump. She didn’t endorse Hillary Clinton. She didn’t endorse anyone. She seemed to assume her followers could make up their minds for themselves.

It was a problem.

The Daily Beast’s Kevin Fallon asked, “Who did Taylor Swift vote for?” Later that month, The Guardian wrote an editorial titled “Taylor Swift: an envoy for Trump values?” The left-wing paper noted that “since Donald Trump was elected, the entertainment world has been largely united in its disdain for his presidency.” But Swift’s “has been missing from the chorus.”

Swift is not inflammatory. She’s no one’s “problematic fav.” She’s a savvy businesswoman who built a multimillion-dollar brand and a fan base that has stuck with her. Through both her music and her actions, she’s empowered women.

So why can’t the feminist movement accept her? Has the mere thought that Swift might be a Republican (an assumption backed by no real proof and refuted by those who know her) really usurped the tangible good she’s done for women? It seems so.

Until Swift actually does or says something egregious, we should stop cornering her on her political beliefs. Her actions have spoken for her: She’s pro-woman and pro-survivor. She thinks independently and doesn’t let pressure force her to answer for the actions of men who she has nothing to do with.

Sounds pretty feminist.