#Actually decolonize the whole US I hate it here

[frobby]

it's kinda crazy to me that some people can't fathom.....no going to hawai'i. Like they're telling you not to go there's a billion other places to go why would you vacation in hawai'i if the native people tell you not to??? Hawaiians telling you to not vacation in hawai'i like someone telling you to not come into their private house like they might have cool stuff in there but it's their fuckingg house. STOP FUCKING GOING TO HAWAI'I VACATION SOMEWHERE ELSE MOVE SOMEWHERE ELSE!!!!!!

[hero-israel]

Something I need to just vent: I'm half Jewish and half something US leftists have no trouble understanding as oppressed. I feel like I'm being torn in two. First there are the people from my non-Jewish half, which is, yeah, really fucking antisemitic. There's the garden-variety "fucking kikes deserved it" shit, but I am also fucking drowning in "well obvs we stand w/ the Palestinians" version that went to college, skimmed Fanon, and thinks every struggle is exactly the same. And they all want to pretend the rampant anitsemitism they were all raised with doesn't feed into it, but of course it does. These big name Twitter users of my bg pretty it up with blah blah decolonization isn't a metaphor, but they will never say the whole truth, which is that they visit home and break bread with parents who just say Jews are Satanic pieces of shit with their whole chest. Then there's my fucking idiot white friends who parrot it all. They don't know what's being carefully hidden from them, and if someone showed them, they'd bend over backwards to insist it was somehow totally justified. They know who the Good Guys are, and obviously it's not those loud, greedy, cruel Christ-kil-oh oooooops, I mean Israelis!!! And they're just rushing to like and retweet what the idiots from my other half have to say. They don't question why their pet issue isn't, say, Hawaiian independence, which they might have some weight in as Americans. They don't wonder why they don't give as much of a shit about tribal sovereignty. Hating Jews -- oops, Israelis! -- just feels somehow so much more satisfying and righteous, and whooo could possssibly say why? Definitely not those vicious settler colonialist Jews who just see Jew-hatred everywhere for SOME crazy made-up reasons. And I'm just here, alone. I don't want to act like my non-Jewish half has it easy; it doesn't. But on the left, at least there's like .... the *etiquette* of people pretending to support us, to sit down and listen, to acknowledge they probably have biases. But Jews....everyone just fucking hates us. All my life, I've felt the pressure from gentile people on the left (which is dominant where I'm from in MA) to only care about my gentile half, to only identify with it. I resist it every day, but it's so. hard. A secret I can only whisper here: Both my sides struggle. But I'm only ever truly afraid for my life as a Jewish person. That's the one that feels like it could get me killed. That's the one that I feel tempted to hide. I wear my chai, but sometimes, when I'm on the T and someone seems like they're staring, I panic and want to hide it. Maybe I'm wrong. But I know there's a significant chance I'm not. Especially when they're clearly from my other half, I know exactly what the fuck they're thinking. And I have nowhere to say it, except a stranger's askbox. Am Yisrael chai, motherfuckers.

I very much hope you stay safe, and am sorry you feel so unsupported by your friends.

I know what that is like. None of my actual goyische friends have said anything hostile, but most of them haven't said anything at all. I know it sounds minor but the days and days of posts of Mr. Rogers saying to look for the helpers, or Gandalf saying nobody wants to live through these times, the usual rounds of virtuous signals, are unmissably absent. And the friends-of-friends are pure violent garbage, which makes me wonder if my friends would have hated and rejected me as a Jew if they'd met me for the first time now and not when we were kids. Have had MULTIPLE friends-of-friends declare that the Israeli civilians weren't civilians, they were colonizers who can't be civilians and who all deserved it ("it" to include rape and infanticide). Every last one of those friends-of-friends are white Americans.

Please keep wearing the chai.

[hellsbellschime]

I just wanted to thank you so, so much for standing up for Jews right now. I can't express how much it means to me and the rest of the Jewish community that you're one of the few people who've actually gone to bat for us when everyone else went mask off ❤️

<3 honestly you shouldn't be thanking me because it's just the right thing to do, but the amount of antisemitism I have seen since 10/7 has been APPALLING and it's extremely scary. The people who went mask off REALLY went mask off, but there has also been so much stealth antisemitism in so much of the reaction and reporting that I've seen about the situation that it really threw me off and made me realize that I vastly underestimated how popular antisemitism still is.

Clearly, discussing Zionism in the past has REALLY not gone well for me, but the reaction toward it for me specifically and in general has always set off alarm bells that there was antisemitism baked in there which was trying to be passed off as anti-Zionism or anti-Israeli sentiment. But I feel like 10/7 was such a horrific revelation for Jewish people and allies because, at least for me, it was a revelation that for certain people, basically there is no limit to what you could do to an Israeli. There is no limit to what crimes or atrocities could be committed against someone because of where they lived or where they were born, and there is a really scary number of people who would paint that kind of atrocity as some kind of rebellious act of freedom. If you are calling literal babies colonizers and you are saying that the gang rape and mutilation of people's genitals is somehow an act of decolonization, you are trying to dress up your genocidal antisemitic POV with the veneer of some kind of social justice or moral righteousness.

But there are bigger fish to fry here that I think a lot of people are missing, which again further disturbs and upsets me. Because Jewish people should be able to just exist in the world, but the ebb and flow of antisemitism is also an exceptionally good indicator of when social and political upheaval is about to REALLY start fucking everyone's lives up. So again, people should be concerned about this because it's morally wrong, but they should also be concerned about it because Jewish people are also almost always just the first up to bat. Once we pass that critical point where antisemitism becomes socially acceptable again, it's almost always because we are at the beginning of a really hard downturn that is going to destroy a TON of people's lives. So the fact that so many people on the left and right are now united in the whole "oh wouldn't our lives be so much better if we could just take power away from the Jews" is a REALLY REALLY REALLY scary sign that should not be ignored.

And of course, the fact that the Israeli government actually does horrible shit makes this a much easier sell. There are a ton of very legitimate problems that need to be fixed and should absolutely be called out. But again, it's a very scary mindset to get drawn into, because yes you think you're a leftist and completely unaffected by the antisemitism that has been baked into our culture for literally thousands of years and you're on the right side because WELL THE JEWS ARE ACTUALLY BAD NOW. But what the hell do you think people thought in 1930s Europe? Do you think that they hated Jewish people just to hate them? Or do you think that they also genuinely believed that Jewish people were actually the problem then too?

It's heinous because 10/7 and the invasion of Gaza afterward is a perfect vector to hide antisemitism in, and it really seems to be working well. The overt antisemitism I've seen as well as the way more covert that I've seen has shocked me, and even though I'm not Jewish, I considered myself to be more aware than most that antisemitism is not even remotely a problem that's been relegated to the past.

But I'm sorry that you've had to deal with this because I am just a person who is capable of empathy and understands how fucked up it must be to experience this, while Jewish people actually have to experience it. The lack of pushback against pretty obvious antisemitism is really frightening, and again, the whole progression of what has happened is exceptionally cruel and offensive. You can support a free and democratic Palestine while condemning 10/7 (in fact I'd argue given that Hamas hasn't held elections in decades, it's a REQUIREMENT to condemn 10/7 if you genuinely support a free Palestine). You can acknowledge that Hamas is an outwardly stated and admitted antisemitic terrorist organization and 10/7 was an expressly antisemitic attack and fight for an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

But the amount of pressure I've seen put on Jewish people specifically to go along with the complete reframing and minimization of 10/7, because actually if you live in Israel then you had it coming, and because the Palestinians have it worse you can't even take a moment to react emotionally to something truly horrific and traumatizing, and if you don't think exactly what we think you're one of the "bad ones," has been disturbing to watch. Your pain is incredibly valid and I know everything that has happened must be so difficult and isolating, but just know that you do have supporters out there, even if you deserve to have a lot more.

[beardedmrbean]

I know you didn’t see it, but as someone pointed out with Killmonger. The people who often said “fuck Christopher Columbus and white people!” don’t hate imperialism itself. They hate that their ancestors was on the losing side of the wars centuries ago

As I mentioned before they glamorized the Dahomey kingdom of all things, I saw a person online with a PHD said the Ottomans were good to lived under.

A Hindu mutual of mine said that the left constantly glamorized the Mughals because they are brown. People are even defending the Aztecs now.

Like I saw people say that the left only “protected” the Jews because of the Holocaust. Because when you dive into Hitler and the Nazis the mindsets you notice a lot of similarities

“The Jews/White people are the root of all evil and must be wiped out!”

And I think Jews are getting a wake up call with the I/P conflict as now the left antisemitism is in full force

I mean I saw these as the left said in more privileged than career politicians such as Hillary Clinton because I have a dick. But the second they learn in black, I’m more oppressed than a trailer park kid that was pimp out by their parents

And the decolonization thing, hmm strange that never passed to Arab ethnostates

Oh good, you're still here. I'm happy about that _____________

Aztecs, yikes people raised hell here in CA about some of the lessons that involved learning various Aztec prayers, not sure how far if actually got but I hope it didn't get implemented.

Was a whole thing about connecting the Latino students to part of their heritage and CA history as well dumb for one because the Aztecs never made it up this far and for two, the reason Cortez managed to take them out with 300 Spaniards was because of the 30,000 natives that joined in because they were tired of being used for human sacrifices among other things.

Interesting to see the return of moral relativism

It's their culture and it should be respected even if that means this 73 year old dude that died's 19 year old wife will be placed on his funeral pyre with him and burned alive so they can be together in the afterlife (first time I hears a self proclaimed atheist say something along those lines my head spun, was weird. Still is gotta respect their beliefs provided they are using a western religion because reasons)

Colonization thing, I was originally looking for a map of arab migration into North Africa but this kind of thing kept coming up

Finally ran into one that was just Arab migration and it's the same map, which makes sense, Egypt is still full of Egyptians though which is kinda wild, Iran is split between Persians and Arabs, Persians being the indigenous people in that area.

Like I saw people say that the left only “protected” the Jews because of the Holocaust.

This is one of those things I've put a lot of time and thought into.

Short version of my conclusion is that if they were still a stateless people they would likely be one of the darlings of leftist circles.

At least until they started getting to successful, preformative wokeness would be the modern term I guess.

You're not supposed to actually do well because if you do then we can't use you as a prop to show how awful other people are.

Be why Asians got kicked out of the POC club.

And I think Jews are getting a wake up call with the I/P conflict as now the left antisemitism is in full force

Stephen Fry coming out and saying, you know what, I'm Jewish is a good bit for that, seems to be some of the secular Jewish community, even the one's that don't do anything Jewish at all, well didn't since it would seem a bunch of them are having their eyes opened more than they ever thought they would.

So ya that's a thing too.

Circling back to Egypt, wonder what the hotep contingent thinks about the Arabization of North Africa, they're lunatics regardless but I bet there's some funny stuff going on in the we-wuz circles about that. __________

And again, I'm glad to hear from you especially after your previous ask. Keep pushing through world needs self aware people in it.

[possibilistfanfiction]

I am very, very attached to ava "gender? *shrug emoji*" silva because it's so rare I see that approach and, self indulgently, it's me. I've got trans friends and nb friends and the whole pronoun thing makes sense to them in a way I'm almost jealous of? Does that make any sense? They know themselves enough to know they were a square peg on a round hole...no double entendre intended...and I'm sat here going "well using my birth pronouns doesn't hurt me so I'll roll with that", and it feels weird somehow? Because it's not bad and it's not uncomfortable but I know it would only be the newness factor and the extra steps correcting people that mean I wouldn't be just as comfortable going by a different one?

And then I feel all twisted because I work in a decent job with an actual commitment to supporting LGBTQ+ people, but I'm still puzzling out the pronouns and I don't want to put them into my email signature then change, or have them hang about after I potentially have a revelation. But I don't want people to think I'm opposed to them either.

I don't know, don't feel obligated to weigh in, I just figure I could ping this at you without judgement at least. It's hard to state it out loud sometimes.

lemme tell you. pronouns (especially in english) as a stand in for gender is a) v recent; b) so neoliberal & western, & rly wayyyy more of an issue in the global north. ppl prioritizing pronouns as Respectful™️ toward trans folks is all fine & good (it’s easy), but the neoliberal rhetoric around trans existence as like… rooted in western language, western terms, western experiences… fucking infuriating. i hate pronouns. i hate the expectation of them. i hate a “dead” name — i was never not who i am, i will always be who i am; i have a name i was given & a name i chose & they’re not desperate selves. the pathologization of transness is disgusting & not at all decolonized; the expectation that u have to feel at deep odds w your body, at deep odds w ur pronouns, ur name, etc, is a western reaction to a western problem. all over the world, for literally all of history, gender expansive folks have existed without the expectation of Being Trans, without definitions & boxes. i despise the expectation that i have to feel hatred or profound anxiety about myself or my body to access care, or to have a name i chose — i think care should be about what makes you feel best, & that’s it. the state control thru the medical industrial complex of gender & care & belonging is insane. so i always just ask, what’s the best choice? what makes me feel comfortable & at ease? what do i Want? those are the only questions that matter to me at this point. if those answers are rly rooted in pronouns & a name etc, then that’s obvs fine! but i think so often we get caught up in HAVING to have those things to be able to answer those questions. & to me the answers to those questions are found in the texture & fit of fabrics, & my home, & really good food, & my community. not once have i found them in a they/them pronoun

so anyway yes i hear you. i don’t think u should feel jealous of ur friends bc ur experience is so real & expansive & that’s also wonderful.

& for ava yah it’s honestly pissed me off for a while that ppl have just thrown this inaccurate & weird & western agenda on her gender. like when i say she doesn’t care, she’s happy w her body, she loves curiosity & hates boxes & labels — it’s tru. it’s not more than that, it’s not “non-binary”. there’s no binary to begin with!! there never has been!

[anonymous-dentist]

hi ad i was wondering if you could help me historically contextualize this great post tagged #red scare (among other irrelevant things) with your historical expertise? 😊😊😊😊😊

(joseph stalin does not understand my aesthetic visions)

Alright, so I'm first going to say that the 'He' in question here would actually be United States Senator Joseph McCarthy, the instigator of the most famous of America's various Red Scares. That motherfucker hated communism, and aesthetics beyond anything WASP-y. The introduction of the stereotypical white suburban housewife? That's thanks to McCarthy, and, well. Hm.

So the most famous Red Scare we've had in America would be the one that originated right after the end of World War Two. It came about because America is a country that was birthed upon the foundation of We Want Our Money (taxation without representation, dig?) After the Russian Civil War (1917-1922), only one country in the world really recognized the Soviet Union, and it was not the United States (it was actually Germany, who was Europe's other most ostracized nation, though this backfired on the USSR pretty badly in 1941 with Hitler's Operation Barbarossa.) The US has had a history of Red Scares dating back to the 1920s after the Russian Revolution, and I'd argue that we're in the middle of a Third Red Scare today.

But back to our Red Scare, the Second Red Scare as it's called.

So the big three dudes during World War Two on the Allied side were US President Roosevelt, British Fucker Churchill, and That Motherfucker Stalin. But Roosevelt died and was replaced with that motherfucker Truman, and Churchill was replaced by some other dude that doesn't matter. Stalin hated Truman. A lot. He thought Truman was intolerable. He also hated the "west" in general because, uh, fuck them, I guess. Some sort of Russian nationalism, which Stalin was famous for despite being Georgian (I believe, don't quote me on that.)

So by the time the Berlin Airlifts happened in 1948-49, Stalin was about done with the US, and the US was about done with the USSR. It gets better when the USSR is revealed to be working on this funny little thing called a Fucking Nuke. On top of that, communism was spreading around the world at a rapid rate, mostly in countries in the process of decolonizing, and especially in countries in the process of decolonizing that saw the bullshit that America had been up to regarding its own colonizing efforts and said, fuck that, we're not doing this whole capitalism thing.

And so, with all those foreign problems in mind, we've got this motherfucker in the US named Joseph McCarthy. Anyone who was sus (for lack of a better phrase) was considered a communist spy and was arrested. That included people of color, single women over the age of about 24, disabled or neurodivergent people, queer people, etc. Basically, you aren't a good ol' boy, you're sus. You don't like Jesus? Sus. You support queer rights? Sus. You criticize the government? Sus.

I'm not going to go too far into the specifics because, frankly, it's entirely too long a topic and it pisses me off. The Second Red Scare was essentially the same kind of terror-based enforced nationalism that Stalin himself was a pretty big fan of during his various Terrors of the 1930s, and that Soviet leaders were pretty big on until that motherfucker Gorbachev. I'm sure that you've at least read about, say, the Rosenberg trials, and the foundation of the People's Republic of China, and the nuclear bomb, and the House Un-American Activities Committee. You've also got the CIA, and, well.

Well.

#Traumatize Men

[eretzyisrael]

Identity and Reality

This morning I picked up a book from my philosophy student days, “Identity and Reality,” by Emile Meyerson. It’s a book about the metaphysical foundations of science, but the title inspired me.

Everyone has an identity in the sense of their answer to the question “what are you?” Almost everyone has a need to find, adopt, or construct an answer. Often it’s a list of things: a mother, a Jew, a football fan, a plumber, and so on. Recently “gender identity” has been added.

There is no national identity with a longer pedigree than that of the Jewish people. For millennia Jews have had a unique language and religion, and a tradition that connects them to the Land of Israel, which (according to that tradition) was given to them by Hashem. Religious Jews explicitly remind themselves of this three times a day.

This makes “Jewish” a very desirable identity. As Jimmy Durante said (about something else), “everybody wants to get into the act,” despite the anti-Jewish attitudes that Jews have to deal with. Jewish identity is so sought-after, that one of the popular themes of antisemites is to claim that they are the “real Jews” and we are Khazars or just fakers. If a Jew chooses to live in the Land of Israel, they have additional prejudices against them. Recently a European “anti-fascist” said that as an Israeli Jew, I was “stealing the very air I breathe.”

But still, the Jewish identity is attractive because – here is the connection to the book I picked up – it is solidly grounded in reality. Lots of people hate Jews and even want to kill them, but no identity is better documented. Indeed, one of the most important parts of the cognitive warfare that is being waged against the Jewish people by its enemies is the effort to break down that identity; in particular, to disconnect us from the Land of Israel. So, for example, Palestinian Arabs go out of their way to destroy archaeological evidence of ancient Jewish provenance in the land, as they have done at the Temple Mount and numerous other sites.

Mahmoud Abbas has always insisted that “Jewish” refers only to a religion, not to a people, because a people can have ties to a particular land, and if there were a Jewish people, this would be their land. This is why he objected so strongly to the condition that he recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people, although he claims to recognize Israel’s existence. This is why the PLO has never agreed to the formulation “two states for two peoples,” although it claims to support a “two state solution.”

Tribal identities are important to Arabs, but attempts to forge a pan-Arab identity among Arabic speakers haven’t been particularly successful, because, for example, North Africans, Egyptians, and Syrians have little in common. A great deal of energy is put into the attempt to establish that there is a historical “Palestinian” identity, but the people who identify as “Palestinians” today have diverse origins, with many of them relatively recent (after 1830) migrants to the area. There is very little that is specifically Palestinian in their culture (as opposed to tribal, Arab, or Muslim), other than elements that developed in opposition to Israel. They didn’t even self-identify as “Palestinian” until the 1960s. That is not to say that there cannot be a “Palestinian people” – give them another 3000 years, and if they still remember the Nakba, they may become as well-established as the Jewish people.

The Palestinian argument is that we, the Jews, appeared from Europe in the 20th century and “colonized” a long-established indigenous “Palestinian people,” ultimately taking their land by force, driving most of them out of their homes and not allowing them to return. The Jews, according to this story, are not even a people, just a bunch of Europeans whose made-up religious myth connects them to what is actually the Palestinians’ homeland (I am not sure how they account for the more than 50% of Israelis who previously lived in various Arab countries).

Like all “Europeans,” the story continues, the Jews are white racists who exploit black and brown indigenous peoples like the Palestinians. Justice therefore requires that the Jews should give up control of the land to its “rightful owners,” the millions of descendants of the Arab refugees of 1948.

The Palestinian story is wildly wrong on several points. First, there were several ancient Jewish commonwealths in the Land of Israel, and some Jews always were present during the millennia in which the land was under the control of various outside powers. Doubtless some of today’s Palestinians are also descended from ancient residents of the land, but the great bulk of Palestinian families arrived much later. So the claim that Arabs are “more indigenous” than Jews is false. Arab families with names like “al Musri” (Egyptian) or “al Haurani” (Syrian) and numerous others testify to their origins.

Second, when the Zionists arrived and began developing what would become the Jewish state, it was not in the possession of the Palestinian Arabs – there was never a sovereign Palestinian entity in the land – but was a colony of the Ottoman Empire. Most private land belonged to absentee owners. Shortly thereafter the British Mandate was established, and the Arabs, led by Amin al-Husseini, who later cast his lot with Hitler, violently tried to prevent the advent of Jewish sovereignty. When the British were forced out, the Jews defeated the Palestinian Arabs and the Arab nations that invaded (who were interested in grabbing territory and kicking the Jews out, not in setting up a Palestinian state). The Jews did not “colonize” Palestine – they decolonized it, by ejecting the British.

Third, by the time the British left and the Arab nations invaded, the Palestinian Arabs had been fighting with the Jews for several months (with the connivance of the British, who preferred that the land come under Arab control). Much of the Arab elite fled early in order to avoid the conflict (some went to summer homes in Lebanon). The poorer Arabs fled for various reasons, including fear induced by propaganda about Jewish atrocities – which was not difficult for them to believe, since their own leaders planned to do the same to the Jews if they got the upper hand. Some Arabs were expelled (Lod or Lydda) because their towns or villages fought on the side of the Arab armies. Some 500-700 thousand Arabs left for various reasons, but there was no overall plan to expel them. In some cases (Haifa) Jewish authorities asked non-belligerent Arabs to stay.

After the war, only a few were allowed to return. The new state simply could not take the risk of allowing hostile Arabs to return and reignite the war. This was a classic ethnic conflict over land, and the usual result of these is either that the weaker side becomes refugees, or the winner massacres the losers. The leaders of the Arab nations did not hide their intention to massacre the Jews if they won. The 800,000 Jews kicked out of Arab countries at about the same time suffered a similar fate to the Palestinian Arabs.

Fourth, and finally, the whole “racism” theme is nonsense. Only a minority of Israelis ever lived in Europe. They range in color from black Ethiopians to white Europeans with red hair and freckles. Most are various shades of brown, as are Palestinians, who also include the descendants of black slaves and – if you remember her – Ahed Tamimi, who earned the nickname “Shirley Temper” for kicking and hitting Israeli soldiers, with her pale skin and blonde hair. The conflict is best described as national and religious, not racial.

But unlike other similar conflicts, the losers managed to persuade the world of the justice of their cause, with the help of the Soviet KGB, the Arab oil weapon, the liberal application of terrorism, and the exploitation of the always-present antisemitism of the west. Which is why my European anti-fascist acquaintance thinks I’m an oxygen bandit.

Abu Yehuda

[hussyknee]

Hi, fellow lgbt+ inclusionist here. It's cool that you've reclaimed "queer" for yourself and use it as a self-descriptor, but do not call lgbt+ gatekeepers "queer people". Hell, don't call anyone (who isn't yourself) "queer" without their explicit consent. Even if you don't think it's an anti-lgbt slur—for whatever nonsensical and ahistorical reason—don't label people with words they may or may not label themselves as; it's just rude.

The whole point of inclusionism is that "queer" is an acceptable term to call the ourselves and each other, excepting individual preference. The way we say "disabled people", unless someone says "I prefer person with disabilities actually" or even "differently-abled for me please" when referred to directly.

By and large the disabled community now severely side-eyes person-first language because of how it's a dogwhistle for anti-austistic ableism, and the second is considered a downright insult. But on an individual level people get to be called what they want. That doesn't mean we can't call each other "disabled" because not everyone likes it.

Hell, I hate being called "Desi". That word comes from the Hindi word "Des" which means "country", and so carries implications of North Indian manifest destiny, which is an ongoing cultural and geo-political concern for everyone else who lives in the subcontinent that isn't Indian. That doesn't mean I get a hair up my ass every time someone calls it the "Desi community" or refers to a group that includes me as "Desi". Because there's a lot more diaspora history behind the word than just that.

Look, we're all gonna get called by some shorthand we don't like when we're part of a larger community. Anyone who doesn't personally want to be called queer is fine. Anyone who wants to make a space for themselves and others like them that isn't called queer is also cool.

But that's not what exclusionists are doing. They're actively trying to smear and degrade a word that is important to a lot of people and shame everyone out of using it. And they have used this rhetoric to bully aces and aros and whoever doesn't conform to their conditions out of the community. There are people with literal PTSD from their bullshit.

So I personally do not give a good shit what they want. I won't refer to a specific person as queer if they decline the word but I'm also not going to take a survey every time I want to refer to non-allo-cishet people or discourage cis hets from using the word. That's literally what stigmatising means.

Also I really need all of you to understand - none of this shit matters. Right now I'm doing an anthropology program and waist deep in academic literature on queer decolonization. I was on a Zoom conference yesterday listening to human rights lawyers talking about queer activists in India and Uganda fighting bills that would allow the state-sanctioned murder of gay and transgender people. We're pulling researchers from various Departments of Queer Studies from all over the world to understand how colonized peoples saw sexuality and gender, completely divorced from whatever we now think of as "LGBT". There are countless cultures that has no innate understanding of a cishet Vs non-cishet binary. Concepts of queerness and queer histories completely apart from the gay liberation movements of the UK and Stonewall.

And we call them all "queer" when we communicate in English (one single colonial language out of six thousand languages, that the majority of the world doesn't even speak) because it's a placeholder term. Nothing more or less.

Stay in your little social media bubbles and bleat about whatever alphabet soup you'd rather use. I don't care. The rest of us have actual work to do.

[sleepymarmot]

Twilight Mirage liveblog 5/5 (finale & post-mortem)

64-67

Found a new shortcut to my heart: announcing your finale is going to be a mashup of The Quiet Year and Firebrands 

Why is it surpising that the Qui Err Coalition allies with the Waking Cadent? That was my first thought when Iota was making her speech! The Qui Err thinks the humans should leave, the Cadent thinks the humans should leave, sounds pretty compatible to me. 

What's the logic of “When Crystal Palace arrives, we will blow up this system”? It's not a bomb! But it will be in danger if a bomb goes off right next to it!

Oh no, Ali is doing the classic “shoot yourself in the foot on purpose” move

I don't get how Grand Magnificent got promoted from “got paid once to retire” to “is trusted to do actual missions for Advent”

Why the hell does Gig want to kill Ballad

The players keep underestimating how “horny” the scenes in Firebrands are and Austin is increasingly exasperated 

I would like to thank Jack from the bottom of my heart for choosing dance as a framing for making contact with Grand. Also I completely lost it at “there are talons on my shoulder”

I must have missed something, what's so bad about the Splice and Our Profit that everyone's so excited to fuck them over? The Mirage is made a renewable resource, right, so the Splice isn't a drain on anything?

The Echo-Ballad scene is so frustrating that I can't even feel appropriately bad about it! Come on Echo, just help Grand go back to Advent as an undercover spy, it doesn't have to be a competition this time!

I still don't understand Independence II… How do you send your new very conspicous and recognizable design to friends in rival factions without blowing your cover 

The timeline here is really weird… Echo rescues Grand and brings Ballad with them, Ballad calls off his people, Grand sends out his new mech design… And a week later, Grand's still on Qui Err territory having a friendly lunch with its leader? If going back is still an option, how is that going to look without making Advent seem like total idiots? Ah, it's only a day after? Okay…

I'm very glad the Volition problem was solved so peacefully!

5 minutes later: “Quire could die!” How about no??! I was so busy preparing to mourn Volition. I am completely unprepared to lose Quire just like that.

Memorious was alive and also an axiom worm this whole time? Wut

Fuck, do we need another opportunity to kill off Ballad?! This list of NPCs is making me very nervous, I don't want any of them to die… As soon as they said “tactical skirmish” I started screaming internally and likely won't stop until it is over… Wow, Ali, that was cold Oh no, Keith is really on a mission to murder Ballad

Grand how could you bring a bomb to Christmas dinner what the hell RIP bird leader / avian boss, he had an amazing unique voice and, in my head, a really cool cartoony design

Thanks for 9.5 hours of fun. Now I guess it's time for the 4 hour long brutal and heartbreaking final boss encounter

Full offence Gig, but I wouldn't log off even the real internet for lawn games

Signet fucking saved everyone single-handedly, twice. Two biggest threats. Incredible. What is the rest of the game even about

Seriously, do the players know something about Advent that I don't?! Otherwise please stop calling your cheesy space mafia “nazis”

I've been waiting for Even and Cascabel stealing time together since the beginning of the finale! For 11 hours! Finally! This finale is in dire need of more romance content I like that everyone immediately starting dragging all Bioware games at once

I don't see how a secular virtual reality is more of a “weird cult” than an augmented reality in which people maintain an actual religion worshipping the union of human and synthetic life for 30k years. Can we not do the hypocrisy again please. Why is it okay for the Divine Fleet to build their own take on utopia but when the NEH does it's portrayed as a threat and all characters treat it with suspicion and contempt

OK all these ideological debates are fine and dandy but people really should ask more practical questions like “you don't have to rush, why don't you just go back to the previous eco-friendly methods we have previously agreed upon” Glad Fourteen won, but ideologically, as you can guess from this entire liveblog, I'm with Our Profit

I don't like how Tender started with the intention of attacking Our Profit / the Splice but very much like how it somehow turned into her offering to help them and solve everyone's problems in one move

Grand Magnificent building a pseudo-Divine to blind the Crystal Palace with the power of bullshit is the ideal happy ending for him

Good on everyone for doing the best possible things with the Divines, except for the DFS for managing to do every possible bad thing simultaneously!!! My dislike of that faction is vindicated but at what cost Oh god it's even worse 

“Echo Reverie, who knew well both the value and the cost of violence, and who dreamt powerfully of peace” is such a beautiful and concise summary of their character arc God I just love how organically Echo and Gig's arcs led them to help a decolonized society lead independent, peaceful and joyful lives

A new Fleet with a healthier relationship between the Divines and everyone else is nice, thank you Signet

Oh my god, the ending titles are Gig interviewing everyone, that's so sweet!!! Really the perfect sentence to end this campaign with.

(I feel like a jerk mentioning it but… Whenever there's music overlayed with the voice track, it's almost always too loud and I have to strain my ears to hear the words… It's been like that since season one. Am I really the only one with this problem?!) 

Whew! Hard to believe this long, long listening experience is over. I have mixed feelings: sometimes it was exciting or inspiring, sometimes it was fun but I felt I could as well be doing something else, sometimes I listened to the outro and thought “this music and the montage for it in my head right now make me feel so much more than the episode I just heard”, and sometimes the ideology of the narrative or characters'/players' opinions and actions clashed enough with my worldview enough to poison the entire experience. What's new is that, unlike the previous arcs, I didn't have an urge to shake my friends and yell at them “you absolutely must listen to this!” and that made me sad. But that might be just me getting used to this show and taking its good features for granted.

Post-mortem

Oh god, the production of the final sequence sounds like absolute nightmare

Thanks for validating me with the speech about the Fleet's lack of engagement with its “original sin”, Austin 

Thanks, Janine, I hate it! This religion didn't need to get any creepier!

Yes tell us how many ears Tender has! I need to know!! Tender's fursona is the Russian food cat?! Amazing The livestream practically starts with googling animal pictures. Classic

Honestly Echo's disability was barely noticeable to me as a listener… There wasn't a lot of visible difference between the way they accessed the mesh and other PCs did, and after the nanites did activate, I don't think it was ever brought up again…

Yeah I'm genuinely upset that Tender and Fourteen didn't get together, by the way! Or at least have an overt romantic storyline! Give me that sweet sweet PC/PC romance my soul is starving Like I get what Jack is saying about the value of depicting friendship and normally I'd be on his side but 😭 😭 😭 On the other hand I didn't know Echo/Grand was a thing (And now feel kind of bitter it got more official endorsement than my ship that has more canonical foundation) This universe is actually about Austin inventing NPCs who have crushes on Keith's characters and then Keith pointedly avoiding the subject How could anyone forget about Tender's wild fangirling over Waltz lmfao

Austin calmly talking of all these things I screamed about above like “yeah that's what I intended”. Like on the one hand I'm glad, but on the other why couldn't you make it less frustrating to listen to

The rehabilitation theme is another thing that is present thematically but was not discussed on screen enough imo. One thing my mind kept returning to re: Contrition's Figure was the question of forgiveness for serious crime, personal boundaries and principles, and the policy of not disclosing the inmates' crimes. I imagine a survivor of rape or abuse wouldn't want to share space with someone who did the same kind of crime that hurt them. Even if they wouldn't be made to interact, of course, but what if that person believes those kind of people don't deserve rehabilitation at all? What if they reject that system on principle? You often encounter seemingly serious statements like “abusers/rapists/nazis should die”, especially lately. I've heard that about “fascists” (which is a separate issue) in this very campaign. Where do people with these opinions go in a utopia? Do they not exist? Do people who commit horrific crimes not exist either? Because I was listening to that arc and thinking “What if one of those undisclosed crimes was csa or serial murder or something like that? Would I be expected to shake hands and play chess with that criminal? How could I rehabilitate, heal, re-socialize, learn to trust in a space where anyone I meet could be Shrodinger's rapist?” And that leads to the bigger question of what a utopia is. Is it a better society – or better human nature? If latter (and Austin said so) – then to what extent? Because the theoretical people who are so much more advanced than us that they are, en masse, incapable of extreme cruelty, must also differ from our generation with their entire psychology. And a psychology so different would be unimaginable, unplayable, and would not provide necessary dramatic conflict or antagonistic characters. Which is why most alien characters in most stories, including this one, are just humans in silly costumes or prosthetics.

Oh dear god, that must be the heaviest personal story yet… But I understand better what Declan's Corrective was about.

Oh I've been definitely thinking about static utopias vs utopias of process while listening! When I wrote at some point that they made me stop and consider what a utopia is, it was one of the things I meant.

Yeah, sure, in our world the Splice would be terrible because of the existing power dynamics. But that's a Counter/weight story! Twilight Mirage and the Divine Fleet have been about the technologies and ideas that could have been, or were, used to terrible ends, but miraculously, we got to see them used in good faith with genuinely good intentions and good results. Divines have been all kinds of threats over the ages, and yet the Fleet managed to build a community around them that was a small paradise for 30,000 years. So why do the NEH and the Splice not get the same benefit of the doubt? Why is narrative not treating them with the same respect? Why are they always a threat? Why isn't there a major, likeable NPC whose life was enriched by the Splice to the extent that it is central to their identity, who could be our advocate for that point of view? Why are some powerful and potentially infinitely dangerous things, like Divines or religion itself, shown as more valid than others? And don't tell me that our player characters are from the Fleet – none of them are Qui Err either, and yet by the end it is a respected, lovingly portrayed player faction.

Oh, and also, speaking of the Splice's dangers, and what would have made it dangerous in the real world – one of the things that bothered me about it was that these dangers weren't actually described and addressed in the show properly! Probably at least in part because this techology is so magical it's hard to codify how it works. If it gives an indefinite amount of time, how do you sync up all these infinite amounts of timelines? Whenever anyone logs in to visit Tender, how do they know if it's been a day for her, like in the real world, or a hundred years? (Oh and by the way, I waited in vain for the explanation for these strange duplicities and possible time anomalies; what was going on with Ache and Acre?) If opposing the Splice and the NEH were about solving specific problems with the Splice, I would be all for that!

But yeah, I really do appreciate “processes that self-regulate and address their own issues”, how the story and specifically the finale were about the work of building a better world. I like the finale especially because it shows the social processes more clearly; TM's lack of a faction game and its focus on “bigger picture” was palpable, so I was happy to see again that aspect of the show I think is really good and unique. At first I thought it was anticlimactic that the main threats of the finale were solved so easily, early, and pretty much single-handedly. And, indeed, in a tv show that would have looked pretty strange (and require some rewriting, because with how it went down, Signet should have been the sole protagonist from the start lol). But on the other hand, it gave a lot of space and focus to what the whole story has been about: building a better society and future. Not just saving it from an external threat and drawing the curtain on that – but making sure the world we won is the one we want to live in. Preserve the environment! Decolonize the land! Shut off the tyrannical prophecy machine! And that's a good thing, and from my perspective very characteristic of this show. Before it, I didn't even know there were games about building and preserving communities and addressing civil issues! For years I thought “Well, stories of adventure are fun, but they don't address the real issues”, but turns out, there are people and systems that at least try to combine both. And that's a thought I can find comfort in, even if the specific choices of this campaign make me frustrated sometimes.

“I also tried to move away from violence this season and ended up making an arms manufacturer”

Somehow the end of the post-mortem feels sadder and more final than the end of the show proper

[mujer--solitaria]

On Kanye

Anti-Blackness in the Chicano Community: For Chicanos and Mestizos to Reflect On, Especially Those of Us Who Are White and White-Adjacent 

I’ve been a long time Kanye fan. It’s something I credit one of my brothers for, and I never talk about Kanye’s early career or his legacy at length without referring back to my brother and how much Kanye means to us as a family.

I remember the first album like it was yesterday.

I will never forget that it was released on my brother’s birthday in 2004.

I don’t forget because my dad had just died a few months before.

The College Dropout was with me during that year.

He’d passed Thanksgiving Day week.

He was a cooker, among many things. I feel like I forget my English when I reach this far back.

My father was the chef of the family, a breadth of Mexican recipes and national identity he took with him when he left. I remember this giant Valentine’s day teddy bear he once tried to give me in, what felt like, the darkest part of our house. I knew it then, right then, that he was trying to cover his own sun. The novelty of his warmth, spoiled with the bile of an angry child and my belly hasn’t recovered since.

I wonder if this feeling is mutual. I wonder if the universe or something in it can’t get over me whenever I struggle with things outside of my control. I think this is what I’m always at odds with, this specter of another, different universe.

My life as a writer can largely be summarized as my saying,

Here,

take this from me. It can no longer live inside me.

I feel this way not just about what it means to write and the act of expulsing or forgiving what’s within, but also when it comes to not writing, as an act of forgetting what’s within. I repeat,

Please, take this from me. I can no longer live inside of it.

Take this moment away from my grasp and make me do something else. Anything else. Until I’ve blamed everyone else and all that’s left is me.

It has always been me. This is why writing isn’t easy. This is a euphemism for my work as a visual artist since.

It was actually my mom who did most of the cooking, and she was the only one who got it thrown back at her.

I yell at men all the time. Dark skin men, light skin men. I’ve yelled at them all these men I don’t know at some point or another on the street for some kind of harassment. * The more physical it became, the older I got.

Something happened, and it’s that nothing did. Il y a quelque chose de tres grave qui m’est arrive. It’s that with my privilege comes the power to repeat generational and institutional trauma. It’s an act of memory. This proximity is exact. It turns out men of color on the street are much more afraid of me than I could ever imagine. I have something to lose these days, but so have the men in my community always. Am I really about justice? Sometimes it can only be had in the street. Sometimes, whiteness must lose and it starts with me.

In private spaces with men I’ve dated, it’s a game of endurance.  I can tell when they want to, but they don’t. And then, when I wanted it to end, I’ve brought out my own jugular. I stuck out the corners of my face like this and pointed to clouds like that. Like a statue or a relic. I’m pointing to them right now. The only way to see it coming is to remember where you come from. Hallelujah, Baudelaire. Sas. But sas never comes.

"The Stranger" by Charles Baudelaire (1821 - 1867)

Tell me, enigmatic man, whom do you love best? Your father, your mother, your sister, or your brother?

- I have neither father, nor mother, nor sister, nor brother.

- Your friends?

- You are using a word whose meaning to this day remains unknown to me.

-Your country?

- I do not know in which latitude it lies.

- Beauty?

- I would love her gladly, goddess and immortal.

- Gold?

- I hate it as you hate God.

- Well then! What do you love, unfathomable stranger?

- I love the clouds… the passing clouds … up there … up there … the marvelous clouds!

—Translated by Sam Taylor, http://poems.com/Poets%27%20Picks%202015/0415_Taylor.html

I wanted there to be no doubt. I was broken, but he tried to break me during him, he tried to make me golden. Hallelujah.

I think this is our role, to also emotionally dive in. Decolonizing includes the utmost compassion and sensitivity. Not a seat on the bleachers.

It took 27 years for my mom and I to love her better.

But that’s not really true. What is true is that every year, it feels like the first time. It is true that love as an adult has taken a large amount of living from me, but it has neither begun nor will it end. Right now, at this moment, I am discovering that its probably supposed to be kind of fluid, right? That the way I love myself has a say in the way we love each other.

Is it crude of me to ask myself which love came first though?

I often take my time with Kanye alone because there are friends and people who say they cannot look past his ego. But as a Black man whose visibility is tied to his wealth, it is not the same thing to parade oneself and to be paraded, and some Chicanxs consider their misunderstanding of this to be neutralizing and progressive.

What we get back in return is what we’ve forgotten. I am currently conversing with Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem. Conversing is a euphemism for reading, but one I find less troublesome.

How is it that we are supposed to be

humble

practice humility

humidfy ourselves when we must always look within

when we are alone,

when loneliness is a lifelong repulsion?

When solitude is a lifelong partner who we (begrudgingly) accommodate (by covering it up in Black slang), it is a euphemism for writing. The only lifelong partner some of us we have. And it is often we who let ourselves down first. This is how I knew I was an adult. How are we supposed to remain humble when we must strengthen ourselves with the same power we are torn down by? To have any ego about the whole thing means to reject some part of the equation.

How are we supposed to work with a city that insists we work for it instead? Los Angeles is the city of contradiction. How do u humidify its intentions? You call it chaparral.

To be Black in LA is to know Chicanx anti-Blackness. To have a small circle of friends and a larger circle of doubt. A degree in LA is to be well versed in white and brown liberalism, or Chicanismo, for short.

No. For some people, like Kanye, it is to strengthen themselves to price match the same power we have torn them down by. This proximity is exact. This is sense. This is now.

This proximity is exactly like love and horror. To talk about one without the other is grotesque, truly grotesque. Some of us don’t understand this. But the contemporary horror genre is an attempt to do so. To understand how you cannot invoke fear without invoking the space where love was supposed to be. But can you invoke love without pointing to where fear lives? A haunting like love takes years. You cannot tell me that you didn’t see it coming.

Racism isn’t humble. Mediocre white and white adjacent Chicanx men are arrogant for far less.

Last night I found out an ex was engaged and with child, all in a quaint picturesque home on top of a hill. This morning, I reread my own line about mediocre white men, and my world continues to turn against itself. I am convinced that if someone as ordinary as he can find idyllic pleasures, then yeah there is hope for me after all.

At the same time, I remember he dumped me because I was too poor, too depressed, and too willing to tax him for it. At the time, I still referred to myself as a brown woman, but I was struggling with how nonsensical and regional it all was. A true IRL non sequitur. To have a white guy make u feel like you’re at once the only white person in the relationship and the only brown one too. It was all so unromantic and not interracial.

It’s not that we are or are not the same. It’s that we won’t implicate ourselves.

It’s that we won’t let u be anything.

We can’t even be ourselves.

The difficultly of living in contradiction. It’s that there’s nothing there. Staring back. It’s that no matter how hard u try to have some respect for urself, all that matters is that the mirror not show u in it. Some of us would rather identify with that emptiness than show up.

We need to honor the people we begrudgingly are because of the people we are not. That there are parts of our surrounding we will never be at one with. Is that idea really so hard to expand with? And if those visions for something other are released. Do we dare.

I think the most painful thing said about me from someone who hurt me was that I never loved them.

No. To be Chicanx in LA, in South Gate is to live largely segregated from other white people and other people of color. Or to not see oneself as one is because Chicanismo in LA is self-salutatory. Self-referential. Self-referencing. Because Chicanismo needs you not to be otherwise. Because Chicanismo can thrive unchallenged.

Yes. To be Chicanx in LA is to build yourself up using the same thing that’s torn down by u.

To be Mexican in southeast Los Angeles is to look at the growing population of Black residents and call them a loss of property value. Some Chicanos here prefer Wal-mart to Black neighbors. Not unlike rural whites in the news. Someone once made the God-awful mistake of calling LA a suburb and now I can’t look away, I can’t undo it!

It is light and dark skin family members understanding where Trump is coming from and trying to break even. Call it mestizaje. Is this some twisted attempt at trying to take responsibility for oneself through punishment and contradiction. Contractions. Self-effacing. Take your pick. LA is a Libra, too. Is this internalized racism? Or a euphemism for it? I don’t understand.

The idea that Kanye is a narcissist is only an illusion about how many accolades we wish to deny him of. It is also an illusion about what we blame him for. In places where Chicanxs do not live in proximity to Black people, we look to Black celebrities and culture figures for clues on how to be less white, more white, Black, not Black. We study borders. We practice how to break them down and fund them back up. We take the barbed wire and make it our own. White supremacy, but make it Mexican.

Someone once made the God-awful mistake of saying South Gate was one of the most racially segregated cities, and now I can’t look away! I can’t undo it.

This essay is a euphemism for self-care and minor exiles. For the way we leave our cities and eachother. It was written in memory of. A memorandum. This essay is not an apology to Chicanos or to Mestizaje. It’s a love poem. Sas.

See also @bad_dominicana (2.0 and 3.0), @rachel.cargle, all Black thought, all Black art, all banality, True Detective season 3, Barbara Tucker – Beautiful People (Underground Network Remix)

 *Sike. I knew some of them, and by their first name. You know their last.

[plaintofu]

The Only Inheritance That Matters

Law is about tradition. Learning legal doctrine, I am slowly realizing after many months of confusion, is an act not too different from the central premise of “The Giver”—it is the downloading of a hive mind into your mind. It is a recoding; it is the thoughts and decisions of others that have come before you and who you are subject to; it is an act of inheritance. 

So, I’ve thought a lot about inheritance, intertwined intimately with the experience of the imposter syndrome. Because inheritance begets some sort of familial relationship—you don’t leave behind your traditions to just anyone. You find the people who are like you, the people who matter. 

I’ve thought about inheritance far more in law school that I ever did as a student of English literature. The literary canon is, on the surface, not too different from legal doctrine; it is the building blocks of language and images that we find so beautiful we keep rewriting the same stories and evoking the same images. Sure, it’s soaked in Western thought, it’s white, it’s patriarchal—but the ultimate concern is about the human experience, and there is something accessible about that. Even for someone like me. I never felt like an imposter in literature (although in hindsight, my younger self really should have worked harder to decolonize the canon), it actually came so easily to me. I felt so much but I was never given the tools to express, then suddenly here was Milton and Faulkner and Woolf and Butler, their feelings overflowing from the page. I had held my breath so long, literature gave me room to breath. 

Law is different, because it concerns itself with systems of power and this makes me hesitate. Its tools are words, but unlike literature which liberates, law is a process of assimilation and it can end with assimilation. Anything beyond that is subversion and subversion is terrifying. 

There is nothing about who I am that I think has really prepared me to be subversive. When I think of the proud tradition I hail from—my mother and grandmother—it is one of resilience, grit, survival, and audacity. The audacity to find space in a system not designed for people like you to exist and to breathe. Much of the immigrant experience, I think, is lived in the footnotes of the main narrative. To assimilate peacefully, to not draw attention, to be one of the desirable immigrants. A doctor, a commercial lawyer, an engineer—someone objectively useful. You can dream, you can create, you can express, but do not bite the hand that feeds. That has always been the unwritten rule we are beholden to.

The imposter syndrome has given me so much anxiety in law school because I have slowly realized that my outlet for creativity has become intertwined with systems of power. There is a voice in my head that screams for me to back away. Stay with the safer subjects, whatever that may be—commercial work or whatever. This is not your fight, it says. And why should it be? There is freedom in the cracks. As a first generation immigrant, I have the culture and language to feel tied to my motherland, but I am not beholden to it. I have a place in America but no need to play anything more than a supporting role. A spot of color in the background. A best friend. A sidekick. A quirky member of the crew. The background character gets to have her own inner life; it doesn’t have to become public, it doesn’t have to drive the story.

This past week has been something of an experiment of experiencing the imposter syndrome in the vacuum of my own head. Being in Cape Town and isolated from the law school, I have been able to observe how my own mind reconstructs the elements of law school that reinforce my imposter syndrome. It’s been a trip. It’s fascinating. 

All week I’ve worked on a written proposal for the Race Law Journal for a symposium that is supposed to make a meaningful contribution to furthering the conversation on civil rights and racial justice in America. It’s the greatest gift and my worst nightmare all rolled up into one. 

That voice in my head takes on the amorphous form of the professors who will be reviewing the proposal—the unidentifiable emblems of power, prestige, and legitimacy—and it tells me my ideas are derivative. It sees through me and knows that I am just barely grasping at a language and tradition that I am not native to, it knows I’m just faking it. It knows I’m jumping in half way in the narrative and pretending like I know what has happened earlier. The voice takes on the form of what I believe to be real activists and it reminds me that I am not black or brown or white—why should you get a role in this narrative larger than a footnote? 

--

I think back to a moment in a class I took on race and the constitution, taught by one of the leading civil rights scholars in the country. We were discussing a case that is over a hundred years old and the foundation of immigration law—Chae Chan Ping v. United States. The plaintiff was a Chinese laborer and, per usual, Asian people usually appear in the doctrine in immigration cases. 

The professor prefaces the discussion by saying, “It’s terrible. I’ve taught this case for years but I never know to abbreviate the case name as Chae v. US or Ping v. US. It’s unclear which one is the last name.” 

I raised my hand, too brazenly for my usual style, and said, “It’s the first one, ‘Chae’.”

“Oh, how do you know?”

I think about the first time I encountered this case, how excited I was to see someone like me featured. How I wondered who this person really was, how I knew his name had probably been brutalized by multiple layers of romanization, and I wondered what his name really was, in its full meaning. Because Chinese names are beautiful, and that beauty is lost when it is transliterated into seemingly nonsensical words in the English alphabet.

“I looked up the Chinese characters,” I replied. 迟成平.

She seemed satisfied and made some intonations along the lines of, of course, and moved on. “Chae v. US.” 

It was a fleeting moment, what could be a nothing moment. But I thought about it in the aftermath. I relived how legal doctrine erases the very people it uses to define itself. I envisioned the decades this professor had used this case to describe the bases of immigration law, never finding a moment to answer this question. I imagined the colleagues she may have encountered who knew enough Chinese to answer this question, I thought about the generations of students who came before me who could have said something and I thought, perhaps, they were smart to stay out of that conversation. They were smart enough to know their place. Either to stay silence, or to know not to take a class on race and the law to begin with. 

Before this exchange took place, I had previously had a conversation with one of the progressive professors on campus about diversity in law school. We both, of course, agreed it was important. Then she let slip, “It’s important for the students to be diverse to remind professors to consider a variety of perspectives.” 

“Or,” I said with some hesitation, “we should just have more diverse professors.”

“Yes, definitely,” she quickly agreed. 

I thought about this conversation after my little “Chae” interaction. I realized, I had become that very student: the “diverse” student that reminds the professor to be a little more inclusive. At first, I was proud that I was able to instruct a professor, but the more that I have thought about it—up until this very moment—the more I hate it and the angrier I feel. I hate having to be that person to explain exoticism. I hate that it is still exotic and perplexing to have an asian plaintiff in a case name. I hate being patted on the head, and made to feel useful. I hate these seemingly harmless interactions that reinforce what my role is in this whole thing—law school, the legal profession, the legal system—a translator. What a joke.

--

Interestingly enough, working as a translator was what got my mom her green card, despite her graduate degree in computer science. And there is nothing wrong with survival, between the cracks, in the background, as the mediator between the relevant people in the conversation. But, I would like to think we have moved on from that. That we no longer have to earn our place by being a useful tool. 

I don’t condone acting out on anger, but I think anger can be instructive, I think it can be telling. And sometimes my anger overrules my imposter syndrome, and I think, of course I am uncomfortable here, of course I resist this act of inheritance—because I don’t even want what they’re giving me. I don’t want to be a successor and I don’t want to continue business as usual. It’s true that I am new to this conversation of legal doctrine and civil rights and racial justice and I have a lot to learn, but I am not new to the concept of dignity and doing what I believe is right. Beyond resilience, beyond survival, my mother has taught me what it means to fight for your own dignity and the dignity of others. It’s what makes us human, it is the fight that matters.

I am learning to carry this reminder in my heart when I feel afraid, and small, and out of place. I am trying to rewrite my narrative and remind myself that, in fact, it is not in my tradition to opt out of this fight. All along, my mother has subverted every system she has been in. She has learned it, and operated within it, but she has never allowed it to change her and I think she has only become more of herself with time. This is the tradition I choose to follow, and the only inheritance that matters to me. 

[driftwooddragons]

Re: that post you reblogged about racism in Europe: Coming from Europe I have been taught my whole life that the definition of racism is ‘treating people as if different races are a thing and theirs is inferior’. And in most of Europe, last time the word ‘race’ was considered acceptable it was used by the Nazis in the biological sense, and people who look very white like the Polish, Sami etc. were seen as inferior races. I’m not trying to pick a fight or excuse racism in any form here, 1/2

I guess I just don’t understand how treating people as if they’re a different RACE is not racism, or why it’s seen as a problem that it can ALSO include white people. (Also I’m not from an English-speaking country, so maybe this is an Anglophone-non-Anglophone cultural way of seeing things, IDK.) Anyway I love your blog, hope you’re having a nice day! 2/2

(Your last anon here again) I realized my last asks maybe came across as racism-apologist, and I’m sorry! I’m just trying to understand, because having always been told that anyone can be racist to anyone else who is not part of their ethnic group, it’s very confusing and a little disturbing to encounter this idea that you can’t be racist to white people. It feels like it’s making light of the struggles some people here have faced and still face, and leaves a bad taste in my mouth… IDK

________________________

Yeah, so I don’t think I’m qualified to speak to this either. 

But let’s think through it together - but if someone more qualified comes along, then we’ll listen to them instead of my ramblings….

I think what it comes down to is different cultures/languages have different definitions of racism.

So, for instance, in my mind, you can’t be racist against white people because they’re the dominate/oppressive group. Now, this isn’t to say that white people never experience being a hated group - but that hatred would be called xenophobia or prejudice.

Like, racism packs with it an idea of superiority/inferiority and systematic oppression. 

Of course, this then gets into the problem of culture… like, Hitler DID see Slavic people as inferior to those of German and Scandinavian decent… and he attempted to oppress them because of that. That’s racism - because he did see them as a different race. So… how does that work? Is it only racism if your beliefs are THAT extreme?

I guess the real question is are MODERN prejudices against white people of certain nationalities called racism or are they called xenophobia? I think that’s the argument that the post I reblogged was making - that maybe it was racism in the past (when people not only believed race was a thing, but also had really extreme ideas about what the “races” were), but these days it’s not racism - it’s just cultural xenophobia.

Like, does a random British person look down on the Greeks because they think they’re a separate race of people who are inherently/genetically inferior… or is it because Greek culture is foreign to British culture and they don’t understand it, so they dislike the people? 

I think the argument is that it’s the latter… so, modern “racism against white people” in Europe is actually xenophobia. Whereas, historically, Hitler WAS a huge racist, because he saw everyone who wasn’t “aryan” as an inferior race.

So, it’s exactly as you say - people who think race is a thing and act to oppress are racists, people who just dislike others because they are different are xenophobic.  

THEN we get into systematic racism…. where modern culture/society is still recovering from many many years of extreme racism towards people of colour… And as a result, our culture/society (whether you’re in north america or europe) is STILL really racist towards people of colour. So, the society itself, the way it’s set up, the way it subconsciously educates us, is very dependent on skin colour…

And I think this is where you don’t want to use the same word for the prejudice that a white Polish person in Britain might encounter to the systematic racism that… let’s say a dark-skinned Algerian in Paris might encounter. The racism in America/Canada can be seen WAY more starkly in living conditions of various minorities… and I can’t speak to what it’s like in Europe… but I do know that you have similar problems in the Paris area with housing projects and such.  And on that note, this also gets into colonization/decolonization arguments… and yeah, I’m REALLY not able to speak to that.

So, what have my blatherings brought us… that modern day, I think all people know that race isn’t actually a thing, therefore, when they’re hating on particular groups of white people, it’s because they’re xenophobic. HOWEVER, modern day society is built on hundred of years of extreme racism towards people of colour and it’s still reflected in our society and we’re still influenced by it (think about representation in media, children’s books, toys, etc) and as a result, when someone is hating on a person of colour, it’s more than likely either consciously or unconsciously fueled by racism, rather than xenophobia. 

For instance, think of that dude saying that Idris Elba was not “English enough” to play Bond, when Bond was played by a Scotsman and Irishman in the past…. what makes Idris less English than an Irish person? Is it because his parents were from Africa? Irdis was born and raised in England. How many generations do you have to live in England before you’re “English enough?” If Idris’ parents were white Polish people, would we be even having this conversation?  So, you sort of see the difference in the xenophobic prejudice that someone from Eastern Europe might face and the racist prejudice that anyone non-white might face.

Like, we’re all still racist whether we want to be or not. Because of the legacy of racism, we have to work really hard to NOT be racist. If you’re not consciously not being racist, then you’re probably being racist. The irony is that consciously not being racist makes you feel like a racist, because you want to live in a perfect world where you don’t need to have the thought “am I being racist right now?” But we ALWAYS have to have that thought.

Anyway, my point is, I apologize if I am racist. And I’m not claiming I’m right about any of this… this is me, just trying to work through language and terminology and how it relates to society and cultural differences.

I’m also coming at this from a largely North American perspective - although I have lived in Europe, it was very briefly. I’ve also studied European history A LOT, but that doesn’t tell me that much about what today is like - and today is kind of a cesspit with this weird resurgence of nationalism and xenophobia. 

(Though, that does remind me that when I went to an anti-nazi rally in Germany when I lived there, they did use the German word for xenophobia rather than racism, when they described the nazi’s beliefs…. not sure if that matters. It was over 10 years ago now.)

[scorpioslut-blog1]

Stupid social media

It’s probably been a year... two years... who knows? I’m still at college or whatever, oversharing with pseudo anonymity on tumblr, incapable of journaling like normal or dedicated depressed emo art hoes have been doing for centuries... 

Anyways, I guess I went off social media mostly for the first time in my life... temporarily deactivated twitter (until christmas) and instagram (until further notice), still have my finsta which i'm sworn off of, my spam ~aesthetic~ account which literally keeps me going, my art acct which is sort of stagnant as the moment as i dive into my new hobby/class mandated photography obsession, and my new food diary instagram which is pretty lame and literally just for me to reflect on eating habits. oh i'm on adderall right now. which i looove... it just feels good, ur mind feels good, u think hard but like i feel like i could write a novel, clean my room, text everyone i need to catch up with, or i dont know, write on tumblr like a teenager (i’m 21 fucking years old now). Anyway I’ve been thinking a lot recently about anger.... anger as a coping mechanism, justified anger, repressed anger, anger at yourself, hatred for yourself. anger that is productive and unproductive. at cal, anger at white people, at men, at the world, at people. i’m also thinking a lot about paul, the founder of the palestine decal that i’m taking. and how he spoke to our class on tuesday and explained how israelis, like 18 year olds in the IDF, are taught to hate, are conditioned to hate--not even hate--dehumanize. like how by the time an israeli teenager turns 18 they have already been trained for the military--not physically, but psychologically--to see palestinians as less than human. he frames settler colonialism and israeli occupation of palestine as not an ethnic conflict, not ideological, not religious, or cultural--but about LAND. israelis are murdering, dispelling, bombing, etc. palestinians for the cold, painfully simple reason that they are on land that israel wants. it is not because israelis hate palestinians. while that may be true for many individuals, in which israelis may be racist or islamophobic or for whatever reason hate palestinians or see them as less than, that thought process is a result of government conditioning and hegemony. while america is, in some ways, its own unique case study of cultural, religious, ethnic, social, economic “diversity”, paul also said that we’re all the same. in that, there is nothing unique about the palestine/israel instance compared to, say, the british in south africa. or in india. or australia. or the US in the americas or hawaii or the caribbean. there is nothing unique about palestine/israel, except that their colonization was put in a historical context so close to our current timeframe that we are forced to analyze it as if it were an anomaly. but that’s besides the point. anyway, anger. and hate. in america, it made me think a lot about two communities i was somewhat a part of, whether i felt like it or not---percussionville and berkeley. and how similar they are, and how different i feel in both. back home, i was so angry. i was soooo angry. angry at my parents for putting me there, angry at the people i went to school with, angry at admin, at my teachers, at my peers, at boys, at girls, at white people, at the government, just angry. and i stayed angry in college. i removed myself from that environment but still it haunted me. i never let go of that anger, it blinded me, i couldnt even allow myself to process those four years. and i was still so colonized and following a series of unfortunate events, or fate, or my own hypocrisy or internalized white supremacy, i was surrounded by all white friends, while still trying to understand my own relationship to whiteness, how i was similar to my white friends but also how they could never understand. so i was just blindly angry at white people--and after i stopped being friends with them, anger was almost how i coped. and the poc friends i found myself building relationships with shared this anger, encouraged it. they were angry too, for different reasons but also the same, in different contexts, different levels of anger, manifestations, outbursts, and copings. it was easy to hate these individual white people. before, it was easy for me to hate the idea of white people. in high school i hated white people, but i was always surrounded by them, friends with them because there were no other options really. i mean, i was literally living in it. people here don’t get that, i think, except other poc who really were that heavily immersed in that. like i didnt have a choice. isolation is hard. i spent a lot of high school alone, of course, but i'm a social creature no matter how hard i try and fight it. and this summer i think the idea of hating individual white people for the ways in which they wronged you was almost glorified. and i understand that people are angry. but our anger is all different. i can never even begin to understand the anger of a Black person, especially a Black woman, or a woman who has been sexualized constantly for her beauty, objectified and harassed her whole life, or someone who is currently decolonizing and realizing how much they had ignored or allowed their whole lives... these are just examples of people i think about when i try to think about others’ anger. but my anger is my own. i experience it in my own ways; i have been angry my whole life. i think i came out of the womb angry. i've always just been an angry person, and been suppressing it my whole life. that resulted in me mostly being angry at myself my whole life. and the world. i've had healthy anger, misplaced anger, toxic anger, unjustified anger, genetic anger. and i truly believe that healing is knowing how to cope with this lifelong anger, anguish, sadness. i was angry this summer. i was angry because it seemed like the only way to cope, to be angry at the people who i had failed to set boundaries with, people i had hurt, people who had hurt and confused me. angry at white people, men, starting drunken fights at parties, outside bars... 

anyway, that was a huuuge tangent but my point is. in relation to the palestine decal guy, paul. he’s a few years older than us, and he was clearly still angry as well. angry at the university, for starters, angry at hypocrisy. but the surprising thing to me was that he did not seem angry at israelis. which is a good thing. and he has every right to be angry, to hate the 18 year old IDF soldier, despite the fact that this might be all they’ve ever known, despite the fact that hate is taught, despite the fact that there might not be anything to make that soldier change, or to change how they see paul. but he wasn’t angry. he didn’t blame individuals. he said this was structural, that zionism was not judaism, despite the constant conflation of the two, especially at cal, especially with people who sit in the same classrooms as us every day. it’s easy to be angry. i’ve been angry at so many people. and i have always accepted that i am flawed, i hurt others, people are angry at me. but i don’t know. i don’t know how it is productive for me to be angry. most recently i got angry at felix. and i definitely am still frustrated by him and don’t think it’s even worth talking about at the moment, or that i have the capacity, but i don’t want to be angry at him. i love him, miss him, wish him the best. just texted him that i miss him actually. anyway, on anger--i tried to make him hold my anger, and just sort of lashed out on him over text. which isnt really productive. at the time i was going through a lot with other people, and i think i was so frustrated with always being painted the bad guy that i wanted someone else to hold my anger. i have held others’ anger, and tried to understand it, so i guess i just wanted someone to do the same for me. it did feel good to yell at him honestly. but anyway. back to my point. 

i think about where i'm from, where i grew up, and i have to claim it. i’ve been so angry for the past two years, running away from that place and everything about it. coming to a place that seemed so drastically different at first, but eventually realizing that everywhere is, in many ways, the same. like paul said. i can’t be angry at felix, even if it’s warranted, even if my friends applaud me on the text i sent him. i mean i can. i can be angry at my old friends. but i dont know. i just am so so tired. i'm old. i'm 21.