#Rich White Men

[crimson-and-clover-1717]

Mother Teach, Ed, and Self-Determination CW: Emotive

I want to explore Ed’s mother in the red silk flashback, and its lasting impact on Ed.

Mother Teach begins with the imperative, ‘Feel it, boy’. There seems to be a certain lesson in showing Ed the thing he cannot have, before explaining the rich folk she works for own many items of this quality; so matter of fact as if it’s nature’s law.

When Ed asks in innocence the question, ‘Why can’t we have things like this?’ Mother Teach comes up against an alternate line of thinking which she seems never to have considered. She blinks in what could be surprise before giving what appears to be an obvious answer: ‘It’s up to God. He decides who gets what’. This establishes the idea that life is ‘not up to us’, but controlled by an external locus: God, providence, fate… ‘He decides’.

Mother Teach is conditioned to believe in determinism, and who can blame her. Her life is decided for her. What hope of agency for a poor, indigenous woman in a world run by a rich, white patriarchy? And it’s easier to attribute the decision to God, His unfathomable will. God is also likely and conveniently a rich, white man, so the issues blur somewhat in who is actually doing ‘the determining’; but frankly, the outcome is the same. It is safe to say God isn’t a poor, brown woman.

Ed carries this belief into his future life, struggling with agency, succumbing easily to manipulation; not having beautiful things despite acquiring riches, and giving up quickly in the face of setbacks. The second part of Mother Teach’s explanation, ‘We’re just not those kind of people’ further reinforces Ed’s class and race inferiority, which again he carries painfully into adulthood. These words are spoken with some emotion. We hear the shake in her voice as she acknowledges certain truths about the limitations of their existence.

The impact of his father on Ed’s psyche is largely plain in the cycles of abuse with older white men, but the transmission of generational trauma via Ed’s mother is also significant.

Mother Teach isn’t trying to be cruel. She clearly loves her son, and the silk is a love-token which she possibly took without permission so her child could have at least one chance to look upon and own a ‘beautiful thing’. But her own trauma means she further damages her son’s self-esteem during this interaction. She doesn’t want Ed to be a dreamer or believer in a better life. Best accept your lot, know your place, then you won’t be disappointed. There is a certain wisdom to it; and had she an average son with a dullish mind, it’s probably sound advice in this particular time and place.

But her son isn’t ordinary. He is a genius, an empath, a creative, as well as prone to overthinking and melancholy. His race foremost, and class also, are against him, and that is outside of his control; but everything else is up for grabs with someone as brilliant as Ed if he can find inner worth. He might always have to live within a subculture to find both success and happiness, but he may have done so sooner with a stronger internal locus of control, and belief in his own worth and agency, had he received a different message in childhood.

As it is, he lives a life in the shadows, emulating and enhancing further the toxic masculinity revered in the dominant culture which is so against his true nature. He uses his genius for strategy and theatre to enrich himself for protection and subsistence only, never going beyond and allowing luxury or beauty; and when finally world-weary and screaming for change, finds himself trapped by the ghosts of his childhood, some of whom are reshaped into new human forms.

One of many things which saddens me regarding Ed’s sacrifice in killing his father as an act of protecting his mother is I don’t feel it changed anything much. It was a micro action against a macro problem. If Ed possibly then ran away, his mother would’ve had to do what she always did: find another male protector, possibly a white man to enable a certain social standing, and she would likely be back within a similarly psychological and physically abusive situation. It isn’t inevitable this would happen to a woman in her situation, but it’s the most likely outcome because her choices are so limited. And that’s hugely tragic for both herself and Ed.

It’s often said for Ed, there’s a psychological affinity between Stede and Mother Teach. The rich, white man who is kind and optimistic is everything Ed’s mother could’ve been with those same sociological advantages. Stede is able to self-determine. He is a repressed gay man in a heteronormative society, but much of the world is built with his empowerment in mind, and he is able to take full advantage of that and change his path. Both Stede and Mother Teach love or loved Ed, and in an unequal world, one of them at least is able to model a different way of living; help push open the psychological door enough to allow Ed himself to begin to change his stars, and self-actualise as the person he truly is.

Writing this made me sob…I’m sorry if it does the same for you reading it

[shrinkrants]

Since the 1870s, during the reconstruction of the American government after the Civil War, white reactionaries insisted that opening the vote to anyone but white men would result in socialism. Their argument was that poor voters—by which they meant Black men—would elect leaders who would promise them roads and schools and hospitals, and so on. Those public benefits could be paid for only with tax levies, and since white men held most of the property in the country in those days, they insisted such benefits amounted to a redistribution of wealth from hardworking white men to undeserving Black Americans, even though poor white people would benefit from those public works as much as or more than Black people did. This argument resurfaced after World War II as an argument against Black and Brown voting and, in the 1970s, against the electoral power of “women’s libbers,” that is, women who called for the federal government to protect the rights of women equally to those of men. Beginning in 1980, when Republican presidential candidate Ronald Reagan called for rolling back the government regulations and social safety net that underpinned society, a gap appeared in voting behavior. Women, especially Black women, tended to back the Democrats, while men moved toward Republican candidates. Increasingly, Republican leaders used racist and sexist tropes to undermine the active government whose business regulations they hated. 

-- Heather Cox Richardson

[letsdeconstructtogether]

Island in the Sun (Full movie linked! First minute has no audio) explores a concept that many are not aware of to begin with, that many are not comfortable to even touch, and that many are not willing to explore.

It exposes the true thoughts of the aristocracy of the Western Hemisphere (those who made wealth through the enslavement of Africans and Indigenous Folks), and asks essentially... Can we move toward a place of forgiveness?

Can the two worlds once separated through classism, subjugation, violence, and hatred come together? Can they hug it out and finally put it all behind them, so they can be one people?

To be honest, this concept rocked my core.

For a large part of my life, I have heard of the atrocities my ancestors have gone through. I have also been subjected to a continuing cultural message in which the classifications of White and Black are suggested as not only real concepts, but also concepts that are separate and incapable of mixing.

That messaging, I've coming to realize, reduces the true complexity of the situation. White people are not a monolith, they're Europeans from distinct nations with distinct cultures. Black people are also not a monolith, they're Africans that originate from the distinct nations of West Africa, that also have distinct cultures. The cultures of 'White' and 'Black' people are not separate either. They mix together naturally. I have heard a British man sample Jamaican music in his DJ sets. I know Jamaicans that enjoy Johnny Cash. White people bopped to jazz, a music genre birthed in Black Harlem. Black people eat spaghetti and meatballs, something obviously Italian.

So, is it true that these groups are exclusive? Or is it more, in the Western Hemisphere, we are a part of an interesting experiment. So many people, from so many nations, disseminate who they are into one spicy soup.

"Out of Many, One People", a saying written on Jamaica's coat of arms. A saying emblematic of the truth that has been staring us down for generations, a saying Bob Marley tried to drill through our thick skulls. We are, in fact, one people. We always have been. We always will be.

So let's hug it out man. Let's cry the pain out. Let's strive for a better, sweeter tomorrow. Let's heal from the painful past, so we can walk hand in hand.

[nightqueens-world]

Hopefully he will do better than Elon musk

[somerandomg33k]

Sorry "proud Americans." But this country was "founded" by Rich White men that were Slave owners, who wanted to expanded westward and take more land from the Indigenous folk, who hated true democracy because true democracy would have been a treat to their own positions of power.

[stopthewoke]

The ridin' with Biden cult of Blue MAGAts are angry!!!!

[shinyasahalo]

[asg-stuff]

Neiman employs a particularly effective metaphor, that of "compounding unearned advantage" to demonstrate how racial and gender advantages amass at an exponential rate, creating more profound inequities over time. This analogy builds on the Racial Equity Institute's framework of "unearned advantage," which "carries less baggage and is less loaded than 'privilege.'" (via 'Rich White Men' reinforces the argument that inequality harms us all | NPR)

See also Unearned Advantage: What to Make of "Privilege"?

[losergirlsyndrome]

i remember going into trc thinking it was about rich boys of some fancy school and i was like man, really do i have to care about these privileged bratty teenagers and their "struggles" and then i read the first chapter and my exact reaction was... damn, we are unliving them right off the bat... hardcore stuff. I'm into it!

[dnpbeats]

There is one thing I know for a fact they will never share with us. Like they would rather post a 3 hour video of them making out before sharing. And thats how much they earn and how much they have earned. And If I had one question I could ask them that they had to answer, it wouldn't be "are you married" or anything like that, it would be how much money do you make, and where does that income come from. Because based on the look of the phouse and the price of the clothes they buy, I would not be shocked to find out they are millionaires, but where is that money coming from?? Because surely its not all from video veiws. They have not uploaded consistently enough throughout their career for that imo. And I mean. Yes they are big creators and used to be bigger, but its nothing compared to the numbers of big creators now. They never even broke 10mil subs. Is dragon city seriously paying them that much??? And what about the 5 years where they basically posted nothing and phil did like one 10min video a month. Surely that was not covering mortage costs plus rent of TWO apartments, plus all of dans bougie clothes?? Were they living off of savings from before the haitus??? That brings me back to HOW MUCH WERE THEY MAKING??? This is the phan conspiracy I want them to address.

i also would love to know how much they’re currently making bc im a nosey bitch. but also for sure they are millionaires. like multi-millionaires. think about how much money they were bringing in in their prime (2014-2018). obviously there are their videos, so the adsense money plus any sponsorships. they were getting money from the radio show and also all the other hosting gigs they did for the bbc (those handful of random docs dan did, all the festivals, etc). there was money from their own merch, but also remember that they own irl, so they're getting a cut from other people who were using irl as their merch distributor. then they had the money from tabinof and dapgo. they had the money from tatinof and ii (while we know they lost money on some legs, I'm sure overall it was income gained not lost). also whatever money they got from tatinof + story of tatinof being posted on yt red and then the money from the ii dvd. also other random shit, like they had licensed t-shirts at hot topic (which as a side note is so batshit 😭). also those random two events they did for dapgo (dapgoose 🤩). oh also truth bombs!! also the partnership they had with rize (I want to say they also had one with younow at one point?? but I could be making that up lol). and this is all just stuff off the top of my head, I’m sure there’s more i'm forgetting

and then okay, the hiatus hits, but phil's still making videos, and then dan eventual comes out with ywgttn. (then wad ofc but dan didn't make money on that so 😭 lmao.) but also keep in mind that during this time, they're still getting adsense revenue from anyone rewatching any of their videos, and also like you said im sure they had savings. and on top of all of this, I'm 100000% sure they have investments that we don't know about, because I don't know how they could've not invested any money lmao. like we know they aren't stupid when it comes to business, and investing is something regular ppl do too. so you’d assume for ppl like d&p who are self-employed (and making a shit load of money doing it) they have more investments than most ppl. so like they aren’t mr. beast obviously, but I don’t think dan is losing any sleep over dropping $600 on a shirt

[fayevalcntine]

The whole framing of Lestat as the sole symbol of patriarchy that fandom is so desperate to put him in doesn't work unless you deliberately ignore how he was also a victim of rape and abuse before he was turned. People want him to be fit into this strict role of "father figure/violent husband/perpetrator" that is only that and not even a whole person, and in doing so they need to push aside the fact that despite being his family's provider, he was also pushed into that role when his father forbid him from joining a monastery or gaining an education that he wanted. Lestat wanted to run away with a theater group as a kid, and actually managed to do so once Gabrielle gave him her blessing and monetary support in order to go to Paris. He didn't always want to be the provider, he was forced into that role and became despondent when he thought he would never get a chance to leave his home.

His new life prior to being turned is pretty much the antithesis to the whole "Lestat is a manly man who would sooner throw up than be compared to a woman" spiel: he lived with another man in Paris while also being an actor, having left his family and "responsibility" to them. The only family member he was ever close to was his mother, all the other male members shunned or ridiculed him. Add onto that the fact that his turning firmly placed him within the role of the damsel/victim: he's kidnapped from his bed by a stranger, taken into a tower and left to rot while being fed on for a week, before then being raped and violently turned all while never even being asked if he would consent to it in any normal circumstance. But you of course have to ignore all of this if you want him to only represent the aggressor/patriarch while Louis is the helpless unhappy matriarch of the family.

My issue isn't that I think Louis isn't a victim, it's that it's not unrealistic for Lestat to be an aggressor/abuser while also displaying traits that aren't regularly assigned to stereotypical depictions of male characters. He's abusive to Claudia while also having been a victim of abuse from his own family. He's not a good maker/teacher, but he also didn't even have one when he was turned. He's the provider/attempted protector of the family and seemed to like being that, while also having run away from his own family prior to this to act in a theater in Paris. He's a rich white man while also being obviously effeminate in public spaces, even to Tom's own bigoted humor.

Like Louis' own complicated story with being his family's benefactor and provider, you can't firmly place Lestat as being one thing or another in terms of gender ideals without deliberately ignoring parts about him that don't fit this. And I don't think it's an absolute necessity, when even in Louis' own story, Lestat isn't stripped of his effeminate mannerisms or behavior while also being the abusive maker/father/lover.

[hhawks]

i fear americans have lost the plot because up against ANYBODY how is a CONVICTED FELON winning

[parkersgnome]

“If you don’t like your job, then just quit!”

Ok then.

Don’t like high school? Just drop out!

Don’t like that he’s abusive? Just leave the relationship!

Don’t like being homeless? Just buy a house!

[genericpuff]

Do you know "Eggnoid"? It's a rather old webtoon about a girl being put into circumstances on taking care of a robot guy who hatched from an egg (hence the title) the robot guy appears to be a grown man, but he has mental capabilities of a toddler and even acts like one. So, it's like those types of "born sexy yesterday" tropes but the gender reversed. The girl also repeatedly shown crushing over the robot guy and at some point, she called him her boyfriend despite she's supposed to be his caretaker.

I haven't read it, but I can definitely attest that there's a double standard when it comes to gender roles and age gaps / situations of grooming / etc. in literature but especially in webtoons. And by that I mean I've legit seen people hold comics like Lore Olympus accountable for their gross dynamics between a young teenage girl and the much older and richer love interest, but then turn around and say it's "couple goals" for a teenage boy to hook up with a much older woman. At the end of the day there's still a power imbalance due to the age gap and the massive differences in life experiences between the two, gender doesn't really change that.

Big ole' sip of hot tea as a take, but speaking as an AFAB, a lot of women are just as capable of grooming and taking advantage of younger men in the same way as men towards young women, it's just that on the surface people tend to get skittish about addressing that because they don't want to sound like they're going "yeah well actually women though-" and dismissing the notion of toxic masculinity. Which yes, that's a fair thing to worry about, some people do use that as a way to dismiss the arguments made regarding patterns of grooming behavior in men towards young girls (among many other problems in which men and toxic masculinity are held accountable), but like any topic of this nature, it's not always a cut and dry black and white thing. Toxic masculinity and the grooming of teenage girls by adult men is a very real problem! But just like how we can understand the nuance that being a man by default doesn't immediately make you a predator, we should be able to understand the nuance that being a woman doesn't give you a free pass to do the same things we call out men for doing without consequences. It's like the double standard in LO that it's okay for Persephone to do the same things - if not worse - than what Leuce and Minthe and Thetis do, because she's the main character and she's not some scummy "mud-sucking" lower class person, she's rich and a Queen and she's wearing a giant hat so it makes it okay /s

Unfortunately the saying of "I support women's rights and women's wrongs" is being used in a completely tone deaf "literally excusing the main character of her crimes and wrongdoings against others because she happens to be a woman" kind of way, while missing the real point of the saying - supporting women's wrongs doesn't mean you celebrate their abuse towards others, it just means women shouldn't automatically be viewed as irredeemable "crazy bitches" for making mistakes like any other human does, and like any other human, they should be given the opportunity to grow and heal and learn from their wrongs.

When it comes to Persephone specifically, it can't even be chalked up to a "one time mistake" anymore, she's literally been showing patterns of abusive behavior for years now and refusing to take accountability, and now even Rachel is meme'ing on it knowing fully well it's what people are calling Persephone out for in the critical spaces. That's not "supporting women's wrongs", that's enabling the wrongs of a person because they happen to be a woman, and that's not okay. Persephone isn't a "girl boss", she's a bully.

I think the double standard in these age gap romances also speaks to the idolization and fixation on women as being nothing more than conquests for men as well. People who romanticize age gaps between a young woman and an older man think, "Wow, that woman is so mature for her age, enough that an older richer man would choose HER to be his wife! So romantic!" when in reality those who know those dynamics are unhealthy and toxic recognize it as an older man taking advantage of a young woman who's being love-bombed into believing she's "mature for her age" so that she'll sleep with him. Meanwhile, on the other side of it, those who romanticize young men getting with older women tend to come at it from the angle of "well she's so old and washed up, no man could ever love her, her chance for love and a happily ever after is gone now! it's so wonderful of that young man to give that sad and lonely old woman love and attention!" and yet fail to see it from the same perspective of an older person manipulating a young person with zero life experience, because there's still this deeply-rooted ideology that women are "used up" by age 30 and any man who gives her attention beyond that age range is a hero. Completely neglecting the fact that relationships aren't off the table at all for older single people and they don't need to involve robbing the cradle.

I blame the lack of older couple representation in media tbh, so many mainstream romance stories are basically just this:

To pull it out of the perspective of LO and webtoons for a second (sorry, I'm going on a hell of a tangent here), remember how gross it was when it was revealed in Fifty Shades Darker that Christian had been introduced to the concept of BDSM at age 15 through one of his mom's friends (i.e. an older woman!) who Anastasia calls "Mrs. Robinson"? And they had that relationship until he was 21? And they never really did anything about that, it was pretty much just there to explain why Christian was fucked up but he still got married to Anastasia, an innocent woman who he was repeating the cycle of abuse with, and lived happily ever after anyways?

Yeah. That was pretty fucked up.

[superkitten-poison]

to me velvette doesnt lie about *being bisexual* for attention but she lies about being bisexual *for attention*. like admitting to being attracted to women would make her a dyke and manly and f/f relationships dont even count bc her internalized misogyny goes so crazy she subconsicounsly does not see women as full people and needs men to validate her own personhood, and since men hold most of the power, surrounding herself with men is in fact a means to power. so one way she feels she Can have sexual contact with women is through excuses: it's for attention, for convenience, as a power play. but never because of her own desires and it can never mean anything. can you imagine? two women in a loving relationship. who would want to see that?

[usefulquotes7]

As you grow older, you’ll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don’t you forget it—whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash Harper Lee