#She's a racial eugenicist

[irithnova]

Imagine wasting your time making 15 FAKE ACCOUNTS JUST TO DO THIS HELPPPP

This is literally the definition of harassment but ok continue being obsessed Panda or like one of your friends or something

"You are becoming a bully" dawg you are a racial eugenicist

[romanceyourdemons]

with incisive visuals, powerhouse performances, and a keenly presented narrative, the substance (2024) functions as a feminist revisiting of the picture of dorian gray and the strange case of dr. jekyll and mr. hyde and their attendant eugenicist fears of the nascent presence of the troglodyte within the superior man. with stark and oppressive sets and framings homaging stanley kubrick, the flesh-centered cinematography and soundscaping of the younger cronenberg turning the everyday functionings of the body into body horror, and of course practical body horror effects that match the work of the elder cronenberg in his prime, this film’s visceral sensory overwhelm firmly denies the audience the reprieve stevenson and wilde indulge in by identifying the audience safely with an unaffected, untouchable, normal observer. instead, the audience of this film must identify with, must be the disintegrating, disgusting, self-destroying protagonist. the feared and despised troglodyte that this work centers around is not delineated on racial and socioeconomic lines like the troglodytes of dorian gray and jekyll and hyde—othered parties ostensibly escapable by getting oneself in with whiteness and then violently pulling up the latter behind oneself—but rather is delineated along the lines of age. she is the despised and discarded figure of the older woman, whom, no matter how loudly one performatively shuns her, each young woman will inevitably become. although of course the issues raised in this film are not novel questions, particularly not in regards to the entertainment industry around which the film centers, the immediate, engaging, crystal clear way in which it presents them hits like a countertop and cuts like a needle, from its two leads’ electrifying performances to its stunning effects and soundtrack to articulate intertextual engagement, including an ironic use of also sprach zarathustra that recalls both the appearance of the appearance of the “evolved” man through violence in 2001: a space odyssey (1968) and the rights and role of the “evolved” man as described by nietzsche. everything about the substance (2024) is stunning and overwhelming and as powerful as blunt force trauma, and i would highly, highly recommend it

[transmutationisms]

Epigenetics anon, just to say you answered it 👍 by "alternatives" I meant in explanatory power, but it seems we agree both that it's the best for "how organisms work" broadly, & that recognizing it doesn't suddenly mean we can better target genetic "improvements" (ie, increase an organism's profitability). But now I'm curious about the Yellow Wallpaper critique? High school taught it was an epic clap-back against hysteria diagnoses and views of (upper-class) women as fragile.

gotcha. but yes this is a great post from najia gothhabiba about the yellow wallpaper:

it's important i would say for anyone to learn to recognise these ideas and contextualise them as eugenic, but esp if your work bumps up against ideas of heredity, epigenetics, biological improvement, &c. the idea of changing an organism thru action on its environment, for example, has a history; there's clear transposition from animal and plant breeding in the 18th century to schemes for social control and improvement in the 19th and onward. this sort of discursive & cross-disciplinary slippage absolutely still occurs today; it is never politically neutral when we start hearing about ways to improve organisms, whether thru crispr-style genetic engineering, or cross-breeding, or efforts to control bodies thru environmental meddling (u can see this latter in, for example, theories of the 'obesogenic environment' in public health/nutrition sci).

& i also have to say here: yea, this story IS a response to the hysteria dx and the idea of white female 'fragility'; it IS ALSO a eugenic argument. those two things are not in contradiction; again there is a massive history here of feminist (& socialist!) eugenic projects. feminist discourses are not only capable of engaging with eugenic and racist logic, some have historically and presently grounded their arguments on these very points. in fact part of the argument of gilman's feminism was always an appeal to white men that it would be in their interest to improve their own racial stock and position in the social hierarchy by attending to white women's biological betterment, such as by turning against things like locking their wealthy wives up in the attic. the demonstration of the 'barbarity' of such treatment is an appeal to the fear of degenerating the race thru mistreatment of wealthy, otherwise respectable / capable women. the story is both feminist and eugenicist; the two don't contradict. this is a really good example of how 'white feminism' is not just a feminism that 'lacks' attention to race and racism; rather, it is feminism that makes its appeal for women's liberation explicitly on racist & racialising grounds, & at the direct expense of racialised people.

[sunstormbudgie]

okay but like. what if the hivewings aren't any more closely related to Clearsight than the other Pantalan tribes. what if the black scales thing was made up by someone to justify segregation. what if the stories were all propaganda for some kind of eugenics movement.

Look, here's the thing. We all know the official story makes no sense. How on earth does one single dragon completely change the language, genetics, and culture of an entire continent??? I've seen some people saying "oH CLeArSigHt wAs a CoLoNisER" but I still don't think that interpretation makes any sense. It doesn't fit her character at all, and even if it did, she couldn't have taken over the entire continent by herself.

But what if all that change wasn't her doing at all?

My theory is that at some point between Clearsight's death and the Tree Wars, there was a civil war in the beetlewing kingdom. At that time, there was a small group of extremists who believed themselves to be descendants of Clearsight. They believed that nightwings/the Pyrrhian tribes in general were racially superior, and so they started some kind of eugenics program in an attempt to breed dragons that had more nightwing features.

The biggest thing the eugenics movement focused on was black scales. When they took over the beetlewing kingdom, they segregated the population into dragons that had black scales, and those that didn't. This was the beginning of the split into hivewings and silkwings. They also deliberately tried to breed more defensive/dangerous abilities (such as venom) out of the silkwings.

After several decades of being denied basic rights, the silkwings revolted. They eventually gained independence from the hivewing kingdom, starting their own kingdom.

For the most part, the old eugenicist beliefs were shunned, seen by the new generations of hivewings as a terrible crime. But there was always a small group of hivewings who held onto those extreme beliefs, hoping that one day the hivewings would rule the continent once again.

And Queen Wasp was one of them.

[teruthecreator]

TW FOR RACISM, CHILD IMPREGNATION, EUGENICS, & TRANSPHOBIA

okay @silvercistern! thats okay! if you dont wanna be here for this conversation then i'll have a conversation without you! for all those readers out there who might've missed it

FOR EVERYONE'S INFORMATION:

Side Quest is definitely one of the weirdest fics I have ever seen get popular, for several content-related reasons.

Firstly, the racism. She writes her Serizawa to be half-black, half-Japanese, which is a perfectly valid hc if not for how she handles this fact. Ignoring the moments of subtle racism she gives Reigen (having him comment on the apparent "sloppiness" of his afro--which she also refuses to call an afro, by the way--and also having him guess his race via his racial characteristics), she blatantly and openly makes Toichiro racist towards Serizawa in a way that I feel we cannot ignore. For example:

I shouldn't have to say that calling a black man a "slave" in any context is fucked up, but I will for the sake of this post! Since she already think I'm insane :-) Also:

Once again, shouldn't have to say this but I will: Saying a black man has a "brutal masculine appeal" is so obviously and blatantly racist while also being entirely unnecessary for his character! We understand, as both readers and watchers of the base material, that Toichiro is a bad guy. We do not need him to then become racist, borderline-pedophilic, and a supporter of eugenics! And if you need quotes for some of these points, I will include one that has both:

Even if he is saying that he won't facilitate the "impregnation of a child", why the fuck is he laughing about it? Just a reminder: Toichiro in canon is only a terrorist and a child abuser. Yes, he is a bad person. However, I think elevating his evil to this level removes any concept of character depth that you could possibly have, and makes the ending of this fic (where he is seemingly normal and fine, with both his wife and child in his relative good graces) all the weirder. But again, I'm insane, right? Oh yeah, one more point about Toichiro that I found from the comments:

Now this tells me several things. Firstly, it's that she lacks the oversight to recognize when there is blatant racism in her works of fiction. Which is questionable, but I'm willing to let that slide because people should always be given the opportunity to grow. HOWEVER, the second part of this tells me that the first part might be a lie!!! Because hey!! If you are headcanoning a person's parent as being a WHITE SOUTH AFRICAN WITH EUGENICIST BELIEFS, you are basically saying your character was raised by an APARTHEID APOLOGIST. So I really don't know how you can avoid the racism embedded in that statement.

Now, let's move away from Toichiro because he's not the only character she completely butchers with weird concepts. Shimazaki is a trans chaser in this fic.

That's right. I'm not kidding. He is a chaser.

Once again reminding you that I'm the insane one.

There is literally no reason I can see as to why she would write this, other than that it is supposed to be a joke. Now, as an afab trans butch, there is only so much I can say to this point, but I will still ask: Who is laughing here? Who is this joke funny to? Is it to the trans women, who have to deal with similar kinds of harassment each time they try to go on a date? Or is it the Shimazaki fans, who I guess aren't weirded out by their fav being a chaser? Or is it just you, silvercistern? Is it just funny to you?

That point brings me to one of my last points with context. She seems to enjoy throwing in random "edgy" topics for either shock value or a laugh, neither of which I think her wording lands on. I did collegiate improv comedy for all four years of college (yes that may seem pathetic to you, but it was fun)--if anyone knows how a joke should sound, I think I'm one of the few. And, frankly, none of these land. For instance, the repeated "joke" of calling Reigen a creep or alluding to him being a pedo:

But, again, me? I'm insane, apparently. If you take issue with any of this, like I did, then to her you are insane.

This is not surprising to me, given that she already had a kind of breakdown to my friend regarding when they asked if silvercistern could tag one of her fics with sa.

Here is the link to their post. I ask that you respect their wishes and do not send harassment to silvercistern (as that is my wish as well) and do not be weird to them in their inbox.

But this is why it does not surprise me that she 1. would private her twitter account when faced with even the slightest backlash, 2. would then talk about the situation to her mutuals to garner sympathy, and 3. not even bother to read a single thing I said, given that she replied to my post in less than a minute after I had posted it.

By the way, one of those mutuals? Yeah, they are literally a toichiro/shou shipper. Here's the proof:

Anyway, this is not an excuse to go harass her. I DO NOT CONDONE HARASSMENT OF ANY KIND. ANY OF MY POSTS ABOUT THIS SITUATION WERE MADE TO DIRECTLY ADDRESS HER AND THE ISSUES I HAVE. IF YOU FEEL THE NEED TO CHIME IN, DO IT ON YOUR OWN TIME WITH YOUR OWN POST. DO NOT HARASS HER.

So yeah. Guess this would be something an insane person does, right? lol

[gwenllian-in-the-abbey]

I'm not being rude or evasive and if so, forgive me. I just have this doubt: why don't you illustrate baela with black skin like in the HBO series?

I'll tag the artist, @aifsaath in on this too, in case I'm speaking out of turn, but it is indeed something that we definitely discussed when we decided make this fic happen.

The simple answer is that we're writing from the book canon, and we went with book descriptions when possible, including their coloring and their body types. Of course, whenever there's an adaptation, the actors portrayed in the show are going to be the ones who first pop into people's minds, regardless of whether the fic is set in the book canon or the show canon, and that's fine! In fact, my first long-fic is based more on the show-verse, and I described that Baela as she appears on the show, with curly silver hair and brown skin. To me, they're different canons and there are legit reasons to choose one or the other, or to mix them up. For this fic we wanted to stick to one consistent canon rather than mixing and matching, and since the majority of the events that happen in this fic have not been depicted on the show yet, and won't for many years to come, we decided to go with Fire and Blood. Less simple answer below the cut.

Here's the more complicated answer. While the show chooses not to focus too heavily on this aspect of the world building, the Valyrians are racial supremacists. They believe in blood purity and consider themselves to be better than non-Valyrians. The Targaryen dynasty in particular has built a whole mythos around Targaryen exceptionalism based on their special blood, but the blood is shown time and again to not actually be all that special. It's a lie, like white supremacy itself is a lie. Targaryens can't get sick, until they do. Only those with Targaryen blood can ride dragons, until Nettles comes along. Targaryens must marry their brothers and sisters, and nothing bad will come of this because they are a special exception, but it literally ruins multiple people's lives and causes at least one massive war. The Valyrians weren't special chosen ones, they were slavers, eugenicists, they practiced blood magic (heavily implied to involve human sacrifice), and their hubris led to their doom. And while it's kind of heavy handed, it's not coincidental that GRRM made these folks pale haired and pale skinned and made them obsessed with preserving Targaryen purity. OFCIR is critical of this, and we did not think it was a great idea to make George's fantasy version of white supremacists into POC since they are blood supremacists in our fic, something the show waters down a lot, at least so far. George has actually said that he once had the idea of making ALL of the Valyrians Black, as a kind of uno-reverse on white supremacy, but realized that would probably be a bad look and scrapped the idea.

Some fans are also very attached to the idea of the special blood actually being special. Online I've already seen people arguing that Nettles, who was written in the books as a Black woman, could simply be of Velaryon blood (nevermind that the Velaryons were not dragonriders by blood, Addam Velaryon rides a dragon, probably due to centuries of Velaryon mixing with the Targs), when in Fire and Blood it is heavily implied that Nettles tamed a dragon the good old fashioned way (by feeding it!) rather than bonding to one by blood. And when Rhaenyra believes Nettles is fooling around with Daemon, she throws around insults that imply Nettles' blood is impure, calling her "common," saying Daemon would never lie with such a "low creature," and finally accuses her of sorcery to tame her dragon, saying, "you only have to look at her to know she doesn't have a drop of dragon blood in her." Hair and eye color alone can't be what she's talking about either, because book!Rhaenys has dark hair, and Rhaenyra's own sons are brown haired and brown eyed. And while I have no doubt that the show will likely change this storyline significantly, we are using book canon. For what it's worth, I think it's significant that the one canonically Black dragonrider is the one who does not get her dragonriding skills from her "pure" Valyrian blood, but through skill and perseverance. It's a deconstruction of racial supremacy, but it doesn't work if she is simply another hidden Valyrian.

But you might have noticed the art gives Aegon a more golden skin tone, and that's because his mixed heritage is a part of his story. And although later on some Hightowers are described as having light blonde hair (possibly because Rhaena marries into the bloodline), Oldtown is very close to Dorne, and the southern part of the Reach is closest to the Summer Isles of any part of the realm. Oldtown is this major trading port, with people coming in and out from all over the world for thousands of years. Oldtown has a history of being a center of trade for a lot longer than King's Landing has, so we imagine the southern Reach as being as pretty diverse place, a bit like the Mediterranean in our world. It's fair to say you'd have Reacher families with a wide variety of skin tones, which is why you see that in @aifsaath's drawings of Aegon, and in our descriptions, he is indeed darker than Baela.

[lesbiansforboromir]

SPOILERS FOR LOTRO's KING'S GONDOR AND THE NEW BOOK QUESTS BUT as always I have a gripe with the major storyline, which is this mirroring of Arwen and Vidumavi. I understand the point of it, to inspire this xenophobic backlash that drives people to look to the heirs of Castamir in the first place and give us a reason to go to Umbar and I also get that the whole concept of middle men vs high men vs men of darkness has been somewhat scrubbed from the game's concepts of race and racism but STILL I JUST... Gondor didn't disapprove of Vidumavi because she was nebulously 'foreign'!!!

She was of a 'lesser' race of men, the movement against her in Gondor was a eugenicist one, they did not want to 'soil' the line of the kings with lesser blood that might incur issues like smaller life spans. This was an upper class southern dunadain issue! And in-text, Tolkien says essentially 'no don't worry, dunadain blood is stronger so it didnt effect their lifespans', as if we need that reassurance! As if the concerns were justified and needed to be assuaged for us! And Arwen, being both an elf of royal descent and literally the niece of Numenor's founder, is just fundamentally not the same.

Eldarion and Eldacar are not in the same position of mixed 'lesser' blood, the introduction of Arwen into the King's line is meant to 'reinvigorate it', what is the beef that gondorians have for her? If the common gondorian populace was looking for a 'foreign' figure to insight their ire, then why isn't Aragorn himself a target? He is just as foreign as Arwen is, both geographically and racially. The rohirrim are a descent of Vidumavi's people, why isn't Eowyn an issue?

If we're going for a mistrust of elves as the root cause, well that's also an issue for me since Gondorians do not need to call upon xenophobic prejudice to have an issue with elves. Couldn't their worry be the precise opposite? It has been a long time since Gondor was a majority dunadain country, most if not all people are 'middle men' by SOME descent, and now here we are with a 'pure' dunadain king whom was born to an isolationist cult that spurned the company of the common folk and associated mostly with the high-beauty eldar.

What will these new rulers think about their subjects? How will this effect their politics, their plans? Aragorn is no Steward he has all the rights of a King including the DIVINE right, what will such a glut of power be used to do? And how will a previously-immortal queen relate to her very mortal subjects? These are all very pertinent questions, especially considering that Gondor was expecting Boromir 'the rohirrim are true and valiant, our allies' II to rule them once Denethor was gone. It's a big and unexpected shift towards Dunadain and elven supremacy for Gondor, would that not inspire political concern?

Like here;

Aithil mentions that an elven sense of superiority over humans is something she has encountered! Which could be a lie, if it wasn't for the player having been through in-game Lothlorien and witnessed the way elves treated Nona. So it just kind of feels like an a-historical loss to position Arwen as recieving the same animosity as Vidumavi, relegating it to undeserved bigotry when the issue of elven superiority is real and believed by many characters, including Aragorn himself! And also minimising the bigotry Vidumavi and her children suffered to just 'oh they just didn't like foreign people', there was a very specific reason they did not like her!! It frustrates me.

Though admittedly I understand LOTRO can't go too far into these issues, lest Aragorn's kingship begin to look a little less like a beautiful and noble thing that will bring peace and happiness to all middle earth. And in any case I want to go to Umbar so whatever it takes to get me there comrades, I'll kiss Aragorn on his dumbass baby head if I have too. BUT STILL!! I wish there had been some other way to do that.

[ingek73]

You can’t truly understand the royal race row unless you’ve felt the sting of skin tone bigotry

Georgina Lawton

The row over Omid Scobie’s new book has reignited a depressing debate about mixed-race identity, with our voices barely heard

Wed 6 Dec 2023 10.00 GMT

Meghan in a white coat and hat and Harry in a black suit and tie with military badges.

There are a few words and phrases I’ve muted on X (formerly Twitter) for a while, including: mixed-race, biracial, interracial relationship, and royal race row. But I would have had to have thrown my phone in the sea to avoid part two of the latter, involving Archie’s skin tone, Meghan and Harry’s unofficial biographer, Omid Scobie, and his new book, Endgame – in which the two royals who apparently commented on Archie’s skin colour before he was born were named in the Dutch-language version of the book (which was promptly pulped by the publisher).

I do sympathise – with Archie first and foremost, that is. Before he is even able to talk, his heritage has been loaded with meaning, his very existence described as progressive, transgressive, a step forwards or a step backwards, depending on whom you speak to. Being born into a story over which you have little control is a heavy load to bear. Many people of colour in white spaces and “mixed-race” people will relate.

To me, the most tedious part of this race row is the “is it racist, is it not racist” dance. While Meghan and Harry have yet to break their silence, Boris Johnson has declared that it is “not remotely racist” to query how dark a baby may be. Timeline trolls and rightwing thinkers repeat the same refrain. But rather than getting into this pointless back and forth, we need to think about why these kind of comments about skin tone are still being made in the 21st century; and those directly affected by these words need to express why, and if, it makes them feel uncomfortable.

Personally I’d quite like it if no one passed comment on my particular “mix” ever again – and I don’t think that’s too much to ask. Quite recently I was sharing a late-night taxi with someone who commented on the low “timbre” of my voice. He confidently put this down to the Nigerian side of my heritage and compared the voices of his mixed-Jamaican friends to his mixed-Nigerian friends, concluding that west Africans had voices like mine, and that I couldn’t “pass” for Jamaican. I shut this down quite quickly, but found myself tiptoeing around my language, lest he would feel that I was calling him racist – which would inflame the whole thing. I also had no backup.

I can definitely relate to having white people analysing one’s appearance or “phenotype” as a mixed-race person, trying to work out which aspect comes from the white side versus the black side. The comments are rooted in eugenicist-style thinking: they are ultimately a hallmark of darker days gone by when the justification of the subjugation of black people was rooted in proving their non-humanity. Whether or not there is ill-intent behind these kind of comments doesn’t really matter. The onus is on the person making them to educate themselves and make a pledge to do better.

Trying to empathise here is key. Many people will never really know what it’s like to be in a room full of people to whom you are related, or you know quite intimately, and overhear a remark that makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up and makes you wonder: do they think those things about me?

In my book Raceless, I wrote about experiences like this: the reality of being raised in all-white spaces when you are not white. Many people have written to me over the years, some of them multiracial, some of them not, to say they recognise the fatigue and mental anguish that comes from standing out in homogeneous settings. When Meghan spoke about her troubled time within the royal family and the racial minefields she walked through, I didn’t find it hard to relate – as I’m sure was the case with many others. But she was shut down, brandished a liar and a drama queen, and effectively forced out of the country by our mainstream press.

Many people of colour in white spaces and those of mixed backgrounds battle every day with the idea that their very existence represents a crossing of boundaries, a disruption of long-held beliefs around kinship and belonging. Your experiences and your skin shade can also be called into question by those with whom you share loving and intimate experiences.

Instead of pretending these instances don’t happen in modern Britain and in our families, we need to let those affected speak up when they do – to avoid repeating the same old mistakes.

Georgina Lawton is the author of Raceless: In Search of Family, Identity, and the Truth About Where I Belong

[delta-queerdrant]

maybe she's pieces of me you've never seen (Faces, s1 e14)

I am, it turns out, a sucker for an art that involves a lady-type person investing in a relationship with herself. I live for a self-rescuing princess.

A lovely example of this genre is the short comic "Radishes" by Casey Nowak, which you can find in their comics collection Girl Town. It's a slice-of-life comic about two young people playing hooky in a fantasy-world mall, and it depicts the protagonist coming face to face with herself and delivering the kind of loving self-talk that therapists are always giving us worksheets about. It's a comic about adolescence but, reading it for the first time as a fully 31-year-old woman, I may have gotten weepy. It's one thing to say the words aloud, another to embody the message in a face-to-face encounter.

"Faces" hits the same notes for me and stands out in a series that is generally curious about women and women's experiences but doesn't always hit the mark. The metaphor, to be clear, is mixed: are B'Elanna's human and Klingon halves a parable for race? Emotional dysregulation? Gender roles? The wobbliness of alien "race" as an essential category in the Trekverse is certainly at play here, conflating physical difference with behavioral difference in a way that's uncomfortable. So why is it so compelling?

The show starts with a bananapants cold open - a Vidiian lab where a phenotypically Klingon B'Elanna is undergoing medical experimentation. We learn that her genome has been reconfigured in order to test her resistance to the phage, producing a second, human counterpart constructed from her leftover genes.

The episode seems to want to say something about illness, but I'm not sure it's anything good. B'Elanna is a "pure specimen" and physically resilient against the infection, while her human counterpart continuously self-describes as "weak". B'Elanna's Klingon pain tolerance brings to mind the way racialized people are viewed as experiencing less pain. The episode frames her Klingon heritage as a source of strength, but "being mixed-race is good because you inherit positive racial traits" is... still a kinda racist and eugenicist message?

We also see B'Elanna using her sexuality to aid her escape, a trope I absolutely never want to see (male characters never resort to it!) The show thinks it's clever by having her use the stereotype of Klingon female hypersexuality against her captor, but as viewers we've been consistently shown this stereotype to be true, so it comes off as boring feminine wiles shit and not a judo move to flip the patriarchy.

Meanwhile, Tom and Durst bunk up with a Talaxian even more grating than Neelix and plot their escape. Poor Durst; it appears that extras on Voyager only get names when they're destined to die, have babies, or both. Tom attempts to comfort human!Torres with his bland sympathetic manner but in the process says literally all the worst things. Apparently he's lost the Vidiian "hot or not" competition, as it's Durst's face that's grafted onto B'Elanna's captor.

Roxann Dawson is really fucking good in these roles. As human!Torres, she's able to give voice to her inner turmoil; as her Klingon self, she's a total boss who embodies confidence, strength, and mad rodent-hunting skills. Their relationship is beautifully Jungian, a woman accepting that she must embrace her whole self to survive.

By the end, Klingon!B'Elanna has died, but her genetics and her body have allowed a reintegrated B'Elanna to survive. Again, there's so much to critique in the confusion of racial and Jungian images of dark and light halves and the framing of B'Elanna's mixed identity as a "fight." But, goddammit, I find it incredibly moving, because there is some subjective truth here: the shadow self inside us who says, yeah, no, you can survive. You can be unruly and make your own destiny. Go ahead, conform, play by their rules, but remember, I'm still here. And you need me.

4 out of 5 roasty-toasty rodents.

[theawkwardvirgin]

Margaret Sanger: A Racist, Ableist Eugenicist

In honor of the March for Life taking place yesterday, here’s a friendly reminder that Margaret Sanger was a racist, ableist eugenicist.

In her article My Way to Peace, she outlined this 3-step plan to prevent “fifteen or twenty millions of our population” from tainting society:

Sterilizing anyone with mental or physical disabilities and putting them to work on segregated farms for the rest of their lives.

Putting poor, illiterate, drug-addicted, or sex-working individuals to work on state-run concentration farms, which they would only be allowed to leave if they reformed and accepted sterilization.

Institute mandatory birth-control training for women with serious illnesses like heart disease, to discourage them from having children.

In that same document, she specifies that she includes those “barred from entrance by the Immigration Laws of 1924” and their descendants among the undesirable groups that should be sterilized and segregated—said immigration laws barred Asians and imposed severe restrictions on the number of Africans and Arabs allowed to enter the country.

Her support for this plan actually resulted in 30 states passing laws allowing for forced sterilization: “At least 70,000 people in the United States were forcibly sterilized under the laws promoted by Sanger and her associates. Far more, especially women prisoners and women on welfare, were surreptitiously sterilized.”

She went on to say in A Better Race Through Birth Control that “women of subnormal mentality, however lacking they may be in vision and altruism, would prefer to avoid the pain and responsibilities of procreation, if the satisfaction of sex could be divorced from reproduction.”

In her article In Defense of Assassination, she said, “Exterminating warfare is also waged against the savage members of the human race wherever they oppose the establishment of conditions necessary for the development of the more highly organized types.”

In fact, Sanger’s eugenicist beliefs are so blatant that a Planned Parenthood center in NYC actually removed their founder’s name from their clinic because they didn’t want to be associated with her eugenicist policies—an ironic decision, as they continue to advocate for some of the methods of eugenics Sanger supported.

While Sanger’s ultimate mission of segregation and forced sterilization has failed, her eugenicist beliefs continue to succeed in more subtle ways. For instance, in NYC in 2013, more Black babies were aborted than born, at a rate of 67.3 per 1,000, a rate vastly higher than any other racial group. While that rate decreased to 32.6 in 2020, the disparity between races increased, with Black babies being aborted over 5 times more often than their white counterparts.

The fact that Margaret Sanger supported the forced sterilization and enslavement of POC, drug addicts, sex workers, and disabled individuals has been suppressed for decades, so as not to complicate the message that she is a champion of women’s rights. Ignoring these facts—ignoring her own words—allows these evils to continue uncontested. We cannot remain in ignorance. We cannot meaningfully separate Planned Parenthood’s current actions from their founder, especially as the racial disparities are only growing more extreme. Regardless of how you feel about abortion, it’s eugenicist roots are a vital piece of information to have when considering it.

Now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned, the March for Life has turned even more attention to mitigating the damage done by Margaret Sanger’s eugenicist beliefs. Specifically, to ensure that all pregnant women and their families have easier access to several kinds of support, so they can make a truly informed decision instead of believing that abortion is their only option.

With every woman, with every child.

[awideplace]

Posting this as it is akin to the Ask I received last night on here

Eugenics is a social movement that supports the supposed improvement of the human population via selective breeding and other means. It was originally developed by Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, and based upon Darwin’s theory of evolution. The word eugenics literally means “good birth” and comes from a Greek word meaning “well-born, of good stock, of noble race.” The goal of eugenics is to make the world (or at least a country) a better place by guiding the course of human reproduction and “purifying” the gene pool.

Eugenicists advocate genetic screening, birth control, segregation, transhumanism, euthanasia, compulsory sterilization, forced pregnancies, and abortion. Eugenics was practiced openly in the early decades of the 20th century in many countries, including the United States. Several state laws were passed allowing for the forced sterilization of institutionalized people. Such a law in Virginia survived a court challenge, with Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., writing in the decision, “It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind” (Buck v. Bell, Supreme Court, 274 U.S. 200, decided May 2, 1927). After WWII, eugenics by that name fell into disfavor when the extent of Nazi atrocities became known.

Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, America’s largest abortion provider, was also a proponent of eugenics. Sanger railed against the “reckless breeding” of the “unfit.” In her book Woman and the New Race, she wrote, “The most merciful thing that a large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it” (Chapter V, “The Wickedness of Creating Large Families,” 1920). She desired “to breed a race of human thoroughbreds” and would rather a society “produce a thousand thoroughbreds than a million runts” (Radio WFAB Syracuse, February 29, 1924, transcripted in “The Meaning of Radio Birth Control,” April 1924, p. 111).

The Bible does not specifically mention eugenics, but the idea behind eugenics—that man can better himself by ridding the world of “undesirable” people—is definitely not biblical. And the methods promoted by eugenicists, including abortion, euthanasia, and racial segregation, are wicked practices. God told mankind to “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28; 9:1, 7). No exception to that command is given in Scripture, and there is certainly no racial modification to that command suggested anywhere in the Bible. For social engineers to usurp God’s authority over life and death in order to create a self-defined “master race” is evil. Biblically, there is only one race—the human race—with everyone having descended from Adam and Eve. Racial discrimination and ethnic superiority go against God’s very nature: “God does not show favoritism but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right” (Acts 10:34–35).

English theologian G. K. Chesterton wrote in his 1922 book Eugenics and Other Evils, “There is no reason in Eugenics, but there is plenty of motive. Its supporters are highly vague about its theory, but they will be painfully practical about its practice” (from Chapter VIII, “A Summary of a False Theory”). Since that practice involves abortion and euthanasia, eugenics is simply murder.

Eugenics is not commonly called by that name today, but the underlying philosophy is still evident in medical genetics. Today’s genetic screening and fetal gene manipulation are vestiges of eugenics. When a possible genetic defect is diagnosed in an unborn child, some couples choose to abort the baby. Unborn children with Down syndrome are one example: in the United States, an estimated 67 percent of the unborn diagnosed with Down syndrome are aborted; in France, 77 percent; in Denmark, 98 percent; and in Iceland nearly 100 percent (“‘What kind of society do you want to live in?’: Inside the country where Down syndrome is disappearing,” cbsnews.com/news/down-syndrome-iceland, accessed 6/22/20). It’s eugenics by a different name, as people continue to attempt to identify and eliminate genetic material they consider “unfit” or undesirable.

Eugenics is a meritless and immoral social engineering experiment. It is a slippery slope in which Chesterton’s scientific madmen abrogate the authority of God and seek to create their own utopia on Earth. Centuries ago, Job lamented the evil of his day: “When daylight is gone, the murderer rises up, kills the poor and needy, and in the night steals forth like a thief” (Job 24:14). This is the role of eugenicist: killing the poor and needy and those he deems “unworthy,” preventing a “poor quality of life” (in his estimation) by taking life, denying men’s liberty, and playing God.

One day as Jesus and His disciples were walking in Jerusalem, His disciples asked about a man born blind. They wanted to know “who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John 9:2). Jesus replied, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, . . . but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him” (verse 3). Who are we to decide who does or does not display the works of God?

In direct contrast to eugenics, the Bible tells us to defend the weak and disadvantaged: “Uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed. . . . Rescue the weak and the needy” (Psalm 82:4); “Blessed are those who have regard for the weak” (Psalm 41:1; see also Matthew 25:35–36; Acts 20:35). Killing the disadvantaged, culling those whom the more fortunate determine to be “unfit” for life, or weeding out the weak is ungodly to the core.

Source: https://www.gotquestions.org/eugenics-Bible.html

[very-grownup]

Book 33, 2023

Everyone loves "The Yellow Wallpaper", the semi-autobiographical gothic horror story about postpartum mental health issues and the treatment of women's illness in the late 19th and early 20th century.

We regret to inform you that the author of "The Yellow Wallpaper", a white feminist born in 1860, has horrible politics. Who could have foreseen this?

The answer is: anyone if we studied literature in the context of an author's wider body of work, instead of cherry picking and whittling down an author profile for specific relevance to that chosen work. I studied "The Yellow Wallpaper" in multiple university classes, because it is an excellent little story, heavy with symbolism and material to interpret, while also having a very clear message. It's unsettling, raw, claustrophobic, bumping against issues that we're still grappling with over a hundred years later. There's a reason Charlotte Perkins Gilman is primarily remembered for this story, which doesn't reveal any of her more questionable opinions. So periodically people on social media get to discover things like how she was an eugenicist.

I wrote a number of papers on depictions of single-sex societies in fiction while at school, which means I also read Gilman's novella, "Herland", which gives room for her wider politics to breathe, but I was still surprised by what I found in her fiction reading "Herland and Selected Stories".

For starters: a lot of them are fairly unimpressive and mundane and I wasn't reading a collection of all of Gilman's fiction. These were curated by an editor. I admit to not having read Barbara H. Solomon's introduction; I skimmed it and didn't see any references to Gilman's opinions that are less palpable to modern readers. Perhaps there she explains her logic for the stories she selected.

Some of the stories concern utopia-adjacent feminist ideals relevant to Gilman's time. Older women finding themselves invigorated by late-in-life discovery of things that fulfill them outside the confines of the wife-and-mother role. Young women guided to more fulfilling lives independent of men they don't really want by older mentors. Women finding common ground in being hurt by the same man and uniting with each other, instead of embracing a villain in the Other Woman. Women finding love but with men who respect them and don't ask them to change themselves. Which is all fine and can be recognized as progressive and counter to the culture of the time.

They're not very interesting, though, Gilman's polemic against the patriarchy more significant than any interesting plot or character sketch or artistically pleasing turns of phrase.

The selected stories don't particularly advertise Gilman's racial stances. Gilman was a great-niece of Harriet Beecher Stowe and, while she acknowledged the ill that had been done to Black Americans, similarly fails to understand the wider systemic problems of post-slavery America and her own contributions in perpetuating a culture of white supremacy. There are a few references to "coloured" maids, most egregious in "Her Housekeeper", where a Black maid is present and named and the reader is informed she sleeps on the couch, but doesn't care where she sleeps, if she even needs to sleep. Unsurprisingly, what's most conspicuous is the otherwise complete absence of Black people from any of the selected stories.

The matter of eugenics is more clearly on display, thought, particularly in "Herland", where good women and citizens who are "inferior" recognize themselves as such and choose to forego motherhood (the female ideal in their society and for the women in many of the selected short stories, despite Gilman's beliefs being counter to strict gender roles), preventing the spread of those "inferior" qualities (physical and mental disabilities and asocial tendencies that could lead to crime). The women are all fit and diversely Aryan (blonde, brunette, redheaded, pale, tan). Other stories remind us that fat women are repulsive to witness in society.

The story that really captured my attention was "When I Was A Witch", in which a woman acquires ambiguous magical abilities that she uses to angrily right societal wrongs, only to lose them when she tries to impose something positive and pure in the form of making all women realize all the good power and potential available to them as women, drawing a line between women as they exist and "real" women, who have embraced "... their real power, their real dignity, their real responsibility in the world ...", who don't behave in a way the narrator finds embarrassing. This is labeled white magic versus her previous black magics that come from rage. But it's undeniable that those black magic wishes represent real beliefs of Gilman's, many of them coming from a place of good intentions. Carriage drivers are made to feel the physical suffering their horses endure, reducing their cruelty to the animals. Shareholders of major companies are made to feel the suffering the people at the bottom of the chain of power, pushing them to change their priorities from profits to people. Domestic animals in the city lead lives either stifled or full of suffering, so they all suddenly die. Parrots are given the ability to speak their 'opinions' of their owners and they all hate them.

Also, they think their predominantly female owners are ugly.

Gilman would love PETA.

There's a condescending feminist version of noblesse oblige in how Gilman and her protagonists talk about other women who have not found or chosen the path of what Gilman sees as empowered, fully realized femaleness that leaves a bad taste in my mind. Women need to work together to uplift each other and rely on each other in their stories, but they need to recognize that some women are going to try and keep them from fulfilling themselves because they don't Understand and have become disconnected from True Femaleness in a very second-wave eco-feminist nature mother way.

"The Yellow Wallpaper" is clearly Gilman's most enduring work of fiction because, in addition to being an easy work to teach, it's genuinely good and coming from a real, personal place. It doesn't propose a solution to the protagonist's distress, it has an ending that breaks her instead of giving her a neatly gift-wrapped solution because there isn't an easy solution for post-partum depression. When she moves away from that personal experience in her fiction, the reader also moves away from connecting with it. The politics, both good and bad, don't intersect meaningfully with the personal, and a number of them simply aren't good.

Sometimes it's easy to forget an author might only have one good one in them.

[collapsedsquid]

The Collinses themselves have been called "hipster eugenicists" online, something Simone called "amazing" when I brought it to her attention.

Malcolm's "going to want to make business cards that say 'Simone and Malcolm Collins: Hipster Eugenicists," she said with a laugh.

"It's funny that people are so afraid of being accused of Nazism," when they're just improving their own embryos, Simone added, after noting that her Jewish grandmother escaped Nazi-occupied France. "I'm not eliminating people. I mean, I'm eliminating from my own genetic pool, but these are all only Malcolm and me."

[...]

Musk was echoing an argument made by Nick Bostrom, one of the founding fathers of longtermism, who wrote that he worried declining fertility among "intellectually talented individuals" could lead to the demise of "advanced civilized society." Émile P. Torres, a former longtermist philosopher who has become one of the movement's most outspoken critics, put it more bluntly: "The longtermist view itself implies that really, people in rich countries matter more."

A source who worked closely with Musk for several years described this thinking as core to the billionaire's pronatalist ideology. "He's very serious about the idea that your wealth is directly linked to your IQ," he said. The source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for this article, also said Musk urged "all the rich men he knew" to have as many children as possible.

[...]

These worries tend to focus on one class of people in particular, which pronatalists use various euphemisms to express. In August, Elon's father, Errol Musk, told me that he was worried about low birth rates in what he called "productive nations." The Collinses call it "cosmopolitan society." Elon Musk himself has tweeted about the movie "Idiocracy," in which the intelligent elite stop procreating, allowing the unintelligent to populate the earth.

[...]

While pronatalism is often associated with religious extremism, the version now trending in this community has more in common with dystopian sci-fi. The Collinses, who identify as secular Calvinists, are particularly drawn to the tenet of predestination, which suggests that certain people are chosen to be superior on earth and that free will is an illusion. They believe pronatalism is a natural extension of the philosophical movements sweeping tech hubs like the Silicon Hills of Austin, Texas. Our conversations frequently return to transhumanism (efforts to merge human and machine capabilities to create superior beings), longtermism (a philosophy that argues the true cost of human extinction wouldn't be the death of billions today but the preemptive loss of trillions, or more, unborn future people), and effective altruism (or EA, a philanthropic system currently focused on preventing artificial intelligence from wiping out the human population).

“I’m not a nazi bent on eugenicist racial mass extermination, I merely subcribe to all the beliefs that would compel that conclusion and are also said by those who publicly espouse eugenicist racial mass extermination ”

[irithnova]

OK I was waiting for someone in the notes to point this out. At first I thought maybe I was reading too much into it because no one else was talking about it so I just left it at that, but I'm glad I'm not the only one who's realised she is literally talking like a racial eugenicist :/

[collymore]

A case not necessarily for eugenics but certainly one for the enforced sterilization of discernible idiots.

By Stanley Collymore Intelligence most regrettably isn’t equally dispensed to everyone, that’s one of the really stark anomalies of life and there’s crucially little, let alone significantly, anything at all, that anybody can realistically do about that; other than basically humour, wherever that’s relatively conveniently possible such clear outright prats; very alternatively, they could be legally, medically sectioned; and, either lengthily or permanently incarcerate all the clearly, hard-core lunatics and distinctly, mind-numbing psychopaths while evidently, so distinctly, humanitarianly medicate and very sensibly, permanently and decidedly steadfastly and unfailingly, conscionably and fittingly, sterilize the bulk of them! For stupidity is too dangerous an element of life within any progressive and obviously meaningful society since it wholesale effectively and equally vastly imperils the essentially coherent and likewise the cohesive embodiment of each of them, and thus consequently should therefore not be allowed to asininely infiltrate let alone commandeer and effectively persuasively regulate the actual means through which a truly beneficial and, similarly a distinctly discernibly modern society, clearly and effectively undoubtedly needs to acquire for itself and ostensibly sensibly, clearly and progressively so confidently embrace its future! (C) Stanley V. Collymore 22 February 2023. Author's Remarks: Britain currently, and has now for some time has been injuriously and seemingly inescapably as well been rampantly infested by discernibly dim-witted, patently obvious and deeply ingrained, intellectually challenged, unthinkingly pathetically gullible and very short attention span, easily exploitable and actually routinely exploited morons who aren’t merely monarchical brownnosing serfs but quite evidently also obviously love being arbitrarily characterized by their perceived societal betters as who and what they essentially are and must effectively significantly always remain; notwithstanding that psychologically they’re neither living in the Middle Ages or the 19th Century but actually an unquestionably, modern and progressive 21st Century. Stupidity so endemic, deeply ingrained and egregiously rampant that it’s embarrassingly painful to observe and actually countenance; courtesy of the purported Master Race, British and likewise attendantly so their surfeit of likeminded and overseas progeny of genocidal and racially inured bastards, keen to hold on to what they barbarically acquired in places like Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States of America but, all the same, collectively wanting Europe strictly for white Caucasians! So pathetically inane! Even Winston Churchill the obsessively arch and deeply inured eugenicist contemptuously abhorred the lot of them as he earnestly and frequently sought to have legally introduced parliamentary legislation that would automatically and drastically reduce the numbers of these intensely perceived as distinctly lower orders regrettably of British society. More than a tad ironic coming from Winston Churchill considering what a prolific and licentiously whoring trollop his own mother, nee Jenny Jerome, was throughout her entire useless life, who palmed him and his brother onto a father, who even Jennie’s own sisters unerringly believed was not these boys biological dad; and considering that Jennie Jerome was already 3 months pregnant when she easily conned Randolph Churchill into marrying her; asininely and wholly unconvincingly, to anyone with a functioning brain, claiming after Winston’s delivery that his birth was premature because she had accidentally fallen during her pregnancy with him – on her back presumably and a position that was for her most commonplace in such circumstances – causing her to have a 3 months early birth of the baby that she was carrying? Give me a bloody break! But the white British and their kin are exceptionally gullible and will unquestionably believe any and every piece of shit told to them by their intensely perceived and, accordingly, automatically believed societal betters! In the same way that they have collectively endorsed the said Winston Churchill who summarily wanted to be permanently rid of their sort, as the greatest ever living British person there ever was. No Jane Austen, William Shakespeare or Catherine Cookson for example, mind; but if you’re intensely intellectually challenged as significant numbers of them are, that is undoubtedly bound to happen. Besides, Winston Churchill himself ironically idealized his mother Jennie Jerome who characteristically had had little or no time for him, leaving him exclusively to his nannies; but I guess lying on her back and spreading her legs quite copiously for her myriad and invariably influential lovers was much more fun; as well as indisputably far more profitable, financially and societal wise, in addition to being a lot more appealing for this licentious American and naturalized British whore! Then came along Margaret Thatcher who decided to get rid of Britain’s many and quite longstanding mental hospitals, under the lame and unconvincing pretext that in doing so it would save the country’s Exchequer loads of money and instantaneously enable the affected patients , many of whom were legally and mentally sectioned to these psychiatric institutions, to be liberated into their respective communities and accordingly cared for there by loved ones and charitable bodies committed to and likewise experienced in this sort of work. What a financially grasping and avaricious Maggie Thatcher, her supportive Tories and their likeminded champagne drinking Labtories in the Labour Party conveniently failed to and accordingly didn’t tell the general public, but intelligent minds had already adduced what was going on, was that the entire project was nothing more than a commercial scam to close down these mental hospitals and literally not only sell them off but similarly too their myriad and valuable assets to these political scavengers personal commercial friends but attendant to this ensure significant financial kickbacks for themselves. And it worked immensely! The detrimental outcome of these purposefully executed and extremely damaging societal consequences are all too obvious and horrifically commonplace across the entirety of Britain with people who ought never to have been conceived let alone allowed to be born, and would never have been if Winston Churchill had had his way; yet are now running rampantly and murderously at large; and with the Home Office, the Crown Prosecution Service, the Magistracy, the plethora of UK courts, at all levels, collectively  combined in their unmanageable control of events and not infrequently in unison with each other’s crass inability and even their active encouragement of what’s going on – as they’re very much part of the problem itself – law and order in Britain has become not only a sick but likewise a pathetic and psychopathic joke; though not for those on the receiving end of it.

Just take a serious and dispassionate look at those who’re routinely, indifferently and callously committing these atrocious murders, and it’s patently obvious to anyone but the obviously blind or likemindedly biased that an increasing number of them aren’t even out of their teens; and effectively these are already hard-core psychopaths that literally should have no place in any, modern, normal and progressive society. Personally, I’ve always been, very much still am, and will resolutely continue to be against any state wide and statutorily introduced death penalty, but that doesn’t mean that either myself or those I’ve spoken to and who think like me should throw our hands up in the air despairingly and thus indifferently allow things to carry on as they currently are and, what’s more, become even more despairingly for all decent members of our respective society. For quite irrefutably these infernally callous murderers and rather uncaring lowlife elements of supposedly Homo sapiens are unquestionably never likely to change in character being the inured psychopaths that they distinctly are; and sensibly the best solution to adopt relative to them and also intelligently and relentlessly carry out is to compulsorily sterilize the least destructive among them so they’re permanently incapable of ever reproducing their own kind , while with the more extreme elements and atrocious lot among them: regardless of their age or gender, utilize the once commonly used electroconvulsive therapy treatment that was prevalent in the past throughout mental hospitals across Britain, but this time massively increase the electrode dosage to that generally used in death row centres across the United States of America  to discernibly and permanently dispense with such likeminded scum. Quite sensibly and effectively, in my estimation, a serious and detrimental problem largely and significantly, even if not completely so, effectively solved.

[assignmentimprobable]

Back at it again and one thing I want to say following the release of IWTV AMC is that the context surrounding a character’s racial swap in horror is what makes or breaks the whole thing.

Analysis below the cut. 

TW for discussions of racism, violence, and eugenics. 

Light spoilers for IWTV (2022)

Let me explain using an example that doesn’t work. Albert Wesker in the Netflix Resident Evil series. Albert Wesker is a eugenicist. Eugenics is a field framed by white supremecist views and anti-disability beliefs. It feels… Wrong, to race swap him to use those frameworks as is in line with his character without any meaningful effort to address the subject or say anything important about it. It’d be different if the story tackled the idea that hierarchies based in racialized science are often enforced by members of the communities that they harm (that’s how they survive.) through respectability politics and exceptionalism, but Wesker is just? A villain. That’s it. It ends there.

Now let’s use an example that works. Candyman, acted superbly by Tony Todd. He was a white man with red hair in the original short story by Clive Barker. But we don’t care because the recontextualization of his story is constructed in a way that… idk, for lack of better word actually shows an active dedication to what choice is being made, and how it is carried out. Is it racist that a black man is chasing around a white woman and terrorizing her? Yes, at it’s nature because of the history of deaths that followed false accusations during the era of Jim Crow and the Black Codes. However, Candyman is loved by the black community. Why? Because he’s sympathetic, because he’s charming, because his power is given in the wake of something awful and not even remotely uncommon for black people living in his time. Because he’s handsome and debonair and speaks with a voice like honey. There’s this great documentary called Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror that I recommend you check out if you’re interested in seeing the topography of the genre and it’s continued cultural relevance.

Candyman works because of the setting around it: gentrification and hood poverty. How myths and horrors can float around in poverty stricken communities because honestly? What’s one more when you’re facing hunger and state indifference and violence to survive? Helen‘s critical mistake was assuming that Candyman was some mass-delusion to blame squalor on a boogeyman. Like no bitch. The Candyman stories flourish in these places because of the desensitization to horror that living in an environment with them brings. Also, centering Candyman himself: His subsequent backstory and the 2021 entry to the series do so much to lend sympathy to his character. There’s a retroactive reason he’s enamored with Helen, and we see that racist violence and cruelty made him what he is. A painter in love turned something that white people invoked- that’s why he’s Candyman. The projects didn’t name Candyman, the white people who tortured him to death did. We can sympathize with him, we can ask why Helen felt so compelled to interrupt the lives of this community. For what? To be some white savior? To chase a study in intellectualism, knowing she can go home and forget them? She fucked around and found out. Enter Candyman.

So why does it work for Louis?

Well, let’s take a look at his book counterpart.

Being half black I can’t sympathize with book Louis. I don’t give a fuck about what he’s been through. Seriously. He was a slaver. There’s no such thing as a benevolent slave owner, you have human beings as currency and *chattel*. His framing as the hypocritical, but more compassionate and empathetic of the duo is something I can’t buy. That’s not something I can overlook, it takes me out of the enjoyment. I cannot separate that from his character to enjoy him for what he’s supposed to be.

AMC Louis? completely different story. By introducing blackness to his character, you are creating what is supposed to be the ‘monster’ as is the genre’s convention, but not a *monster*. He’s infinitely more compelling, more complex as a well-to-do eldest son of an affluent black family struggling with the racial hierarchy, his sexuality; and the judgment that comes with these two categorical assignments. He’s dealing with the lapse of generational wealth- something that many black people have not had the opportunity to build to the level of glut that white affluent families have. Often all it takes is ONE generation of bad decisions to lose it all because one or in the luckiest cases: two generation’s worth is the most for many who find their footing. Louis can’t be himself. He has to be tough but infinitely patient and well mannered to appeal to his white business partners. He can’t be angry, but he must be rough for fear that he’ll be walked all over. He’s judged for the very thing that keeps his family in their comfort. He’s not free to emotionally engage with art because of what kind of policing results from being a black man AND a queer man. Those two distinctions overlap and create a separate experience that people refuse to really put an understanding to? Like people put a monolith to queerness that has its defaults in white convention. White butches and twinks and bears and hunks. The colloquial y’all don’t have to deal with how your race informs the behaviors that people ascribe to queerness. 

When Louis read his mother’s mind and heard her disgust over the simple act of *getting his nails done* i couldn’t help but think about conversations among the black elders when they see the little boys acting even a little outside their norms. “He’s got a little sugar in the tank”, “you need to snap him out of that, make sure he doesn’t grow up a punk”. Some of that is garden variety homophobia, but so much of it is also how much crueler life is when you’re black and you’re gay. The racial hierarchy exists in the communities it subjugates and it maintains racial norms of what black men are supposed to act like. Louis is bound to that.

That kind of context makes it easier to sympathize with Louis and feel his pain. It lends itself well to his relationship with Lestat and the balance they’re supposed to strike. Lestat, a white man, is able to kill as he does because his whiteness gives him carte Blanche to see himself superior to ‘humans’. Whiteness, the construction, incentivizes putting people into categories of ‘other’ and situating yourself at the top. ‘Humans’ replace ‘blacks’. Of course he doesn’t care that he’s taking human beings out of this world, of course he takes delight in the killing. Vampirism gives him the tools to do what the world (the social stratosphere, the *law*) already encourages and incentivizes white men to do completely unimpeded! People don’t like to talk about it, but like the Vampire genre lends itself a little too well to capitalist greed and colonial wealth hoarding. Louis does not, and has never had access to these tools. Of course he is horrified, of course it is unnatural to him. Of course the transition is difficult! That makes the divide between them so interesting. That’s what makes this change for Louis’ character so good.

Context *matters* if you’re going to reclaim a character in this genre. Race swaps in action and fantasy? 

Nah, you don’t need a reason lmao fuck y’all. Black MJ, Black Ariel, Black Catwoman, Iris West, and Jim Gordon for life idgaf idgaf idgaf. 

Anyways. If your character has a storied history of racist belief or politics, and the change will fundamentally alter the fabric of how the story is carried out then writers have an obligation to accommodate and write carefully around it. Which I think they’ve done here in the series so far. I’m excited to see what happens next.