#(and these are comparatively powerful and wealthy white women from the US

[pasdetrois]

you'd think that after the nightmare circus that was the (social) media treatment of amber heard, people would learn to become a tad more skeptical when there are suddenly thousands of posts, videos, articles, etc. tarring and feathering another woman in the spotlight. silly me! i forgot this is a bone you can wave in front of the dog forever, because many people still view women as vicious caricatures by default, and not real human beings.

[ravenkings]

Bernie is wrong. He has always been wrong and is still wrong. The flaw in his theory is what he deems the “wealthy elite” versus what everyday Americans consider them to be. Voters don’t see all billionaires as the elites. They see college-educated liberals on the coasts, some of whom are billionaires, as elites.

Bernie-style populism didn’t land because billionaires figured out long ago they could undermine it by being socially right-wing, and the working class would forgive their wealth and privilege. That’s why this same demographic is willing to make it rain for grifters like Joel Osteen and Pat Robertson. That’s why they worship the wealthiest man on the planet like a God and consider him some real-life Tony Stark. People dismissed Donald Trump as a shameless attention-hungry New York oligarch until he called Mexicans rapists. Then he shot up to the top of the GOP primary polls. The working class didn’t think much of Elon Musk until he said “pronouns suck.” Then he became their hero. A scion of working-class Pennsylvania lost his US Senate seat last week to a hedge fund manager from Connecticut. West Virginia elected their richest man to the Senate after electing him governor – as a Democrat and later a Republican. Ohio tossed out their longtime Democratic senator, known for his strong support of labor rights, for – literally, no joke – a used-car salesman.

You can’t tell me the working class in America thinks being a billionaire alone is what makes one a “wealthy elite.” There are significant factors at play here Bernie is either oblivious to or purposely ignorant of.

In college, a professor once told me that Communism never succeeded in the United States because we are too religious and proud as a country. Religion, traditions, and culture were never widely discredited the way they were in Europe and Asia, where the clergy and nobility kept the bourgeoisie in figurative chains for centuries. The relative ease of social mobility made America unique compared to its Western counterparts. Historically, American progressivism has been focused on expanding social mobility – initially limited to only white men – to identity groups who had been denied it at the start: blacks, women, and immigrants. We have done it, with various amounts of success. While it may seem counterintuitive, Americans pride themselves in being the nation that pioneered the idea that wealth and status can be achieved through ingenuity and hard work and not just based on a lucky roll of the genetic dice, as it was in the Old World. It doesn’t mean we don’t have generational wealth in our country; we do, but since it isn’t the sole way to achieve wealth and power, we don’t care nearly as much about destroying all of it. Further, we will happily endorse it if the oligarchs and the aristocrats vow to promote and protect the social values we care about and the social hierarchy that benefits us.

It’s one of the reasons I believe Bernie could never beat Trump. If you ask working-class people what they want: an anti-immigrant, anti-intellectual billionaire or a Vermont socialist backed by kids from Harvard and UC Berkeley who hate our traditions and customs, the working class will always back the billionaire.

–Nick Rafter, "Bernie Sanders Can Take a Seat"

[robertreich]

We Need to Make Government Bigger (It’s Not What You Think) 

We need to make the House of Representatives bigger!

Now I know what some might be thinking: “Make the government bigger?” Well, technically yes. But that's missing the point. We need to expand the House to make the government work better, and be more responsive to our needs.

Put simply: The House of Representatives does not have enough members to adequately represent all 334 million of us.

Now, the House hasn’t always had 435 members and it was never intended to stay the same size forever. For the first 140 years of America’s existence, a growing House of Reps was actually the norm.

It wasn’t until 1929 that Congress arbitrarily decided to cap the size of the House at 435 members. Back then, each House member represented roughly 200,000 people.

But since then, the population of the United States has more than tripled, bringing the average number of constituents up to roughly 760,000.

Compared to other democracies, we are one of the worst in terms of how many constituents a single legislator is supposed to represent. Only in India does the average representative have more constituents.

And as America continues to grow it's only going to get worse.

Think your representative doesn’t listen to you now? Just wait.

Not surprisingly, research shows that representatives from more populous House districts tend to be less accessible to their constituents, and less popular.

Thankfully, the solution is simple: allow the House to grow.

Increasing the number of representatives should be a no brainer for at least four reasons:

First, logically, more representatives would mean fewer people in each congressional district — improving the quality of representation.

Second, a larger House would be more diverse. Despite recent progress, today’s House is still overwhelmingly male, white, and middle-aged. More representatives means more opportunities for young people, people of color, and women to run for office — and win.

Third, this reduces the power of Big Money. Running an election in a smaller district would be less expensive, increasing the likelihood that people elect representatives that respond to their interests rather than big corporations and the wealthy.

Fourth, this would help reduce the Electoral College’s bias toward small states in presidential elections. As more heavily populated states gain more representatives in Congress — they also gain more electoral votes.

Now, some might say that a larger House of Representatives would be unwieldy and unmanageable.

Well, Japan, Germany, France, and the UK — countries with smaller populations than us — all have larger legislatures — and they manage just fine.

Others might say that it would be too difficult — or expensive — to accommodate more representatives in the Capitol. “Are there even enough chairs???”

Seriously?

Look, we’ve done it before. The current Capitol has been expanded to accommodate more members several times — and it can be again. A building should not be an obstacle to a more representative democracy.

Increasing the size of the House is an achievable goal.

We don’t even need a constitutional amendment. Congress only needs to pass a law to expand the number of representatives, which it’s done numerous times.

And as it happens, there is a bill — two in fact!

Each would add more than 130 seats to the House and lower the number of constituents a typical representative serves from 761,000 to a little over 570,000. Plus, there is a mechanism for adding new members down the line.

These bills are our best chance to restore the tradition of a House that grows in representation as America grows.

It’s time for us to think big — and make the People’s House live up to its name.

[overleftdown]

saltburn and privilege; an investigative tangent

god, where to begin.

i've seen a lot of people discussing this moving and specifically using the word "privilege," along with power, dominance, desire, control, greed, etc. me included. these are all very essential aspects of this movie. what i want to focus on is emerald fennell's nuanced portrayal of how different types of privilege interact. which one trumps the other? which types of privilege are more visible, while others are more subtle? what differentiates different levels and layers of privilege?

when emerald fennell describes the core of this movie, her inspiration for this script, she talks about desire versus untouchability. she chose the most absurd type of wealth to represent untouchability: the british aristocracy. old wealth, generational wealth, so far removed from the majority of their ancestors' sins that they can arguably ignore that the money they're standing on is dirty. and they live in fucking castles. this is one of the most unbelievable, gaudy, visible types of privilege you can imagine. everyone is entirely aware and feels entirely justified to call attention to this type of privilege.

oliver, being the main character, might be considered the least privileged within this movie. i'd like to take a critical look at this. this movie is not a straightforward class commentary; there is no traditional "the poor eat the rich" dynamic. because although some people perceive oliver as the least privileged character in this movie, he is incredibly privileged. oliver comes from a comfortable upper-middle-class home in the suburbs. oliver has two loving parents and two sisters. oliver is white. oliver is a man. interestingly, from oliver's perspective, he's not privileged at all. he hates the cattons because they are more wealthy, more comfortable, more untouchable. this extends to venetia and farleigh, even though oliver has applicable layers of privilege stacked above even them. he knows he has a certain type of power over them... yet he still hates them because they have one type of power he doesn't have.

that brings me to my next point. the existence of one type of privilege does not negate the effects of another, entirely different, type of privilege (or marginalization) [quote]. this is what venetia and farleigh's characters draw attention to. venetia experiences some of the same struggles as many women; she is ignored in her own household, perpetually existing within her brother's shadow (rosamund pike once lovingly pointed out that venetia does not have a single conversation with elspeth in this movie). she's insecure about her body and her worth, so she takes what little opportunity she has to use felix's friends as a form of self-fulfillment. farleigh is not only half black, but he's also queer, non-immediate family, and unaccustomed to english culture (specifically this type of english culture). farleigh is, in some ways, more financially unstable than oliver's family because his mom was too sheltered to understand money and his dad is, apparently, "a lunatic." (that's not to say farleigh isn't economically privileged because oh boy, he absolutely is).

this movie doesn't intend to incite pity from the viewers for any of these characters, and it generally doesn't. oliver is pathetically greedy, ungrateful, and desperate for a chance to lick the boots (or bathtubs) of those above him. venetia is pathetically bored of the privilege she does have yet is still so entrenched in emotional turmoil due to other areas in which she is marginalized. farleigh is pathetically attached to uninterrupted comfort and arbitrary white-centric expectations, constantly running from or attacking any threat of struggle. none of these people understand, comparatively, what the less fortunate experience. they are so ignorant to the bubble they exist in and just how grateful they should be for what monumental privileges they do have. but... felix.

felix is the epitome of privilege. oliver is specifically obsessed with felix. just like oliver, felix is a white man. but felix is more wealthy, more comfortable, more untouchable than oliver. oliver isn't as infatuated with farleigh and venetia because he's fully aware of the privilege they lack. he's fully aware of the privilege he holds above them, and he enthusiastically uses this power he has against them. to be in the position of oliver is to be consumed by jealousy and greed so bottomless that you will assert your dominance over any group that you're able to. felix doesn't need to do this. he's been handed every privilege under the sun and therefor welcomes the less fortunate with childlike interest and an equally childlike attention span. there's an aspect of farleigh and venetia's marginalization that is so invisible, so quiet and unassuming, that felix doesn't even notice it. he can't possibly be confronted by it. to be in the position of oliver is to understand what power you hold over others, because there is always more power to have.

racism, sexism, wealth, power, control, desire. there are so many facets of this movie that come into play. it may seem overwhelming, but this is... how things work. commentary on wealth is, and should be, equally a commentary on other areas of privilege. to be black and wealthy means different things than to be white and wealthy. to be a wealthy woman means different things than to be a wealthy man. to be rich to some also means you're much less rich than others, unless you're the richest person in the world. and, as this movie so beautifully portrays, to be richer than most doesn't make you less messy. the catton family is an ugly one, but also a complexly human one. each catton (or start) is jealous of someone else for another reason. each catton is emotionally damaged or incompetent for another reason. each catton has a different layer of privilege over the other. and each catton loves everyone in saltburn, because this is still a family, albeit a terrible one.

[howhow326]

For black history month, I think we should begin popularizing monsters from the African continent the same way European monsters are overpopularized. To that end, here's a list of some of the most famous folkloric figures from Africa!

Mmoatia

Origin: Ghana (Akan)

Creature it is not: Dwarf

(Singular: Aboatia) Mmoatia are a subclass of abosom (spirits in between Man and Creator) that live in the forests of Ghana. They are short, have curved noses, backwards feet, and a unique language made up of only whistling sounds. Whistling in the forest is a sure way to get their attention. According to legend, they are phenomenal herbalists that will sometimes share their knowledge with humans. When a person gets lost in the woods, they are said to have been taken by Mmoatia. Humans who come back after being taken will become incredible medicine men. In Ghana, Dust Devils are called "Mmoatia Mframa" (Wind of Mmoatia) because they are belived to be a portal to their world similar to how fairyrings are treated in Ireland.

Mmoatia are divided into three tribes: Black, White, and Red. Black Mmoatia are supposedly harmless, while White and Red ones are always up to some kind of mischief.

Adze

Origin: Ghana (Ewe)

Creature it is not: Vampire

In Ewe culture, the Adze is a type of demonic spirit associated with witchcraft. They take the form of a fire fly that, during the night, crawls inside human beings in order to posses them. People possesd by the Adze are said to be witches, who use the spirit to slowly drain the life force of people that they envy (Old witches target the young, Poor witches target the wealthy, enslaved witches target their masters as they should).

When targeting a person, the Adze will leave it's host human during the night and crawl into the house of the victim. When it's close, it will drain blood from the victim like a mosquito.

Werehyena

Origin: Pan-African

Creature it is not: Werewolf

Just like how there are Werewolf stories all over Europe, there are Werehyena stories all over Africa. Compared to werewolves, which are said to be men cursed to be monsters, Werehyenas are actually monsters that disguise themselves as humans only to eat it's friends during the night. The people most likely to be werehyenas are village outsiders and blacksmiths, who are associated with magic.

In Angola, there is a similar (but not the same) creature to the werehyena called the Kishi. It is literally a two-faced demon that has a handsome man's body and face in the front, and a hyena's face in the back. This creature lures unsuspecting women into relationships so that it may eat them. If the Kishi has any male children with it's prey, it teaches them the art of femicide.

Mami Wata

Origin: Pan-African

Creature it is not: Mermaid (ok, it kinda is a mermaid but I need to keep the joke running)

Even more wide-spread than the Werehyena, Mami Wata is a figure so popular that it is common for water spirits in Africa to be retroactively labeld as Mami Wata and take on her iconography.

The most famous picture of Mami Wata is actually a french painting of a black Caribbean snake charmer, who west africans later identified as Her. Mami Wata is worshipped as a powerful, female river spirit that controls the flow of the river, the rate at which fish can be caught, the money that men can make, and several other things important to humanity. She is also said to be a seductress, who sleeps with unsuspecting men only to later kill them for cheating on their wives. Indeed, Mami Wata is a defender of women and a slayer of sinful and abusive men.

In many places, it is common to believe that women who drown or go missing in bodies of water were taken by Mami Wata to be taught magic. The women who return become pristessess to her, while the women who never come back become new Mami Watas.

Impundulu

Origin: South Africa (Zulu)

Creature it is not: Thunderbird (no hate, Thunderbird gets constantly thrown into things where it shouldn't be by people who don't understand it. And those people tend to be not native)

Impundulu, or Lightning Bird (NOT THUNDER BIRD), is a person sized Hamerkop bird that has the power to control the weather and summon lightning. It is also creature of evil magic, allied with witches and it has a never ending hunger for blood. It is said to sometimes take the form of a handsom young men in order to seduce women (why dose that keep happening).

Impundulu are immortal, and the ones that serve as witch familiars are passed down in the family as the old master dies and the child becomes grown. The bird is immune to gunshots, stabbing, drowning, and poison. It's only weakness is fire.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Mike Luckovich

* * * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

August 5, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Aug 06, 2024

Christi Carras of the Los Angeles Times reported today that the reality TV industry has collapsed. From April to June, reality TV production in the Los Angeles region fell by 57% compared to the same period in 2023; that’s a 50% drop over the five-year average, excluding the Covid-induced production shutdown. The immediate reasons for the dropping production are systemic to the business, Carras reports, but the change seems to represent Americans’ souring on the blurring of reality and entertainment that gave us the Trump era.

Trump rose to political power thanks to his appearances on reality TV, which claimed to be unscripted but was actually edited to emphasize ruthless competition among people striving for ultimate victory in a closed system. The Apprentice launched in 2004, and its highly edited episodes portrayed its star, Trump, as a brilliant and very wealthy businessman despite his past failures. 

Since 2015, Trump has offered a simple narrative of American life that did not reflect reality. Using the sort of language rising authoritarians use to attract a disaffected population, he promised those left behind economically by forty years of supply-side economics that he would bring back manufacturing, close tax loopholes, promote infrastructure, and make healthcare cheaper and better. He also promised sexists and racists who wanted to roll back the gains women and racial and gender minorities had made since the 1950s that he would, once again, center white, heteronormative men.

He never delivered on his economic promises: manufacturing continued to decline, he cut taxes for the wealthy and for corporations, “infrastructure week” became a national joke, and rather than expand the Affordable Care Act, Republicans repeatedly tried to kill it. But Trump and his followers did center those who had gravitated toward the MAGA movement for its cultural promises. Now, in 2024, that gravitation means that the Republican Party has become an antidemocratic vehicle for Christian nationalism.

In the 2024 contest, Trump has continued to push a fake narrative, but his ability to dominate the political conversation is slipping. Last Wednesday, his interview before the National Association of Black Journalists began more than an hour late; Trump publicly blamed the delay on the association’s technology, and there was, in fact, a brief issue with the audio. But it turns out that the delay was due primarily to Trump’s not wanting to be fact-checked during the interview. He was not willing to go on stage without a promise that the journalists would permit him to say whatever he wanted. They declined.

Trump’s determination to have a friendly audience to promote his narrative was behind the dust-up over planned presidential debates. Trump has not sat down for an interview with any but friendly right-wing interviewers. He agreed to a September 10 debate on ABC News back when he assumed the Democratic presidential nominee would be President Joe Biden. As soon as Biden said he would not accept the nomination, Trump suggested he would not be willing to follow through with the ABC News event if Vice President Kamala Harris was his opponent.

Over the weekend, he announced that he would be willing to debate Harris on September 4, but only on his terms: he wants the Fox News Channel—which had to pay a $787 million settlement for lying that Trump won the 2020 election—to host such an event, and he wants the arena full of people. Essentially, he wants to set up the conditions for one of his rallies and then “debate” Harris in that right-wing bubble. 

But Harris has stood firm on the previous agreement, condemning Trump’s trash talk about her and daring Trump instead to “say it to my face.” She is taunting him for chickening out of the arranged debate, and says she will follow through with the September 10 event to which both campaigns agreed. Trump’s new plan doubles as a way to get out of debating altogether: he’s saying that if she doesn’t show up at his event, he won’t debate her at all. 

At the same time, Americans have seen the Biden-Harris administration actually do the hard work of governing, completing the promises Trump made but didn’t deliver. Manufacturing has surged under Biden, with factories under construction and about 800,000 manufacturing jobs created. The Biden-Harris administration more fully funded the IRS to go after tax cheats, passing the mark of recovering more than $1 billion from high-income, high-wealth individuals earlier this month and scoring a $6 billion judgment against Coca-Cola Co. for back taxes just last week. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is rebuilding the nation’s roads and bridges, and a record high number of people have enrolled in affordable health coverage plans since January 2021.

The difference between sound bites and the hard work of governance was illustrated last week when Biden and Harris were the ones who pulled off a complicated multi-country swap that freed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich—whom Trump had repeatedly boasted that he alone could get Russian president Vladimir Putin to release—along with fifteen other Russian-held prisoners. 

That focus on complicated governance rather than sound bites has paid off in the Indo-Pacific region as well. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan wrote in the Washington Post today that “enhanced U.S. power in the [Indo-Pacific] region is one of the most important legacies of this administration.” 

They note that “[n]o place on Earth is more critical to Americans’ livelihoods and futures than the Indo-Pacific.” It generates nearly 60% of global gross domestic product and its commerce supports more than 3 million U.S. jobs, while the area’s security challenges—North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and China’s provocations at sea—have far reaching effects. 

As the U.S. turned inward during the Trump administration, China’s power grew, and when Biden and Harris took office, America’s standing in the Indo-Pacific was at “its lowest point in decades.” Biden’s transformation of the nation’s Indo-Pacific policy “is one of the most important and least-told stories of the [administration’s] foreign policy strategy,” the authors write. Biden’s team replaced one-to-one relationships in the region with wider partnerships: AUKUS, a new security partnership comprising Australia, the U.K., and the U.S.; a trilateral summit with Japan and South Korea; and a summit with Japan and the Philippines. It elevated the Quad—Australia, India, Japan, and the U.S.—and hosted both the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the Pacific Islands Forum. With 13 other countries, it created the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity. 

These partnerships do not translate to easy slogans, but they have strengthened defense and supply chains and helped address climate change. “Our security partnerships across the Indo-Pacific” make “us and our neighbors safer and stronger,” they wrote. 

The stock market fell today, with the big indices—the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the Nasdaq Composite, and the S&P 500—all sliding. The Dow, which measures 30 of the nation’s older, prominent companies, and the S&P 500, which measures 500 of the largest companies on the U.S. stock exchanges, took their biggest daily losses since September 2022, although they still remain up about 60% from the time of Biden’s election. 

In June, Moody’s Analytics assessed that the economy would grow less under Trump’s policies than under a continuation of Biden’s, but today, Trump promptly wrote: “Stock markets are crashing, jobs numbers are terrible, we are heading to World War III, and we have two of the most incompetent ‘leaders’ in history.” His running mate, J.D. Vance, followed that up by blaming Vice President Kamala Harris. “The stock market is crashing because of weak and failed Kamala Harris’ policies and the world is on the brink of WW3,” he said. 

But what is really at stake here is the complicated business of balancing the economy as it has come out of the worst of the coronavirus pandemic. The Biden-Harris administration made the decision to invest money in ordinary Americans, and it worked: the U.S. came out of the pandemic with a stronger economy than any other nation.

That economic strength came with inflation, both because people had more money to spend thanks to higher wages and because that cash meant that corporations could continue to charge higher prices: the net profits of food companies, for example, are up by a median of 51% since just before the pandemic, according to Tom Perkins of The Guardian, and one egg producer’s profits went up by around 950% (not a typo). To get inflation under control, Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell—a Trump appointee, by the way—kept interest rates high. 

He has been under pressure to cut interest rates in order to keep the economy humming but has not, and on Friday a jobs report showed that U.S. employers had added fewer jobs than economists had expected, while the unemployment rate ticked up. This hiccup in the booming economy prompted investors to sell.

Fine-tuning the economy through interest rates is like catching an egg on a plate. Economist Robert Reich notes that the economy will continue to need the antitrust regulations the administration has put in place to bring down costs, and just today federal judge Amit Mehta ruled that Google illegally maintained a monopoly for internet searches, a decision likely to influence other antitrust lawsuits the government has undertaken. 

Voters seem increasingly aware of the difference between image and reality. Today the hospitality workers’ union UNITE HERE, which plays a big role in Nevada politics, endorsed Vice President Harris for president. Trump had tried to court the union with a promise to end taxes on tips, a plan Americans for Tax Fairness says avoids increasing the low minimum wage for waitstaff and instead opens the door to tax abuse by high-income professionals who reclassify their compensation as tips.

Union president Gwen Mills told Josh Boak of the Associated Press that Trump was just “making a play” for votes. The union says its members will knock on more than 3.3 million doors for Harris in swing states.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[croutonconfidential]

I haven’t really scoped out much of the opinions on Mel x Jayce and the prevailing opinions but I’m aware that there is discourse about the authenticity of their relationship and I just want to say that when we first get introduced to Mel she’s shown as this rich wealthy woman aiming for an increase in her profit margins and saying that even for all her wealth as one of the richest women in piltover she is still the poorest medarda which is clearly a thought that lives long term in her head she deflects mention of her wealth because it is overshadowed in comparison to the wealth of her family

we see her first in this large pristine white room with tall wide windows and gold accents her very space is large and wealthy and we are immediately shown that she wants more

she’s selecting a birthday gift for a councilor and selects a child’s toy remarking that it’s the perfect gift and when she gives it to her fellow councilor she tells him it was made for the sharpest minds, it’s an insult to him that he’s unaware of and a joke meant only for herself, that gift is not goodwill but her politicking, in Jayce’s trial Mel leads the councilor to vote along with Mel it shows her nature and her ability to lead and manipulate because that’s who you become when it’s a life of politics and Mel is doing it expertly, winning favor is winning power from the hands of others

she’s not shown with any genuine personal connections of any sort like a friend or sibling or parent or children like many other characters have been ,( like Jayce first being shown with cait, vi powder mylo and claggor all being shown together, vander and his kids, vander and his community in the last drop) the only other comparison I have to another character getting an introduction that shows no personal connection is maybe Viktor but part of his introduction is the beginning of his partnership with Jayce so I’m unsure if it can be compared the same as Mel’s introduction

she lives and breathes politics as a councilor and that’s all we know her as initially, it’s a strong first impression to us as viewers and its important to remember that when thinking about Mel as she changes through the course of the show and what that means when looking at Mel and Jayce’s relationship

[opiatemasses]

Racism and discrimination in sports: killing players from inside

Within global sports, racism has long been prevalent. It is intensified when athletes of colour are placed under the spotlight during major international competitions. 

The massive increase in sports’ visibility and popularity has also intensified the way that fans relate to sportspeople. Athletes become the face of the country they are representing and many people pin patriotic hopes, frustration and fears on them. 

According to Walters et al. (2022) racial abuse is generally an ugly mixture of fandom, rage, grief, patriotism and scapegoating. 

When fans engage in racist abuse, this may be because the target of their abuse is seen as not belonging. However, racial discrimination and stereotypes differ across nations, wherein the media may play a different role in promoting racial discrimination in sports. For instance, black athletes from Africa in international matches in the US may face issues in terms of prioritising racial and other questions from the media. 

According to Scharrer & Ramasubramanian (2015) the media may be guilty of presenting ethnic and minority groups as less dominating, less wealthy, less powerful and having less intelligence. This illustrates the potential influence of the media to challenge norms and promote and eliminate the racial aspects in sports.

Yet, the media represents women athletes as women first and athletes later. Coverage of women's sport is dominated by their age, appearance and family rather than their performance and capabilities. In contrast, the media commonly represents men as valued, independent, powerful and dominating. 

Importantly, the cases in the world are changing and various governments are taking action to reduce discrimination and stereotypes and promote equal treatment to BAME (Black, Asian, Minority and Ethnic) communities (UNESCO, 2022). 

The UK government has proposed that fans who are guilty of spreading racism online could be prevented and banned. Further, the US government has supported the inclusion and participation of African females' via media representation. As a result, the appraisal or inclusion of skilled and capable African females is included in US sports (Zenquis & Mwaniki, 2019). Still, these females face stereotypes by American media and fans. 

Despite this, it is worth noting that around 65% in the case of football and around 75% of the players in the case of basketball players are black in the US. This justifies the provision of promotion and importance to the black community by the US government in its sports.

Nevertheless, despite being a rapid and effective stereotype and discrimination reduction in the sports of America, black women players are generally compared and contrasted with white women in the essence of womanhood. 

The bodies of these black women are generally depicted as hair, proper attire, muscular and buttocks by the media. These justify how white supremacy prevails and dominates black women. 

In this context, the major role is being played by the media. elatedly, racial discrimination and stereotypes may also be due to the lack of media favouring ethnic groups specifically while avoiding others. 

Furthermore, negative media representation not only promotes public hostility toward ethnic groups but also lowers the self-esteem of the players belonging to ethnic groups (Castañeda, 2018). 

Therefore, prevention and combating crude and lazy stereotypes and tackling discrimination in sports are imperative, though difficult to achieve. Yet, constant efforts by various governments and organisations are evident, in an attempt to bring about positive change for athletes, especially those belonging to the BAME community.

N0970642

[aronarchy]

[set of arguments relevant to the subject; see also my post dissecting some of the problematic arguments in OP’s replies]

(note: I’m an Asian transgender person, so not A White Westerner (although I am currently living in the West), so hopefully this might further defuse the notion that we’re a monolith who uniformly believe in the relativist viewpoint, or that the only people arguing against third-gendering trans women are saviors without the “proper” race-card-based “right” to speak on the subject.)

I would really recommend rethinking your position here. If you actually looked through the notes, you’d see extensive discussion of why the above arguments are wrong, more hijra identify as trans women and would prefer that to be the default label than this above thread seems to imply, and examples of Indian trans women arguing that the above line of thinking actually recapitulates Orientalism.

This is because the term trans, nonbinary, and gender non-conforming are Western terms. Most Indians who use these terms for themselves are either immigrants or are wealthy enough to have studied in Western schools.

(Note: this does not mean that BEING what a Westerner would call trans, nonbinary, or gender non-conforming is a Western construct. Just about every culture in history has had people who did not fall into what we think of as standard binaries. But the terms themselves are Western, and therefore rarely used by those who have not heavily been influenced by Western culture.)

I feel like something you may be overlooking is—of course these terms are “Western,” because they are in English? It seems unfair to judge the term “trans,” for example, as “more Western” than the term “hijra” in such a context, because it’s like comparing apples to oranges: one is from one language and the other is from a different language. This is the whole point of translation: to try your best to use the words your language has to pair with the words another language has. Of course they’re not going to be exactly the same unless you decline to translate and just transliterate the other language’s word and rely on describing further. If someone is using the word “trans” for themself, then that just means they know English (or another similar language which uses those four letters for that word specifically). Those are not fair grounds to imply that nobody else just uses a translatable term or set of terms to denote having a different gender than the one they were assigned by binarized assumptions based on natal biology, and the accompanying social positionality.

It’s true that linguistically, Western imperialism has also imposed a disproportionate epistemic power imbalance where many non-English languages borrow words from or have adapted words from ones from English while the other way around doesn’t happen anywhere nearly as much, and this shows up in how non-Western trans/gender-variant people may adopt Western-built frameworks more readily when searching for a label. But that doesn’t mean understanding oneself as “trans” in some way is necessarily a more “privileged” thing (I would be very careful around applying such generalizations, as they flow from very popular, very detrimental transphobic tropes). Because the West often is able to appear more “progressive” or faster at improving rights for minorities because of white privilege granting more power even to white people experiencing marginalizations to do their activism and expand the scope of their projects, and to promote their activism to others and have others hear them. (Though this also often relies on liberation struggles in non-Western areas being erased, despite their contributions.) But perhaps, instead, these concepts are more general things that could reasonably apply to others because they’re simply describing an experience that people regardless of culture can experience, so others might simply see themselves in them because it’s true? That wouldn’t be a bad thing, and would not be “imperialism” (“internalized imperialism”?); the idea of transness shouldn’t be bound to Western-ness. It’s not the same as a concept like “hijra”; “trans” isn’t a historically-specific culturally closed identity.

Once again, if “trans woman,” “trans,” “nonbinary,” or “gender non-conforming” are necessarily “Western” terms in some way, then why wouldn’t the terms “woman,” “man,” “male,” “female”—or for that matter “gender”—also be “Western” and problematic to use as a default descriptor for people in any other culture when speaking in English? Why is it considered reasonable to automatically call Indian cis women women without any further deep investigation, but Very Controversial and Problematic to allow for the same with a category of likely trans women? Why is “woman” a cross-culturally self-evident accurately applicable term for cis women but not trans women? The disproportionate, way overboard mystification(tm) of non-Western transfemininity and non-cis gender roles is bordering on exoticization of the same kind that the more traditional Orientalism was based on.

At some point, white trans allies have got to choose. It’s not enough to just nod every time the kind of non-white relativist who shuts down liberatory practices as White/Western starts chastising any transfeminists with reasonable proposals as “white,” because they do implicitly rely on white people to have white guilt about contradicting them and on us to feel guilty about race- or culture-traitorism or self-tokenization in contradicting them, but being wrong is still being wrong and multiple arguments above follow tried-and-true tropes that have historically proved especially harmful to trans/non-cis people in non-white and non-Western communities. Hardly anyone listens to non-Western transfeminists with the more radical viewpoint in the first place, so who is really the most suppressed and marginalized here?

I'm so glad that y'all are so into Monkey Man and the badass hijra priestess army, but friendly reminder that hijra are NOT trans women. Hijra are their own distinct gender; trans women are women. India has both :)

[misfitwashere]

August 5, 2024 

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

AUG 6

Christi Carras of the Los Angeles Times reported today that the reality TV industry has collapsed. From April to June, reality TV production in the Los Angeles region fell by 57% compared to the same period in 2023; that’s a 50% drop over the five-year average, excluding the Covid-induced production shutdown. The immediate reasons for the dropping production are systemic to the business, Carras reports, but the change seems to represent Americans’ souring on the blurring of reality and entertainment that gave us the Trump era.

Trump rose to political power thanks to his appearances on reality TV, which claimed to be unscripted but was actually edited to emphasize ruthless competition among people striving for ultimate victory in a closed system. The Apprentice launched in 2004, and its highly edited episodes portrayed its star, Trump, as a brilliant and very wealthy businessman despite his past failures. 

Since 2015, Trump has offered a simple narrative of American life that did not reflect reality. Using the sort of language rising authoritarians use to attract a disaffected population, he promised those left behind economically by forty years of supply-side economics that he would bring back manufacturing, close tax loopholes, promote infrastructure, and make healthcare cheaper and better. He also promised sexists and racists who wanted to roll back the gains women and racial and gender minorities had made since the 1950s that he would, once again, center white, heteronormative men.

He never delivered on his economic promises: manufacturing continued to decline, he cut taxes for the wealthy and for corporations, “infrastructure week” became a national joke, and rather than expand the Affordable Care Act, Republicans repeatedly tried to kill it. But Trump and his followers did center those who had gravitated toward the MAGA movement for its cultural promises. Now, in 2024, that gravitation means that the Republican Party has become an antidemocratic vehicle for Christian nationalism.

In the 2024 contest, Trump has continued to push a fake narrative, but his ability to dominate the political conversation is slipping. Last Wednesday, his interview before the National Association of Black Journalists began more than an hour late; Trump publicly blamed the delay on the association’s technology, and there was, in fact, a brief issue with the audio. But it turns out that the delay was due primarily to Trump’s not wanting to be fact-checked during the interview. He was not willing to go on stage without a promise that the journalists would permit him to say whatever he wanted. They declined.

Trump’s determination to have a friendly audience to promote his narrative was behind the dust-up over planned presidential debates. Trump has not sat down for an interview with any but friendly right-wing interviewers. He agreed to a September 10 debate on ABC News back when he assumed the Democratic presidential nominee would be President Joe Biden. As soon as Biden said he would not accept the nomination, Trump suggested he would not be willing to follow through with the ABC News event if Vice President Kamala Harris was his opponent.

Over the weekend, he announced that he would be willing to debate Harris on September 4, but only on his terms: he wants the Fox News Channel—which had to pay a $787 million settlement for lying that Trump won the 2020 election—to host such an event, and he wants the arena full of people. Essentially, he wants to set up the conditions for one of his rallies and then “debate” Harris in that right-wing bubble. 

But Harris has stood firm on the previous agreement, condemning Trump’s trash talk about her and daring Trump instead to “say it to my face.” She is taunting him for chickening out of the arranged debate, and says she will follow through with the September 10 event to which both campaigns agreed. Trump’s new plan doubles as a way to get out of debating altogether: he’s saying that if she doesn’t show up at his event, he won’t debate her at all. 

At the same time, Americans have seen the Biden-Harris administration actually do the hard work of governing, completing the promises Trump made but didn’t deliver. Manufacturing has surged under Biden, with factories under construction and about 800,000 manufacturing jobs created. The Biden-Harris administration more fully funded the IRS to go after tax cheats, passing the mark of recovering more than $1 billion from high-income, high-wealth individuals earlier this month and scoring a $6 billion judgment against Coca-Cola Co. for back taxes just last week. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is rebuilding the nation’s roads and bridges, and a record high number of people have enrolled in affordable health coverage plans since January 2021.

The difference between sound bites and the hard work of governance was illustrated last week when Biden and Harris were the ones who pulled off a complicated multi-country swap that freed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich—whom Trump had repeatedly boasted that he alone could get Russian president Vladimir Putin to release—along with fifteen other Russian-held prisoners. 

That focus on complicated governance rather than sound bites has paid off in the Indo-Pacific region as well. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan wrote in the Washington Post today that “enhanced U.S. power in the [Indo-Pacific] region is one of the most important legacies of this administration.” 

They note that “[n]o place on Earth is more critical to Americans’ livelihoods and futures than the Indo-Pacific.” It generates nearly 60% of global gross domestic product and its commerce supports more than 3 million U.S. jobs, while the area’s security challenges—North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and China’s provocations at sea—have far reaching effects. 

As the U.S. turned inward during the Trump administration, China’s power grew, and when Biden and Harris took office, America’s standing in the Indo-Pacific was at “its lowest point in decades.” Biden’s transformation of the nation’s Indo-Pacific policy “is one of the most important and least-told stories of the [administration’s] foreign policy strategy,” the authors write. Biden’s team replaced one-to-one relationships in the region with wider partnerships: AUKUS, a new security partnership comprising Australia, the U.K., and the U.S.; a trilateral summit with Japan and South Korea; and a summit with Japan and the Philippines. It elevated the Quad—Australia, India, Japan, and the U.S.—and hosted both the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the Pacific Islands Forum. With 13 other countries, it created the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity. 

These partnerships do not translate to easy slogans, but they have strengthened defense and supply chains and helped address climate change. “Our security partnerships across the Indo-Pacific” make “us and our neighbors safer and stronger,” they wrote. 

The stock market fell today, with the big indices—the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the Nasdaq Composite, and the S&P 500—all sliding. The Dow, which measures 30 of the nation’s older, prominent companies, and the S&P 500, which measures 500 of the largest companies on the U.S. stock exchanges, took their biggest daily losses since September 2022, although they still remain up about 60% from the time of Biden’s election. 

In June, Moody’s Analytics assessed that the economy would grow less under Trump’s policies than under a continuation of Biden’s, but today, Trump promptly wrote: “Stock markets are crashing, jobs numbers are terrible, we are heading to World War III, and we have two of the most incompetent ‘leaders’ in history.” His running mate, J.D. Vance, followed that up by blaming Vice President Kamala Harris. “The stock market is crashing because of weak and failed Kamala Harris’ policies and the world is on the brink of WW3,” he said. 

But what is really at stake here is the complicated business of balancing the economy as it has come out of the worst of the coronavirus pandemic. The Biden-Harris administration made the decision to invest money in ordinary Americans, and it worked: the U.S. came out of the pandemic with a stronger economy than any other nation. 

That economic strength came with inflation, both because people had more money to spend thanks to higher wages and because that cash meant that corporations could continue to charge higher prices: the net profits of food companies, for example, are up by a median of 51% since just before the pandemic, according to Tom Perkins of The Guardian, and one egg producer’s profits went up by around 950% (not a typo). To get inflation under control, Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell—a Trump appointee, by the way—kept interest rates high. 

He has been under pressure to cut interest rates in order to keep the economy humming but has not, and on Friday a jobs report showed that U.S. employers had added fewer jobs than economists had expected, while the unemployment rate ticked up. This hiccup in the booming economy prompted investors to sell. 

Fine-tuning the economy through interest rates is like catching an egg on a plate. Economist Robert Reich notes that the economy will continue to need the antitrust regulations the administration has put in place to bring down costs, and just today federal judge Amit Mehta ruled that Google illegally maintained a monopoly for internet searches, a decision likely to influence other antitrust lawsuits the government has undertaken. 

Voters seem increasingly aware of the difference between image and reality. Today the hospitality workers’ union UNITE HERE, which plays a big role in Nevada politics, endorsed Vice President Harris for president. Trump had tried to court the union with a promise to end taxes on tips, a plan Americans for Tax Fairness says avoids increasing the low minimum wage for waitstaff and instead opens the door to tax abuse by high-income professionals who reclassify their compensation as tips. 

Union president Gwen Mills told Josh Boak of the Associated Press that Trump was just “making a play” for votes. The union says its members will knock on more than 3.3 million doors for Harris in swing states.

[theclimateconversations]

Climate stories: what about a tragic photograph?

The faces of people in newspapers sometimes disturb me. Let me explain. I have talked to people that want their stories told or don’t really care whether their likeness is available to the world, but I also know from my own experience that I do not want my family's fresh wounds aired out for the world to see. When we use people’s faces to humanize a climate disaster, at what point are we dehumanizing those whose stories are being told? As a family stands on the rubble of their life-long home, destroyed by a hurricane, flood, tornado, fire, you get to look into their eyes from the other side of your screen and scroll through. I don’t have an answer for this. Climate stories need to be told, but why? For readers to understand the impacts of climate change, as climate disasters worsen all over the world but especially for vulnerable populations. For outside observers of these disasters to understand their role, and the role of the powerful and wealthy, in exacerbating climate change. Maybe these stories and these faces can reach someone out there that can make a statistically significant difference in the effects of our human actions. These stories are told to a curious or bored or skeptical audience, and then what? What am I or you or anyone reading going to do about it? Why is their pain and suffering available to me, why is it for sale and on exhibit? Whose pockets do the profits from the exposure of this suffering reach?

Let people tell their own stories. Most importantly, listen to those communities that have already been facing the impacts of climate change before it’s too late. Listen to them before disaster occurs, so communities can have more resources available earlier on as they search for and work towards solutions. 

Heather McTeer Toney speaks specifically to the experiences of black women in the South (the southern USA), highlighting how community efforts and ancestral knowledge have been a powerful tool for collective action, and how these efforts are starting to overcome the tokenized use of black voices in climate tragedy media.

An excerpt from McTeer Toney’s exposé Collards Are Just as Good as Kale featured in All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis below expands, touches on, and adds dimension to the key points discussed above:

“Despite hearing the Republican rhetoric of “climate change ain’t real,” people knew that something more than a rising river was changing and amiss. The river waters were coming faster and stronger from the increased snow up north. (Heavier wintertime precipitation is yet another outcome of rising global temperatures.) Each time Chicago, Minneapolis, and other midwestern cities got strong winter storms, the snow melted into streams that eventually made their way to the Mississippi Delta. Deer and duck seasons weren’t the same as in years past. Cotton and soybean crop yields were different. Increased heat, droughts, and floods meant more pests. Meanwhile, it felt like no one was listening to the voices of the poor, of rural folks, of southerners. 

[...]We live in pollution, play around it, work for it, and pray against it. Hell, we even sing about it. Black women are everyday environmentalists; we are climate leaders. We just don’t get the headlines too often. Rarely do we see or hear Black voices as part of national conversation about climate policy, the green economy, or clean energy - even though 57 percent of Black Americans are concerned or alarmed about climate change, compared to 49 percent of White folks. We’re relegated to providing an official comment on environmental justice issues like the water crisis in Flint, or we’re the faces in the photos when candidates need to show they’re inclusive. Fortunately, this is slowly changing as more and more women of color step loudly up to the table and make their expertise known in climate justice and culturally competent, solution-based thinking.”

What are your thoughts? Let's continue the conversation.

[lilou-a]

CRITICAL REVIEW #2

“The Legal Infrastructure of Childbirth.”

Key Points

The legal frame regulating childbirth follows a set of principles anchored in the belief that birthing is a "pathological condition" requiring constant medical attention, medicalization, and surgical interventions to guarantee the survival of the fetus.

The medicalization of birthing robs the mother of her autonomy and attributes the power of decision making to the doctor which leads to manipulation and coercion, and obstetric violence in about 28% reported cases.

The law uses the standard of care to enforce the exceptional status of the fetus over the well-being, liberty of consent and choice, and even the survival of the birthing individual.

Harvard Law Review Association. 2021. “The Legal Infrastructure of Childbirth.” Harvard Law Review. Vol.134 (6), p.2209-2232.

“By shaping the provision of healthcare, law encodes particular values in the birthing process, promoting a fetal-centric and physician-controlled approach.”

“Law endorses the "right of every individual to the possession and control of his own person" (1) including a "liberty interest [under the Due Process Clause] in refusing unwanted medical treatment." (2) However, in childbirth, the state controls the bodily choices of pregnant and birthing people through a patchwork of tort law standards and the regulation of healthcare providers, systematically enforcing compliance with particular, value-driven norms.”

When medical professionals ran a smear campaign against midwives in the early 1900s, they targeted immigrants and Black women midwives. They also made hygiene a focus of the campaign to distill fears in mother’s minds. Women used to give birth surrounded by other women empowered with millennia of knowledge passed on through generations with complete autonomy and agency in their decision-making.

Today, women deliver in a highly unnatural, medically layered process, surrounded by men and women in white coats who symbolize expertise and are willing to intimidate, coerce, and manipulate individuals during an intensely vulnerable moment to trigger a succession of unwarranted medical steps which yields a depressingly high maternal mortality rate, especially for women of color who die at four times the rate of their white counterpart. The U.S. practices c-sections, an invasive and risky surgery, at a rate of 45% compared to 15% on average for similarly developed and wealthy nations. Such a sickening cesarian rate is symptomatic of obstetric violence, which directly results from gender oppression and institutional control over women’s bodies and decision-making.

[livingobserver]

The Red and The Blue (White is right out of it)

So..., I was educated in the Rural Schools of America. I was taught to keep and protect an Independent mind in all things. To turn every issue over and over again until the full context and truth are revealed. Where possible. I still do that. Even this morning as I sat down with my first coffee, still a bit groggy. The Housemate must have been watching ABC last night. Because as I turned on the BoobTube. I found myself seeing the Women of 'The View'. I thought, because I think...., that I would give them a chance to reach me on any Common Sense level if they could. That was my mistake. But as I watched and listened, I quickly realized it wasn't about trying to reach me as an Independent but to reinforce what must be brainwashing already accomplished. Just making sure that they still had weaker minds fully under their control. I heard nothing but Ignorance of the realities, Self-Inflicted Blindness, deep Hatred of all things not of their Liberal narratives. But then I also realized I wasn't listening to authentic, original gibberish spouted by these Women. All were obviously getting their cues and Talking/Bitching points from a teleprompter. It wasn't the Women I was hearing but their Puppet Master George Sorros. A Far Left Sociopathic/Marxist Billionaire locked in a Social Political war with another Sociopathic Billionaire, Rupert Murdoch, on the Establishment (The Bush Dynasty), Far Conservative Right. Though I have suspected this was the case for a long time now, I didn't realize the extent these two men would go too. To get us involved in their personal battles. Using us to fight the dirty Social and Political war. So..., you think yourself an "Influencer"? You are nothing compared to these two very wealthy freaks. Who probably have a hefty bet going as to who will win. At the expense of not only us as individuals, but our American Society and Culture, and on a Global scale as well. So... , I watched with morbid curiosity as the Women of 'The View', prattled on clucking and hissing, apparently not sure if they were supposed to be chickens or snakes. I saw and heard both, playing off each other in nearly perfect choreography. What struck me the most was the blatant stupidity. It just has to be an act. Nobody is that stupid, unless there is profit and power to be found in it. But isn't this true of every "Main Stream Media" out there? FOX likes to think itself outside that Main Stream. But, it is not. It is exactly the same method, just on a different side of the fence. Harris Faulkners' "Outnumbered" as an example. It reminds me (both sides), of the Trailer Park Folk who are obsessed with professional wrestling. You can't tell them anything they don't want to hear either. The same mentality. The same utter and complete failure of Common Sense, Logic and Reason. And they too, are of like ilk. Republican and Democrats, who hear nothing that could in any way, cause them to question their own failure to identify the Truth and where it can most be found. Somewhere near the Middle. The utter and complete failure to be anything but sheep, herded by two Sociopathic Lunatics. What I came away with? That anarchy on a National Level, has already begun in America (rising crime), and these two very wealthy lunatics will get a lot of folks hurt and killed before the dust they kick up between you and I settles. Which one will "Win"? That will depend entirely on who has controlling interest through their puppets, in the rise of the American AI. Whatsoever you hand to government to solve for you, the government will take for itself to control you. In turn..., whatsoever you handover to a Machine, so too will it take to serve it's masters. It won't be you who wins. You..., are expendable.

[truck-fump]

We Need to Make Government Bigger (It’s Not What You Think) We...

New Post has been published on https://robertreich.org/post/715608851501694976

We Need to Make Government Bigger (It’s Not What You Think) We...

We Need to Make Government Bigger (It’s Not What You Think) 

We need to make the House of Representatives bigger!

Now I know what some might be thinking: “Make the government bigger?” Well, technically yes. But that’s missing the point. We need to expand the House to make the government work better, and be more responsive to our needs.

Put simply: The House of Representatives does not have enough members to adequately represent all 334 million of us.

Now, the House hasn’t always had 435 members and it was never intended to stay the same size forever. For the first 140 years of America’s existence, a growing House of Reps was actually the norm.

It wasn’t until 1929 that Congress arbitrarily decided to cap the size of the House at 435 members. Back then, each House member represented roughly 200,000 people.

But since then, the population of the United States has more than tripled, bringing the average number of constituents up to roughly 760,000.

Compared to other democracies, we are one of the worst in terms of how many constituents a single legislator is supposed to represent. Only in India does the average representative have more constituents.

And as America continues to grow it’s only going to get worse.

Think your representative doesn’t listen to you now? Just wait.

Not surprisingly, research shows that representatives from more populous House districts tend to be less accessible to their constituents, and less popular.

Thankfully, the solution is simple: allow the House to grow.

Increasing the number of representatives should be a no brainer for at least four reasons:

First, logically, more representatives would mean fewer people in each congressional district — improving the quality of representation.

Second, a larger House would be more diverse. Despite recent progress, today’s House is still overwhelmingly male, white, and middle-aged. More representatives means more opportunities for young people, people of color, and women to run for office — and win.

Third, this reduces the power of Big Money. Running an election in a smaller district would be less expensive, increasing the likelihood that people elect representatives that respond to their interests rather than big corporations and the wealthy.

Fourth, this would help reduce the Electoral College’s bias toward small states in presidential elections. As more heavily populated states gain more representatives in Congress — they also gain more electoral votes.

Now, some might say that a larger House of Representatives would be unwieldy and unmanageable.

Well, Japan, Germany, France, and the UK — countries with smaller populations than us — all have larger legislatures — and they manage just fine.

Others might say that it would be too difficult — or expensive — to accommodate more representatives in the Capitol. “Are there even enough chairs???”

Seriously?

Look, we’ve done it before. The current Capitol has been expanded to accommodate more members several times — and it can be again. A building should not be an obstacle to a more representative democracy.

Increasing the size of the House is an achievable goal.

We don’t even need a constitutional amendment. Congress only needs to pass a law to expand the number of representatives, which it’s done numerous times.

And as it happens, there is a bill — two in fact!

Each would add more than 130 seats to the House and lower the number of constituents a typical representative serves from 761,000 to a little over 570,000. Plus, there is a mechanism for adding new members down the line.

These bills are our best chance to restore the tradition of a House that grows in representation as America grows.

It’s time for us to think big — and make the People’s House live up to its name.

[vergess]

Oh, sure. So, okay, first off the "female gaze" "doesn't exist" in the sense that visual media are universally dominated by (white, wealthy, etc) men. To some arguable extent, it isn't possible for another "gaze" to emerge in a society where film, TV, etc are owned by and cater to a presumed male audience. I'm willing to concede that.

The "male gaze" refers to a specific style of film making where women/girls/female/other characters are objectified or dehumanized. It can range from the obvious, like "fridging your girlfriend," to the more impressively subtle, like using the "rule of thirds" to frame men's faces with focal points on the eyes and mouth, but women's entire upper bodies, with focal points on the eyes and breasts.

Image 1: A screenshots from marvel movie Shang Chi, overlaid with Rule of Thirds and Golden Ratio marks. As expected, the male character's face is framed with focus on eyes and mouth.

Another marked screenshot, of a female character about 1 minute later. The female character's eyes and cleavage are framed. Her breasts are further highlighted by literal highlighting: her exposed skin is well lit compared to the rest of the dark scene.

All of these things combine to create women who are less emotionally resonant to the audience because a thick layer of sexual objectification exists between them and the viewer. Even powerful women like the one in image 2, who have spent the whole movie written as imposing and threatening figures, are still visually presented as sexual objects for the presumed male viewer to ogle without risk.

However, it is not the sex that is a problem, it's the inequal treatment of male and female characters.

Thus, it you want to think about alternative gazes, you need to frame them around that inequality, not around sex. Otherwise you just get """""movies for women""""" where all the men look like this:

Image 3: Three indistinguishable male leads from Hallmark movies. They literally have the same haircut. 2 out of the 3 have the same clothes for fuck's sakes.

You could call this "the male gaze for women" and I usually do. In fact, these types of film literally still dehumanize and sexualize female characters too, just to prove how Worthy and Good the female protagonist is.

So, we need to identify a genre of visual media where men/boys/male/other characters are dehumanized in similar degrees, not similar ways. And where female characters are all allowed to be complex and full of depth.

And handily, we DO have such media!

It's film for girls, made by women. This does not mean men cannot be involved, but rather, to say the production is led by women, with an assumed target audience of girls.

It's girl's cartoons.

Because of various ageism and sexism and what-have-you-isms, western* media for girls-under-12 by women is often completely free of romantic and sexual storylines, whether between girls and girls or girls and boys. This avoidance of romance (and sex) entirely, leaves a lot of space to focus on female friendship/family (eg barbie), female hobbies/work (eg american girl), or just plain old Adventuring For Girls (eg my little pony).

Compare this to girls' media made by deferring to men or with an expectation of a large male audience, wherein the obsession with women as love interest habitually spills over onto young girls who become boy obsessed in age-unlikely ways. Or, where there is a "main girl" surrounded by a cast of mostly or all boys, such as is the case in many girl-centered educational programs, like Dora la Exploradora.

A fun (fun?) case study is that of My Little Pony friendship Is Magic, Season 1, when the show was made primarily as a passion project by women for girls, and subsequent seasons when the male audience was more desirable.

S1 could be said to represent a "female gaze."

There is one* recurring male character, Spike the Dragon: a young boy with many feminine interests who mostly exists to be a prop for them main, female cast. The main cast and major political characters are all single women. Men populate the world in the background, but for the viewer? There just are not men. They are set dressing and not much else.

Doesn't that sound familiar?

But it goes further: the adventures these women go on are solved by women; they have traditionally feminine jobs (nursing, fashion, librarian) and hobbies (cooking, event hosting), etc. Their traditionally masculine traits (sport, farming, being a stubborn jackass) are never used to imply they are "manly."

Even their villains are women, natural forces, or just the main women's own mistakes coming back to bite them.

Men aren't even an afterthought. They're not a thought at all.

The season ends on these female friends bonding at an after party for a diplomatic gala.

Season 2 introduces multiple male villains, recurring male characters, and even romantic storylines.

It literally ends on a two episode long royal wedding processional to a male character we'd never met who is suddenly a HUGE part of the ongoing world, to the extent that his presence retcons the first season permanently.

Image 4: Twilight Sparkle, the main character of My Little Pony friendship is Magic, surrounded by her female friends (and Spike) on the cover of the Season 1 DVD.

Image 5: Twilight singing a sad love song about her brother, whose ghostly image is presented as larger, stronger, and more imposing than Twilight, who again, is the main character and a literal god in training.

That's a pretty abrupt change, but one that you might not even notice if you're not looking for it. It's a shift from a girl-centered "gaze" that ignores or dismisses male characters, to a more "neutral" one that reduces the prominence of women as it progresses. And as time progresses.

It's little shock to find out that the high level production crew (especially writers) went from mostly women to mostly men in this time, nor will it come as a shock to learn that the "feminst influenced" "girly doesn't mean stupid" female showrunner for S1 was replaced with a more.... mainstream woman who unironically espouses "every girl wants to be a princess" for subsequent seasons.

By later seasons, where the audience was presumed to be adult men, in addition to young girls, these issues are ever more exagerrated.

Personally, and I know this is going to piss off some people but hopefully they're bored of reading this by now:

Seasons 8 and 9 (the final seasons) were made with the male gaze.

There are many male characters by S9. These male characters often dominate episodes they are in. Male friendships are explored without women involved. Whole plotlines reduce women to love interests (big mac's wedding, Rarity's sudden feelings for Spike), racist stereotypes (the yaks), sexist stereotypes (the seaponies), or involve women only as particularly shallow villains (the changelings). Female character development from preceding seasons is literally undone so that male characters can save the day (mostly Spike but plenty of his male friends too).

It's a slow boil if you go linearly. But if you watch Season 1 then Season 9, the contrast is almost staggering. Side by side, they seem nothing alike.

It goes from a show for girls, about women, aimed at meeting young girls where they are at mentally/emotionally and helping them model healthy relationships... to this absurd preachy nonsense that condescends to the girls in the audience, lectures them, and comes with a heavy heaping of compulsory heterosexuality.

The show goes from treating its young female audience with respect as a group that must be courted for their favour, to treating them as captives to talk down to, because the "real money" comes from the adult men watching.

So yeah, the female gaze can exist, but only in very limited capacities because of the overwhelming social pressure of patriarchy and capitalism in media production.

But "catering to a weird amorphous concept of what women think is hot" is not the female gaze. It's just the male gaze for women.

Footnotes:

1) Girl x girl content is common in girls' cartoons in Japan; however we are excluding it here because of the absurdly sexist stereotype that lesbianism is a phase that all women go through as practice for becoming loving wives to their male husbands. This stereotype is not as common in the west, but is the literal defining reason why FxF content is so popular in girls' media in Japan.

2) Applejack's brother is not a "character" in season one; he literally says ONE WORD.

"The female gaze doesn't exist"

No, you just find women and girls so distressing that media made by and for them which dehumanizes and ignores boys and men is invisible to you.

>> NOTE: The female gaze is not "when men are sexy on camera for women" that is literally STILL THE MALE GAZE

[light-yaers]

Fools in the Darkness: Chapter One

Darkling x Reader

Warnings: Death, violence, drugs (Parem), NSFW and sexual content. This content is explicit and 18+ at some points.

A/N: I caved. I am a wildly stupid individual who has no control over her actions. I know I might come to regret posting this so fast and thus forcing myself into my third ongoing x reader fic, but I also just generally don’t care. I’m still working on No Saints and Sweet Esacpe, just as a slower pace due to my mental health, but this baby here floated out of me like melted butter. I’ll be alternating between uploading this fic and my currently ongoing others! I just had to get this shit out of my system about Shadow and Bone, fr. 

Fic Masterpost

Word Count - 3.4k

Chapter One

Ketterdam covered up your secrets perfectly. It’d only been a matter of weeks since you’d fled there, after travelling the exhausting journey across East Ravka until the Fold had stood before you; brooding, dangerous, a death-wish just to look at, let alone enter it.

Maybe you had to thank him for one thing, General Kirigan, because without him—

You never would have crossed the Fold on your own.

Maybe Ketterdam was made for a person such as yourself. Dark, danger around every corner, full to the brim with power-hungry men and women trapped behind silks. You’d never warmed to anyone yet, but that wasn’t a surprise—it was easy to hate people in the Barrel, but even easier to take their kruge and send them sailing upon the True Sea without another glance.

Kerch was a merchant port, stuffed with expensive clubs and those with no money troubles, armed and ready to open their pockets if they so wished. There were two sides of the docks—Fifth Harbour; the lavishly bright sector for the rich and wealthy—and the Barrel; a breeding ground for crime, killings and losing all of your kruge in one night.

You’d made acquaintances with the Barrel rats from the very beginning, hearing stories about the destruction they caused. You’d much rather not be on the side of the wealth, but the side of fear.

“I found her wandering the harbour, Kaz,” A petite lady in dark clothes spoke to her boss. She’d dragged you from the bustling harbour, flying you through the dark streets of Ketterdam. You tried to hear her footsteps across the cobblestones, but she left no footprints, like a Wraith in the night.

Kaz approached his desk then, stepping into the small lamp light of his office in the Slat. Kaz Brekker was a man that no one wanted to cross. With his clenched jaw and unforgiving stares, the Bastard of the Barrel was cut-throat in every sense of the description.

“She’s a rat, Inej. Not our responsibility—,”

“Do you see the clothes she’s wearing?” Inej cut over Kaz, stepping towards him abruptly. He stayed in place, looking at his Wraith in the eyes, unwaveringly. He regarded her for a moment, taking all of her in, before turning back to you.

His eyes skimmed you up and down, traversing the darkened and muddied fabrics on your body.

“A Kefta,” He whispered it, his eyes widening. “It doesn’t look like the usual Second Army attire,” He added. You perked up, trying to keep your expression as blunt as possible. After your journey, it wasn’t hard not to show anything—you’d been forced to endure a quiet and agonising journey for a month, while trying to stay in the shadows at the same time.

“Because it’s not,” You spoke up, for the first time since entering Brekker’s office. Kaz turned his attention to your face, stepping forward menacingly. His crow-headed cane slammed the wooden floorboards threateningly, but you weren’t scared—

You’d crossed the fucking Fold on your own. Nothing scared you anymore.

“Who are you?” He questioned, trying to keep his voice steady. Men like Kaz tried not to show off what they felt either, but the curiosity in his tone was undeniable. You cleared your throat.

“How much time have you got?”

Fjerda, 1 Year Ago

It was a risk to take, that was for sure. But choosing whether to go through the Fold or around it was a no brainer. Evidently, it had paid off so far, as you and your sister travelled through the barren coldness of Fjerda, headed for the Ravkan border.

“How much farther?” Your sister chided. She was older than you by a year, but on this mission, you’d taken charge. You shuffled into your pack, pulling out a tattered map and a compass. You set the point to North, calculating the miles you had left to trudge to safety.

Your sister wasn’t Grisha, no—you were. A Squaller; untrained, unenthusiastic about your power and utterly afraid of the Druskelle. But you’d had no choice in getting you and your sister safely around the Fold. There was no other way to go from where you’d first found asylum in Novyi Zem; going through Fjerda was the safest route to the Ravkan army.

You smiled at the map. “Five miles. Then we’ll be in Ravka,” An exhausted but relief filled scoff fell from your lips. You locked eyes with your sister, before the two of you embraced tightly. “We’ll be safe soon,” You whispered in her ear, enjoying the small warmth you got from her bare cheek pressing against your jaw.

“You’ll be safe soon,” She replied, bringing a hand to rest on the back of your neck. She pulled away then, as the tears began to well in her crystalline eyes. “You put yourself in this danger to keep me safe. I’m the older sister—I should be keeping you safe,”

“It was this, or through the Fold,” You spoke, furrowing your brows at her. “I’d rather take on twenty druskelle than step foot in that heaping mound of darkness,” Laughter trickled from both sisters, floating over the snow-covered trees and giving you hope.

You both continued forward tirelessly, mercilessly, trudging through inches of untouched snow and praying to whichever god out there who was listening. You prayed for your sister’s safety, for a safe life for her in the First Army. You prayed that you could stay with her—

A Squaller you were, yes, but over your dead body would you be taken to the Little Palace. You knew that’s where Grisha were trained for the King, you knew it was different. Your abilities didn’t define you; Saints, you barely even used them.

They were unpredictable. And you were scared of hurting those around you without meaning to. Ever since an incident when you were younger, you’d almost been afraid of your own power. You kept it hidden from those who you didn’t know closely.

Those who knew you were Grisha in Novyi Zem called you zowa—blessed, in Zemeni. It also meant Grisha, so you didn’t know if they were simply calling you what you were, or if they were commenting upon how strong your Squaller abilities were.

You’d never even met another Sqauller. You had nothing to compare yourself off of.

With a mile until you hit the Ravkan border, you stopped abruptly. Plumes of smoke rose high above the skies, coming from somewhere further on before you. You stuck your hand out, halting your sister from walking any further.

You were silent, listening for any signs of breakings twigs, compacted snow, or other indications of druskelle being near.

“Saints, you look like a fentomen,” Your sister scoffed beside you.

“Quiet,” You hit back with.

“What is it?” She spoke again, quieter this time, but not by much.

“Quiet,” You hissed.

You both waited another few minutes, silently standing like statues in the garden of the Grand Palace. You let out shaky breaths as you eventually straightened yourself once more, clutching onto your sister’s forearm for dear life.

“It’s okay. We just need to be wary,” You whispered. She nodded in response.

You both set off once more through countless trees and untouched snow. But you didn’t get far—until two druskelle spotted you. Neither of you could speak Fjerdan, and you were a fucking Grisha. This couldn’t have been any worse, when you were so close to being free.

“Hje marden,” One of them spoke. They were both tall, with broad shoulders and the white hair and blue eyes of Fjerda. Neither had beards—they were in training to being full druskelle. The trainees were always worse than their commanders, you thought. They would do anything to prove themselves to their superiors.

You tried not to shake as they circled you and your sister.

“I’m sorry, we don’t speak Fjerdan,” You said honestly. The druskelle immediately changed. Their hands rested upon their guns, ready to fire if need be. You raised your hands to the sky as your expression dropped. “Please! Please, we are just travellers—uh—we are perjenger—,”

“Perjenger? Travellers? To where?” The second druskelle spat.

You glanced at your sister quickly, knowing that if you answered Ravka, you’d both be shot immediately. Ravka was at war with Fjerda—Grisha were at war with Druskelle.

“Kerch,” You said strongly. “We have to go through Ravka and Shu Han. We can’t cross the Fold,”

For a moment, you thought it had worked. The druskelle looked at each other gruffly, muttering some words in Fjerdan. You clutched onto your sister’s arm tightly, not planning on letting her go now until you’d both crossed the border.

“Wait here,” One of the men said, as he began trudging back through the snow. He disappeared in the white landscape, leaving you with one druskelle.

You stayed quiet, feeling the warmth of your sister next to you. You glanced at her then, traversing your gaze over her side profile. Her nose, which was the same as yours; her eyes, brighter and more beautiful than your own, mimicking your mother; her hair, lighter and softer than yours. She was shorter than you, smaller than you, getting a lot of genetics from your mother, while you took from your father greatly. His height, his broad shoulders, his darker hair.

But she was your only family left, your only love and focus and everything.

And you were less than a mile from getting her to safety. You were less than a mile from being free of this Saint forsaken country, full of killers and fascists and men who only cared about power.

It was one druskelle against a Squaller. One against one. You could do that. You could beat him.

That’s what made you push your sister back, falling into the snow slowly as you brought your hands together. The druskelle yelled as he saw your movements, trying to aim his gun at you between your eyes, but it was too late—

In a flash, you summoned a storm that whipped him off of his feet. It circled him, gliding him backwards through the trees as you kept pushing and pushing, ignoring the raging winds as they whipped your hair from your face and agitated the snow on the trees.

“Come on!” You yelled behind you, as your sister scrambled up from the floor to stand beside you. She held your arm sturdily, watching fearfully as the druskelle struggled against the rapid winds that you wielded.

You thought that was it—you could both run with the time you’d bought—but that’s when the entire druskelle camp rocketed through the tree line. They yelled and boomed as they came to aid their brother, pushing back against the furious winds you were trying desperately to wield.

“Drüsje!” The commander yelled, storming through the group as he set up the largest of their guns—a machine gun, aimed and ready fire. You gasped, and for a second the winds wavered—they wavered long enough for the machine gun round to penetrate the small snow snuffed tornado that you’d created—

Until those bullets trickled over the blanketed ground, moving steadily closer and closer—

Until one landed straight through the heart of your sister.

All you remembered was that time slowed, then, as you saw the bullet exit her shoulder blade. She fell to the floor, unclasping her hands from your forearm and collapsing into a shocked heap on the floor. You remembered the way her blood dyed the snow. You remembered the way her eyes stayed open—

And then you remembered screaming.

It was a blur, as you tensed all of your limbs to the point where they yelled beneath your skin. You mustered all of your strength into this one storm; one that was merciless and unforgiving, circling all the druskelle in the clearing around you. You knew that soon all of the air would fade from within the eye of the storm that whipped devilishly around them.

You knew that soon they’d all begin to run out of oxygen and pass out, or better yet—maybe their hearts would stop. Cease to beat, drained of any energy to fire more rounds of bullets or kill Grisha for no fucking reason.

The storm was the largest you’d ever summoned, engulfing the entire druskelle camp and uprooting trees from their homes in the cold, hard Fjerdan ground. You saw them get sucked into your whirlwind, flying high, high, high until they eventually slipped out of the storms’ gusts; then they fell back down to earth, landing aggressively and dangerously on the ground below and being spat out at any random location.

You didn’t stop the storm, not even when you saw a tree fall atop a druskelle, crushing him where he’d stood moments before. The commander was the last one standing, rising above his suffocating men to look at you, face on, menacingly.

“Drüsje like you deserve to lose that which you love,” He boomed, using his remaining energy to cast you to Hell.

You wasted no time when you adjusted your stance, focusing the brunt force of the storm onto him—you decreased the eye of the storm until it flowed over him, and only him, grunting all of your strength into the circling winds that now surrounded him utterly and completely.

You collapsed at the same time that the commander did, falling into inches of snow and crawling exhaustedly to your sister. She was motionless, cold, her lips turning blue by the second as her blood continued to flow on Fjerdan soil. Dead. Gone.

Tears cascaded down your cheeks without any indication of stopping, but you couldn’t sob. It was impossible when you were already holding your breath, too afraid that if you were to breathe, only screams would pour from your coarse lungs.

The clearing was deserted, now, as druskelle bodies laid motionless on the snow-covered ground, their camp up ahead completely destroyed. Broken branches, twigs, tree trunks were dotted around, acting as just another indication of the destruction that you were truly capable of. Saints, you wanted to know if you were a normal Grisha, a normal Squaller, since those old women on Novyi Zem had looked at you like a weapon from the first day you could summon and control hurricanes and tornados at will.

Your fingers found your sister’s forehead then, swiping the hair off of her face. You cupped her cheek, laying your other hand upon her stomach. “Vaarwell,” You whispered shakily. “I’m sorry—I’m so sorry—,”

“Who’s there?” A voice spoke up from just beyond the clearing. You got up from the floor immediately, feeling a strange sense of power surrounding you. You waited silently, until First Army soldiers made their way to the clearing. A few stopped and checked the pulses of the druskelle upon the floor, before continuing forward until you were finally spotted.

A young man approached you slowly, holding his gun tightly, draped against his shoulder. “Was this... you?” He asked, looking you in the eye. His gaze dropped to the ground by your feet, seeing the blood-stained snow where your sister lay dead, before he looked back up to you.

He was joined by the rest of his crew. They slowly approached you, almost as if they were trapping you within a circle of their bodies. You stepped back once then, keeping your chin high and proud. The young man at the front was trying everything to keep you calm, you could see it in his eyes, but what he didn’t know was that you were seething—

And nothing would stop that.

Without your sister, you’d be taken to the Little Palace. Without knowing she was safe in the First Army, nothing would get you through the rest of your life—

You were dead. Inside and out. Nothing would change that.

Without a word, you brought your hands together, far too quickly for any of the soldiers to raise their weapons in defence. You ignored their begs and pleads as you circled them within in your storm, slowly suffocating the air out of their lungs and seeing the way their eyes bulged uncomfortably in their skulls.

“General!” The young man shouted, clutching at his throat as he tried desperately to suck air into his lungs. His voice echoed throughout the clearing, travelling through the trees slowly, until an eery type of silence settled into the air around you.

That’s when he arrived—his horse just as black at the Kefta on his frame, the stubble on his chin and the irises of his eyes. He dismounted, ignoring the cries from the soldiers within your raging storm as he began to approach you, step by step by step, crunching through the snow broodingly.

You knew who this man was; General Kirigan of the Second Army.

The Darkling.

He got ever closer, walking around the circular storm. The gap was beginning to bridge, and the more it did, the more you faltered. He took one more step, and you lost it.

“Stop!” You yelled. “Don’t come any closer, Darkling,” He stopped on command, keeping his arms by his sides, but the corners of his mouth upturned into a smile. “You find me amusing?” You spat.

“By the looks of this,” He gestured to the druskelle. “You were trying to get to Ravka. We’re here to help, yet you’re trying to suffocate my men,” You ignored his words, but you found your energy waning slightly—or maybe your heart was finally giving in. It didn’t really want to hurt anyone else, didn’t want to cause more damage than was already on your hands. “You’re a Squaller?” Kirigan asked, and that surprised you.

“Isn’t this how all Squaller’s are?” You asked in reply. Kirigin raised a brow at you.

“Not usually,” He said honestly. “You’ve never met another Grisha before?”

“I know what you’re doing,” You furrowed your brows at him. “You’re trying to distract me, to make me let my guard down and go with you willingly. I’d rather die than work for the King at the Little Palace,” Your breaths were getting more laborious the longer you held on to the storm. You were losing energy rapidly.

“Interesting,” The Darkling muttered.

There were a few moments then, where he was simply staring at you. Regarding you, analysing you, or perhaps— waiting for you to lose all of your energy. You were in a somewhat sticky situation, losing a grasp on your power with every passing second and feeling the intense gaze of Kirigan to your left.

“Let go,” He spoke softly. “I can see you’re tired, you don’t truly want to kill these men,”

“You don’t know anything about me,” You forced your eyelids to stay open as a wave of exhaustion flowed through you.

“And you know me?” He chided. You moved your gaze to him then, as your limbs finally lost momentum. Your hands dropped to your sides, your storm dissipating into the cold air at the Fjerdan border. Soldiers sucked in breaths noisily, gaining back their vision.

You stumbled back once, forcing yourself to stay standing despite the immense urge to pass the fuck out. Kirigan stayed still the entire time, a softness on his jaw that you hadn’t been expecting.

“Everyone knows you,” You mumbled. “I never wanted to meet you, though,”

Your heart jolted then, when the General let out a scoff. You forced yourself to move. Step by step through disturbed snow, until you were back where your sister lay on the floor. You collapsed to your knees unwillingly, as your body threatened to blackout at any moment.

You laid a shaky hand on her collarbone, curling your fingers up to her jaw. Kirigan moved slowly in your peripheral, turning towards you but staying at the distance he’d always been.

“Don’t take me to Os Alta,” You muttered. “Please, don’t take me,” You looked up at the General with pleading eyes.

“Why?” Kirigan whispered with furrowed brows, as if he was trying to work out why on earth you didn’t want a life within the royal Ravkan walls, living in luxury, fighting with other Grisha and honing your power.

Your vision began to blur then, as black spots dotted the white snow that surrounded you.

You never answered the General, your body gave up before you could—

And all you saw was black.

Tag list of those who were interested from my earlier post (tell me if you want off/on the list): @notawritergettingtherethough @rbg1993 @mayallyourbaconburn @luminous-99