#I don't know enough about indigenous peoples

[vigilskept]

the whole "if you're still criticising datv after six months get a life" spiel that the datv stans are spewing now is so annoying like sorry if the game i waited a literal decade for being bad has a lasting effect on my enjoyment of the series lmao, not every criticism is just baseless haterism

honestly on some level i can empathise with frustration at seeing endless waves of criticism about a game you enjoy. another anon i haven't posted (sorry anon) was talking about how people should just embrace that they like a game that's widely panned & i think that's true but also people are human. if it makes you feel like people are shitting in your cheerios then fine, fair enough. if you want to avoid it all, blacklist the veilguard critical tag, mass block blogs that post meta in that tag... well i'm not sure how healthy that is, but this is literally a hobby you're engaging in for fun. so. no one will stop you! it's definitely healthier than lying about people on the internet.

but it should be self-evident that every critical engagement with the game is not going to be baseless haterism, just as it should be self-evident that every positive engagement with the game is not corporate dicksucking. this meta on how bellara's quest can be read as diasporic jewish story is one i still think about all the time. i had a completely different take on that quest reading it mostly though the indigenous-coding lens and this really made me look at it in a new light.

what i've said from the beginning and still stand by now is that meta should be read and judged based on its own merits. not on whether that person's opinions are more positive/critical. not on whether they've signalled their identity to you on their profile (seriously. you have to stop assuming shit about people who you don't know!)

the point of meta is to engage with the text, so consider how each post engages with the text. it can truly be that simple!

[spiderwarden]

where are your rules

one of three whole easily acceptable links in my theme, Nonnie. I believe in you.

[dragon-in-a-fez]

I've been playing Stellaris for 8 years and this is absolutely the wildest fucking galaxy I've ever seen

I'll try to explain this so people who don't know the game will understand it.

my empire, the Fen, spawned in a totally isolated part of the galaxy, sandwiched between, on one side, an ancient empire with technology centuries ahead of mine and no interest in letting me through their borders, and on the other, a "devouring swarm" species that kept trying to eat me. so I basically hunkered down behind a whole bunch of defense platforms and didn't meet anyone else until halfway through the game.

that situation lured me into a false sense of calm.

about an hour into the game, another ancient empire from the other side of the galaxy "awakened", slaughtered the devouring swarm in less than five minutes, and started closing in on my borders right around the time a violent warlord popped into the middle of my territory through a wormhole.

shortly after this I accidentally imploded my home planet into a black hole.

then, because apparently I had accidentally set the "crisis" option to "ALL", the galaxy was attacked by:

ghost invaders from the dimension where telepathy happens

a rogue AI that made half the robots in the galaxy turn evil

a "scourge" from outside the galaxy intent on consuming everything, including my ships

another rogue AI that wants to erase all consciousness from the universe

in response to this I leaned hard on my bioengineering technology and created a sort of space Godzilla the size of a planet. the entire galactic community then decided that makes me the real problem, and every single civilisation declared war on me.

I evolved my space Godzilla until it got big enough to eat planets, at which point a sort of space Cthulhu emerged and started rampaging through the galaxy trying to challenge it for dominance.

so now, I'm just running around eating planet after planet trying to make my space Godzilla strong enough to fight space Cthulhu, basically doing ranked competitive genocide with the other remaining crisis factions. the galactic population has dropped by like 70%. a dozen empires have fallen. my economy is crashing because apparently this situation is bad for trade and general citizen morale. somewhere there's a planet that keeps sending me notifications because the indigenous species is about to achieve FTL travel and I'm just like. oh buddy. pal. you do not want to be out here.

[unsolicited-opinions]

The Israel thing confuses the shit out of me, I've gotta say.

I consider myself left wing politically. Pretty darn left. (Or what I thought "left" meant.) I have voted for progressive parties/candidates in every election (local, national, EU-wide) since I was legally able to do so. I am a Pride-flag-waving lesbian, a feminist (I legally changed my surname to my mothers last name in solidarity when I was still a teenager!), a vegan, an environmentalist (I don't drive a car, I don't fly, my home is fossil fuel free, powered entirely by wind and solar generated electricity) and a union member. I'm very careful about everything I buy, always looking for the most ethical option. No "fast fashion". No Twitter since Musk took over. No Amazon Prime.

I try pretty hard, every day, to walk the walk, y'know? Not just talk the talk. I try to live my beliefs. Not just perform them. Even though it is often inconvenient. (Having to constantly look stuff up. See where my money would be going. Check for bad business practices. Who owns what. Who do they vote for. Who do they donate to. How and where is it made. Who made it. How are they treated. What's the carbon footprint. What's the energy efficiency rating. Etc, etc, etc.)

When the October 7th attacks on Israel happened, I immediately realised 'I don't know enough about this' and so started reading about the history (and present) of Israel and Palestine. There were things I felt I needed to know and understand before I threw my lot in with anyone.

One of the earliest things I learned was that Israel existed before Palestine (fact one. And it seemed important.) and Jewish people existed thousands of years before there were Muslims. I learned (fairly quickly and not in great depth) about the Hebrew Bible, the Bar Kokba revolt, the origins of Islam, the Arab conquest of the Levant, the Edict of Expulsion, the Alhambra decree, the 19th century pogroms and the Pale of Settlement, Theodor Herzl and the origins of Zionism, WW1 and the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the Holocaust, the first Arab/Israeli war, Black September, the Munich Olympics, the first and second intifada, Hamas and Fatah, culture and laws in modern Israel...

I feel like I did my homework. And I concluded, given what I had read, that I was quite broadly on Israel's side. It seemed to me that the Jewish people have every right to be there. Israel has every right to exist. It's where the Jewish people originated. They purchased land there legally. They achieved polity and declared independence. They have fought and won wars over it. What more could anyone ask for? They're indigenous to the land, they have always been there (to a greater or lesser degree), the ones who left paid for the land when they returned, they fought wars for the land and won. What other ways can they prove or earn their right to be there? They have done more to "earn" their existence on that land than any other people on Earth.

I do not understand the "left"'s antipathy toward Israel, Israelis or Zionism. It makes no sense to me.

Yes, war is awful. Of course. Innocent people dying is awful. Of course. But that does not seem to be what is being protested. It is Israel's very existence that they object to. And I do NOT understand that. I have tried. I have read what I believe to be a fairly thorough account of the history of the land and its people. And I simply cannot get onboard with what my comrades (...) on the left are saying and doing. It just does not make sense to me. It doesn't fit.

And at the moment (since October 2023) it is in all left wing spaces. Feminist bookshops I once frequented. Environmental organizations I was once a member of. Pride parades I once marched in. All are now obsessed with the BDS movement and bashing Israel and Zionists. And it's not even a question. It's just a given. If you are a feminist or queer or an environmentalist you must also (obviously!) hate Israel. And I just cannot logically understand WHY.

Jews don't often encounter non-Jewish progressives these days who can be normal about Jews, rational about Israel, and see what we see...so I can't tell you how much I appreciate this and you, Anon.

Thank you for sharing these thoughts.

I have so much respect for the integrity required to tell oneself "I don't know enough to have an opinion, so I'm going to make an effort to learn more."

I can count the non-Jews I know who have done that on one hand.

The LGBTQ+ Jews I know (including family) all tell me that while they feel secure, safe, and included as LGBTQ+ persons in Jewish spaces, they don't feel at all safe as Jews in LGBTQ+ spaces, and that breaks my heart because I know how important that sense of community is to my LGBTQ+ family and friends and I understand how much that loss must hurt.

Like most of us, LGBTQ+ Jews are liberals who thought they shared values with other progressives until October 7th taught us that while we might have felt solidarity with them, they didn't feel solidarity with us...and jumped at the opportunity to feel righteous about being hateful.

Many (perhaps most) of us similarly lost communities because you're right that all the progressive spaces aren't just unthinkingly hostile and willfully ignorant, but actively hateful and parroting Jew-hatred tropes from the middle ages, the Czars, the Soviets, and a Fuhrer. In liberal spaces. While claiming to be progressives. While claiming to be AntiFa. While claiming to despise Nazis and bigotry. While allying themselves with Islamist movements which favor genital mutilation, child brides, and honor killings.

If you'd like to get in touch without the anonymity, I'd welcome that - because I'd like to see more of your writing.

Again, thank you. This made my day.

[phoenixyfriend]

MOTHERFUCKERS

Hi, if you're new here, I'm Nixy. I've spent the past five months trying to bully Colourpop, a cosmetics company known for their collaborations, into doing the right thing.

Today, I received the email on the left. I checked instagram to be sure, and lo and behold, they're advertising it there, too. Presumably, they are also doing so on tiktok, but I don't have that app.

Do me a favor, and go to one of the linked socials, or their online email contact form, and let them know you're even more angry and disappointed about this than about the HP thing. This isn't about which franchise has done more harm, but about the stage of the collaborations themselves. The HP Collab is a dying project that's been constantly on sale for half a year and, most likely, was just being advertised in a last-ditch attempt to dump backstock before it expires; it was in bad taste, but not too likely to have a direct impact on the minority group we know it harms. I'm especially sure of this because they only advertised that sale by email, not on the socials.

The Twilight collaboration is alive and well, being restocked, being advertised, and actively banking on the marketing of an indigenous population without any kind of benefit to the tribe. The least that Colourpop could do, since I imagine they can't back out of the contract, is donate a portion of their profits to the fundraiser. That would probably do a lot more to help the tribe than just cancelling the collaboration entirely anyway!

Mention that people have been asking them to make a statement on this issue for a good year and a half now.

Mention that between this and the HP collab and other questionable projects, they are losing goodwill by the day among people who previously trusted that they were trying to act with ethics and transparency.

Mention that the Quileute Move to Higher Ground project has been struggling for years to put together the funds to move their entire community away from the danger of rising sea levels. They've managed to move the school, but they still need to build new housing... especially because companies have been buying up their houses to establish as AirBNBs since it's a tourist area. They've also bought up all the properties in Forks, WA, for the same reason, which means fewer people actually hiring Quileute workers.

Because of Twilight.

These people are being forced to leave their homes in part because of the franchise that Colourpop is collaborating with. They have not seen any money directly from the way SMeyer used their tribe, and any possible benefits of tourism have been far outweighed by the aforementioned airbnb issue.

Colourpop is a big company, but it's not a giant. It's got enough going for it that you can safely assume you're not going to ruin a person's life and livelihood by hassling the contact forms, but it's not so big that it's impossible to budge them.

Let's try to make at least something happen. It might not be much, but please just send an email or leave a comment on their socials. Reblog this post so other people know what's going on.

[boreal-sea]

So from what I've seen there are four main excuses American leftist non-Jews use to deny indigeneity for diaspora Jews.

Most of them agree Jews were indigenous 2,000 years ago, but some think the Jews who were forced out of Israel during the past 2,000 years have "lost" their indigeneity in some way. In other words, they don't think diaspora Jews have a right to claim indigeneity to the Jewish homeland.

Some of them think that converts and/or external marriages have "diluted" diaspora Jewish bloodlines too much, and diaspora Jews are now a "different race" or "different ethnicity" from the "original Jews". They may even consider some diaspora Jews to be "white", which means they think those Jews definitely can't claim indigeneity.

Some of them think the fact that diaspora Jews absorbed parts of other cultures means they are no longer the "same kind of Jews" that originally came from the region, and this means they have changed too much to be considered the same culture, and thus they cannot return to their homeland.

Some just think "too much time has passed". It doesn't matter that diaspora Jews didn't choose to leave, nor does it matter that people prevented them from returning until very recently. Time is time, and too much time has passed. Indigeneity gone.

Finally, I have seen some argue that birthplace or citizenship is what matters. They say, "you can't be indigenous to a place you weren't born in". I've seen some claim that being born as a citizen of a country or becoming a citizen of a country erases any prior ethnic, cultural, national, indigenous, or religious ties they and their family may have had. For example, they think Jews born in America are American, and have zero right to say they have any ties to anywhere else.

Basically, for whatever reason, they don't think diaspora Jews are "native Jews" anymore, and thus they don't belong in their homeland.

...

I wonder though.

Do they know the difference between an ethnicity and a race? Do they know what an ethnoreligion is? Do they know how Jews view converts?

Do they think certain Jewish ethnic groups get to have a claim to indigeneity while others don't? Why do they think that as a non-Jew they get to have any say in that?

If they think the indigeneity of diaspora Jews has "expired" due to how long Jews have been living in the diaspora, do they think the indigeneity of ALL displaced indigenous peoples can "expire", or does this rule only apply to Jews?

If they believe indigeneity expires, when does it expire? After 200 years? What about 500 years? 1000?

If a colonized country with a displaced indigenous population waits long enough, will it be OK to tell those displaced people, "Sorry, you've been gone from the parts of the continent you were originally from for too long. Even though it wasn't your choice to leave, and even though we have prevented you from returning, you have no right to claim that as your homeland anymore". Is that acceptable?

When does a population living in a forced diaspora have no right to return home?

[vermiciousyidreborn]

So people keep assuring me that Palestinians are also indigenous to the southern levant and...well, I admit I'm skeptical of this. Like, I'm NOT advocating expelling them or genocide, etc. Those are all bad, just questioning the notion of indigeneity here. Mostly as a consequentialist. If Palestinians are indigenous to the Levant, that seems to imply other things. Let's think through this.

We're going to set aside the UN notion of indigenous because that's crafted to exclude Jews and often enough this is a statement by people who reject that and consider Jews to be indigenous, they're often saying both groups are. So...I guess that means something like "A group is indigenous to the region where they underwent ethnogenesis" so we'll take that as our definition of indigeneity. Jews are indigenous to the Levant, check. We're good. Arabs are indigenous to Arabia. All makes sense.

So, anyway, what's an ethnic group? From Wikipedia:

An ethnicity or ethnic group is a group of people who identify with each other on the basis of perceived shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Those attributes can include a people of a common language, culture, common sets of ancestry, traditions, society, religion, history, or social treatment.[

Ok, so common language, culture, traditions, history, etc.

So European American Protestants are indigenous to North America? Common history (going back to the 1600s!), identify as a group, believe they have a common culture (even if we need to break things up more finely, you can find common cultures, say, New England, or Midwest, wee American Nations), common language (English, which I will posit is part of why there's basically a moral panic about Spanish and has been almost my entire life, in much of the country). Note that an ethnicity "can include" and doesn't need ALL of these things.

So it seems pretty solid that European American Protestants are, at the least, a collection of ethnic groups unique to North America. Which means they did ethnogenesis here. Which means they're indigenous now.

So...let's be clear, to me this is a reductio ad absurdam. OF COURSE white US protestants are not indigenous to North America! But I've yet to see definitions that mark Palestinian Arabs as indigenous to the Levant without also implying that white Americans are indigenous to fucking Ohio (along with the rest of the country).

Especially when you consider that white american protestant as an identity in this sense is older than a distinct Palestinian identity. It just brings us to the eternal questions that the Israeli/Palestinian conflict brings up and that people REALLY don't want to discuss:

When, if ever, does indigeneity expire? Personally, I think it doesn't, and Jews are and will always be indigenous to the Levant, just like the Cherokee Nation is indigenous to the US Southeast, even though they've been displaced. Though I know many "Pro-Palestine" activists implicitly believe indigeneity does expire, at least for Jews, but even if I weren't Jewish, I wouldn't want that precedent set because it would fuck over EVERYONE

When does a colonizer become indigenous to the place they colonized? This is rarely discussed, but lies implicitly behind a lot of things. Again, I want to avoid setting bad precedents, but I don't see how Palestinian Arabs can have hit this threshold and white people in the US haven't, which leads me to reject the idea that colonizers can ever become indigenous, at least while holding onto the identity that did the colonization (White and Arab, respectively, hell, White Christian and Arab Muslim if we want to get more specific).

Now, I don't believe colonizers need to be killed or expelled, I'm generally against violence outside of self-defense, but I do think that the rhetoric we use matters, and I want to interrogate it.

[paarthursass]

Mizrak is someone who is incapable of confronting his own insecurities and doubts in a healthy way, and I almost can't blame him for that. He's discovered that the order he pledged himself to was a tool for evil, that he was a tool for evil. And this further causes him to doubt his own place in God's kingdom: what does it mean for his soul? What does it mean about God's mercy? These questions are broad and big and scary, and he doesn't have the tools around him to properly grapple with them: the Abbott is a lost cause, Tera is dead, he doesn't know Juste or Alucard enough to confide in them these things, and Maria and Richter are children.

So what does he do instead? He takes it out on Olrox.

Mizrak is downright vicious with Olrox. He repeatedly calls him an animal, an evil creature. When Olrox opens up to him about the Spanish invasion of his homeland, Mizrak responds with disdain that his gods must not have been powerful enough. I don't think these jabs are truly about Olrox (however pointed and vile they are; plenty of others have pointed out how loaded it is for Mizrak to call Olrox (an Indigenous man) a soulless animal, when that kind of language was used to justify the genocide of Indigenous people. And responding to Olrox speaking about the genocide of his people with a derisive "your gods were wrong" is also uncomfortably in line with rhetoric used during these ethnic cleansings). I think Mizrak is externalizing his own insecurities and projecting them onto the closest, most convenient punching bag. He can't confront his own insecurities about his soul (not until he's on his deathbed at least), so he tears at Olrox's instead. He can't outright say he's doubting his own God, so he insults Olrox's gods instead.

And though I'm sure Olrox did what he thought was a kindness, sparing Mizrak's soul, cheating the Devil for him...based on how we have seen Mizrak react to other vampires, I doubt he'll see it the same way (at least at first.)

Because now, Mizrak, Mr "Loves Projecting His Own Problems Onto Other People" is going to have the perfect reason to double down on using Olrox as his punching bag for his own fears.

Now Olrox is the one who damned him. Now Olrox is the one who barred him from God's Kingdom.

And what's even sadder, is based on how he's handled Mizrak's previous barbs...I think Olrox is going to let him.

[ifishouldvanish]

The idea of Olrox being from Cholula specifically makes me so insane. Like would he have identified more as Mexica? Or as Tlaxcaltec? Would he have been loyal to the Tlaxcaltec and allied with the Spanish only to get screwed over like his Mohican lover did in the colonies? Would he have done so thinking he could get the upper hand in the end just like Mizrak/Emmanuel thought the Order could with Erzsebet?

"He thinks the devils he manufactures will be enough to destroy her when the time comes. What do you think? Do you think he's right?" - S1E4

Even after the fall of Tenochtitlan, nobility from all over the region would have been sent to Cholula to get the blessing of Cholulan priests for their legitimacy. How might this have fueled his disdain for nobility?

Olrox: "I prefer my blood blue."

Drolta: "Maybe you do things differently in the new world, but over here we don't feed off the wealthy. The locals will start to grumble." - S1E5

As a Mexica citizen, this disdain could come from resentment toward sumptuary laws, the increasing lack of socioeconomic mobility during Moctezuma's rule, and frustration with how he handled the Spanish... But as a Cholulan sympathetic to Tlaxcala, there's so much more???

It could come from frustration with leadership that defected from the very people who helped them elude Mexica rule in the years before the Spanish conquest. Anger at a decision that economically obliterated the Tlaxcaltec, who became completely surrounded by Mexica member-states? Regret at how much it cost them to 'overthrow' the Mexica? Grief at how this kind of political/military opportunism helped lead the wider indigenous population to its demise?? Like the latter is so much more thematically ripe for a show tackling colonialism and imperialism imo???

"This one? He was just an opportunist, following the Messiah because she's powerful." - S1E4

I mean!!?? Think about how the implications of all of this... *gestures wildly* stuff would lead him to adopt such a cynical, morally ambiguous worldview? This sense that it's all doomed, that he's not strong enough to fight it? Resist and fall to your enemies, or work with them only to lose parts of your identity in the process? Think about how the brutality of the Cholula massacre recontextualizes eurocentric perceptions of the brutality of flower wars and ritual sacrifice??? How it would leave you with anger and pain and an unyielding need for justice?

"Little boy Belmont. I know that feeling. That pain, that hate, that burning, unendurable need for retribution." - S1E1

Think about how the Mexica Empire had adopted Huitzilopochtli (war, sacrifice) as their primary patron deity, and the Tlaxcaltec Mixcoatl/Camaxtli (the hunt, fire)... Yet Olrox's form seems to be based on Quetzalcoatl (wind, knowledge, rebirth, among other things)–the deity the great temple at Cholula was dedicated to.

A handful of mesoamerican deities are associated with serpents/have names ending in '-coatl', but Olrox's serpent form clearly has a feathered crest—the 'quetzal-' in Quetzalcoatl.

But Olrox's abilities also seem to include lightning/thunder, which are associated with Tlaloc, who the Cholulans seemed to have adopted as their central deity some time before the Spanish conquest.

Quetzalcoatl is only associated with storms sort of tangentially, through his aspect as the wind god, Ehecatl. The Florentine Codex refers to Quetzalcoatl-Ehecatl as sweeping the roads to make way for the rain and the thunder.

Think about how in Tlaxcaltec accounts, Cholula–being a sacred city–had no real military to speak of and depended on their gods to protect them???

Mizrak: "There's only one God. Just one. That's the only thing I'm sure of. And I've spent my whole life serving him, fighting for him. That hasn't changed, and it never will." Olrox: "One god... And you think he can protect you?" - S1E4

Like... What does it all mean???? 🫠🫠🫠

Agshsjdkdkfll *screams into a pillow* I am so excited for season 2 but whatever happens Cholulan Olrox is canon in my heart y'all

[mucking-faori]

Venting here but it's been deeply frustrating since the treaty principles bill came out to see just how wilfully misinformed a lot of people are. I mean, I expected it of the right, have all my life, and I /know/ a lot wasn't taught in schools, but you know what? Most NZ schools don't teach you deep leninism or about the electoral college, and yet I keep running into kiwi commies who can explain roe v Wade back to front but not who Hone Heke was.

This one time, it's become a social media trend, and I certainly appreciate it right now, but will it stick around when this is no longer a hot button issue? Will people examine the racism running deeply through this country beyond tiktok history rundowns and taking selfies with their meme signs?

Kiwis are so proud of our history of resistance and how good "we" have been to our indigenous people. "We" ensured the language stayed alive. "We" ensured Maori had land rights. But Te Piringa at the office never /complained/ about how we say her name, so we don't /really/ need to learn. And oh, this brown boy is so well /spoken/, using big words like "egregious"!

This refusal to confront uncomfortable truths is partly what allowed David Seymour and the rest of the coalition to stir up so much misinformation and hate. Too many new Zealanders don't know enough basic national history to immediately refute what Seymour is saying because they've spent their lives comfortable not knowing, and now they're playing catch up.

I'm praying people catch up and /keep learning after that/. After Maori politics, and the whole Maori /world/ stops being a trend. Even if something else happens in america that makes pakeha feel less uncomfortable to learn about because NZ looks great by comparison.

Anyway. Peace and love peace and love. Thanks for reading my rant. Check out Te Ara dot com.

[sophie-frm-mars]

The Cass Review, and what we can do about it

The UK government is making decisive moves toward banning trans healthcare outright. The NHS says it is adjusting its policies to be in line with the "cass report", a pseudoscientific report written by a transphobe that goes as far as to claim that little boys playing with trucks and little girls playing with dolls is biological, and which disregards dozens of scientifically sound previous studies into HRT and trans healthcare in order to reach its conclusions that trans healthcare for under 25s should be radically changed to discourage transition at every turn and make it as hard as possible for young people to transition.

These moves will kill countless young trans people. I would not have made it to 25 if healthcare wasn't available and I know so many other trans people wouldn't have either.

The mainstream reporting in the UK is keeping itself ideologically cohesive by claiming that trans people exist, nobody hates them, and they're very rare, and the big problem is the explosion of new cases of not-really-trans people who are clogging up the system (this is a lie, the system has been intentionally slowed by malicious neglect, it isn't even a resource issue, the clinics have far more capacity than the number of patients who are let through)

Once again, this is genocidal and is actually a commonplace methodology of genocide. The nazis asked GRT people to help them understand which Traveller families were "real" travellers and which were the fake ones, since they insisted it was only the fake ones who were the problem and who had to be exterminated (because a lot of nazi GRT policy was based on American indigenous reservation policy).

Labour, the main opposiiton party in the UK, has announced it will "follow the Cass Report", and implement these restrictions on trans healthcare once in government.

For the survival of young trans people, robust community structures must be developed immediately.

Efforts to change the electoral situation will proceed at a snail's pace and will be entirely at the whims of what is politically expedient. It will turn around, but it will take a long time. At the voting level, everyone in the UK who cares about trans people needs to make it clear that they won't vote for Labour unless they reverse position on this, and to be clear about this: Labour will not listen. They are PR Brained Psychopaths and they don't want to get into this "controversial" issue in a way that might cost them further popularity and the easy election win.

Wes Streeting, inhuman lab experiment and Labour Shadow Health Secretary has said that activists need to "stop protesting to ask us to be better opposition and start protesting to ask us to be better government", in other words their electoral promises are cynical reactionary bargains and deals to get them into power and the only point at which they will change anything is once they are in government, if at all. I know this sounds very "push Biden left" but I'm not saying give up now - to repeat, everyone who cares about trans people in the UK should tell Labour to get fucked right away, and then keep doing it as loudly as possible, but it's just not going to change until after the general election at least.

Another way to help could be through legal routes, like the work that The Good Law Project has been doing for trans people for several years now, but I don't know enough about the law to know if it can be used to challenge this at all.

We have to accept there is no electoral solution right now to this genocidal campaign against trans people in the UK, and while those efforts are ongoing trans people and cis allies need to fucking organise. Trans exclusive / separatist organising is riddled with issues, I don't want to cast hopelessness around but there are really very few of us and while it's absolutely necessary to privilege trans voices in trans organising and give us the deciding power and the autonomy, we need to utilise the support and time and labour of every cis person who is willing to help in whatever way they can.

Robust community structures means community structures that are helping young trans people get healthcare as an absolute basic starting point, but it means a lot more than that besides. We need community structures that are consciously organised by people who are taking responsibility for the community roles they are in and being completely explicit with each other about the nature and function of their organising. We need HRT community resources so young trans people can survive this medical segregation, we need drug user harm reduction spaces so that what people turn to in despair doesn't kill them, we need sober spaces so that people can get away from unhealthy coping responses, we need conflict resolution structures so that our problems are dealt with privately and nobody is left completely isolated, but more than any of those things, and in order to have all of those things, we desperately need trans assemblies

Assemblies are how we will get a community of robust radical organisers, because only by repeatedly practicing the ongoing process of democracy can people learn how to do it in a way that will facilitate their own organising. We have to empower the whole community to answer our own questions, come up with solutions, organise people into structures to enact those solutions and then do them. All this means is that an open door event convenes frequently (at least fortnightly) to discuss what is happening in the community. Trans people get the mic for allotted time, and discuss the issues, and then whatever voting structure the assembly uses facilitates further discussion, for example through working groups - the assembly breaks into smaller groups to discuss the topic and then representatives report the outcomes of those discussions back and consensus is reached from what the representatives report.

We have to get people engaging in this process because in order to effectively combat this situation trans people must agree on the solutions and then tell cis allies how to help and so far we haven't been doing that. We really really haven't been. But we could be with a little work. And as I'm saying, doing this will also empower everyone in the community to organise toward specific solutions for specific issues like HRT provision, sober spaces, housing, food, etc.

fuck

I'll have more to add to this post later I have to get to therapy I just got really mad when I saw the news this morning

[phoenixyfriend]

I wrote another email to colourpop. (Explanation of the situation as of about a week ago)

Feel free to change a few things up and send one yourself:

Hello again.

This is my third time emailing about this, though I endeavor to remain professional and polite. You never did respond to my first email, and your response to my second on the topic was very rote, even canned. I'm hoping to get something more this time.

By this point, I'm sure you've heard more than enough on the morality and ethics that are at play here. After all, people have been asking you to address it for a year. Even with the announcement of the first collection, there were people telling you that you needed to make a statement, that you needed to at least ACKNOWLEDGE something they were concerned about. You have continuously refused to do so.

We are asking for you to donate a portion of the proceeds from the New Moon collection to the Quileute Move to Higher Ground fund, and if you can't, to tell us WHY. You have ignored endless numbers of comments over the past year on multiple platforms, and have recently even been deleting comments (polite ones, I saw) and shadow-blocking people on Instagram. Maybe it was a slip of the finger. Maybe it was Instagram's automoderator. Either way, it's not a good look.

There are five options I see:

You are planning to donate, and are currently working behind the scenes to put together a plan due to the continued support for the fundraiser. This is my favorite option. (Perhaps you already HAVE contributed somehow, and were keeping it a surprise. If that's the case, it's not an amazing plan, because I'd like to buy the collection NOW, and not when products have started going out of stock.)

You contacted mthg with an offer to donate, but they refused, not wanting any Twilight money. I find this unlikely, but I could respect it. I'd still ask that you make a statement, because if you DID, it would mean I could actually buy the collection.

You cannot afford it for some reason. I think this is unlikely as well, given that you have reported yearly sales in the eight figures, but I'll admit that it's possible the LA fires have had a major impact on your supply lines, or you're expanding the factory and have new mortgage payments. Sad, and I wouldn't buy the collection, but it would be nice to know so I could stop putting hours of my week into trying to get you to understand.

Your contract with Stephenie Meyer in particular, and the Twilight franchise more generally, prevents you from speaking publicly on this topic. It could be that you are legally unable to mention the Quileute people, as it could draw unfavorable attention to the Twilight brand. I'd consider it a bad look that you even signed the contract, then, much like with the Harry Potter collection (which sends money into transphobic lobbying), but it would at least make sense, you know? Maybe you could work around it, donating to a more general native charity, or working with an indigenous creator, to make up for the mistake you are now contributing to without breaking your contract.

Greed. You are earning money, and if you don't talk about it where people can see, then the people who don't care won't LEARN about the conflict, and the people who DO care won't have made so much noise that you had to give some of your cash away. I dislike this.

We want to know which of the five it is.

The last few weeks, you've spent a lot of time advertising your Pretty Fresh Tinted Foundation Balm. It's a good product, with a wide and flexible shade range. People have responded positively, and you clearly care about inclusivity… but doesn't that include native peoples? Does that not include the people whose culture you are using as advertising? The New Moon collection rests so heavily on Quileute characters, on individuals built to be of a culture that was used for years by Stephenie and never saw compensation despite being a cornerstone of the franchise. You are using them for marketing, also without compensation, and it spits in the face of the diversity you want to claim you champion.

In a political situation such as this, in a country where things like "DEI" are being disassembled in the name of fascism, a place where your own record on such things is shaky, why make things WORSE for marginalized groups? Why make things harder for people who are already struggling? You have the power to help in a profound way, and you aren't.

I am… very frustrated, at this point. Can we please just know why? Can we please just be TOLD what it is that you're doing, and why? Reasons one through five are up there, just tell me which one it is, because I am tired.

Just not tired enough to stop campaigning for a cause I truly believe in.

Thank you for your time.

[panther-os]

beating my head against the walls in Latine

here's eight things that atp will have me immediately closing out of any fic, AleRudy edition:

1.

❌ "the los vaqueros"

ah yes the famed and feared las almas battalion of Mexican special forces. the the cowboys

✅ "los vaqueros"

✅ "the vaqueros"

2.

❌ "the los vaqueros base"

✅ "los vaqueros' base"

✅ "the vaqueros' base"

3.

❌ "corporal alejandro vargas and sergeant rodolfo parra/major rodolfo parra"

look, fuck the military as an institution and also fuck the devs for using American rank structure for members of the Mexican army but

it takes roughly 2 years in the army to advance to Corporal. the equivalent in the Mexican army is Cabo, and Google will not give me the requirements for it no matter how I ask

it takes 3-6 years to advance to Sergeant. From what I can tell, the Mexican equivalent is also Cabo (where Sargento Segundo is closer to Staff Sergeant)

it takes 10-12 years to advance to Major, the equivalent is Mayor (not the English word mayor like of a city, don't be like those white people)

it takes 22-24 years, a bachelor's degree, and officer school to become a Colonel and it takes 18-20 years and a whole mess of leadership courses nearly equivalent to a degree to become a Sergeant Major

put some goddamn respect on their names

✅ Colonel Alejandro Vargas and Sergeant Major Rodolfo Parra

✅ Coronel Alejandro Vargas and Sargento Primero Rodolfo Parra

4.

❌ Fuerza Especiales

❌ Fuerzas Especiale

this is just not understanding Spanish grammar

✅ Fuerzas Especiales ("Special Forces")

❎ Fuerza Especial ("special force")

5.

❌ Sin Nombre ("without name")

Alejandro literally corrects Soap on this one in the game

✅ El Sin Nombre ("The Nameless")

6.

❌ "Alejandro Vargas, leader of Mexican Special Forces"

the leader of Mexican Special Forces is the Secretaría de la Defensa Nacional - the Secretary of Defense - and Fuerzas Especiales is composed of three brigades, 74 independent battalions (like Los Vaqueros), 36 amphibious special operations groups. Colonels command single brigades at most.

Alejandro is capable of leading Mexican Special Forces, but it would require him to retire from the field and get more of a desk job, with far more politics than I think he'd have patience for

✅ "Alejandro Vargas, leader of Los Vaqueros - a battalion of Fuerzas Especiales stationed in Las Almas"

7.

❎ "our ancestors, the Aztecs"

look, indigenous identity is weird sometimes and I don't know enough specifics about the culture around it in Mexico to have a solid opinion, but I'm also very fucking tired of people thinking the only indigenous groups in Mexico are the Nahua (Aztecs) and Maya. if they're on the Texas border and their families have always lived there, their heritage is most likely seven different Apache nations/language groups in a trench coat with some Spanish conquistador on the side. they're most likely not related to any famous indigenous chiefs or other figures, but it's very possible they can trace their Spanish ancestry back directly to nobility

for example, I am related to absolutely none well-known Tsalagi or Kwikipa people as far as I'm aware, but I am a direct descendant of the brother of King Ferdinand the Catholic, which also means I'm a direct descendant of the guy who started the Inquisition (and now I'm Jewish (and pro-Palestine for those who want to know) so take that, colonizer)

also while Bayardo is Mexicano, Alain is Cubano, please be respectful when talking about the actors or when in their instagram lives and just. don't make assumptions y'all

8.

❎ "Los Vaqueros" is a nickname from the people of Las Almas, the battalion's actual name that is on all the paperwork and dog tags is more likely numerical or describing their role/location - like "11th Battalion" or "The Borderline Battalion" or something like that. maybe even both, like "The 11th Border Battalion"

[mish-mash-marsh]

Fuck "normal amounts of diversity" in media. "Normal" people in real life are diverse.

I want two aro people to talk to each other. To get to talk about it with someone else who gets it. Aro people irl know - getting to talk to other aros about it is just different sometimes.

I want two trans people to talk to each other onscreen. I want them to differ, to be visibly different, to be able to disagree. Isn't that so much more interesting?

I want more than one black character in a "main cast" lineup. Let them have black friendships, black families, black neighbors. Let them come from different backgrounds, from the same backgrounds.

I want more than one asian person — holy shit, groundbreaking idea — let there be both a Korean person and a Chinese person. Let there be three Vietnamese girls and four Japanese men and five Pakistani characters because life is just random and diverse like that.

Characters from countries people don't hear about as often—give me a character from Cape Verde, from Kyrgyzstan, from Guyana.

And fuck "giving each character one thing to make them part of the diverse cast". I want a pansexual Ghanian with a disability. I want her to get to talk to another Ghanian who is also queer, but also different. I want her to have disabled friends.

I want a transman to be a single father in the tv show.

I want an indigenous woman with chronic pain in the book.

I want a mixed nonbinary jewish character to be undocumented in the movie.

I want to see my friendships reflected, my futures portrayed, my struggles, my intersectionalities represented.

I want there to be enough diversity that the very real diversity within those communities is highlighted, from different experiences, to differing opinions.

Stop checking boxes. Stop saying, oh, there's a black best friend in the cast, we've checked off our "race" representation, we don't need anymore. There can and should always be more.

So yeah.

I want "unrealistic amounts" of diversity.

[gaelic-symphony]

it's really weird how many ways people find online to talk about i/p without actually talking about israelis, palestinians, or any material reality related to either community. i haven't ventured into the tags in almost a year, since i became disillusioned with the kind of postivism i saw from my mutuals...who i morbidly check on sometimes - and they're the type living in overconfident denial that i think you were talking about. they're the type i don't expect to talk about hate crimes against jews or israelis (or presumed jews and israelis) to either condemn or condone, because it's insulting you'd even ask them. their stance too simple to have to explain. they're "just" against genocide. that's it. they won't stoop to joining a lynch mob against a eurovision contestant, but they do want people to stop talking about that, because it's obviously shallow and unimportant. they're "just" using their platform to help people in their inbox, and think it's evil to accuse any of those people of being scammers. they're "just" against racism, and they genuinely have no idea why anyone brings up antisemitism when they talk about antizionism - because when they reblogged that "zionists are indigenous to hell" post they were laughing about biden's cancer diagnosis, not talking about jewish people

there's really something that comes from knowing enough to know it's bad to fandomize a war, but not knowing how to interact with the world in any other way

I think you hit the nail on the head: So many of these people have never really experienced war before, so they don't know how to interact with it or with any other of the complex issues going on in the world, and the frameworks they have (oppressor/oppressed, good vs. evil, America/capitalism/colonialism is the root of everything bad, my parents/hometown/religious community treated me badly growing up so everything they believe must be inherently evil and wrong) make them disturbingly susceptible to falling for antisemitic propaganda masquerading as social justice.

[wheeloffortune-design]

re: latinoamerican/hispanic/south american discourse

out of nowhere but i see this often enough online and it bugs me

people fight because the terms latino, south-american, and hispanic, all mostly overlap but the definitions are slightly different and exclude slightly different people.

South-America: Countries from the South American continent. Does not include Mexico and Central America.

Hispanic: Countries and people that speak Spanish. Includes Spain, does not include Brazil.

Latino: This one is the trickiest because the definition is a bit vague, and that creates conflict. Mostly, latinoamerican countries mean the ones conquered by Spain and Portugal, so Mexico and everything south of it. No, I know French is a latin language but it does not include the French colonies (source: I'm from Québec. We do not consider ourselve latinos. Only pedantic people in Youtube comments use this as a gotcha.)

Mostly, it means a culture, but that's also tricky because even though there are similarities, of course Mexico and Chile won't have the same culture. And as I understand, the Carribean coutries are even more unique, but there's a history of racism in the latino community that tends to exclude them and that's not cool. And of course, Indigenous people can decide to call themselve latinos if they want to, or not, and that's alright.

So, you have this mass of countries, cultures, and people, that do have similar traits, but are also different enough to argue about everything. Just ask them what is the word for a drinking straw.

I think the problem is that the world tends to put us all in the same basket. Africa has to live with that too, but I'm starting to hear more and more "Ok but which African country, you can't just say someone is 'from Africa'". And I feel like people understand now that "the Orient" is not a thing and I do see people say that all Asian countries are not the same. Of course there's still a long way to go, but I don't even hear that when talked about Latinoamerica.

And! Mostly, what enrages me, is that we are not kind between ourselves, or with our diaspora! Every day I see comments saying you're not a real latino of you don't speak perfect Spanish, if you don't dance, if you can't recognize a bachata from a salsa, if this, if that.

Colonization, slavery, and then US imperialism fucked up most of our countries, installing dictators and fucking up the economy. Of course you will have a massive exile, and our people will be spread across the world. Of course you will have second generations immigrants that only have what their parents taught them for crumbs of the culture. Of course you will have children that will struggle to speak Spanish because they don't use it everyday, and calling abuelita once a month is not enough to keep a language.

These immigrants, these children, will be told all their lives that they don't belong to the country they now live in. Please don't tell them they don't belong in the culture they had to leave too.

What I mean with all this: The world brushes off too easily, and we deserve to be treated with more respect. But before we come to that, we need to respect each other, and celebrate our differences instead of using them to determine who is and who isn't part of the club.

There may be a lot of differences between me, a pale skinned, black haired, Chilean immigrant in Québec who speaks mostly French; and a Black Puerto Rican who lived in their country their whole life; and a white and blonde Mexican who now lives in the US but still grew up in Quintana Roo; and kids all over that don't really care for their parent's music or food because they got their own things going on; and people who struggle to learn and keep Spanish and Portugese.

But if we decide to all call ourselves latinos, then that's what we are, and that means we're family.