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consummate-deviant · 5 years ago

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Why I Think Entrapdak is Pretty Neat

Hello! How’s the family? Cat treating you okay? Isn’t autumn just...like… the best? Anyway, so, my Hordak thing turned out to be kinda popular. I’m flattered, really! If there are people out there willing to reward me writing stuff with positive attention, then I’ll just have to write more stuff. I mentioned back then that I had a similar write-up about Entrapdak, as a ship… and there seemed to be a little bit of interest in hearing my thoughts on the subject. So, here ya go! I’m Lancer, by the by. Not a lot to me. I’m a guy who likes things, and who enjoys articulating why I like things. I don’t really do it for any particular reason. I’m not trying to pwn haters or convert nonbelievers… As you may recall, though you might have missed it (I tend to be very lowkey and subtle about it), I’m not your dad and have no interest in the position… unless it pays. I just feel like the internet doesn’t have enough positivity, and the best way to remedy that is to produce some of my own.

As fate would have it, I like Entrapdak. A lot. I don’t ship often... a relationship has to really sync with me on a profound level to make me invested enough in it to want to write about it, but this one did it. Now, I’m not really promising originality here. As someone who explores the tag frequently, I know that plenty have expressed feelings I’m going to share with you here, many of whom did so better than I ever could, but sometimes you want to share your perspective, even if others whose opinions mirror yours have done so in the past, y’know? It’s a human thing! The relationship is a little… polarizing with people, though, I’ve noticed. A lot of people hate it, and have various reasons for doing so. Again, I ain’t here to convert you if you feel that way, but I did feel like the best way to kick things off would be to look at some of the major reasons other people tend to react to the ship like it were horseradish on a hotdog, and why those reasons don’t really bother me. A part that I, in my infinite wit and adorned in my clever pants, have dubbed:

Part 1: Entrapdak- Why I don’t hate it

***EXAMPLE THE FIRST: “HORDAK, THE AGED”***

By now it’s fairly well known that Entrapta is somewhere in the range of her late 20s to her early 30s. Now a few people refuse to accept this, citing her behavior as childish and accusing the creators of lying. I’m not really going to engage with that perspective. Hordak and Entrapta have appeared together in creator works and concept art dating back to 2017. Their interactions were intended to be a part of the show from the early stages of its creation. If you have so little faith in Noelle that you believe she planned for her story to have a romantic-coded relationship between an adult and a minor… I don’t know what I can even tell you.

Rather, the perspective that interests me comes from people who accept Entrapta being in the stated age range, but who still find themselves repulsed by the relationship on grounds of age. ‘She’s an adult, sure, but how old is Hordak? He could be in his fifties or sixties, or even be hundreds of years old.’ This point of view is at least interesting to think about, so I reckon I can share why this deal-breaker for some doesn’t really bother me.

To begin, assigning human ages, and the stigmas thereof, to an alien bat clone just feels strange to me. The Horde doesn’t seem like the type of place to want to waste resources on alien bat clone daycare... was Hordak born as an infant, or was he artificially developed to his current age? If it’s the later, do we consider him 0 years old at the moment of his birth, or already an adult? We don’t have a timescale provided to accurately determine his age, so investing too heavily in trying to learn it seems somewhat tedious and a lotofwhat pointless.

If we do, though, my next question is: what is the element of an age gap that makes it inappropriate? Now, that’s a personal question, of course. Morality isn’t something that really lends itself to objective declarations, but there are a few answers you can offer. ‘Morality’ isn’t really the operative word here anyway... since it has more to do with taste, though this particular taste does come from what you believe… Y’know, it just occurred to me, but… People who believe that their taste in ships makes them morally superior, and that ships they dislike are supported by moral degenerates, seem like people who just aren’t a lot of fun to be around or think about… but that’s a digression, I’ll refocus my thought-lazer.

For me, with age gaps, it comes down to two things:

1.) Both parties being on the same side of the child/adult divide- I should hope this one sounds reasonable, right? The ships that really powdered sugar my poptart are the ones that feel like equal partnerships, and relationships that try to cross this line tend to not be especially equal.

2.) What stage in their lives they’re at- It’s difficult for even a wizard of self expression like myself to state plainly, so let me give an example: If I saw a 25 year old dating a 50 year old, the 25-year age difference isn’t so much what makes it off-putting, but rather what those 25 years represent in this circumstance. At age 25, people are still struggling to find themselves. They’re adjusting to independence, gaining an identity, maybe finally finding an entryway into a career path that suits them. By 50, a person is already established. They likely have a career, they have a firm grasp on who they are as a person and what they want to be, and they almost certainly have a greater degree of financial stability. Thus, if they enter a relationship, which is supposed to be equal, it doesn’t feel that way. One side has a stronger position than the other, and over time that could become power they use to sway and control the other.

I don’t see Hordak as being in a more advanced stage of his life than Entrapta. They seem to be at about the same place when it comes to self actualization. In fact, Hordak is a bit more arrested in his development than Entrapta is, simply because he’s never really thought to question what would make him happy or why. Hordak rules the Horde, which Entrapta is a part of… which could lead to an imbalance, if Entrapta, like, could be bothered to give even the slightest toss of a salad about status or promotion, but she doesn’t. Neither of them holds higher ground over the other in a way that’s significant to the two of them. In terms of life stage, they’re perfectly equal. The fact that Hordak might be physically older than her by some unspecified amount is, by itself, completely arbitrary and meaningless.

*** EXAMPLE THE SECOND: ‘ENTRAPTA, THE MANIPULATED’***

A second, rarer discussion point for those who are unfond of the ship is that it’s unhealthy, on the grounds that Hordak is manipulating Entrapta. Taking advantage of her naivete to coerce her into aiding the forces of darkness despite not caring for her at all. Now, as I mentioned above, I ain’t writing this to change anyone’s mind. If you’re reading this, and this is a viewpoint you hold as valid, do what makes you happy, homie. That said, the issue I ran into when I tried to think of why this perspective didn’t bother me was a vexing one. See, I like to fancy myself an empathetic dude. I try really hard to consider other people’s perspectives when I have a disagreement, and avoid judging anyone too harshly if I don’t know their full circumstance… but even with all that alleged empathy at my disposal… this hot take about Entrapdak is… kinda completely incomprehensible to me? Like, I have no idea how anyone could have seen the interactions between the two and draw this conclusion?

Part of it has to do with how Entrapta is written. She’s both ADHD-coded and Autistic-coded, and there’s a tendency to perceive the behaviors of both those groups of people as childish. People who see that ‘childishness’ extrapolate it further to a general innocence/stupidity, and assume the character in question lacks the faculties to engage with other people evenly.

Look, I don’t have ADHD, but I am super, duper autistic. Having lived with myself for a lifetime, let me just say, I kind of get why this happens. We get extremely focused on our hobbies, we’re bad at reading social nuance, we have very simplistic body language, we tend to express our emotions in a very blunt and straightforward manner… I get that, for most neurotypical people, the only other group they ever encounter who shares these traits are children, and thus they tend to subconsciously connect the two. I understand why it happens, even if I do find it awkward and condescending.

…but y’all are underestimating Entrapta. She’s not helping the horde because she’s helpless and being manipulated. She’s helping them because she has no moral compass to speak of, and will eagerly assist with any scientific endeavor she finds interesting, without care for its ultimate application. In season 1, she knew well in advance the damage her actions would have on the world, and followed through with them anyway. In season 2, she happily assisted in the creation of a portal, knowing full-well that its opening would invite a colonialist military force into the vicinity of her home, and only withdrew her support for the project… hesitantly… when it became clearly evident that activating it would eradicate all life on the planet. At no point is she ever acting while the applications of her actions are being hidden from her by Hordak. She’s not an innocent child.

The thing is, though, I agree that Entrapta would be incredibly easy to manipulate… if someone knew what buttons to push. She is very self conscious of how difficult it is for her to form lasting emotional bonds with other people. She tends to blame herself when she feels she’s been abandoned by others, and feels that her inability make friends is a sign that she’s a defective failure. If someone wanted to manipulate her into doing something she didn’t want to do, they would probably find success if they offered her friendship and then fed into that self loathing, emotionally abusing her by implying that she was indeed a failure, and would be abandoned again if she didn’t obey. That is totally something someone could do to her, and I would absolutely not enjoy any ship between her and such a person. Good thing Hordak… y’know… did literally the opposite of that.

***EXAMPLE THE THIRD- “ENTRAPDAK, THE PLATONIC”***

A nice short one to balance out the longer examples above. Quite a few people just deny that there are romantic implications behind their interactions, and see them as a friendship instead. I do disagree with this assessment, but honestly, even if it were true, this would still be my favorite relationship in the show.

Something that has always boggled me about people on the internet is their tendency to treat friendship like some ‘equal but opposite’ force to romance… a status independent of a romantic relationship rather than literally the foundation upon which all successful romantic relationships are built. Genuine friendship is a beautiful, underrated thing, and acting as though the bond of friendship is inherently less worthy of appreciation than romance is silly.

So… yeah… platonic Entrapdak… I disagree, but even if you’re right and I’m wrong in the end… I’ll be pretty okay with that, too. Movin’ on.

***EXAMPLE THE FOURTH: ‘HORDAK, THE IRREDEEMABLE’***

For the last dealbreaker I want to consider today, I figured I’d bring one up that’s a lot like the platonic argument, in my eyes: that an evil guy like Hordak can’t change his ways, even with the power of love. Thus, the relationship is bust, because what’s the point of of a villain x heroine ship, if not to redeem the villain?

...

So, recently I wrote this whole big thing about Hordak, where I argued in favor of his redemption, and why I felt like that was where the story is going… I stand by the opinions expressed there, but I’d like to ask any who read that to push it out of their mind for now. Hordak’s redemptive potential is largely irrelevant to my feelings about this ship. When it comes to entrapdak, when confronted by the possibility that Hordak may remain a villain, my reaction is the most intense and passionate of shrugs.

...I just don’t care.

There’s a tendency to assume that redemption is the aim of a villain ship, and I suppose I can see why that is. There’s a bit of a stereotype for female fantasies where they fix a broken man with the power of their love, and when people ship villains, that’s probably the first assumption an outsider will make as to why. I cannot speak for others, but that’s just not a factor in the appeal of their relationship for me.

When you allow yourself to be vulnerable in front of another person, you open yourself up to the risk of being completely devastated by them. When you show vulnerability to another person, and they accept that side of you, and express vulnerability of their own, you establish a genuine connection with that person, and those connections are kiiiinda one of the most important elements of the human experience.

That Hordak was a villain who did terrible things was always kinda aside from the point of what really makes Entrapta and Hordak such a bewitching pairing for me. It was always the serendipity of two people who privately believe they’re alone in the world realizing they resonate with one another in a meaningful way. Resonance is the appeal of Entrapdak, not redemption.

I tend to hope for Hordak’s redemption, I won’t lie, and I do think it’s likely, but I don’t think it’ll be love that redeems him, nor would I want it to be… not entirely. I like seeing flawed, morally dark/gray characters overcome the obstacles that deny them self actualization, and watching them grow as a result.

That’s got nothing to do with him and Entrapta, though. Whether the story ends with the pair of them riding into the sunset to collect data and invent shit, or with the pair of them leading the Horde in the name of galactic conquest and terror… I’m down with it either way, dude. In the context of the ship, I care that Hordak is an evil overlord… about as much as Entrapta does.

However, pseudo-responding to naysayers is a bit negative for my tastes. I prefer to focus on the positive in life, like the smell of soil and rain on a crisp autumn morning. I… I’m in a very fall mood, okay? Sue me. Y’know what else I like, though? Entrapdak. Lemme wax poetic for a bit longer, and I’ll tell ya why this ship is, like, the peanut butter on my blueberry pancakes.

Part 2: Entrapdak- Why I love it

So, uh… If brevity is the soul of wit, I may be something of an idiot. I’ve made my peace with that, of course, I’m just sayin’: I’m many things, but I’m not pithy. If someone were to put a gun to my head, though, and demand that I describe the shipping aesthetic I love the most in life in a single sentence… I would probably respond with this:

My favorite ships are ones in which awkward, lonely people bond over a shared fondness of nerdy hobbies.

Now, that sounds super narrow, and it totally is… I don’t get new OTPs very often… but hearing that, I imagine you can see why Entrapta and Hordak immediately appealed to me. It goes a bit deeper, though.

The bonds between people are a major part of the story of She-ra. We see how characters are changed, positively or negatively, by the connection they share with other characters. Just like in real life, these connections are a mixed bag; some of them are positive, and some are negative. Some characters, like Hordak and Catra, resonate strongly with one another, but the resonance is a negative force in their lives, which draws them deeper into darkness, and for many of the characters in the show, their character journeys are about breaking free of such toxic relationships and forming healthy bonds.

The bond between Entrapta and Hordak is unique among all bonds in the show though, in that it is the only one that isn’t mixed. It is an unambiguous positive influence on both of them. Let’s break it down a little bit.

***ENTRAPTA***

Entrapta, at first, seems like the kind of person who isn’t super connected to other people. At the princess prom, she mentions that she finds observing the relationships of others far more fascinating than forging relationships of her own, and she spends much of the early seasons working alone with her robots, buried in whichever task happens to have her interest in that particular moment.

Later seasons gradually tear this facade away, though, and reveal a fairly tragic truth hidden behind it. I mentioned above that she internalizes her failures to form lasting bonds with other people, and is genuinely distraught about it. When she’s exiled to Beast Island, her frustration at her inability to make friends was the driving force that chained her there, even more so than her love of technology and invention. It becomes clear that, to some degree, she buries herself in her work to escape her feelings of inadequacy.

This is a relatable and sad thing to realize about a character, but it also has the unpleasant effect of making events that were played for laughs earlier in the show somewhat tragic in hindsight. Seeing the way she interacted with the Princess Alliance, you could see how she would have come to a very soul-crushing misunderstanding: That, among other people, she was someone whose presence was… tolerated- at times even appreciated- but never seemed to be enjoyed by anyone. She was the friend everyone sought out when they needed her help, then forgot about.

This wasn’t the case, of course, and clarifying her value to the group was what ultimately helped her escape the vines in season four, but from her perspective that was how it appeared, and likely how all her previous interactions with other people had gone before that. Some people complained about how easily Entrapta was able to believe that the princesses had left her behind, but it’s the same reason Hordak was so easily able to believe that Entrapta had betrayed him: In the eyes of someone who hates themselves, it’s only a matter of time before others abandon them.

That said, it also goes to show why Hordak became so special to her. For the first time in her life, she had a friend who joined her in her workspace, instead of leaving her to a task after giving it to her. Someone able to converse equally with her about subjects she was interested in. The elements of herself that made it so difficult to draw closer to others were the very same elements that caused her to get so close to him. Her intelligence and hyper-focus upon science made her the intellectual peer of a space-faring alien, her lack of awareness of social subtext helped her to see beyond the barriers he put up to keep other people away, and her past experience with failure and rejection helped her to empathize with his pain.

It’s perfectly pleasant to find someone who accepts you and enjoys your company despite not understanding the idiosyncratic elements of your personality, but that pales in comparison to how it feels to find someone who accepts you precisely because they understand those elements.

***Hordak***

Hordak didn’t really have ‘peers’, per se, for most of his life. We don’t know the level of autonomy the average clone has in the Horde… but I feel comfortable assuming that the level isn’t very high. Thus, his circumstance differs quite a bit from Entrapta, in that, rather than trying to form bonds with others, and feeling like he failed, for much of his life he never had the chance to try to form them in the first place.

He is, at first, deeply dismissive of the people of Etheria, whom he regards as primitives who are beneath his acknowledgment. Much of this, as with much of everything that dictates how he treats others, is born of projection… dude has some pretty major self-loathing issues… but regardless of cause, it results in a kind of self-imposed isolation.

Unlike Entrapta, who knew, on some level, that her lack of ability to bond with others troubled her, Hordak kept most of his emotions bottled up... Locked so deeply inside him that not even he really bothered to try to understand them. That was where her disposition and his meshed perfectly for him. Because Entrapta was defined by her curiosity, and her lackluster awareness of his attempts to keep her at bay, she was able to metaphorically crack him open, forcing him to vocalize and confront his own motivations.

Sometimes you need someone to just… like... grab you with their hair, push you up against a vat, and demand you tell them everything, man.

I’ve already discussed Hordak fairly extensively in my first blog blurb thingy, and while I repeat myself by accident quite frequently, I’m loathe to repeat myself on purpose. I just wanted to take the opportunity to marvel at how well their personalities fit together. Perhaps I’m just high on this feeling: I’ve never actually shipped something a creator so clearly intended to be there, before!

*** In Conclusion***

We’re all born imperfect, and we’ll all die imperfect. Our imperfections are similar, but never uniform. Each of us bears jagged cuts and missing sections of many shapes and sizes. Humans are social creatures, and it’s in our nature to constantly seek one another out. We keep trying to find people who are strong where we are weak; someone whose missing sections happen to lie in a pattern compatible with our own.

We’ll resonate with many in our lifetime. Sometimes, the melody will be harmonious, and guide all involved higher and higher into the light of self actualization. Other times the sound will be discordant, and pull us down into self destruction. Sadly, from our perspective in the middle, it will always be difficult to tell which is which.

I love the relationship between Entrapta and Hordak because it’s a dynamic that elevates both of them. Not in a moral sense, but in a personal one. In a series defined by toxic and uneven relationships that wear others down and tear them apart, these two have a dynamic that shelters and reinforces them. Giving them an opportunity to be glad they were born the way they were, instead of cursing their misfortune.

It’s the kind of relationship that makes me muse about how imperfection really is beautiful. It’s because we’re imperfect that we never stop trying to harmonize with other people, and if there’s one theme I can’t help but feel that the show itself is building toward, it’s this: Two in harmony surpass one in perfection.

*** So hey! Thanks for reading all of that! Sorry if it was a bit of a mess. Saying nothing with a great deal of words is a talent of mine, but I really do love these guys, and if you love ‘em too, don’t let anyone grind you down over it!

Let me know if you enjoyed my work, though! If so, I’ll be happy to share my thoughts on other things, since I’ll be stuck with this series on my brain until I see how my new obsession plays out. In the meantime take care of yourselves! If you do heavy lifting, make sure to do so with your knees, not your back. Tell someone who makes your day a little brighter how much you appreciate them. Then, take some time to savor the greatest of all winter beverages: hot apple cider.

#entrapdak #liking things #Entrapta #hordak #you try killing 8 hours at this job

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critical-platform-studies · 5 years ago

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The Present: The Rise and Fall of Tumblr

With the expansion of Tumblr’s user base and need to grow the platform as a whole, David Karp began selling paid advertisements to companies on Tumblr. In our discussions, we talked about platforms turning into companies with the sole power of making money. Although Karp originally made Tumblr to share blogs, connect others to one another, and build community, the temptation and call to work with investors for the upkeep of the platform was unavoidable. Although I don’t believe money necessarily corrupts, I do believe that this was the slipping slope and initial fall for the platform.

After 6 years of self-success, Karp officially sold the platform to Yahoo! for 1.1 billion dollars in June 2013. This business deal was not very profitable for Yahoo! because the site did not have any way to make revenue off of Tumblr. Thus, Yahoo! began incorporating native advertisements on the site that were integrated into the user’s blog feed on their homepage. Many Tumblr users disliked this change to their once “free from capital” platform, yet the user count sustained and even grew during this time.

After Yahoo! was bought by Verizon in June 2017, Tumblr became a subsidiary company to Verizon. Shortly after this in 2018, Tumblr notified its users that 84 accounts linked to Russian propagandists were removed from the site because of the spread of disinformation regarding the 2016 US Presidential election. This infiltration and sway reminds me of the Herder reading, specifically the governmentality section. Although Tumblr is simply a digital platform, we expect it to filter out and regulate the fake news and fake information that people may post. In part, Tumblr is doing just that; however, what if there were more blogs with this type of propaganda?

Wait for it....wait for it....

One of the final nails in the coffin that contains Tumblr comes from its ban on the App Store in November 2018. Apple decides to remove the Tumblr app from its services once reports come in that large scale material containing child pornography and child abuse are posted on the platform.

Although Tumblr was a place for self-expression and self-exploration, particularly on topics related to sexuality, identity, self-image, etc, this type of content was not regulated by the platform. One could argue that this is a good thing because it allows free speech and free expression; however, one must take into account the other side which could depict material that no one should be posting or viewing such as the exploitation of minors in a sexual manner. Considering Verizon was losing ad revenue from Tumblr being taken off the App Store, Tumblr (under Verizon) decided to ban all adult content from the platform.

Instead of updating their current algorithm (cross-referencing algorithm) to find posts deemed unsuitable for the website, Tumblr decides to place a ban on all “adult content” and use an algorithm which places a flag on all adult content.

"Written content such as erotica, nudity related to political or newsworthy speech, and nudity found in art, specifically sculptures and illustrations, is also stuff that can be freely posted on Tumblr. Although, photorealistic imagery or photography – images, videos, or GIFs -- with real humans that include exposed genitals or female-presenting nipples or depict sex acts is not allowed per our guidelines."

With a bad algorithm for finding posts that did not meet their past guidelines, Tumblr has instated an addition onto their past algorithm which will only make the matters worse for its users and their experience with the platform. Many users criticized this move and believed that Tumblr should be focusing more on finding and banning hate speech, fake news, and porn-bots which post a majority of the content they were trying to censor. Instead, the freely and openly sexual community of Tumblr (who made up a large number of their user base) is punished for the misdeeds of something completely out of their control. Posts that met the new guidelines were being flagged, and content was being hidden from users that had nothing to do with the new algorithm set in place. Pictures of men’s chests, dogs, cartoon characters, etc. were being flagged for inappropriate content showing that this algorithm is flawed. Majorly flawed.

This ban has a direct correlation between Tumblr losing nearly 30% of its user base and having 100 less million views (March 2019). But hey, they got rid of all the porn and did a good deed.

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freedom-of-fanfic · 7 years ago

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why fanworks are such a convenient social scapegoat

(this post is mostly an expansion on the twitter thread i did a while back, which addressed this question: why is fanfiction often blamed for harming young people in fandom? (please also read the spinoff additions to the end of the thread, which start here.)

this post deliberately does not address whether or not fandom should have particular social expectations/obligations. I think these ethical questions are complicated and require nuanced address, particularly because of how social media works these days. rather, this is my offered explanation for why fanworks are the chosen scapegoat for the cumulative harm of systemic social problems.)

Note this post is US-centric because the scapegoating of fanworks seems to come primarily from Americans in English-speaking fandom spaces.

I think that because fanworks have long been slapped with warnings of dark content (abuse, noncon/dubcon, etc) it’s difficult for me to believe they directly play a major part in setting young people up for abusive situations irl ... for the most part. It’s less the fanworks themselves and more the environment in which fanworks have been presented over the last 5-8 years.

In my opinion, the sad irony is that fanworks only have the potential to cause direct harm by causing people to believe their contents are models for safe sex/relationships/etc because of the expectation that fandom is a space for education.

fanworks have been around for ages, but currently they are:

in a post 9/11 social environment where the unknown/unfamiliar is feared, critical thinking is discouraged, safety is prioritized over freedom, and censorship is treated as protection,

(but information is available in unchecked quantities that outstrips the individual’s ability to process it);

available in a viral-sharing environment featuring nigh-infinite freedom/no moderating authority and on a highly-networked, easily-searched internet;

where young people are often more expert at navigation than their guardians, and thus easily able to access content that isn’t age-appropriate/safe for them

(but being young people, they often think they’re ready for that content);

furthermore, content that is not only inappropriate for their age/maturity, but also on topics that they will never/have never received a proper, thorough education on

(because schools have their hands tied by religiously-motivated regulations and guardians have abdicated responsibility for sex ed and lack acceptance for non-straight/non-cis identities);

targeted marketing has encouraged and exacerbated existing stratification by income, age, gender, and sexual orientation; and

increasing social awareness is constantly creating tension between social tradition and social advancement, putting incredible stress on anyone who represents ‘advancement’.

On that last point, my thread and this post are particularly concerned with (perceived) women, who are burdened by both traditional and ‘progressive’ social roles:*

women are traditionally seen as child caretakers, educators, and burdened with upholding social morality as the heart of homemaking. all perceived women have to deal with this social expectation.

as agents of social advancement, those perceived as women are still burdened with educating the ignorant and being ‘good examples’, as their mistakes will be magnified as evidence that tradition is better.

*these problems are SUPER magnified by being non-white. (and I didn’t even get into the sexual expectations.)

As an isolated space, fandom - with majority women and/or afab participation - did a pretty good job of shaking off the social expectation that perceived women are educators and caretakers. but when fandom gained visibility by the move to tumblr and Google trawling tumblr content/content going viral + all the social factors above, the ‘(perceived) women as educators’ expectation came back on fandom, and with additional exacerbation:

in a culture focused on purity and prioritizing safety over freedom, disgust & feelings of shame both act like a moral compass & a safety warning. fandom’s judgement-free attitude about nsfw/kinky/horrible-irl content looks like a community of people who condone all these things as ‘safe’, if that’s how you’ve been taught to view the world.

Basically: if the people who are writing/creating this stuff are treating it as nothing to be ashamed of, it must not be dangerous. right?

Combined with the not-unusual adolescent belief that you’re ready for literally anything and know more than most adults, it’s a recipe for disaster.

fanworks often echo aspects of the source material, including aspects that are not healthy: canon romanticization of abusive relationship dynamics, for instance. Fanworks that share canon’s unhealthy features can become a form of reinforcement/seen as tacit approval of existing messages in mass media for fans who don’t have outside education to protect them.

in fact, fanworks are often (deliberately or not) ‘in dialogue’ with the existence of these kinds of harmful cliches. it’s important to view fanworks as what they frequently are: individual reactions/remixes/retakes on things in mass media and real life, created by victims/potential victims of the harm those things can cause. (viral sharing sites often separate these works from this context.)

on fandom tumblr in particular, people are consuming a cominbation of fanworks, fantasies about fictional characters that may or may not be nsfw, educational posts about safe sex / queer/lgbt history / sexual orientiations / gender identity / being a good ally / intersectionalism, and the importance of minority representation in mass media. conflating fanworks with good representation & educational content seems a natural consequence.

within fandom spaces, the expectation is that fans are enlightened on social justice issues. as victims of marginalization, or at least people who are constantly exposed to education on marginalization, we obviously know better than creators of mass media. This contributes to the attitude that fan content should be ‘better’.

Ironically, the content warnings, lack of fan culture shame, and the creators being vulnerable to negative responses together contribute to making fanworks/fan creators unusually visible examples of ‘corrupting’ content to point at and condemn.

between terrible education, a reactionary and conservative background radiation to English-speaking internet culture thanks to the US being a mess, and the fact most people are blind to social constructs that have formed their whole worldview, fanworks are getting a really bad rap.

altogether: fanworks are treated as being on par with mass media, social expectations, and culture norms in terms of the harm they can cause, even though they have comparatively little visibility and are usually created by marginalized people with little relative influence. They are reactions to mass media, social expectations, and culture norms rather than the cause of them.

however, because fanworks are easy to access without supervision, open about the content being potentially harmful, and produced by people who should ‘know better’ or are perceived as caretakers/educators, fanworks get blamed for the cumulative effect of culture/mass media/social norms. And unfortunately, because young people have formed expectations that fanworks will educate them due to those same social norms, the possibility that people will treat fanworks as models for social behavior or comprehensive guidelines to material they lack education on is increased.

I can’t hope to propose a comprehensive solution in this post. Taken altogether, fandom is really the tip of a large iceberg of systemic problems: sexist expectations, lack of outside education, and a reactionary cultural environment are the underlying issues.

Anything fandom can do on its own will amount to little more than a band-aid. Antis will never wipe out potentially harmful fanworks, and all the declarations by fandom members that they abdicate responsibility for educating young fandom people won’t make society less expectant of us.

the only things I know we have to do in the long run is keep fighting for real sex ed, keep warning for and flagging adult-oriented fan content, and do our best to respect each other’s taste and comfort levels. (and it would be a lie to say that I expect any of it to be easy.)

#Context is key #in defense of fanfic #web 2.0 is the worst thing to happen to fandom #anti shipping #in defense of freedom to fandom #why antis do the thing #adults v teens #thanks to shipping-is-not-morality for the disgust-as-morality point

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meterteller4-blog · 6 years ago

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Those Who Care and Those Who Don’t: Children and Racism in the Trump Era

DECEMBER 14, 2018

This piece appears in the latest issue of the LARB Print Quarterly Journal: No. 20 Childhood

To receive the LARB Quarterly Journal, become a member or purchase a copy at your local bookstore.

“Trump does some bad things,” 10-year-old Kenny tells me one afternoon. I’m sitting across from him at a coffee shop in a small town in Mississippi. Kenny is black and loves soccer. As he talks, he anxiously spins a pen cap on the table between us. “Trump talks about racist things … and he does racist things! He puts inappropriate things on Twitter. Like, people won’t admit it but saying, ‘I’m going to build a wall from Mexico,’ and saying bad things about Mexicans is racist and [people] won’t admit it!” Kenny pauses, looks down to the ground, and shakes his head with disbelief. “To me, that’s something.”

Kenny is just one of the millions of children growing up in the United States under the Trump administration. And he, like many of these children, is experiencing a shocking moment in American history. These are young people who have otherwise been taught that America is making progress when it comes to issues like racism and sexism. Their childhoods unfolded during the “post-racial” era of President Obama; their television programs celebrate multiculturalism and diversity; their T-shirts have girl-empowerment slogans; their schools conduct anti-bullying and inclusion campaigns. For the youngest generations in the United States, racial progress was the common narrative across the political spectrum. This changed during the 2016 presidential election, which marked a drastic turning point in this narrative. Things were suddenly different, and the election of Donald Trump deeply complicated how many children in America understand their country.

As many people have pointed out, Trump began his political career by propagating a racist conspiracy against President Obama. Sociologist Matthew W. Hughey argued that the effect of “Birther” movement was in fact twofold: it stoked white fear of a black man in power and encouraged fantasies of a white ethno-state as a remedy for those fears. Trump perhaps noticed its effectiveness. He went on to use explicitly racist rhetoric and antisemitic dog whistles in his presidential campaign ads. Even after taking office, Trump has continued to stoke racial division and white fear. He has used racist, derogatory language to refer to Mexicans, Muslims, and entire nations in Africa and the Caribbean. He has insulted a long list of black celebrities, politicians, and athletes. And his rhetoric is also backed up by action. Within its first year, the Trump administration advanced a ban on Muslim people and refugees entering the country; it has more recently enforced family separation at the border, taking children from their parents and putting them in cages; Trump has pardoned former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, a man with a long history of racial discrimination. Trump also famously refused to denounce white supremacists after their racist and antisemitic rallying and violence in Charlottesville. His racist rhetoric has only escalated in the run up to the midterm elections.

In October 2017, political scientist Cathy J. Cohen and her colleagues at the University of Chicago reported findings from their GenForward Survey of Millennial Attitudes on Race in the U.S. They found that across all racial groups, Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 believe that racism is one of the three most important problems in the United States today and that this problem is getting worse (Cohen, Fowler, Medenica, & Rogowski, 2017). However, nearly half of the white young adults in this research believed that “discrimination against whites has become as big a problem as discrimination against Blacks and other minorities.” Across all racial groups, very few young people thought racial relations were improving in the United States, and when asked if they believed Trump is a racist, 82 percent of African-American respondents, 78 percent of Latinx respondents, and 74 percent of Asian-American respondents said they did. White respondents were split almost exactly down the middle: 51 percent believed he is racist while 48 percent disagreed.

My conversation with Kenny was part of my ongoing research with youth and racism in the United States. My work as a sociologist focuses on racial socialization — I study how children learn about race and racism in the context of their families, communities, and everyday lives. Part of my work involves speaking with children directly about their experiences and perspectives of the social world. I knew from my previous research that for many white children who grew up in the Obama era, they believed that racism was “no longer a problem in America.” In many ways, it made sense for these children to feel this way. Although the United States has a long history of racism and white supremacy, in more recent years, social scientists have found that racism at the individual level has not disappeared but, rather, is expressed in more subtle and implicit ways. The circumstances, however, have clearly changed, and these same children are now confronted with explicit and overt forms of racism in the public sphere. I wanted to know what young people, particularly children in middle school, are thinking about racism in the new Trump era. What are their views on this matter? How are they feeling? What do they have to say?

Over the past year, a team of graduate students and I interviewed children between the ages of 10 and 13 in two distinct geographic locations: Mississippi and Massachusetts. We asked them a range of questions about current events, their schools and families, and their reaction to Trump’s words and actions as president. After interviewing more than 50 children, we found that children of color in both states expressed a great deal of anxiety, stress, fear, and anger about the present moment. The white children’s responses, however, surprised me. For many, their acknowledgment of Trump’s explicitly racist words and actions seemed to mark a rearrangement of empathy, and a rearrangement of how they thought about racism — and, perhaps more importantly, how much they cared.

One day after school in Mississippi, I talk with 10-year-old Crystal, who describes herself as “African American and mixed.” Crystal tells me what she remembers from the night of the 2016 presidential election. “We were very scared the night before…When I was sleeping, I did have a bad dream so I think I could kind of tell that it wasn’t going to end up as I expected.”

“What happened the next day at school?” I ask. She brings up race right away.

“Some black boys and girls were saying that that, like, they really didn’t want Trump to win or that he had won and [that they] didn’t really like him. And then some people who did vote for Trump were like, ‘I’m so happy!’ and they told their friends who also voted for Trump. … It was like allll day.”

I ask her if the kids who supported Trump were black.

Crystal replies immediately: “No. They were all white.” For Crystal, the connection between whiteness and support for Trump is clear.

At the coffee shop, Kenny has similar ideas: “When Barack Obama was the president, I wasn’t thinking about politics,” Kenny explains. “I didn’t really talk about Barack Obama because there’s nothing to talk about! He didn’t do anything bad. He didn’t start anything. So I mean, when he was president, I didn’t get into politics because I didn’t have to. Because he was a good president.”

Later in our interview, I ask Kenny, “What do you think is a big problem in America?”

“Racism is one of the main things that this country has always had problems with. And I’m scared Trump will make that worse,” he adds.

In Massachusetts, children of color express similar fears and anxieties about this moment of reemerging racial animosity. Mariana is 10 years old and identifies as “Mexican-American and white.” She and I sit together talking in a small classroom at her afterschool program.

“Do you think Trump is doing a good job or a bad job leading our country” I ask Mariana.

“I don’t like Donald Trump!” she shouts as she slaps her hand on the desk. “He is terrible! I want Obama to come back. Obama is a better president. In my head, I’m like, Trump is going to get us all bombed. Like, after he won the election, at school, everyonewas like screaming, ‘Ahhhh!’ People were running around and then someone started crying and said, ‘I want Obama to come back!’” Mariana goes on to tell me how “Trump is racist” and a “bad president.”

I also talk with 11-year-old Dominick who identifies as “black and Cape Verdean.” “I have heard him say something bad about black people,” Dominick tells me. “Donald Trump shouldn’t build the wall. … It’s just weird and just like, you’re making fun of a certain region because they like look different? Really?”

I ask him how he feels when the president says bad things about black people.

“I feel like if the president says something racist, I think that they shouldn’t be the president,” he replies.

I hear this opinion echoed in Massachusetts, over and over again. Suzannah tells me that she thinks Trump is “very racist” and that “we need someone [who is] both of our colors so they can be more fair ’cause he only likes really the whiter people.”

Devion, an 11-year-old black boy, responds so quickly I can barely finish asking the question. “He’s said stuff about Mexico, and he’s basically just racial-profiling people! … And people have been joining him! I’ve heard some things on the news and what he says isn’t right!”

I ask him how he felt the day after the election.

“I felt just sad for America. … I was very surprised.” He goes on to tell me about white kids chanting, “Build a wall,” and harassing Latinx kids at his school.

“I honestly think that it’s crazy that kids would say that. I’ve had, um, a kid in my class that I was just fully ashamed by that kid ’cause he was saying some racist stuff [after Trump won] and that was the kid that has [previously] said racist stuff to me.” Devion tells me that he absolutely thinks the election of Trump has emboldened the already-racist bullies at his school.

These conversations reveal that these particular children of color are deeply affected by the state of the country and the larger events and conversations happening around them. My findings are reinforced by a recent survey conducted with teachers by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). This survey, held in the immediate aftermath of the 2016 presidential election, described what the Center referred to as the “Trump Effect. “The report found that more than two-thirds of teachers noted increased anxiety on the behalf of students of color, immigrant students, Muslim students, and LGBTQ students. The report also found that 90 percent of teachers surveyed indicated that their school climate had been negatively affected by the political campaign and election of Donald Trump. This was also reflected in the news: during the past two years, headlines from across the nation have described instances of white youth engaging in forms of racial violence and other forms of harassment — chanting “Build the wall!” in the faces of Latinx kids at athletic competitions or in the school cafeteria, bringing Confederate flags into classrooms to taunt their black peers, sexually assaulting and “grabbing” girls, inflicting physical violence such as pulling hijabs off Muslim students, and so on (SPLC Hatewatch, 2016).

White children are also thinking and engaging in the current political moment, of course, though our conversations are notably different. With white children, I notice a profound divide between how much some children seem to care about Trump’s racist words and actions and how much some don’t.

Paige, 12 years old, was one of the children I talk to in Mississippi. I sit down with her in her living room on a Saturday morning. “We had an assignment after the presidential election,” Paige tells me. “We had to draw a picture of what we think the future is going to look like under our new government…The teacher actually made half the class redo it because she was unhappy with the results because she got a lot of walls and cities in flames or like evil-looking politicians.”

“What did you draw?” I ask. “I personally drew Trump behind a wall of fire,” she says, matter-of-factly. I ask her why she drew that particular image. “I just felt like we were making so much progress with Obama. Like on everything. Like women’s rights, gay rights, racism, like things like global warming. Then, like, now that we have the new president — it’s like a million steps backward.”

A bit later, I ask her if she thinks the election of Trump has had any immediate impact on kids.

She nods. “I think that him being elected has made some people think, ‘Oh, well, since our president has these beliefs, it’s okay.’…Like him being disrespectful to women, some people are like, ‘Oh [if ] the president did that in his past, it’s okay for me to do that,’ … and that’s not okay.”

Zena, another white 12-year-old girl growing up in Mississippi talks to me about some recent changes in how some of her friends are relating to their parents.

“Trump’s not the best person and I think we all know that,” she tells me. “I have friends with parents who are like, ‘We need to raise you like this, and you need to do this, and you need to be a big supporter of Jesus and Trump and racism, and [my friends] are like, you know, ‘I’m going to need you to take a few steps back.’…These kids are like, ‘I should do some of my own research before I jump headfirst into his big agenda.’”

Zena goes on to tell me about one friend who is outraged by Trump’s racism despite her parents’ full support of him. “She argues with her parents all the time,” Zena explains. “What about you?” I ask. “Do you think we still have racism in America?” “I think we are 100 percent not past racism,” she states definitively. “I think recently everyone has had this realization that we are not past this because there are people … who sit in the big chairs and say, ‘No. I don’t want that law [that would help racial minorities] passed,’ and I feel like it’s a problem because the people who have power … they like use it for the wrong reasons. I don’t think we are past [racism] because people in power like Trump aren’t allowing us to get past it. And that sucks.”

Trump’s election has made 12-year-old Charlie, who is also white, rethink aspects of President Obama’s time in office. “I knew President Obama was the first black president, but I didn’t understand the significance of it until Trump became president,” 12-year-old Charlie tells me one afternoon at a restaurant in Mississippi. Charlie attends a public school that is almost 70 percent black. Like many of the white kids I interviewed, Charlie tells me that lately he has been talking about racism with his parents, his friends, and his teachers “all the time.”

“Trump has definitely done something to make things worse,” he tells me.

I ask him what it was like at his school around the time of the election.

“I was surprised [when Trump won]. We did this vote at our school and it was 16 people who voted for Trump while the 360 other people voted for Clinton. But I heard that at this other school [nearby] … the vote was so Trump.”

“How is it that these two schools that are located pretty close to each other have such different results?” I ask him.

“Well, I think our school is more racially diverse than that school,” he responds. Based on his experience growing up in Mississippi — like Crystal — Charlie could also see a connection between support for Trump and whiteness.

A number of white children, in both Massachusetts and Mississippi, tell me they are shocked and outraged by what they perceived to be racism radiating from the highest seats of power. For these kids, Trump’s presidency not only challenges their understanding of the country but also sheds new light on previously held notions about race in America. In addition to their outrage, these children also exhibit racial empathy for people of color, immigrants, women, and other groups that they perceive to be under attack by the Trump administration. In fact, part of what they dislike so much about Trump is how badly he treats the vulnerable and how he seems to bully the marginalized.

Other white children I speak with have a different reaction. They don’t all consider Trump’s racism to be a problem. Children, in both Massachusetts and Mississippi, tell me that even though they recognize Trump’s racism, they ultimately don’t care.

Twelve-year-old Erin lives in Mississippi and attends a former segregationist academy that is still almost entirely white. Erin knows she is white, she explains, because “I was born in America and my skin is white.” I ask her how she felt after Trump won the election. “I was happy he won because I think he knows how to handle, like, people who threaten us and stuff.” She describes kids at her school making jokes about building a wall at recess, but she says she did not tell the teacher because she “did not think it was a big deal.” Like many of the kids, Erin also shares her views on the differences she has observed since President Obama was in office: “When Barack was president, like, there was a lot of tension going on ’cause he was, like, the first black president … the people didn’t think it was right that he should be president because he was black. Now we have a white president again.”

When Erin is asked if she recognizes the rise of racial tension in the United States right now, she acknowledges that Trump “has said racist things,” but she isn’t too bothered by it. “I honestly think it’s fine,” she says with a laugh. “I don’t really care.”

Erin’s attitude echoes what contemporary social scientists have found when studying the racial attitudes of white Americans. White people in the United States have found more subtle ways to express their prejudices toward people of color over time. These new forms of racism often help people maintain the external appearance of not being racist even as they continue to engage in practices and behaviors that reproduce racial inequality — a way of “saving face” so to speak. Drawing on findings from a large, national survey of racial attitudes spanning 40 years, sociologist Tyrone A. Forman finds evidence for an increasein what he defines as “racial apathy” in the United States. White racial apathy, he argues, “refers to lack of feeling or indifference toward societal racial and ethnic inequality and lack of engagement with race-related social issues.” In his research, Forman finds an increase in whites’ use of “I don’t know” or “I don’t care” when asked survey questions about racial integration.

When it comes to young people specifically, Forman and his colleague, sociologist Amanda E. Lewis, explore expressions of racial apathy in white high school students over time. They find that instead of new generations of white kids being less racist and more tolerant than generations before them, this population instead embraces more subtle forms of racism like being indifferent to racial inequality. Data from this important research suggests that racial apathy is actually on the rise.

In talking with some of the white children in my study, I find similar patterns. For instance, Blake, who is 10 years old and lives in Massachusetts, tries many different ways to avoid identifying his race. Eventually, though, he tells me he is white. After talking with him a bit about his hockey team and upcoming game, I ask him what he thought the day after Trump was elected.

“I didn’t care,” he tells me, shrugging.

When I ask him if he thinks Trump is racist, he responds, “I don’t know ’cause I’ve never heard him be racist. But he said um, that we’ll build a wall between Mexico. … Mexico is like part of our world so you shouldn’t try to keep them out.” Blake tells me that there is racism still in America, but that he doesn’t really know much about it. “I’ve never heard anybody say [anything racist],” he tells me. He explains he does not talk about race or racism with his family members. Generally, he says, he does not think much about racism — but he knows that it exists.

“Yeah.” He tells me. “But I don’t pay attention to that stuff.”

Betsy, who is 12 years old, white, and lives in Massachusetts, is more engaged with politics than Blake. She tells me that she loves knowing what is going on in the world. In fact, she gets up early to drink a cup of tea and watch the news before school every morning.

“I feel like I’ve heard stuff on the news about [Trump] being racist, but like, the [news anchors] exaggerate stuff. But I don’t really think he’s racist. I think when he does one thing wrong, people turn it against him.” She can discuss many of the issues that have come up while Trump has been in office, like the wall and the Muslim ban. “Overall, I’m not saying he’s the best president, and he’s definitely not the worst. But he’s not racist. There might have been one or two incidents when he was racist, but he’s not racist.” Betsy tells me that even though she wishes we could have elected a woman for president, from her perspective, Trump is “fine” and even though he is racist sometimes, she does not think that it is a major problem.

Back in Mississippi, 12-year-old Ellie, who is white, tells me about voting in a mock election at her private school, complete with mock voter ID cards that students had to show before casting their mock ballot. “Everyone wanted Trump to win and they were like, ‘If you want Hillary to win, then you’re terrible.’” Ellie was not surprised when Trump won the actual election. “I knew he was probably gonna win,” she tells me. “I didn’t really think anything about it [when he did.]” Ellie talks about how she liked one of the other Republican candidates better than Trump but that ultimately, she was happy Trump won.

When Ellie is asked about her thoughts on racism in the United States today, particularly in light of Trump’s election, she says she has heard people say he is racist, but she “do[esn’t] really know.” She also explains that her family does not talk about racism. “There’s not really any [racism] going on in Mississippi but there might be in like, other states, I just haven’t noticed anything. … I don’t really know. … It’s not something I care about.”

Kids offer different versions of this opinion. James, a 12-year-old boy who identifies as “Caucasian” and who goes to the same school as Ellie, “felt good” after Trump was elected because he supports many of Trump’s positions, even the more controversial stance on the wall between the United States and Mexico. James understands that Trump’s policies may upset people, but he ultimately cares more about other things. For example, he spends a lot of time discussing the conflict between the United States and Muslim countries. “I think it’s silly that [conflict] is still going on,” he says. “They’ve been fighting since 1999 and nobody’s won. Why [hasn’t the United States] dropped an atomic bomb on them? It would just end them, so they wouldn’t like, come at us again.”

In terms of racial politics at the national level, James recognizes that racism exists but does not think that it is serious enough to merit a solution or any political action. Regarding football players kneeling at NFL games, he says, “Some people are doing it because they don’t like the president. They don’t like racism. They don’t like the way some people are getting treated. … But if [they] want to live in America, why [are they] kneeling instead of like, loving our country that people fight for every day so we can be free? If they don’t like wanna stand for the Pledge of Allegiance or the National An

them, why are they living here?” James makes it clear that he understands these protests to be about real racism in America, but he ultimately concludes that racism is not a legitimate reason to protest.

Ava, who is 12 years old and white, also likes Trump but finds him “embarrassing” at times. Sometimes, he “acts like a kid,” she says explaining that her family and friends share the hope that he “straightens out soon.” Despite how embarrassing he is, Ava goes on to say that she was happy Trump won. But, she still thinks “he seems kinda mean.” When I ask her what she means, she says: “Well, I don’t really want him to build a wall even though it keeps some mean people out,” she explains. “There’s usually nice people who want, like, a better life too.”

When Ava is asked if she thinks that the president is racist, Ava replies, “Mmm, maybe, sorta, kinda because he built the wall and because like, he wants to keep some religions out. And I think if it’s just because of like, the religions, we could try to teach them like, about God and like that Jesus Christ came for our sins.” For Ava, racism is, again, not an important issue. Even if Trump’s wall and Muslim ban are “maybe sorta kinda” racist, the real issue with these policies is that they might prevent people from converting to Christianity.

Jason, who is 11 years old and identifies as white, views Trump in a similar “kinda racist” way as Ava. His reaction to Trump winning the election was, “I didn’t care.” When asked if he thinks Trump is racist, Jason replies, “Trump is kind-of racist, kind-of not. He kind-of is building a wall so other people won’t come in.” I ask him what he would say to Trump if he had the opportunity.

“I would make a joke like, ‘Hurry up and build that wall!’” Jason goes on to say that during recess, kids made other “jokes” about immigrants. To Jason, even if Trump’s wall is “kind-of racist,” he does not see a problem with making jokes about it, or replicating the racism in his own conversations or playful interactions with his peers.

The views of children like Ellie, James, Ava, Jason, and others are in direct opposition to those of children who are fearful of or outraged by the Trump administration. Even when this group of kids identifies racism in the words and actions of the president and his administration — even when they agree that Trump is doing something racist — they do not really seem to care. Although they are aware of racism, they would prefer to not think about it.

Indeed, racial apathy is not new, and I found signs of it among the many children I spoke with during the Obama era. But, in my previous work, kids who expressed this apathy embraced a “colorblind” racial logic — they believed that because a black man was president, American society didn’t have to worry about racism anymore. This is different from the apathy I observed in many of these white children today. Based on this new research, it seems that some kids are learning not to care about racism or racial inequality in any way, even when it is explicitly present. The narrative seems to be shifting: “I don’t see racism, so I don’t care” is becoming, “I see racism, and I still don’t care.”

Social science research makes it abundantly clear that, across the board, children today are growing up in a country with increasing economic inequality and “deep differences of opportunity” (Kids Count, 2017). Race and wealth disparities between children are well documented in a wide variety of realms like education, health, the criminal justice system, the child welfare system, the labor market, housing, wealth holdings, and so on. American children are growing up in this context, among tremendous race and class inequality and deep powerful political divides. Based on my new research, however, it seems that there is another type of division separating today’s younger generations: how they respond to explicit forms of racism.

Why is this division important? As psychologist Derald Wing Sue puts it, rather than expressing a “conscious desire to hurt,” racial apathy conveys a “failure to help.” That failure is twofold: it is not just a failure of action, it’s a failure of empathy — it’s the failure to even care about the persistence and consequences of racism in the United States. This “failure to help” — this failure to concern oneself with the suffering and humanity of others — is a powerful tool, used to reproduce and perpetuate existing racial oppression. As Forman and Lewis ask:

If, in the face of entrenched, systemic, and institutionalized racial inequality, most whites say that they have no negative feelings toward racial minorities but feel no responsibility to do anything about enduring racial and ethnic inequalities and in fact object to any programmatic solutions to addressing those inequalities, is that progress, or is it rather a new form of prejudice in its passive support for an unequal racial status quo?

White peoples’ disinterest in racism — or the more active refusal of interest in human suffering — dramatically increases the stakes for racially marginalized people. Every child of color I interviewed not only articulated disgust and outrage with the president’s racist language and actions but also described feeling scared, angry, anxious, upset, and worried because of Trump’s presidency and specifically what his racist actions might mean for themselves or the people they love. They told me about their nightmares and about drawing violent images. They talked to me about feeling fearful and not being able to relax when out in public or around authority figures. As one 11-year-old told me, “When Trump got elected, I was actually kind of nervous. My dad isn’t a citizen. If [Trump] sends him back, he’s not going to be able to come back and I won’t be able to see him. … Like, like [one time recently] we were just driving and the police were behind us and I got scared because if he were to get pulled over, they would arrest him and they’ll send him back. I am scared.” She was on the verge of tears.

Empathy alone will not solve racism and racial injustice in America. But, in the Trump era, when children are confronted with the stark reality of the legacy and persistence of racism in the United States, it appears that they respond in different ways. For black, brown, and other marginalized children, this reality seems to be connected to feelings of stress, fear, anger, and anxiety. For some of the white children I spoke with, this reality seems to be connected to empathy, anger, and a sense of concern for their peers. But, for other white children, this reality simply does not matter, even though they know and can acknowledge that it exists. If children cannot develop empathetic perspectives, if they cannot learn to care about the suffering or humanity of their peers, what does that suggest for our future? Collectively, we must identify, acknowledge, and resist the power of racial apathy — and recognize the destruction it brings to our democratic society, to our political efforts, and to the children growing up in this world.

Margaret A. Hagerman is an assistant professor of Sociology at Mississippi State University. She is the author of White Kids: Growing Up with Privilege in a Racially Divided America (NYU Press.)

Source: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/care-dont-children-racism-trump-era/

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sweatywolftiger-blog · 6 years ago

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Pedophilia is a sexual orientation

“By the above definition of sexual orientation and most common definitions of sexual orientation pedophilia can be viewed as a sexual age orientation based on the more limited evidence available regarding its age of onset, associations with sexual and romantic behavior, and stability over time. Though there are clearly differences in some respects, there are also striking similarities in the research literature on pedophilia.”

“Minor attraction is a complex sexual phenomenon that is best conceived of as a sexual orientation. Minor-attracted people appear to experience their sexuality in much the same way adult-attracted people do, albeit towards a socially unacceptable target. Given the somewhat arbitrary nature of this social distinction, the basis for the pathologization of minor attraction is questionable. The current study adds to evidence of similarities between minor attraction and other sexual minority orientations. It also shows that the experiences of minor-attracted people are quite varied. By using a non-forensic, non-clinical sample I have been able to capture a much broader range of experiences. This has illuminated not only the hardships that many minorattracted people face, but also the ways in which some have succeeded in overcoming or avoiding these hardships. This provides hope that minor-attracted people are not doomed to live unhappy lives, despite the intense stigma they face.”

“Pedophilia as a Sexual Orientation

DSM-5 did not err in referring to Pedophilia as a sexual orientation. In diagnosing any psychiatric disorder (including a Pedophilic Disorder), ordinarily the intent is to guide patient care, management, and research. In discussing the diagnostic features of individuals who are sexually attracted to prepubescent children, DSM-5 notes that some could be said to have a pedophilic sexual orientation. The term sexual orientation ordinarily reflects an individual’s subjective awareness of the category (or categories) of persons toward whom he or she is erotically attracted. Clinically, there are individuals (many of whom are described as having Pedophilia) who report a subjective awareness of being erotically attracted (either exclusively or in part) toward a category of individuals comprised of prepubescent children. Many report experiencing those attractions as unchosen in a fashion that seems very much like an orientation. That such attractions are often unwanted does not alter their resemblance to an orientation.”

Therapy is about self acceptance and having a community.

“The best treatment for the isolated minority syndrome is obviously group therapy or self-help organizations. Experienced members of such groups can function as positive identification models for less experienced members with the same or a similar paraphilia, and teach them how to find a matching partner and how to live a sex life that is satisfying to both parties. The formation of such organizations for all common paraphilias should be encouraged and supported, and any person who suffers from the isolated minority syndrome should be encouraged to become a member of such organizations and subscribe to their publications.”

This is an email sent to Discord after they terminated a discord group made for MAPs.

“Professionals helped some of these men accept their pedophilic interests by separating their sexual attraction from their sexual behavior and by managing their sense of selves (e.g., distancing themselves from stories of “child rapists” [25 p8]). Engaging with other pedophilic individuals helped these men see that others with their interests were able to avoid offending, which brought a sense of hope. Having other social supports that knew about their interests helped because their supports could help them maintain boundaries with children, challenge potentially distorted thinking, and provide them with feedback regarding their behavior with children.”

“The preferred model of treatment is LGBT affirmative psychotherapy, which treats sexual feelings as innate, unchangeable and subject to personal acceptance. The American Psychological Association provides guidelines on its website (see below). Applied to the minor-attracted person, affirmative therapy separates sexual orientation from its expression, emphasizing acceptance and personal growth. This in no way endorses sexual contact between adults and minors.

Awareness of the shame, stigma and fear of exposure that MAPs experience due to their sexual and emotional feelings is crucial to treatment.”

Child molesters are more likely not MAPs.

“Two groups of those sexually offending against children can be distinguished:

▪ Those showing no sexual preference disorder, but who, for different reasons, sexually abuse children seeking a surrogate. This group comprises e.g. sexually inexperienced adolescents, mentally retarded persons, those with anti-social personality disorders and perpetrators within general traumatizing family constellations – and accounts for approximately 60% of officially known offenders;

▪ Those showing a sexual preference disorder, namely pedophilia (erotic preference for prepubescent minors, i.e. showing Tanner stage 1) or hebephilia (erotic preference for pubescent minors, i.e. showing Tanner stages 2 and 3). These account for approximately 40% of officially known offenders.”

Seto & Lalumi`ere (2001) found that 40% of a sample of 1113 sex offenders showed equal or greater sexual arousal to stimuli depicting children compared with stimuli depicting adults.

Maletzky & Steinhauser (2002) reported that 43% of the 5223 sex offenders in their sample were diagnosed as pedophiles on the basis of their sexual offense histories

Estimates for the rate of pedophilia in detected child molesters generally range between 25% and 50%.

A 2006 study found that 35% of its sample of child molesters were pedophilic

MAPs are oppressed in our society for being MAPs.

“"How in the world can anyone go through every day living with this curse and not want to fling themselves off the nearest bridge on a daily basis?”

“When you have a sexual preference that is as stigmatizing as pedophilia, then there’s nowhere to go with it, there’s no one to really talk to about it,” said Professor Michael Miner, one of the study’s co-authors. “So you stew in your isolation, which certainly makes one depressed.”

Todd Nickerson is a 42-year-old pedophile from Tennessee. Struggling to come to terms with his sexual identity caused him many years of crippling depression. “I look back on it now and find it amazing that I never got to the point where I picked up a gun and ended it,” he told me. “There were days when I got up and it was all I could think about. I’d tell myself, ‘I just want to die. I just want to die.’ All day, for days on end.”“

"An innocent man was viciously beaten and then burned to death by vigilante neighbours who wrongly believed rumours that he was a paedophile.”

“The grieving family of a man found hanged in a cemetery claim he was driven to suicide following paedophile accusations on Facebook.”

Sexualizing children in fictional stuff harms no one. Yes, it’s okay to portray children in sexual themes, as long as you don’t show any sexual stuff to an actual child and you don’t touch inappropriately a child or be involved in a romantic relationship with a child.

"The most dramatic decrease in sex crimes was seen when attention was focused on the number and age of rapists and victims among younger groups (Table 2). We hypothesized that the increase in pornography, without age restriction and in comics, if it had any detrimental effect, would most negatively influence younger individuals. Just the opposite occurred. The number of juvenile offenders dramatically dropped every period reviewed from 1,803 perpetrators in 1972 to a low of 264 in 1995; a drop of some 85% (Table 1). The number of victims also decreased particularly among the females younger than 13 (Table 2). In 1972, 8.3% of the victims were younger than 13. In 1995 the percentage of victims younger than 13 years of age dropped to 4.0%.

In 1972, 33.3 % of the offenders were between 14-19 years of age; by 1995 that percentage had decreased to 9.6%. Thus, over the period in question, there was a major shift in the proportion of victims and offenders from the younger categories to older categories.”

In regards to all sexualities, fictional content and violent fantasies don’t harm anyone, it has even beneficial outcomes.

“Taken together, these findings are offered in support of the hypothesis that the occurrence of force fantasies, rather than resulting from an attempt to deal with sexual guilt, represents one of a number of ways in which some women demonstrate a relatively open, unrestricted, and varied approach to their sexuality.”

“Pornography continues to be a contentious matter with those on the one side arguing it detrimental to society while others argue it is pleasurable to many and a feature of free speech. The advent of the Internet with the ready availability of sexually explicit materials thereon particularly has seemed to raise questions of its influence. Following the effects of a new law in the Czech Republic that allowed pornography to a society previously having forbidden it allowed us to monitor the change in sex related crime that followed the change. As found in all other countries in which the phenomenon has been studied, rape and other sex crimes did not increase. Of particular note is that this country, like Denmark and Japan, had a prolonged interval during which possession of child pornography was not illegal and, like those other countries, showed a significant decrease in the incidence of child sex abuse.”

“His first work on the subject, Studies on Pornography and sex crimes in Denmark (1970), was a scientific report ordered by the United States’ President’s Commission on Obscenity and Pornography. It found that the legalizing of pornography in Denmark had not (as had been expected) resulted in an increase in sex crimes.[4]”

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douchebagbrainwaves · 3 years ago

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OK, I'LL TELL YOU YOU ABOUT TECHNIQUE

Because I'd rather offend people than pander to them, and IBM could easily have gotten an operating system elsewhere. It's technique. But these are equivalent to money; the proof is that investors are willing if forced to treat them as interchangeable, granting the same status to sweat equity and the equity they've purchased with cash. If you write the laws very carefully, that is. Here is a brief sketch of the economic proposition. Remember, the original motivation for HN was to test a new programming language, and moreover one that's focused on experimenting with language design, not performance. It's what a startup is thus as close as most people can get to saying to one's boss, I want to work for the Post Office for fifty years.

Technology that's valuable today could be worthless in a couple years. I wanted to make enough money that I didn't have to. Unfortunately, companies can't pay everyone like salesmen. Stuff has gotten a lot richer. An experienced programmer would be more likely to notice and complain. If one likes you, you become a member of this new group. Until a few centuries ago, the main sources of wealth were mines, slaves and serfs, land, and cattle, and the site rules discourage dramatic link titles. Up to a point it would be more fun. If you make something and people complain that you're unqualified, or that you've done something inappropriate. How do you get bought? They never had to bet the company on a bold decision. And indeed, the lumpy ashtrays we made for our parents did not have much of a larger share that what's left over for the rest of your life you devote to your work.

They were at the time a pair of college dropouts with about three years of school between them, and that can probably only increase your earnings by a factor of two or three. This was the era of those fluffy idealized portraits of countesses with their lapdogs. The techniques for dealing with links have to evolve, because the main value of that initial version is not the hope of becoming much richer than anyone else, it will seem low to others. Which meant, with current US tax rates, that it made sense to invest in it, the way to persuade people is not just one thing. Taking money from the rich. The theory is that minor forms of bad behavior encourage worse ones: that a neighborhood with lots of graffiti and broken windows becomes one where robberies occur. Many innovations consist of replacing something with a small group working on a hard technical problem. In 1976, everyone looked down on a company operating out of a garage in Silicon Valley don't seem to be a rule with them that everything has to start with statistics. A bet with only a few years old. It was the value I derived from it. Big companies can develop technology that's simply too hard for competitors to duplicate, you don't need to join a company to do that.

It's easy to measure how much revenue they generate, and they're worried about some nit like not having proper business cards. But more importantly, if you can believe that. There is a lot of them, but though they can end up in the company and went to work for ordinary salaries, but more mundane technologies like light bulbs or semiconductors have to be small? There is a large random multiplier in the success of a startup as an optimization problem in which performance is measured by number of users. Naturally wealth had a bad reputation. You may not even be aware you're doing something people want. The word try is an especially valuable component. Whatever the cause, stupid comments tend to be short. It's that it tends not to happen at all. If you're a good hacker in your mid twenties, you can compete with specialization by working on larger horizontal slices—by both writing and illustrating your book, for example, by going to work for the Post Office for fifty years. Of the remainder, the smart ones would refuse such a job, as if the important thing, why does everyone talk about making money?

Because I'd rather offend people than pander to them, we had to keep going. That's where you'll find the juiciest projects still undone, either because they seemed too risky, or simply because there were too few insiders to explore everything. So in the future, and the people running the test really care about its integrity. This pays especially well in technology, you cook one thing and that's what everyone eats. When you hear people saying that, you're golden. A friend of mine cured herself of a clothes buying habit by asking herself before she bought anything Am I going to wear this all the time, she wouldn't buy it. Government. But only graduation rates, not how much students learn. When I notice something surprising, it's usually very faint at first. I've observed this in the wild.

In life, as in books, action is underrated. The most common types of fluff links are banned as off-topic. And the harder a scene is to parse, the less energy you have left for conscious thoughts. But I don't think it would be: you need to give someone a present and don't have any money, you make one. Take away the incentive of wealth, and in some kinds of work they can outweigh the advantages. They will have all the extra motivation that comes from being in a small group, and leverage from developing new techniques. In my nephews' rooms the bed is the only clear space. No one wants to do it: give money to the poor, or they could become irrelevant. The greatest is an audience. You have to justify.

If starting a startup were easy, everyone would do it. After all those years you get used to the idea of leaving a trail. Suppose new policies make it hard to make a million dollars, you have to tease apart the components. But if you try to attack this type of wealth through economic policy, it's hard to write a short comment that's distinguished for the amount of information it conveys, people try to distinguish them instead by being funny. Startups yield faster growth at greater risk than established companies. Saying pleased to meet you, whether you are or not. If you want to inhabit.

It won't have any adults. There's nothing dishonest about this. And he said that as a kid growing up in Saskatchewan he'd been amazed at the dedication Jobs and Wozniak were marginal people too. This pays especially well in technology, where you earn a premium for working fast. The disadvantage is that it tends to obscure what trade really means. It sounds a good deal to start a startup, I would have sought security by some other means: for example, the good china so many households have, and whose defining quality is not so much that they copy even their flaws. But this wasn't what made them eminent—it was more a flaw their eminence had allowed them to sink into. So have we just shown, by reductio ad absurdum, that it's false that economic inequality is the inevitable fate of countries that don't choose something worse. Unless you have some users to measure, you're optimizing based on guesses. Imagine walking around for years with five pound ankle weights, then suddenly having them removed. One reason they work on big things is that they interact with the ideas.

Thanks to Chris Anderson, Sarah Harlin, Sam Altman, Justin Kan, Patrick Collison, Fred Wilson, Guy Steele, and Trevor Blackwell for their feedback on these thoughts.

#automatically generated text #Markov chains #Paul Graham #Python #Patrick Mooney #programming #one #energy #pander #version #people

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misscrawfords · 7 years ago

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Well, I saw The Last Jedi...

HERE BE SPOILERS

(Also - I will be tagging all posts with “spoilers” and “tlj spoilers” for you to avoid. However, from now on this blog is NOT SPOILER FREE and I can’t guarantee that something might not slip past by accident. Proceed at your own risk.

Okay, I’ve just got back and my head is whirling so don’t expect complex analysis.

However, I’ve been chatting with the lovely ladies in the spoiler zone of the Reylo discord chat and that’s helping me clarify my thoughts a lot.

So basic reactions first in no particular order:

- I am now in love with Poe Dameron. I now ship Damerey. I don’t know how this happened.

- There’s a bit in the soundtrack that is basically the finale of Sibelius’ 2nd Symphony. No1 curr I know but I’m intrigued.

- There was way too much going on in this film. It was like a later HP book - some great things happening individually but overall I just want to kick it because there was too much and it was easy to lose sight of the heart of it and its message because there was YET ANOTHER BATTLE and yet another subplot and character development for a minor character. I’m really frustrated.

- Since when was Hux such an awesome character!? I loved how he was played for laughs but honestly this is absolutely Draco-in-leather-pants. Kylux is literally a Cassandra Clare fanfiction. What is life.

- Several deus ex machina moments that made me go “hmm”. Floaty sky princess? Um, okay. That was unnecessary and a bit weird. Felt like a cringey tribute to Carrie Fisher and then she was knocked out for most of the film. I have problems with that entire narrative arc. To be explored later. Also Force ghost Yoda. Really?

- WTF was that child doing at the end? I’m so confused. My instant reaction is to be suspicious and annoyed. If that child grows up to have the Force and takes away from Rey then I will be so annoyed. Also, we don’t need more characters. We really, really don’t!

- I was disappointed in Rose and Finn. I just... I just didn’t care. Because, once again, there was too much going on. Their whole storyline felt tacked on. Like, there were elements I really liked. I loved the whole weapons dealing in space concept - it was blatant but really good. We were basically in space Saudi Arabia and I loved that and I loved the code breaker who betrayed them for money. It was a more interesting and morally grey update of the bounty hunter concept and I really loved it. Also it fitted very well with the overarching theme of both sides being flawed and the profit of war and it all being kind of pointless in a way. BUT there was too much of it and I feel like they could have shown that message and done Canto Bight somehow without so much subplot that really distracted from the main heart of the film. I’ll need to think about this further and how I would have preferred it to go. Also at the end, I was really annoyed at Rose for saving Finn. Like, I 100% did NOT want Finn to sacrifice himself - NO SIR - but Rose stopped him potentially saving the whole Resistance by taking out that gun. Like, strategically it was dumb since Finn had committed to doing that. (I’m sorry, I’m such a cool-headed Slytherin, but it’s true!) I don’t know where to go from here for these two characters and I didn’t really buy the romance. Perhaps I would have done if there HADN’T BEEN SO MUCH DAMN STUFF GOING ON.

- It was really funny. Like, I was not expecting the humour. Especially over the First Order. But seriously, the FO run by played-for-laughs Hux and emotionally unstable Kylo is not exactly going to be a slick administration, right? It’s a recipe for disaster! (Sorry, Hermione Granger brain taking over again.)

- SHIRTLESS KYLO FANSERVICE. what even

- Every single “inappropriate use of the Force” fic is now canon.

- I kind of need to do a separate post about my Reylo thoughts and feelings, but suffice to say I am actually very conflicted, as I am about most of the film. Everything that happened made total sense in terms of character development and as a continuation of TFA and I applaud that and yet I feel uneasy. I also felt a lack of romantic/sexual chemistry between them that the film could have built up with music and other techniques, even despite shirtless Kylo and the HANDTOUCHING SCENE OMG WHAT IS LIFE. I’m not saying that there isn’t a basis for something to develop in IX but I was left feeling... I don’t actually know. THERE WAS TOO MUCH GOING ON AROUND THEM. I need to watch it again. I may pick up on things on a second viewing I didn’t see this time.

- SAVE BEN SOLO. Honestly, I have no idea what is going on. The film is massively pushing a redemption arc in its plot and what everyone around Kylo is saying. And every time he has the opportunity to fall in with this, HE DOES THE EXACT OPPOSITE. He’s not the only one being torn apart tbh. I don’t understand what the film wants me to think about this. (This isn’t about me analysing it, it’s about an initial reaction to feeling that I don’t know what the film is doing. It seems to be saying “Redeem Ben Solo! It can happen! That’s where this is going!” at the same time as “Kylo Ren is a monster and is turning into the Big Bad of this trilogy” which I don’t really believe but also I just do not see how he can come back from where he is.) But oh my goodness, his was the performance to watch. And he is still the centre and heart of the trilogy, as he should be as the new Skywalker.

- Speaking of Skywalkers... I loved Luke. He was so incredibly “Luke” and yet different. Is it what I’d expected? From what I’d heard and the marketing, yes. From his character as I previously understood it, I’ll have to watch the OT again. I think it probably works. It’s interesting. And Mark Hamill was absolutely fantastic. I really loved the flashbacks and the explanation of the destruction of the school and how it was a horrible, horrible misunderstanding. Best way out. Really tragic. And I like how the adults are taking responsibility for what happened to Ben. But also, like, the choices he makes now are his own. And they are terrible, terrible choices??? Not just morally terrible but also just, like, terrible. Poorly thought out...

- And yet, to me, the most true thing anyone said at any point was Ben’s speech to Rey when he asked her to join him about needing the whole old order to be swept away and replaced. It just... it really does? I felt such a feeling of relief. Like, the legacy is so strong in these characters. They need to get away from their past and the mistakes of the past and the burdens of the past. And that’s shown with the Resistance story but also with the Jedi story. Kylo’s way of doing this is all wrong, of course, but his ideas and vision is right and true. And I feel like this needs to happen! I don’t know HOW Ben can be pulled back from all the awful decisions he is continually making and the fact that he is squandering every single chance he gets, but I just feel like the only ending that is truly satisfying is Rey and Kylo starting from scratch again with a clean slate.

- Which is why Rey Nobody is so important. Whether Kylo is telling the truth or not about her parentage, she’s not a Skywalker. Or a Solo. Or anyone from the OT. And that is so necessary and important.

- I have no idea whether to talk about Kylo Ren or Ben Solo.

- Before watching it I kind of wanted Rey and Kylo to leave together on nobody’s side but their own but watching I realised that she would never leave with Kylo. She will only leave with Ben. But he is refusing to be that person so I don’t know if it can happen. But it also has to happen. Because if Kylo dies in an act of redemption (which is what I always thought would be his fate after TFA) then Rey is left alone again and there is no balance. Sure she has her Resistance friends whom she loves and who love her and that is GREAT, I’m not knocking it, but they don’t understand her. They build up the Force bond, they build up the fact that neither is alone because they have each other, they see their future with each other (and even if that is a manipulation of Snoke’s, he is showing them what they want to see so it is still true) - and then Kylo dies and Rey is all alone as the Last Jedi after being alone all her life. And like, yes, found family and all but... it’s just. Why set all of that up? I’m just incredibly conflicted.

- I’m going to spend the next two years trying to understand all of this by writing Poe/Rey/Ben love triangle fic. Because I loved that moment of chemistry between Rey and Poe and I think he is kind of like the hero she wants but she’s got this connection to Ben and she’s got to deal with that but I think a transitional period in which she awakens to romantic/sexual feelings via Poe would be very important to her. Because I think one of the issues I have with seeing Reylo in this movie is that Rey is just so forceful and determined on one thing that she is not thinking in terms of romance or anything like that at all. There’s just nothing coming off her in that sense - until she sees Poe. And I’m conflicted between what the symbolism is in the film and what the characters actually do. Symbolically and mythologically Reylo is the only answer. But the acting and the characters of them as psychologically realised individuals is problematic to me. I don’t know if any of that makes sense, it’s 1.33am now.

- So on the topic of Rey will only go with Ben and not with Kylo, Ben has to save himself. Rey MUSTN’T, for the sake of feminist narratives everywhere, this cannot become a “bad boy saved by the love of a good woman” story, and I don’t think it is because Kylo is rejected every attempt Rey is making to change him. When he does do something “good”, it is of his own volition. The throne room and killing Snoke, for instance, (also, I totally called that as something that could happen, not that I did it here so I can’t prove it - ah well!), he didn’t do because of Rey directly. So he has to work that out for himself but I have no idea how he is going to do it. I mean, sure Rey can be part of this process and even the catalyst, but she can’t do it for it.

- I’m still so confused by the ending. Were Rey and Kylo looking at each other? I’ve seen people say he was kneeling in front of her, but I’m confused because I thought he was in the main part of the base and they were in the Falcon somewhere in the salt mountains? And also I thought Leia was still on the ground and I was convinced she was going to stay behind and see Kylo but then she was on the Falcon and were Kylo and Rey just staring at each other? I’m confused. I think this may have been a meaningful moment but I was just trying to work out where they all were and what was going on.

SO over all. Overall, I enjoyed lots of it but I don’t think it was a great movie. There was simply too much of it and ultimately I think there was a really fascinating and subtle story surrounding Luke, Kylo/Ben, Leia and Rey with juicy goodies like Force Bonds and grey morality and growing up and growing old (for all that Yoda’s appearance made me roll my eyes, I loved the line about the roll of the master being to be outgrown or whatever it was because as a teacher it’s just, yeah... it meant a lot). But this great and interesting and new take on the SW universe was being lost in battle after battle and confusing Resistance politics and overlong subplots that went nowhere (Finn and Rose didn’t even succeed?! What was the POINT) and an attempt to shoehorn in this fascinating story into a generic SW movie about the plucky band of Resistance fighters and the big bad Empire that we’ve seen too many times before.

LET. THE. PAST. DIE. I’m over that plot and I’m just annoyed because it has the makings of a great movie but I’m just left feeling too much was going on and I’m confused about the bits I really wanted to focus on and linger over.

Anyway, going to see it again on Wednesday with school and I am going to really, really focus on Reylo and trying to find the possibilities for romance so that if nothing else I have fodder for fanfic!

#Star Wars #The Last Jedi #spoilers #tlj spoilers #reylo #I lied #these are not a few initial thoughts #this is a living example of tl;dr #sorry #I have lots of thoughts #most of them make NO SENSE

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discoursecatharsis · 7 years ago

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Hi! I know it’s been a few days, but as a kpop stan for 5+ years, and a fan of the group involved in the Cup/cak//ke-situation, I have something to say. Hopefully, I can shed some light on what happened as well as kpop, sexuaization, and the fandom as a whole.

(I wish I could insert a Read More, because this is long).

I’m going to start by saying, I have no idea why this whole Jung.k00k & Cup/cake thing blew up. This is not the first time Cup/cake made sexual comments about the B//TS members, and for the most part stan twitter found her funny. If fans didn’t, they didn’t make a big deal out of it, unlike what happened a few days ago. I’m not on twt, so I can’t say exactly what happened and why, but I’m going to guess it was a mix of Jung.k00k being the youngest member (A 97er, so the same age as Cup/cake), a fan-favorite, and maybe a callout twt post about how people need to stop sexualizing the BT//S members that people bandwagoned on and used to justify dogpiling Cup//cake. That’s usually how shit like this happens, and while unfortunate, it’s far from uncommon.

(Personally, I don’t care about what Cup/cake said and she should not have been bullied for it, but I think there’s a major difference between someone with a platform and tons of fans saying something, and someone posting their M-rated fanfic on AO3.

For instance, just about a month ago there was a Korean rapper, SanE, who gestured at a female idol, Re//d Velv/et’s Iren3 while singing a sexually suggestive lyric. Everyone called him out for sexual harassment and on twt people were even calling him a rapist & pedophile – even though Irene is 26. However, unlike in the Jung.k00k situation, no one made mention to the R-rated fanfics, tweets, tweets and gifs that fans, both male and female, often make about Iren//e and her group members, as a means to call fans hypocrties.

Again, even though I didn’t think either situation was a big deal, I don’t think people have to be comfortable with what Cup/cake or SanE did. I did notice a difference in reactions to reactions, which I think is unfair. Anyways, it sucks that this situation happens, that Cup////cake was hurt and bullied because of this.)

The kp//op fandom has a strange relationship with purity culture. I make mention of this because I feel like it has a hand in why Cup/cake-gate even happened. It’s k///pop fans digesting skewed Korean fan-culture norms and combining it with the overall advent of purity culture in western fandoms. For instance, this week, right after Cup/cake-gate Jung.k00k, was being called a sexual-harrasser and rapist simply because people thought he was staring at a woman’s chest. I’m not even joking. You can read about what happened here and here – but long story short a fan cropped a gif so it looked like he was oogling this lady, and Korean antis caught hold of it and ran with it. And thus, Stare-gate.

And again, this isn’t the first time. Usually it’s on a smaller scale, such as Stare-gate, but a few years ago, k//pop went through Lolita-Gate. Like most witch-hunts, it started out with good intentions: a girl group was going to debut and people were raising concerns that the members (half of which were under 18, the international age of majority, and most of which were under 19, the Korean age of majority) were being oversexualized. And then these three commercials (Warning: The first two are SFW-ish, the last is definitely NSFW), all of which starred the then 16 y/o T///zuyu (the youngest of her group) dropped and shit blew up. People began having an actual conversation about the sexualization of minors, but being that the group T///zuyu was in, T//wice, was already experiencing a lot of backlash for unrelated things, fans felt like the group itself was being attacked (And it some cases it was) and the conversation steered from constructive criticism to fanwars real quick. People began pulling in other groups, not because they had actual concerns, but because they didn’t want their faves to be the only ones being talked about.

And then a former idol dropped pics that people felt sexualized minors. Even though she herself was an adult and had spent her entire childhood being the target of sexual comments, the conversation went from “These are disturbing trends in this industry” to “These people (who often were actually put in situations of being sexualized minors) are the problem”. The nail was put in the coffin when singer-songwriter I//U dropped an album where among the themes of loneliness and misunderstanding, and a certain mature, she talked about the childishly-sexual image that was her company sold her with.

(For the record, Korean idols/artists do not have the same level of autonomy as American idols/artists, and when I///U blew up she was pushed with this “little sister” type image.)

And somehow talking about this and satirizing it, made her a pedophile. While she eventually apologized, her image, as well as the image of several other people who got swept up into the issue, took a dent.

There are tons of times where stuff like this happened, some as trivial as a twenty-seven year old woman being babied, to as damaging as a teenager being called a rapist for accidentally brushed against a minor’s chest.

So this reaction to anything sexual or perceived sexual is not uncommon unfortunately. A good portion of K////pop sells itself on being sexually non-sexual, which is why these things happen all the time. Idols who dance sexually also advertise dating bans and sexual naiveté. Idols who promote innocence do so in a way that can be sexually construed. And this isn’t me trying to fear-monger and trash k///pop (I hate when people do that) but I’m just trying to succinctly describe what I’ve noticed in all my years as a hard-core stan.

Something else I’ve noticed is that, these things tend to blow up as a reaction to male (hetero)sexuality. Lolita-gate happened because people felt that these young females were being infantilized and sexualized in order to accrue and appease an older-male stanbase, however there was not a similar reaction on the flip side of the coin in regards to young males being infantilized and sexualized in order to accrue and appease an older-female stanbase. Both do happen, but I feel like when it does it’s not approached with nuance, so the issue gets lost in the talk.

Again, an example: the commercial I posted earlier with the 16 y/o gyrating in the elevator. Completely inappropriate, right? Yes. However, just recently there’s a group where a 16 y/o is singing about something innocent enough, but the breathy moans on the chorus coupled with the oral fixation throughout the video, does give it a sexual flair. And then she began promoting another song with two other girls, that is again more sensual, yet I’ve yet to hear any real backlash. Granted, they aren’t anywhere near as popular as T///wice, but they are a well-known fan-favorite. And their fanbase, especially among western stans, is mostly female. As opposed to T///wice, who early on, gained a reputation of having lots of (older) male fans.

(And even as a fan of this group L//00N//A, I can’t even mention it without being dog-piled as trying to start shit)

Or, like I mentioned earlier, I//rene. She’s very popular among guys, and sometimes gifs of her wardrobe malfunctions circulate the Korean interwebs, and that leads to a lot of nsfw discussion regarding her body. She also has a lot of female fans who do and say the same things (especially her western stans), but the anger is 100% directed at the male fans because how dare they.

Anyhow, because I dumped a lot on you that you probably do not care to read, and this was more a response to the asks I saw you had on Cupcak//e-gate – It’s complicated. The reaction that you see towards one situation is often times not the same reaction you’ll get in another, usually because fandom politics takes precedence over the actual issue.

And don’t even get me started on slut-shaming in this fandom, which either comes from outright misogynists, or misogynists pretending to be feminists.

Oh, and yes, shipping is something often encouraged by companies. I can’t think of any group that’s debuted that hasn’t had some sort of company-pushed ship. The fanservice and bromance has definitely died down since the earlier days when the likes of TV//XQ and SU//JU had members kissing on stage and the like. A lot of it is borrowed from j///pop idol & visual-kei culture.

BTW, I know this is long, so feel free not to post it, especially considering how OT it is!

(submitted by anon)

You just submitted this long post, complete with linked sources, that you obviously worked hard on... how can I not post it?! Thank you so much for all this insight into this issue and fandom! I didn’t realize how much fandom politics and history there was behind this. It’s really interesting that reactions vary depending on the situation.

#submission

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