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jewish-privilege · 6 years ago

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The note jammed onto a windshield in Sweden in March last year was designed to terrify. WE ARE WATCHING YOU, YOU JEWISH SWINE, read the message to a retired professor, written on paper with the logo of the Nordic Resistance Movement, a Swedish neo-Nazi organization.

In the bucolic university town of Lund, with its cobblestone streets and medieval buildings, the threat seemed jarringly out of place. More notes followed. “I was really scared,” says the professor, a small woman of 70, who is too fearful about a further attack to reveal her name in print.

Finally in October, an attacker broke into the professor’s home before dawn and set it alight. By a stroke of luck, the professor was not there. But her living and dining rooms were reduced to ash. So too were the writings of her late mother, detailing her internment in the Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz. “For the first time in my life I have needed therapy,” she says, over tea in a sunlit café in Lund. “I have not known what to do with my life.”

The professor was targeted because she is Jewish, and in that she is not alone. Anti-Semitism is flourishing worldwide. Attacks on Jews doubled in the U.S. from 2017 to 2018, according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in New York City. That included the shooting in Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue last October, which killed 11 worshippers.

But the trend is especially pronounced in Europe, the continent where 75 years ago hatred of Jews led to their attempted extermination. The numbers speak plainly in country after country. For each of the past three years, the U.K. has reported the highest number of anti-Semitic incidents ever recorded. In France, with the world’s third biggest Jewish population, government records showed a 74% spike in anti-Semitic acts between 2017 and 2018. And in Germany, anti-Semitic incidents rose more than 19% last year. The findings prompted Germany’s first anti-Semitism commissioner to caution Jews in May about the dangers of wearing kippahs, the traditional skullcaps, in public.

Unsurprisingly, many Jews in Europe feel under assault. In an E.U. poll of European Jews across the Continent, published in January, a full 89% of those surveyed said anti-Semitism had significantly increased over five years. After polling 16,395 Jews in 12 E.U. countries, in a separate survey, the E.U.’s Fundamental Rights Agency concluded that Europe’s Jews were subjected to “a sustained stream of abuse.” With the decade drawing to a close, 38% of those surveyed said they were thinking about emigrating “because they no longer feel safe as Jews,” says the E.U. report.

European officials were stunned at the findings, but perhaps they ought not to have been. A complex web of factors have combined to create this moment in time for one of Europe’s oldest communities. Anti-Semitism has found oxygen among white supremacists on the far right and Israel bashers on the far left. Millions of new immigrants are settling in Europe, many from Muslim countries deeply hostile to Israel and sometimes also Jews. Exacerbated by the Internet’s ability to spread hatred, anti-Jewish feeling is surging in way that experts fear could result in a conflagration, if governments and communities fail effectively to tackle its causes.

...Not waiting for their leaders, communities across Europe have begun to take action themselves. Raised learning about Nazism, many fear what might happen if anti-Semitism is left unchallenged. In recent years, teachers, imams, rabbis and local activists have launched countless initiatives to break stereotypes, educate youth and forge links across religions. In several interviews with TIME, those fighting anti-Semitism caution that it is likely to take many years for their efforts to succeed. Still, they have begun. In Paris, Delphine Horvilleur, a rabbi and author of a recent book on anti-Semitism, says a young Muslim worshipper approached her in her synagogue after she presided over a joint Muslim-Jewish prayer service.

“He told me, ‘I grew up in a family where anti-Semitism was the music in the background,’” she says. Now, she says, “We have to ask ourselves, How can we make sure they have the ability to lower the volume?”

The horrors of World War II shamed the world into acknowledging the evils of anti-Semitism. But exposure did not cure it. Instead, say experts, the hatred simmered for years. “There was a consensus that anti-Semitism should not be voiced openly after World War II,” says Günther Jikeli, a specialist in European anti-Semitism at Indiana University, who is German. “This has gone away with time.”

The growth of the Internet provided new platforms for conspiracy theorists to circulate racist fantasies more broadly. After the financial crisis of 2008, for example, the ADL warned that anti-Semites were spreading lies on message boards that Jews were somehow to blame for the crash. One rumor went that Lehman Brothers, the vaunted U.S. investment bank founded by Jewish immigrants from Europe, had transferred $400 billion to Israeli banks prior to its collapse.

A decade on, those who monitor anti-Semitism believe each attack or conspiracy theory posted online, no matter how small, sets off others. As social media has become an ever greater and yet more unregulated part of our lives, hatred has proliferated. “It used to be that anti-Semitism peaked during times of conflict in the Middle East,” says Katharina von Schnurbein, the European Commission’s first-ever coordinator for combatting anti-Semitism. “Now the incidents remain at their highest level ever recorded.”

...Tensions sporadically erupt in violence. In Sarcelles, a French commune where Jews and Arab immigrants have lived alongside each other for decades, violence erupted during a pro-Palestinian march in 2014. Jewish businesses came under attack by demonstrators, many of them Muslim. Five years on, the Jewish residents of Sarcelles live with armed French soldiers on permanent patrol on their streets, in a measure of the government’s concern about further race riots. “We live with a sense of anxiety,” says René Taïeb, a Jewish community leader, sitting in a kosher café in Sarcelles. “We have a bag packed, ready to go, in the closet.”

But Europe’s most hardcore anti-Semites are arguably on the far right, and they are slowly joining the mainstream, as Europe’s political loyalties have fractured and polarized. In Hungary, the far-right Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s campaign against Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros is regarded as thinly veiled anti-Semitism. And here in Sweden, ostensibly the most liberal country in Europe, a group of far-right extremists has achieved something close to political legitimacy.

...On the opposite end of the political spectrum, anti-Semitism has also flared up. During months of the so-called Yellow Vest protests in France, a handful of demonstrators in the crowd resurrected the stereotype of Jews controlling the levers of power. In February, a group of protesters accosted renowned French philosopher Alain Finkielkraut on a Paris street, screaming, “You are going to hell!” and “Go back to Tel Aviv!”

The problem is not always so overt, however. In the U.K., the opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has faced fury among some members over his alleged tolerance for anti-Semitism, especially regarding criticism of the Israeli government. The veteran leftist has said the party’s problem stems from a “small number of members and supporters,” and has pledged to stamp it out. But his defense has rung hollow to some. “The party is institutionally anti-Semitic,” says Luciana Berger, a Jewish member of Parliament who quit Labour this year over the issue. Under Corbyn, she tells TIME, “there is more of a permission for it to happen now.”

...Many Jews in Europe say it is not the major incidents but the minor ones that prove how widespread this problem is. They describe anti-Semitism as having seeped into quotidian life, in some ways complicating the effort to tackle the problem. “Unless it is very serious and you are physically attacked, there is a tendency not to call the police,” says Fredrik Sieradzki, spokesman for the Jewish community in Malmo, on Sweden’s southern border with Denmark.

...The more insidious effect is not at all visible: the choice by many Jews to remain discreet about their religious background. In numerous interviews, European Jews tell TIME that they avoid wearing a Star of David, and if they do, they tuck it under their shirts. Many also forgo affixing the traditional miniature prayer scrolls, called mezuzahs, to their doorposts, as many American Jews do, choosing instead to hang them inside. “Parents say to their kids, ‘Don’t tell your friends you are Jewish.’ Jewish teachers are afraid to tell kids they are Jewish,” says Shneur Kesselman, the Chabad-Lubavitch rabbi of Malmo, who moved from his native Detroit in 2004.

Kesselman recently installed bulletproof glass on his office window in Malmo’s synagogue, which dates from 1903. He says Jews have steadily adapted to low-level hostility. “We feel so long as our names are not on a list, we are O.K.,” he says. “There is a danger that we are accepting much too much.”

...Taïeb, the community leader in Sarcelles, says the best form of resistance might be to remind anti-Semites who Jews really are — their neighbors, and fellow citizens. He recalls watching the protest in 2014 spiral into violence and deciding to gather about 100 men to surround the synagogue. Instead of chanting Jewish prayers, as one might have expected, they decided instead to sing “La Marseillaise,” France’s national anthem. “We wanted to make the point that we are French, really French, who happen to be Jewish.”

...Yet, after a long period of feeling paralyzed by fear, the professor says she is finally venturing out. “Every day, I wake up and tell myself to go out and repair myself,” she says. Her home, rebuilt, now has security glass and alarms, far different from before the attack. “My house was wonderful, totally open, with big magnolia trees in the garden. The magnolia trees survived.”

[Read Vivienne Walt’s full piece in Time.]

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swshadowcouncil · 6 years ago

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“Predictable” Is Not A Four-Letter Word

Well, looks like it’s that time again. That’s right: it’s time to talk about our good friend, Subverted Expectations™.(WARNING: Game of Thrones spoilers below the jump)

Hey, who’s super excited for the upcoming Benioff and Weiss Star Wars trilogy now?

I’m alluding, of course, to the latest episode of HBO’s Game of Thrones, in which, after an 8-season-long journey learning to own her own power, master her fate, lead armies, free slaves, and reclaim her family’s place on the Iron Throne, Daenerys Targaryen evidently got just a wee bit too much girl power and decided to become…bad? I guess? Boy, who could have foretold such a stunning subversion of expectations?

(I mean, a woman gaining power, being gradually resented by the men around her for her ascent, and eventually being viewed as a megalomaniacal villainess who needs to be taken down a peg is kind of the opposite of a subversion, it’s actually pretty much what happens to most women in power, fictional, or non-fictional, but I digress)

Fan response, needless to say, has been…mixed. Generally, folks seem to be unhappy with this course of events, given that, aside from some allusions to “Targaryen Madness” throughout the series, the buildup to Dany’s heel turn has been widely seen as rushed and somewhat arbitrary. True, she’s suffered a lot in the past few episodes, but the series has also put quite a lot of effort into making Dany a sympathetic character. Complicated, yes, and flawed, as most GoT protagonists are, but still heroic and generally good. Even as a conqueror, she holds her armies to a code of conduct, shows sympathy to the downtrodden, and overall seems to want to be a good, ethical ruler even after she’s taken the Iron Throne. So, uh….what gives?

Those of us who were Star Wars fans during the release and aftermath of The Last Jedi will recognize this feeling all too well. And, much like with TLJ, the backlash itself spawned a backlash. “Actually,” declared the internet masses, “It’s good that Rian Johnson subverted our expectations. To follow through on what Abrams set up would have been obvious and boring. The whole point of storytelling is to be unexpected!” But if this is the case, why did so many people walk away from TLJ, or this past episode of GoT, feeling so unsatisfied? And why, for god’s sake, do we find ourselves constantly having this argument any time a new piece of media comes to an end?

The internet certainly provides many examples of the attitude that objection to an incongruous shock ending is somehow weak, entitled, emotional, and juvenile. There’s a sense that true fans of a franchise are tough enough to absorb an unsatisfying ending, that they actually find satisfaction from the dissatisfaction, and that to want an ending that ties up loose ends and closes character arcs (dare I say, even happily, at times) is to want one’s hand held, or to be incapable of handling nuance or bittersweetness. “Life isn’t always happy!” the internet masses cry. “Life doesn’t always make sense! Life is disappointing too! Deal with it!” But stories aren’t vegetables we’re supposed to choke down before we can leave the dinner table. The purpose of storytelling, for adults, at least, is not just to condescendingly remind the viewer that bad things happen sometimes, and force them to suck it up. Which, of course, isn’t to say that all endings have to be neat and happy, either–there are stories with dark endings that are deeply satisfying (Breaking Bad) and ones with happy endings that are deeply unsatisfying (How I Met Your Mother). There are even stories with subtle, unclear endings that still feel logical and satisfying to many viewers, albeit not all. The ending of The Sopranos, for instance was famously controversial for its ambiguity, but even this ending was tied to themes and concepts planted earlier in the series, and several perfectly cogent arguments have been written to explain this quite persuasively.

But what satisfying endings tend to have in common, that unsatisfying ones don’t, is a feeling of appropriateness and completeness. Most fans who hated the finale of How I Met Your Mother did so not because they resented that it was “happy,” but because they felt it was a 180-degree turn from the arcs of all the characters and storylines up until the last few minutes of the last episode. Conversely, people didn’t love Breaking Bad’s ending because it was “difficult” or “dark,” they loved it because it was a believable, complete, fitting ending to the story that had come before (funny enough, I would wager that more people guessed the ending of Breaking Bad than guessed the ending of How I Met Your Mother, though that’s neither here nor there). But in the current cultural environment, a person can gain quite a bit of attention for boasting that unlike those blubbering fake fans, they LIKED that this ending didn’t conclude the arcs that had built for years, didn’t pick up dropped plot threads, didn’t allow protagonists to learn anything or achieve their goals, and so on and so forth. That they, by virtue of some unspecified quality, didn’t NEED an ending like that in order to enjoy what they were watching. Do I believe people who say this? Well, maybe. Human opinions are varied, and I don’t allege some conspiracy where everyone secretly hates the same things I hate. Nonetheless, I often find a degree of disingenuousness in these statements. A good ending can be obvious, unexpected, happy, sad, or even ambiguous–but more often than not, what makes it good is that it is satisfying. And loving an ending because it is unsatisfying, because it gives the audience nothing it wants, runs counter to this instinct, like it or not.

To use one example of a satisfying ending (albeit not a true ending, since it comes in the middle installment of a trilogy), Darth Vader’s revelation that he is Luke Skywalker’s father has gone down as one of the greatest plot twists in cinema history. Indeed, if you didn’t know that a mystery like this was building, you’d never think to put the pieces together–the ominous references to Luke having “too much of his father in him” or having “much anger…like his father,” the Chekhov’s gun of Anakin’s murder that goes unaddressed throughout A New Hope, and so on. But this twist is somewhat unique in that much of the buildup to it was done retroactively. During the writing of A New Hope, there was no plan for Vader to be Luke’s father–instead, the decision was the result of looking back at what the story had built, and following it to a coherent, unexpected, yet somehow totally natural conclusion that set up compelling stakes for the subsequent chapter. That is why the Vader twist works–it wasn’t chosen purely so the audience couldn’t guess the ending of the film, it was chosen because that was a compelling direction for the story to go, because it complicated and heightened the stakes, and because it deepened the existing text through unexpected means. In other words, arguably the greatest movie twist in history wasn’t great just because it was hard to guess, it was great because of the emotional impact of looking backwards and realizing how well it fit into the framework that was already in place despite the twist being unexpected. The surprise on its own is only a surprise; the surprise filling in the blanks of the story so effectively is what makes it sublime.

So why, then, do we find ourselves sucked into a maelstrom of hot takes every time we say we dislike a shock-value ending? And why does this trend seem to have gotten so much worse in recent years?

Well, it should come as a surprise to nobody that fandom culture to begin with is notorious for the ways in which elitism, gatekeeping, and all-around dick-measuring feature in its social interactions. Anybody who’s spent time in a major fandom has undoubtedly encountered this bizarre form of competitiveness, whether it’s being quizzed by strangers on their knowledge of canon or listening to boasts of “I was into it before it was cool” that would make a Brooklyn vinyl store owner blush. What has changed in recent years is the increased integration of the larger internet into these fandoms, shifting fan discussions from the confines of in-person hangouts or small online chat rooms, into massive public forums such as Tumblr and Reddit. Suddenly, said dick-measuring is not only happening for a far larger audience (including the general public, not just hardcore fans), but likes, reblogs, gold, and upvotes actually give fans a metric by which they can “win” or “lose” these competitions, further incentivizing them as a go-to mode of interaction among fans.

Now, with longform franchises, such as Star Wars, Marvel, and Game of Thrones, this who-is-the-nerdiest-of-them-all dynamic runs headlong into another common form of fan interaction; that is, speculation. When fans of a certain TV show or film series gather together, it’s only logical that one of the main topics of discussion is what they think might happen to their favorite characters next. These two dynamics in conjunction with one another form a fertile breeding ground for the almost gladiatorial style of fan speculation we see in most major forums nowadays. One person theorizes about a certain future plot line and receives a shower of upvotes, likes, favorites, and so on. Another comes back with a biting critique, and is given even more praise. Eventually, what might otherwise be a simple discussion becomes an outright competition, complete with points and ranking systems to keep track of who is “winning.”

This paradigm, in turn, incentivizes a very specific style of speculation. If I begin telling you a story about a girl named Cinderella who lives with her wicked stepmother and two wicked stepsisters, who asks to go to the prince’s ball, and leaves a shoe behind on the steps of the palace, your inevitable prediction that the story will end with a shoe fitting and a royal wedding may be correct, but it’s hardly cause for bragging. Of course you could predict how the story would end, because the ending was obvious. However, if I gave subtle clues in my story that the ending would go a different way, and you were the only one to predict that in this version, Cinderella was actually a vampire the whole time, and the story would end with her turning all the other characters into vampires, you could get praise for your attention to detail and ability to pick up on clues others had missed in this (absolutely bonkers) adaptation of Cinderella. Those of us who have followed the Star Wars online fandom since the release of The Force Awakens will recognize this pattern of behavior, especially in the areas of Snoke’s identity and Rey’s parentage. Though most agreed immediately on the heels of TFA that Rey was heavily implied to be Luke Skywalker’s daughter (or possibly Han and Leia’s), it only took a few weeks for the tide to shift to increasingly fantastical theories. First, the relatively mundane theories that she was a Palpatine or a Kenobi, then the slightly more perplexing suggestions that she was a Lars or Naberrie, and eventually theories that she was an immaculately conceived Force baby, or a clone, or a reincarnation of Padme Amidala.

The simplest explanation for this progression is just that people get bored of talking about obvious theories and want to mix things up with more unusual “what if” scenarios. But it’s hard to ignore the way that the competitive nature of social media fandom fosters this paradigm as well. Like someone betting on horse races, the lower the odds, the higher the reward and the sweeter the victory. Guessing that Rey is Luke Skywalker’s daughter, immediately after The Force Awakens, would be like guessing that the story of Cinderella ends with a wedding–yes, you’re likely right, but so is any schlub off the street who watched the movie once and made an idle guess. However, if you guess that Rey is the reincarnation of Padme Amidala, conceived through the Force, and you’re right, you may well be treated as some sort of prophet. Cue the showers of fake internet points.

I should be clear here–I don’t think there is anything wrong with wanting to guess the right answer to a mystery, or come up with a particularly clever solution to a problem that nobody else has thought of before. To the contrary, these are very normal human desires, ones that anyone who follows my writing knows that I myself engage in. The problem is, again, that this incentive to up the stakes of speculation with increasingly nonsensical, out-of-left-field proposals, purely to outdo others, makes it so that cohesive storytelling without shock value is stigmatized in fandom discussions. Which, of course, makes it harder to call content out for being unsatisfying without being accused of being childish, unsophisticated, or foolish. And so, we wind up in a self-perpetuating cycle. When we set up a paradigm where guessing the plot of a story is a competition, any predictable, reasonable, ho-hum answer becomes “too easy.” We expect content creators to structure their stories to make our guessing games harder, because after all, what’s the point of consuming media if the sweetness of “victory” is undercut by a simple, obvious answer? And if setting up these unexpected endings comes at the expense of a satisfying story, the response from many fans is “so be it.”

Which brings us to an even more pressing issue: the actual impact this discourse has on media itself. Content creators are praised by this subset of fans for creating endings that viewers didn’t expect, because, as established, this style of writing enriches the “game” that they play with one another in various forums. Consequently, fans begin to assume it is in longform media writers’ best interest to structure stories this way–to build a story that seems as though it will go one way, only to pull a U-turn at the last minute just to ensure nobody guessed the ending. Fan discourse, in other words, is normalizing bait-and-switching as a core pillar of storytelling, rather than one of many techniques writers can use to build a compelling story. And, as more people who came of age in the internet era grow up to become content creators themselves, I fear that this recent spate of shock-value media is going to become more of a trend than an aberration. Much has been said about the internet creating political echo chambers, but so too can it create artistic ones–and without dissenting opinions at the table, those reverberations will only get stronger.

So, am I advocating that people fearlessly defend “predictable” storytelling in its common connotation of “boring” and “unoriginal?” Of course not. But even if a story isn’t predictable, an audience member with a keen eye, a good instinct, and some time and attention, should in theory be able to predict it. It shows that the writer has put thought into foreshadowing, thematic congruence, consistency of character and motivation, and overall cohesion. Great, surprising endings are not created by building false decoys of these things. Instead, they’re created by rendering them subtly, slipping them in under the audience’s nose so they’re not aware of a surprise building; or sprinkling in deceptively contradicting information so the audience has to struggle to reconcile these conflicts in their minds. To expand upon a metaphor from our own HypersonicHarpist, a good storyteller–like a good magician–may disguise what they are doing with sleight of hand and misdirection, but ultimately they don’t stop mid-act, set down the hat and wand, and then pull a rabbit out of a nearby air duct vent instead. Put quite simply, we are hard-wired to want stories that leave us feeling satisfied. And the beauty is, we all have different ideas of what that looks like–that’s where good, productive discussion comes in.

But when we let disingenuous, performative internet groupthink make us doubt our instincts that something is amiss, for fear of appearing uncultured or childish, we do ourselves and our media a disservice. Bad-faith criticisms of “predictable” story arcs have poisoned fan discourse to the point where even genuine appreciation for certain shocking endings are drowned out in the cacophony of hot takes. And until more people begin to honestly admit it when they don’t see the Emperor’s new clothes, discussions on media will remain that way. As fans in the age of the internet, we have unprecedented voice and access to content creators, and more tools at our disposal to create content ourselves than any generation before us. Now more than ever, the way we talk about media guides media. It’s up to each of us to make sure we have a voice in that conversation.

#daenerys #daenerys targaryen #gameofthrones #jaime lannister #got #got spoilers #tros #star wars tros #subversion #longread #analysis

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colorisbyshe · 6 years ago

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Hi- I've been following you for a bit and have seen you comment on posts that try to include asexuals as part of the community, but I'm not 100% clear on why you feel that they shouldn't be (just that you do). Would you be willing to share your thoughts or direct me to something that maybe you've shared in the past? I'm bi but I'm not super active in the community and I don't know of others that share your viewpoint. Just trying to educate myself. Thanks in advance!

I just got an ask congratulating me on being out of ace discourse but fine I’ll give you the short and long of it.

The LGBT community is a community that exists to address the issues facing Lesbians, Gay Men, Bisexuals (and any other MGA person who falls under the bisexual label, even if they do not use the bisexual label themselves), and Trans people (and any other person who does not identify with their agab, even if they do not use the label trans themselves).

The issues facing Lesbians, Gay Men, Bisexual, and Trans people stem from homophobia, transphobia, and biphobia. As systems of oppression, these all come from the same institutions and modes of thought--that is to say, there is significant overlap in how we experience oppression, even between a cis lesbian and a straight trans man.

Part of this is because historically (and even currently), gayness and transness were thought to be the same thing and were referred to as “sexual inversion.” For example, a gay man is acting as a woman would because loving men is something only woman do. Therefore, he’s assumed to “want to be” a woman, ie he’s like a trans woman. Even more recently, we had the pseudo science saying “gay people have the brains of the opposite gender.” A woman who loves women has the brain of a man because loving women is a Man Thing.

Ergo, homophobia and transphobia have assumed the same forms. Sodomy laws affect gay, bi, and trans people alike. Marriage equality is a gay and trans issue because in a world where straight trans people are misgendered, legally they cannot marry their SO because they are treated as a same gender couple. A trans man only into women is seen as a lesbian by transphobes. Likewise, laws dictating how much clothes you had to wear of your gender/not of the “wrong” gender targeted gay and trans people alike.

Throughout history, Lesbians, Gay Men, Bisexuals, and Trans people have faced the same hardships, created the same culture together, and have the same legal woes. Between our groups, we share the AIDS Crisis, Stonewall, Lawrence v Texas, etc etc.. There’s a reason why Stonewall wasn’t just cis gay men and cis lesbians--it was a diverse space full of the L G B and T, all there taking refuge in the same spaces and fighting against the same oppression.

We are allied together by our fight against our mutual oppressors--cisgender straight people and cisgender aroace people.

Cisgender people all benefit from transphobia. Straight and aroace people all benefit from lesbophobia, homophobia, and biphobia.

Ergo, cisgender straight/aroace people do not belong in LGBT spaces.

They have no role in our culture, history, or activism outside of being the oppressors who inspire it. Cishets have been trying to glom onto LGBT culture for validation, resources, and to feel cool for decades now--starting with kinksters, going onwards with allies (especially allies who obfuscate their cis/hetness to continue this), and now here with the first publicly successful batch--aces.

I don’t have to bow to that. I don’t have to bow to their harassment campaigns. I don’t have to bow to a community first started on an article complaining about how jealous they are of LGBT pride while bragging about how better they are for not wanting sex. I don’t have to bow to a community whose most popular meeting space is AVEN, created by a man who proposed the acronym be changed to “LGBTTQQPFAGIBDSM” (Spot the slur!), said the a is for ally but allies are “queer anyways,” and then shat out a bunch of homophobia over the years.

A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose and a cishet is a cishet. And a cishet by any other name would smell as oppressive. Heteroromantic. Demi-grey hetrom. Hetero ace. Ace who is attracted to the opposite gender and only the opposite gender but somehow they’re not straight. Whatever.

Cishet is cishet.

And a cishet is not L G B or T. We share no culture, no activism, no strife, no love, no anything. And while they may hack away at liberal groups that never really did much for anyone anyways and win out on “inclusion” which means some groups will mention aces are welcome but never really do anything ace specific because aces don’t really need specific resources beyond just feeling included... I don’t have to subscribe to that bootlicking mindset. I’d much rather invite a thousand wellmeaning allies into LGBT spaces because at least they’re there to help us instead of demand we help them.

Fuck it. I have no respect for the ace community, in all 20+ years of them existing as a coherent (well, sort of) community, they have done exactly zero activism besides being a PR machine for their relationship to sex. No activism for rape victims. No lobbying for anything. All they do is tell teenagers is that tis’ okay to have sex with people they aren’t attracted to, which is just reiterated rape culture.

They are the inverse of the sex positivity movement--telling people unhealthy sexual behaviour is fine and is a new identity without ever really dismantling rape culture besides playing lipservice to “rape is bad.” Which isn’t even an LGBT issue--it’s a feminist one. It’s misogyny.

They have nothing to offer the LGBT community. And I wouldn’t want it even if they had something. Because the only ones not included in the LGBT community by virtue of their actually LGBT identities are just my oppressors (cishets and cis aroaces) and oppressors demanding access to resources and spaces created by those they oppress are just furthering their oppression. We tell cishet women to fuck off all the time and cishet women actually are oppressed by gender things you could arguably connect to homophobia and transphobia! There’s no way in fucking hell I’m gonna bend over backwards for other cishets who aren’t even oppressed by just feel a bit lonely because their relationship to sex/dating isn’t what they see in movies (hint: no relationship to sex/dating is accurately portrayed in the media).

I’m over it. I’m done. Cishets fuck off forever.

Let this be my last longform ace discourse post. My ace discourse tag is full of thoughts and regurgitation but let this be the summation of it all.

#ace discourse #ace positivity #(just to block all the mad cishets #bye)#ace safe #whatever #!!#open your eyes and leave me alone #Anonymous

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topmixtrends · 7 years ago

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AFTER THE OPERA SINGER has told the story of marrying her ex-husband the day they met, her relationship with a sociopath, and her life in an ultra-specialized career, she finally coaches the comedian on his vibrato. He announces that he’s stepping away from the microphone, flexing his diaphragm, and then he lets out a warbling note. He admits that it was terrible, but she laughs and reassures him politely.

“I feel like I’ve done way too much talking,” she says afterward.

“Well, it is a podcast that’s based around the idea of conversation, so I wouldn’t say that,” he replies.

The comedian is Chris Gethard, host of the podcast Beautiful Stories from Anonymous People, which celebrated its 100th episode this February. The opera singer is unnamed, though after an hour-long conversation, not unknown. The conceit is this: Gethard takes a phone call from an anonymous stranger and they talk for 60 minutes, during which Gethard can’t hang up but the caller may disconnect at any time. Or, as he introduces each episode, “One phone call, one hour, no names, no holds barred.” (Gethard is a fan of both professional wrestling and punk rock.)

The opera singer is a longtime listener, first-time caller. “Your podcast is a huge thing for me,” she continues, “because it celebrates this idea of opening up and talking and the human connection. Beautiful/Anonymous is my favorite podcast, because I’m introverted […] I get a lot of my social stuff from this, being able to connect with the callers. And I love hearing people’s stories.”

“That’s very nice,” he replies. “Here at Beautiful/Anonymous we’re all about the human connection, and also sometimes poop stories. Also, that one time, just really graphic poop stories.”

It works like this: when Gethard is in the recording studio, he tweets out a phone number and people call in for the chance to participate. There’s no set schedule, no queue, and almost no vetting — producers simply make sure they have a clear phone connection. In the style of old-school radio contests, callers depend on plain luck to get through the line. The show recently broke its own record when nearly 17,000 people dialed in for one episode. A producer answers, connects the call to Gethard in the studio, and the phone hangs up after 60 minutes. Conversation topics range from geology to Satanism, gun control to scatological humor, and nothing is off-limits except names and identifying details. But there’s been no need to censor, no hate speech or offensive language, and it’s even a running joke for callers to apologize to Gethard’s mother — “sorry, Sally” — after they curse. The concept dictates that callers can hang up anytime, but Gethard can’t. That fail-safe has only been used once — the caller claimed he had to get back to work — and seems so unnecessary it makes one wonder what the producers expected when they made the rule. Were callers going to yell at Gethard, and he had to take it? Did they presume some combative conversation in which the caller decides to bow out? If so, Gethard is the wrong guy.

Beautiful/Anonymous and its host are a near-perfect match. At 37, Gethard is a staple in the New York comedy scene, with an offbeat career. In conversations on Beautiful/Anonymous, he describes himself as Springsteen-esque, an awkward working-class kid from New Jersey who champions the little guy. He has often been the underdog, with bit parts on shows like Broad City and Parks and Recreation while his friends like 30 Rock’s Jack McBrayer have gone on to national TV glory. For three seasons, he ran an eponymous oddball talk show on public access television, which now airs new episodes on truTV. The most popular episode featured a dumpster on-set, while viewers called in to guess what was inside. In addition to his quirkiness, Gethard’s fans appreciate his openness about his struggles with mental health. There doesn’t seem to be much he won’t share, and he has recounted drug use and suicide attempts in his comedy. Last year, he detailed his experiences with depression and anxiety in an off-Broadway show-turned-HBO-special, Career Suicide. While that may not seem like the funniest material, he’s long been a master of fusing comedy and tragedy, and fans love him for his honesty and his bucking of the status quo (remember: punk rock, public access dumpster). He’s like the Pied Piper of the uncool, and one of the first iTunes reviews for Beautiful/Anonymous describes him as “the weirdo’s hero.”

This notion of being a weirdo, just like his fans, is a thread throughout his work. By branding himself as a misfit underdog, he has established himself as a sort of egalitarian performer, breaking down the distinction between entertainer and audience. Hosting Beautiful/Anonymous, where he allows other people to share their stories, seems like a logical next step. It feels as though he is saying, “You’ve heard all of my secrets, now let’s hear yours.” When so much of his work pulls from the sad, awkward, funny moments of his life, it feels authentic when he listens to the sad, awkward, funny moments of someone else’s. In the intro to a recent episode, he says, “The whole premise of this podcast might just be, ‘Maybe we can all be okay. Let’s talk about it.’”

Beautiful/Anonymous is all a bit more warm-hearted than perhaps even the creators expected. It is almost quaint to hear people’s candid, extemporaneous voices now that hour-long phone calls have become passé and most personal communication is done by text message. For a podcast hosted by a stand-up comedian, it isn’t really funny, at least not consistently. Gethard makes jokes but mostly it’s just strangers talking, with a vibe somewhere between a first date and a therapy session, and all of the ice-breakers and sadness and mundanity and, yes, humor, two people can share in an hour. Participants call on their lunch hours, in their cars, tethered to their phone charger on the floor of their office, from a storage unit, while getting a tattoo, in a Dunkin’ Donuts bathroom, while walking the streets of France. They are a midwife, a public defender, a queer black punk from Appalachia, a teenager who just experienced her first kiss. They tell their life stories, or sometimes just chit-chat, and their stories are ordinary, fascinating, serious, light — often all at once.

When the show began in March 2016, most of the callers were already fans of Gethard’s: comedy nerds and aspiring artists and twentysomethings nervous about their careers. The episodes began to feel a little one-note, so a voicemail box was set up so people could leave a pitch for what they’d talk about if they ever got on the show. These messages have been used for a call a handful of times, such as with a transgender man who wanted to share his experience, and with a black veteran from Charlottesville soon after the tragedy there. As the show gained traction — thanks in large part to an excerpt on This American Life — callers became more diverse, including a Southern woman in her 50s who wanted to discuss her support of Donald Trump. It was a vast departure from Gethard’s usual demographic, and as he respectfully disagreed with her politics, he also empathized with her stories of motherhood and domestic abuse. It aired in mid-2016, when Americans were beginning in earnest to pull away from each other, making this coming together seem simultaneously shocking, uncomfortable, and important. It was one of the most compelling episodes of the show’s run.

Beautiful/Anonymous shares DNA with longform interview shows like Marc Maron’s WTF and the thoughtful features of public radio, but it isn’t quite like anything else. Gethard’s style is unique: more conversational than an interview, yet more one-sided than a conversation. Like Beautiful/Anonymous, S-Town and This American Life cover the lives of regular people, but those interviews are researched, edited, and crafted by the producers; the stories are told by others. Instead, the conversations in Beautiful/Anonymous are expressed — verbatim, in their entirety — by the protagonists themselves, like The Moth without the polish or StoryCorps with a host. Beautiful/Anonymous is raw footage, like the “Before” image of a prestige radio segment. And in that way, it may be the most authentic podcast there is.

True authenticity, of course, is arguable — likely impossible — in any public medium. Participants are, by definition, listeners of the show, and often will refer to past episodes in a sort of meta-conversation. A phone call with a stranger isn’t the most natural setting, and it’s even harder to have a real conversation when there’s an element of fandom involved — some callers idolize Gethard and are nervous to talk to him. Knowing that they’re speaking to him, and to an invisible audience, inevitably shapes their stories, whether consciously or not. Gethard plays a role in shaping these stories as well. He asks questions that are most interesting to him, but it would be naïve to assume that he’s not also guiding the conversation into what makes good radio.

Except it’s not always good radio, not in the constructed way we’ve come to expect. Sometimes conversations are awkward or repetitive or over-eager, because in real life, people are most definitely awkward, repetitive, and over-eager. Yes, some episodes are shocking: the mother who unknowingly married a pedophile; the immigrant who fled the civil war in El Salvador; the guy with four kids who doubts that his wife still loves him … and hasn’t talked to anyone else about it. But many are boring, regular conversations with regular people. The college student skipping her internship to make the call. The millennial who recently fell in love. The pregnant woman who lies that it’s her birthday. Gethard’s callers aren’t media-trained, and they don’t speak like prepared entertainers or pundits. There’s an air of truth to what they’re saying and how they say it. Even if total public authenticity is doubtful, Beautiful/Anonymous comes close.

There’s a larger value in listening to regular people. That they are featured so prominently on a podcast gives weight to their stories, their lives, and, thus, to the listener’s. Beautiful/Anonymous highlights the individuality of people’s stories and shows that there aren’t any one-note lives. My descriptions — the opera singer, the immigrant — are incomplete. No one is a cliche or a type; there are no basic bitches or typical bros. Similarly, no caller is a celebrity or memoirist or subject of a TV drama, but all of their stories have humor, pathos, and validity just the same. There are as many fascinating conversations as mundane ones, and then you realize that even the mundane ones are fascinating in their own way.

This appreciation of the average Joe is thanks to Gethard himself. In conversation, he’s enthusiastic and attentive, and is able to find a connection with anyone. Like the intern, he also majored in American Studies! He and the Australian both love Morrissey! He swaps supernatural stories with a ghost hunter! He’s non-judgmental and impressed with people’s stories. He asks probing questions, shares his own anecdotes, and thoughtfully challenges the points he disagrees with. He’ll give a little shit and crack a few jokes too; you can’t take the comedian out of the interviewer. Just as he does in his comedy work, Gethard seems genuine and vulnerable on the show, like when he cried openly while talking to a mother waiting for her five-year-old’s cancer prognosis. Participants often feel so comfortable that they mistakenly say their name, though any slip-ups are bleeped. Each episode, Gethard develops a connection with the caller, which filters over to the listener; it’s what the opera singer experienced as both.

Most interesting is the vast emotional ground covered in these conversations, which almost always turn intimate — often dark — but still maintain an element of lightness. The Charlottesville veteran plays Mario Kart during his call. A major crimes detective microwaves a Hot Pocket. The Australian guy recounts his suicide attempt and then ends the call in a sing-along, with Gethard, to the show’s hold music. Of course, it’s impossible to cover the whole of someone’s identity in an hour, but it’s amazing how much Gethard is able to mine in that time, like a cross-section of a person’s life. Everyone has joy and pain and occasionally funny stories about vomiting. Some conversations are entirely pleasant, but never wholly dark, which says something about humanity — we skew toward the positive, the fun, and, like Gethard, avoid letting the darkness overtake us.

Gethard’s honesty about his own mental illness seems to be the major thing that brings people to the podcast, both as callers and listeners. Almost every caller mentions a struggle with mental health, and his public vulnerability allows them to be vulnerable too. Some callers may believe he’s better than a therapist because he’ll admit to his own issues, and though he avoids giving advice (his own shrink told him not to) he often becomes a reluctant mental health guru. When the mother in the children’s hospital says, “You get to be my therapist for the next hour,” Gethard hesitates. “Well, I can’t be that…” he says. Instead, he’ll often respond with “I’m sorry you’re going through that” — supportive, noncommittal, but apparently genuine. The show sometimes moves into self-help territory, and the less generous listeners among us may roll our eyes at the melodrama in some of these stories: everyone has problems, why should we listen to yours? But Gethard doesn’t. And that’s the key — he cares about people, so we care about people.

What’s notable is that these are real, ordinary people. Not real people who become YouTube stars or reality show favorites. Not real people who are tracked and meme-ified like Damn Daniel and Ken Bone. Anyone can become a blogger or Instagram influencer, with the backlash that may come along with it. Beautiful/Anonymous gives people an opportunity to be heard as themselves, with more nuance than a meme and without the glory — or burden — of recognition. Callers get the chance to say anything they want to a large audience — most episodes are listened to by over 100,000 people — without the expectation of fame. And for listeners, in an age of curated online presences and #brands, it’s moving to hear someone share something that isn’t connected to their constructed persona.

Anonymous media isn’t groundbreaking. A decade ago the website PostSecret displayed unsigned postcards of funny, shocking, or sad secrets to millions of readers, and now famed psychotherapist Esther Perel broadcasts an anonymous couples therapy session on her podcast Where Should We Begin?. It’s no less compelling to listen to Beautiful/Anonymous and hear the personal stories of love, abuse, and longing about families, partners, politics, and jobs, with a level of honesty only available to those who are unidentified. In this way, Beautiful/Anonymous presents a paradox: though names and biographical details are usually the first thing we learn about people, in the show we start to deeply know someone who remains unnamed. In today’s world, we are so closely connected to the daily lives of our friends, but the conversations in Beautiful/Anonymous contain things people can’t share with family, therapists, in Snapchat stories, or possibly anywhere else. “I can just be openly blatantly honest with you ‘cause that’s the whole point of this, right?” one caller says early in the hour. “Yeah,” Gethard replies, “no one’s ever going to know.”

Gethard says the goals of the show are human connection, giving someone a platform, and bringing people together in a time when our world feels so fractured. That’s a lot for one podcast to take on, and it doesn’t quite accomplish all of it — at least not in every episode. Gethard hopes listeners will benefit from hearing differing opinions, at a time when the current political climate has closed people off to dialogue. Which, okay sure, the show does that. But we already have cable news panels and coastal thinkpieces and Hillbilly Elegy. The value of Beautiful/Anonymous isn’t solely political. It’s in simply listening to people, with all of their complexities and contradictions, unbounded by names, identities, and the expectations around them. After 45 minutes, we learn that the Salvadoran immigrant was paralyzed by shrapnel. The ghost hunter is also a Sandy Hook denier. The Russian sex worker is a Christian who harbored a murderous revenge plot after he was raped. You may disagree or judge or cry or fall in love with them for an hour, but either way you’re listening.

There’s an irony, though, to the idea of feeling connected to anonymous strangers through a podcast. On the subway, with Beautiful/Anonymous in my headphones, I’m not engaged with the anonymous strangers surrounding me, but rather a conversation that was taped weeks ago and that doesn’t include me. The show becomes both a throwback — phone calls — and a symbol of our contemporary disengagement — listening alone. There’s safety in the anonymity for the caller, naturally, but for the listener too. We can feel close to someone we don’t have to see or know in any other context. For us perhaps it’s a baby step, a low-stakes connection. You don’t actually have to make a new friend, or more scarily, talk to anyone who disagrees with you. As I’m listening, I understand that the lives of the strangers around me are surely as rich as the one in my headphones. Listening to Beautiful/Anonymous is an exercise in empathy, thanks predominantly to Gethard himself. He feels it, he shows it, and he brings it out in us. We learn empathy by his example.

I wonder whether Beautiful/Anonymous has encouraged anyone to be more open and vulnerable in their own life. The fact remains that in public, in person, with our own identities, the barrier between our interior and exterior selves is hard to cross. But while there is no empirical evidence for this, I have a feeling that the show makes people kinder, or at least more thoughtful about the lives that surround them. What Beautiful/Anonymous seems to be saying, or — I should be honest — what it says to me, is that your regular-person life, with or without jokes or success or depression or a million Twitter followers, is good enough. And that there is value in sharing it, for both the speaker and the listener.

At its best, the show is about the power of conversation, whether intense or casual. It’s fascinating to listen to two people just talking, the awkward dance toward intimacy, and we hear something deep and true from a person like us. Or not at all like us, but somehow there is a feeling that we’re in this life together. It’s not a constructed reality show or a crafted essay, just a conversation about being in the world. We listeners are voyeurs, but we can find ourselves in others’ minutiae, insecurities, jokes, and tragedies. These stories act as mirrors for our own, or windows to other lives. Either way, we feel less alone.

Katy Hershberger is a writer and book publishing professional living in New York. She is an MFA candidate in Nonfiction at The New School and her work has appeared on TinHouse.com, Bustle, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. Find her on Twitter @katyhersh

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