#but my parents’ country was affected by us and british imperialism

[lilac-nites]

*

[theejaguar]

Jaguar's List of Hobie Brown Headcanons

I watched Spider-Man: Across the Spiderverse last Saturday, and Hobie in particular got my brain going brr. So have this (kinda long) list of headcanons - some silly, some 'serious'.

One of Hobie's love languages is touch. You can tell with how he gets Pavitr in a half-hug half-headlock while greeting him, as well as with how he pats Miles' shoulders after he saves Inspector Singh (while barely knowing him). That boy communicates encouragement, affection and care through gentle touches and caresses and hugs.

"Make your own watch" - Hobie told Miles when they were talking about why Miles wanted in so much. And with his distaste for brands, I say: Hobie likes giving homemade gifts. That, or he buys things from independent producers when he wants to give something he isn't skilled at. Hobie Brown doesn't use objects tainted by manifestations of capitalism to express his affections.

Hobie likes Brazilian music. He found it through Admirável Chip Novo by Pitty, and then became obsessed with music from late 60s to the 80s after deep-dive researching it. And that is due to how songs from that time play with words that criticised the authoritarian government. On the nose, but a lot weren't caught.

When meeting Miles' parents, Hobie actually calls them by Mr. and Mrs. Morales. No one comments on it.

Hobie goes by any pronouns. "You've got to confuse the fascists, mate. Can't misgender me if my pronouns are all of 'em" - BROWN, Hobie.

Hobie doesn't restrain anyone, but he's pretty protective of his own. Anyone that hurts the people he cares about is in for big trouble.

On that line, Hobie advocated a lot in Gwen's favour. The reason why they've gone on so many missions together is that he saw this girl that was most likely going to be homeless if they sent her back home and went "hell no". So knowing that Miguel doesn't bother with his antics, Hobie took her as his partner in missions, to be sure that anything she messed up could be glossed over by his "whatever" attitude.

Hobie and Pavtir bond a lot through criticism of the British government and History. I just know they have planned thefts at the British Museum to recover Pav's national treasury. "I... don't think that'd be a good look for Spider-Man, though" - Pav "Whatever" - Hobie, actually dropping the plan because he cares about Pav.

Hobie watches Oscar winners to bash the industry. Ends up liking what he sees at times (most recent occurrence being EEAAO - "It is a metaphor for how capitalism tears down familial relationships and fuels preexisting generational trauma.")

Hobie likes to play with kids. They play football together and he trips them if they call it 'soccer'.

Hobie goes to sleep at 4AM and wakes up at 12PM. He is NOT a morning person ("Hate the AM").

Hobie is friends with tattoo artists, and gets the Spiderband to get matching full-sleeve tattoos. Jeff and Rio go insane when they see Miles. George just sighs tiredly when Gwen gets home like he was waiting for that day to arrive. Inspector Singh's disapproval of Pavtir grows - but Gayatri likes it, so he takes it as a win.

Hobie likes to cook and looks up recipes from different countries in his free time.

Hobie can spot a terminally online person from a distance.

Hobie rejects the Imperial System. Meters, litres and grams are the way to go.

[trans-advice]

Hey :)

I need some advice on how to talk to my stepmom. I’m not out to any of my family yet, and I know they’d be supportive, but I’m not sure if I’m ready.

Where I really need the advice is with Harry Potter. My stepmom grew up with the books and my little brother got REALLY into them too. He’s seen a couple of the movies and read all the books and everything, and has some HP merch. I talked to my stepmom on the phone the other day and asked if she was aware of JKR and her transphobia and what she thought of it. She said she was aware but didn’t know specifics or the severity, and that she’d do some more thinking and researching, but that when it comes to things like that it’s hard because my brother is so into it. She’s keeping him from reading any of her opinion pieces, which I appreciate, but I can’t help but be a little upset by their continued support of her work. I know that they would never intentionally upset me, and I do get how it’s a difficult decision (I suspect my brother is autistic, as am I, so I don’t want to take a special interest away from him) but should I try talking to my stepmom about it again? Is it worth coming out to her so she can see how it’s affecting me emotionally on a personal level? Should I just get over it? I can’t help but feel like I’m overreacting. Thanks in advance :)

There are at least a couple things to say, the JKR gets so focused on is because she's a billionaire collecting royalties from Harry Potter via intellectual property. Her royalties then fund promotion of transphobia, antisemitism, etc. Unfortunately, her antisemitism, her pro-slavery, her transphobia, her pro-imperialism, has many different clones, as bell hooks critiqued in December 2003 in chapter 3 of "The Will To Change".

Ever since masses of American boys began, in the wake of the civil rights struggle, sexual liberation, and feminist movement, to demand their right to be psychologically whole and expressed those demands most visibly by refusing to fight in the Vietnam War, mass media as a propaganda tool for imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy have targeted young males and engaged in heavy-handed brainwashing to reinforce psychological patriarchy. [...]

In the wake of feminist, antiracist, and postcolonial critiques of imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy, the backlash that aims to reinscribe patriarchy is fierce. While feminism may ignore boys and young males, capitalist patriarchal men do not. It was adult, white, wealthy males in this country who first read and fell in love with the Harry Potter books. Though written by a British female, initally described by the rich white American men who "discovered" her as a working-class single mom, J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter books are clever modern reworkings of the English schoolboy novel. Harry as our modern-day hero is the supersmart, gifted, blessed, white boy genius (a mini patriarch) who "rules" over the equally smart kids, including an occasional girl and an occasional male of color. But these books also glorify war, depictedas killing on behalf of the "good."

The Harry Potter movies glorify the use of violence to maintain control over others. In Harry Potter: The Chamber of Secrets violence when used by the acceptable groups is deemed positive. Sexism and racist thinking in the Harry Potter books are rarely critiqued. Had the author been a ruling-class white male, feminist thinkers might have been more active in challenging the imperialism, racism and sexism of Rowling's books.

Again and again I hear parents, particularly antipatriarchal parents, express concern about the contents of these books while praising them for drawing more boys to reading. Of course American children were bombarded with an advertising blitz telling them that they should read these books. Harry Potter began as national news sanctioned by mass media. Books that do not reinscribe patriarchal masculinity do not get the approval the Harry Potter books have received. And children rarely have an opportunity to know that any books exist which offer an alternative to patriarchal masculinist visions. The phenomenal financial success of Harry Potter means that boys will henceforth have an array of literary clones to choose from.

The reason I mention this is that it means that the goal should also be to prevent merch acquistions from being ones that pay JKR royalties. For example, no streaming & no on-demand. Pirating would be more ethical in this case. I also mention this because there's at least 2 other problems: the media overall still supports white bourgeois patriarchy & your brother is likely getting targeted by the school to prison pipeline, which assimilation basically says on average you either have to step on other demographics (such as students of color, poor students, & or tgnciq students, etc) & break solidarity in order to avoid getting targeted, or you get more policing sicced on you.

To summarize there’s 3 goals regarding your brother:

1. do not give JKR money,

2. make sure he starts to become anti-sexist, anti-racist, etc.

3. protect him from the school-to-prison pipeline.

She said she was aware but didn’t know specifics or the severity, and that she’d do some more thinking and researching, but that when it comes to things like that it’s hard because my brother is so into it. She’s keeping him from reading any of her opinion pieces,

The mind can only handle what the butt can stand. She hasn't said which sources she's going to research. Further just because she changes her mind about JKR doesn't mean she'll be able to teach your brother. For example, parents can't censor everything, especially as kids learn to evade censorship, or teachers, students, adults at school & in other social settings expose them to various works including hate speech. What parents can do is control their own wallets.

For example of people at school & other social settings promoting hate speech, some special needs establishments use neurosexism to promote myths such as “only males can have autism”. I literally had teachers use neurosexist myths on entire mainstream classrooms in order to promote other neuromyths like the visual-audio-kinesthetic (VAK) model of learning models. (Like seriously, these teachers would tailor their lesson planning to accommodate these 3 styles. Neurosexism got used to sometimes segregate people by gender marker.) If you need more insight, I recommend Cordelia Fine’s “Testosterone Rex” & “Delusions of Gender”, along with reading up on the school-to-prison pipeline. Schools tend to attack/thwart student solidarity/activism & they are legally allowed to on the basis of preventing “disruptions to education”. This means that on average faculty will reward students who suck up by attacking other students who are either: disabled students, students of color, tgnciq+ students, and or poor students, because this helps break up solidarity. Seriously, I don’t know how your brother’s school’s faculty acts, but consider that your stepmom also has to deal with them & will need support dealing with them.

So no, I don’t know if you coming out will actually do anything. You family is maybe supportive, and even consent to back you up, but are they able to back it up? I don't know your family's situation. I think y’all need help dealing with sexism, dealing with the school-to-prison pipeline, etc. To raise a child, it takes a village, so to combat the racist capitalist anti-TGNCIQ+ patriarchy also takes a village. Make sure your stepmom & family & brother has the support to help your brother learn that sexism, racism, etc, are bad.

Good Luck, Peace & Love,

Eve

[normal-thoughts-official]

Fandom racism anon here and yeah absolutely (I didn't realise I had anon on lol)

Because while LOTR has problems within its themes (ie the orcs can be seen as to be coded as people of colour, especially since they ride elephants) the explicit message of the book is evil bad

Because the only people who work for sauron are evil. There are no morally grey people, they aren't misguided or tricked they just are evil and want to take over the world

And yeah I totally agree that this is more of a literal take on like empirical war (is that the word) and that makes total sense considering Tolkiens history

Whereas I would say that the allegories in shaowhunters is way more based on racial conflict within a country itself especially slavery, I can't remember if this is show Canon but is it that they have the warlock tropheys? I remember that in the books magnus talks about shadowhunters hanging warlock marks on their walls? (sorry to bring the books up)

Idk it's very hollow to me, unlike with LOTR though it's a different allegory it's totally irritating to show many of these supremecists as morally misled. LOTR says bad guys are bad guys, shadowhunters says well yeah they did follow a guy which thinks that downworlders are subhuman and should be eradicated but they just made a mistake

I want to compare this to tfatws which while it isn't really fantasy I just feel like it shows how the priorities of the writer can impact the message of the show so powerfully (I know u aren't up to date so I'm gonna be pretty vague)

There's a scene in tfatws where the new white perfect captain America does something bad and doesn't pay for the consequences - done to comment on white privelege and how America condones white supremacy and how Sam is in comparison to that

Mayrse and Robert revealed to be part of the circle! And paid no consequences Shock horror my parents were the bad guys (even rho they were either implicitly or explicitly extremely racist the entire time) also I haven't finished the seires but do the lightwoods ever try to get their parents to face the consequences?)

Only one actual really critiques the situation and the reality behind it whereas the other one is just to centre the white characters once again and present them in a further sympathetic light

AND ANOTHER THING! I was mostly talking about show Canon here and I'm sorry to bring up the books but I literally can't believe I hadn't picked up in this before.

So like downworlders = people of colour, Simon is a vampire so is coded as a person of colour. However in the books in the last one he stops being a vampire and becomes a shadowhunters instead, coincidentally that's also when he starts dating Izzy HOW IS THIS ABLE TO HAPPEN!!????

I mean I know cassandra clare is lazy right? The original seires is by far the worst of all her writings but come ON!!!!! By the allegory has he become the white man!????? These books made no fuckin sense when I read them at 15 and they make no sense now I'm digressing anyways

I don't know man I wrote this ask because I was trying to find some fantasy book recommendations on booktube and SO MANY of them were about slavery or general ly extrême préjudice with à White protagonist to save this 'poor souls'.

Also I was watching guardians of the galexy the other day and realised nearly every movie set in space is just bigger stakes imperialism - planets instead of countries. Literally star wars, star trek, guardians of the galexy 2, avengers infinity war - all are facing genocidal imperialistic villains without actually paying much, if any attention to those effected

Just writing this ask made me exhausted I'm so tired of lazy writing and exploiting other people's struggle. I'm white and I'm trying to be more critical about the movies, shows and books I watch and read but let me know if I said something off here❤️❤️ you gotta get up to date with tfatws man, Sambucky nation is THRIVING!!!!

i'm not sure i agree that the whole "the evil people are evil" thing is a good thing, because i feel like more often than not making the bad characters just like... unidimensionally evil just means that the reader will be like "lol i could NEVER be that guy" and when it comes to racism that is a dangerous road to take because white people already believe that racism is something that Only The Most Evil People, Ergo, Not Me, Can Do, which makes discussions of stuff like subconscious racial bias and active antiracist work become more difficult because people don't believe they CAN be racist unless they're like, Lord Voldemort

which is not to say that racism should be treated as morally ambiguous, just that the workings of racism should be represented as something that is not done only by the Most Hardcore And Evil, but rather as a part of a system of oppression that affects the way everyone sees the world and interacts with it and lives in it

yes the warlock trophies are mentioned in the show, albeit very quickly (there is a circle member who tells magnus that his cat eyes will make "a nice addition to his collection" and then it's never mentioned again because this is sh and we love using racism for shock value but then not actually treating it as a serious plot point or something that affects oppressed ppl). and you are absolutely right, shadowhunters (and hp, and most fantasy books) has genocide as its core conflict and treats it, like you said, in a very hollow way, treating racism as both not a big deal and not something that is part of a system of oppression, but really the actions of a few Very Bad People. it's almost impressive how they manage to do both at the same time tbh

i think you hit the nail right on the head with this comment, actually. for most of these works, racism is SHOCK VALUE. it's just like "lol isn't it bad that this bad guy wants to kill a gazillion people just because they are muggles? now that is fucked up" but it's not actually an issue. in fact, when this guy is defeated, the whole problem is over! racism is not something that is embedded into that world, it's not a systemic issue, it's not even actually part of what drives the plot. the things that led to this person not only existing but rising to power and gathering enough followers to be a real threat to the whole world are never mentioned. it's like racists are born out of thin air, which is dangerously close to implying that racism is just a natural part of life, tbh

anyway my point is, it is never supposed to be questioned, it is never part of a deeper plot or story, its implications are barely addressed except for a few fleeting comments them and there; so, it's not a critique, it's shock value, even though it is frequently disguised as a critique (which is always empty and shallow anyway. like what is the REAL critique in works like hp or sh/tsc other than "genocide is bad"? wow such a groundbreaking take evelyn)

about simon and the book thing: i actually knew about this and the weird thing about this is that, like... simon is jewish, and he's implied to be ashkenazi (calls his grandma bubbe which is yiddish, which is a language spoken by the ashkenazi ppl), and it seems like cc is always toeing the line between him being accepted by shadowhunters and then not accepted by them, which sounds a lot like antisemitic tropes and history of swinging between (ashkenazi) jewish ppl being seen as the model minority myth and thus used as an example by white christians, and being hated and persecuted. i'm not super qualified to talk about this since i'm not jewish and i'm still learning about/unlearning antisemitism and its tropes, and i don't really have a fully formed thought on that, tbh; it just reminds me of the whole "model minority" swinging, where one second simon is part of the majority, the other he's not, but always he is supposed to give up a part of himself and his identity in other to be "assimilated" by shadowhunter culture. this article (link) covers a book on jewish people and assimilationism into USan culture, this article (link) covers british jews' relationship with being considered an ethnic group, and this article (link) talks a bit about the model minority myth from the perspective of an asian jewish woman

it just really calls to my attention that cc chose to make her ashkenazi jewish character start off as a downworlder and then become a shadowhunter. i don't think she made that decision as a conscious nod to this history, because it would require being informed on antisemitism lol but it's incredible how you can always see bigoted stereotypes shining through her narrative choices completely by accident. it just really shows how ingrained it is in our collective minds and culture

and anyway, making a character go from the oppressed group to just suddenly become the oppressor is just. wtf. not how oppression works, but most of all, really disrespectful, especially because she clearly treats it as an "upgrade"/"glowup" that earns him the Love Of His Life

also, out of curiosity, are you french? it seems like your autocorrect changed a few words and i'm pretty sure extrême and préjudice are the french versions of these words, and since u said ur white, that's where my money would be lol

[g-46-stark]

Find Me In Paris: Things I’m still wondering...

So, I really love Find me in Paris, is really funny and original.

I appreciate the way they handle all the time travel stuff... I’ve watched it like a hundred of times, but I’m still wondering:

1-Why no one ever told Lena about the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917?

Really, not even Ines, who’s like the ballerina version of Hermione Granger.

For the ones who don’t know what I’m talking about, or just wants a reminder, I’m going to make a short resume:

From 1904 to 1905 Russia and Japan were fighting a war; Russia lose it, so people weren’t very happy (they also realize some social classes needed some changes);

The Russian army repressed a manifestation in St. Petersburg (some people want to present a petition to zar Nikolai II);

It started a revolution that lasted two years (1905-1907). After it, the zar was forced to create the Duma (a sort of Parliament). Some historicals think that this was the first step of the 1917 Russian Revolution;

During WWI, the social situation in Russia wasn’t all this good, especially for the factory worker. They all unite under the ideals of Lenin, and it started the October Revolution, which led to the abdication of zar Nikolai II;

Due to some political issue (it started a civil war between the new communist government and people that still wanted the zar) Nikolai Romanov and his family (his wife Alexandra, his four daughter Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia, and his son Alexei) were took in Siberia and then killed.

So, Lena is a Russian princess: some people think is Nikolai daughter, but since it’s not specificated, let’s say she’s his niece. 

She obviously doesn’t know about Russian nobility fate; so, she still thinks that in Russia there would be a zar, who would be one of Nikolai’s descendants.

She says on more than one occasion that she is a princess, who lives in a palace in Russia.

But the thing is this: I don’t think the old Russian nobility still lives in Russia and has all their old proprieties such as palaces.

So no one (not even the teachers) find strange that Lena goes around saying she’s a princess?

This leads me to the next point: why doesn’t Ines tell Lena about Russia 20th century history?

She knows Lena is from 1905, so she knows why she doesn’t know about it.

If I know that one of my dearest friends is a time traveler from 1900’s Russia (and part of the nobility), one of the first thing I would say to them it would be: “If you ever go back in your century, stay away from Russia! Move to the US and don’t go anywhere else!”.

I understand Ines wouldn’t say that for all the “don’t change the past because you don’t know how it could affect the future” thing, but seriously… Lena always said she wanted to go back! You don’t want to even warn her?

And later, in season 2, Lena said to Max all the truth; and she also said she wanted to go back so she could save Ines.

All Max has to say on it was: “Oh, ok. I’m really sad that you’re leaving, but that’s ok. Let’s create the most transgressive choreography that Paris Opera has ever seen.”.

And I was like… Ehm…hello?? The girl you claim to love just said she wanted to go back at the beginning of a disastrous century!! She’s leading herself into two revolutions and probably her death, but ok, let’s dance through it.

No one there knows anything about 1900’s Russian history?

And besides that, what about the history lessons or the history teacher?

What do they teach students in that school?

Oh, right...

2- Max's family: What happened between Max and Ruben     (Reuben?)? What happened between Armando and his wife? And, more importantly, where is she?

I know that since Lena is the main character, we should be worried about her background story, but really… you can’t throw us some hints about Max's dysfunctional family and then just walk away.

I mean, maybe it’s just me, but I’m still confused about something.

If I get it right (feel free to correct me if I’m wrong):

Ruben is not Armando biological son: he was adopted in Spain;

He was a street boy, who was an extraordinarily talented dancer;

He and Max were inseparable;

At some point, their mum took them to London, where she wanted them to attend a boarding school (Arrow? Harrow?);

Max was accepted, but Ruben wasn’t;

So, Armando took the boy with him to New York (where he presumably worked for the Imperial Ballet) since their mum “can’t take care of him”;

Then something bad happened between the two brothers;

The result was that Max was expelled from his school and his relationship with Ruben was ruined;

Max said that Ruben came to visit him at school and started “acting like himself”: he made something bad, but we don’t know what;

After “breaking his mother’s heart” for being expelled (words from Armando), Max won a sort of scholarship for a European ballet school and chose to go to Paris;

Then, it happens all Lena’s stuff;

At a certain point Ruben comes back in Max life, “stealing” is brother baroque choreography and going at his school (and dancing with his chica);

In a dialogue, we discover that he and Max made a promise, but one of them broke it;

I think it was about not “entering in the other's territory”? Like, Ruben couldn’t go to Max boarding school and Max couldn’t go to a ballet school/found a hip-hop crew? 

I don’t know if I missed something or I just misunderstood things, if you can explain it to me, I’ll be happy to listen. 

Anyway, I have some main question about Max family: 

WHERE IS HIS MUM??

I mean, I assumed she lives in London, her son lives in Paris, it’s like an hour's flight… why she never shows up? 

Not even for his shows at Garnier? Not even when her son injured himself so bad that he ends up in the hospital and had surgery?

Is she dead? Is she ill? Like does she have cancer or something so bad that she couldn’t take a plane to go to visit her hurt son? In that case, I’m sorry for my cruel judgment.

But otherwise…I know that the others character parents never go to visit their children (the only exception were Dash and Thea’s mums), but I think that every parent would have shown up in case their child end up in a hospital.

Is she totally unaffectionate?

Because the quote from Armando: “I took Ruben to NY because he wasn’t admitted at Harrow and your mother couldn’t take care of him” sound pretty bad.

What happened between Max's parents?

I know that married couple living in different city/country due to work isn’t uncommon, so it wouldn’t have bothered me if some word in Max and Armando’s dialogue in season 1 hadn’t been said:

Armando said that his wife decided to take the boys back to London, and it sounded to me like he didn’t totally agree with that decision.

Max said something like “don’t speak about mum” as it hurts listening to his dad talking about his mum.

So, maybe I’m seeing drama everywhere, but it seems to me that something happened with Max's mum and/or between the parents.

My interpretation of that, after seeing that scene, is that Armando and his wife were divorcing, so Mum took her sons and moved to London (without Dad's consent, maybe, it’s sadly common in some difficult divorces). Both the boys were obviously traumatized by that, so Ruben started acting badly (so he wasn’t admitted at school) making his mum desperate and unwilling to take care of him? And maybe Max was angry with his father for leaving mum and them (and after, for taking Ruben to NY and leaving him in a boarding school)? 

Why are Ruben and Max hating each other?

Okay, they’re brothers, but we’re going a little too far, don’t we?

Maybe Max’s a little jealous of Ruben's talent and (again) because he was taken to New York with their father while he was in a British all-male boarding school and blah, blah, blah… okay, we get it.

But Ruben?

Maybe he is jealous because he’s not Armando's biological son? Because he thinks Armando would always choose his “real” son instead of him?

It could be, but I’m totally plotting things on this point

We know that probably Ruben was the reason for Max's expulsion from his old school, and I presume that their parents thought it was Max’s fault, but I don’t think that’s all the story.

I mean, I personally want to know more about this.

In conclusion, dear producers: you can’t just toss at us two brothers that literally want to punch one another without a real explanation and expecting us to just walk away with that.

So…tell me what you think. 

Sorry for the long post, and thanks for reading it! 

[yasbxxgie]

As a child entering primary school, I struggled figuring out what it meant to be Canadian. It was a somewhat amorphous word, and besides standing up for the anthem every morning and seeing the red and white flag wave in the school parking lot, I really didn’t know what qualified as Canadian. But as I was exposed to different people and different ideas throughout my childhood, I figured out quickly that the primary criteria one needed to fill to be Canadian was this: whiteness.

The Construct of Whiteness

Now, when I say ‘white’, I’m not talking about Caucasians. It’s important we understand that whiteness is a highly politicized construct that doesn’t apply to all people who have light skin. There are plenty of Caucasians — say, people from the near and middle east — whose skin tones vary greatly, but who for all intents and purposes, are not white.

This is because the concept of whiteness is not necessarily one of skin colour (although it can be), but rather, a concept of power. For example, although in North America we may consider Polish and Ukrainian immigrants to be ‘white’, they are heavily racialized in Britain and other Western European countries. South-eastern European immigrants from Serbia, Bosnia, Macedonia and Albania are considered undesirable in Switzerland compared to immigrants from Western and Northern European countries.

A Macedonian acquaintance with a master’s degree in electrical engineering, whose husband was living and working in Switzerland, was not granted residency until she acquired a non-Macedonian passport. Her family had some roots in non-Balkan countries, so she was able to leverage this, and after two long years living away from her husband, she was finally granted entry into Switzerland.

My point here is that whiteness is relative and often used to establish power dynamics. If you are the child of immigrants, as I and at least a third of my classmates were, you weren’t really Canadian, but something in between. It was like being the adopted child in a well-to-do family that constantly reminded you that your birth parents weren’t respectable enough to keep you. The more obviously different your parents were — perhaps through their appearance, dress, or way of speaking — the more you were coded as foreign, and by extension of that, privileged to be in Canada.

The Trauma of Migration

My parents left their country of birth in the 1980s, when my father anticipated its collapse in the years to come. I was born once they’d already settled into Canadian society, but from the moment I had enough self-awareness to read social cues, I knew we were different.

My mom wasn’t like the other moms. When my classmates got picked up from school, I saw women with straight, shoulder-length hair — usually blonde or light brown, sometimes with highlights. They wore fashionable clothing, clutched fancy purses with manicured nails, and masked their imperfections with flawless makeup.

But my mom didn’t care about fashion. She wore the same sets of clothing day in and day out and carried a giant, ratty old leather bag wherever she went. She had untamed, curly black hair and olive skin, spoke English with a harsh accent, rarely painted her nails, and hardly ever wore makeup.

Now, you might wonder what hair dye, makeup, and fashion have to do with whiteness. Generally, there isn’t much of a relationship; anyone can choose to look and dress a certain way.

However, when you’re born to parents who left a politically tumultuous homeland, you very quickly realize they suffer from a kind of survivor’s guilt. They carry shame for having abandoned their own parents and siblings for what they believed would be a better life. They don’t believe they deserve to have nice things, or that they can afford them (even when they can).

Every moment is haunted by the potential of loss. Tomorrow could be the day they lose everything, so nothing of excess is ever worth wasting precious resources on.

Simply put, many immigrants are traumatized by the very act of migration.

Often, immigrants struggle with economic and social disadvantage. Many immigrant families simply don’t have the luxury to look nice, and so for the immigrant child, even superficial things like clothing, nail polish, makeup, and hair dye on certain bodies can become important signifiers of not just class, but also whiteness.

My mother was too stressed and overworked, alienated and depressed to care about fashion. She didn’t have any friends and felt uncomfortable with white women — partly for cultural reasons, and partly because of her accent. In fact, she was so self-conscious about her accent, she didn’t speak a word of English to me until I went to kindergarten. She didn’t want me to learn English from her because she was afraid I’d learn her accent, so she instead waited until I could learn ‘proper’ English from my teachers and classmates.

Her goal was to make sure that I was assimilated and that I fit in at all costs, and this desire was directly informed by her own feelings of alienation in Canadian society. Whatever differences I observed between her and the other moms must have been amplified ten-fold for her.

But I learned that my mom wasn’t the only one who was different. I was different too, and I struggled relating to other kids. I wasn’t exposed to the same media and culture that they were. I didn’t wear the same clothes, eat the same food, and I didn’t tell the same jokes, anecdotes or stories. It became very clear that I was a foreigner, even though I was living only a few kilometers from the hospital I’d been born in.

A Chimera Trying to be a Chameleon

When I was seven years old, I had my first play-date with a white classmate — let’s call her Karen. Karen’s family was some nth generation Canadian, with a clear family tree of every ancestor from the past few centuries. Karen had stunning, pale blue eyes and strawberry blonde locks that I desperately yearned for. During summer, I’d spend hours in the sun hoping that my dark hair would lighten.

“Am I turning blonde yet?” I’d excitedly ask my mother after spending a day in Karen’s yard.

Yet all that accomplished was sunburns for Karen and brown skin for me.

“Oh my God, you look like a Sri Lankan!” Karen’s mother and aunt laughed when they saw me.

At the time, I didn’t know that Sri Lankan was an ethnicity. I didn’t know what the comment meant or why it felt bad, but I had the impression that there was something funny or embarrassing about how dark my skin had turned seemingly overnight. There shouldn’t be anything embarrassing about looking like a certain ethnicity, but the tone with which I’d been told made me feel like I was somehow wrong.

Although I always knew my ethnicity, I didn’t learn about my muddled racial heritage until much later. I know that I am mixed race, but I’ll never know the extent of it, because imperial legacy does a wonderful job of erasing records and lineages.

While most people of Western European descent have the luxury of knowing where their ancestors are from — which great-grandparent was German, French, or British — people whose ancestors hail from Africa, the Middle East, or the Balkans can only speculate based on limited records and oral history.

Where there is empire, there is a deep loss for the children who are born after that empire crumbles. We want to know our roots. We want to know what our heritage is and where we belong. All I know is that I have diverse roots that have molded me into someone who is sometimes coded as white, and sometimes as something else.

The Universal Woman is White

These were my first encounters with soft racism, but even as they happened, I learned that there was far worse. I didn’t think what was happening to me was racism. As a kid, I assumed racism could only happen to black people, because everyone in my predominantly white neighbourhood seemed to have opinions about black people.

I remember overhearing Karen’s mother say that she would never want her son to date a black woman.

“They’re aggressive,” she argued, “and their butts look weird.”

“Really?” Karen’s aunt replied. “I think they have gorgeous bodies — such nice curves.”

In this brief exchange I had been exposed to two immensely toxic ideas:

First, that what mattered in a woman before all else was how well she conformed to white standards of beauty; and second, that black women are either dangerous and to be avoided, or exotic objects to be fetishized.

Of course, I didn’t have the language I do now to describe these ideas, but it would be a lie to say I didn’t understand them. Even as a third grader, I knew implicitly what these statements meant, and they affected how I understood myself as a girl and an immigrant, and how I understood other women of colour.

It entrenched in me an unconscious drive to be as white as possible. Until I was in my late teens, I kept dying my hair blonde, dieting, and begging my mother to let me wear coloured contacts. I wasn’t intentionally trying to whitewash myself, but I had internalized the standards of white beauty to such a degree that I genuinely believed I would look better with Keira Knightley’s frame, blonde hair, and green eyes.

And yet through it all, whenever someone asked me if I was white, I’d balefully reply that I was, in fact, beige.

***

I mentioned in an earlier piece, A Critique Privilege, Oppression, and Other Such Loaded Concepts, that calling myself ‘beige’ became my way of creating a space for myself. I knew from an early age that ‘white’ didn’t fit. But I also didn’t identify with any of the more established minorities in my neighbourhood. Rather, I occupied an ambiguous space where my race became subject to debate depending on my context.

Beige’ is my way of honouring my experiences of soft racism, of alienation, liminality, and of my family’s sacrifices. It’s a way to ensure I never forget the violent and complicated legacy of imperialism. It’s a reminder that whiteness is often oversimplified and too easily thrown around without consideration. This oversimplification is not just unfair to white-passing people of colour; it obscures exploitation and oppression that hinges on whiteness as a tool of power, wielded by a certain group of people. Without proper nuance, whiteness becomes too sweeping, too general — and something that speaks of everything fails to actually speak about anything at all.

[bodhisatta]

First generation Vietnamese immigrants are like time machines that hold knowledge of Vietnamese culture up to a certain point without ever updating their databases.

Second generation immigrants like me only hold a part of the culture as we have never seen or experienced it on Vietnamese soil. We wonder what it was like to be Vietnamese then. We wonder what it's like to be Vietnamese now. Whether we're 1st gen or 2ng gen, we're nearly clueless about how Vietnamese people are raised today, and they are even more clueless about their history.

"Post-75" is a phrase that is often used by my family members. It is used to refer to anything from Vietnam that evolved after 1975, the end of the Vietnam War. There is post-75 music, post-75 currency, post-75 fashion, and post-75 language.

Something I like to say about Vietnamese kids in Vietnam is "I bet they spell ly like li." Ly is the Vietnamese word for cup, and it is often spelled "li" by people who learned post-75 Vietnamese spelling.

To build on the time machine bit I mentioned before, I am a time machine that holds the pre-75 Vietnamese language. My dialect and vocabulary will never change. The language in Vietnam has changed, however. Words are spelled differently, like ly and li. Words are pronounced differently in an evolution of a new dialect constructed and taught by the people who oppressed my family. Viet kids know it as their language, but we know it as a form of silencing.

After the war, people in Vietnam were not to show the striped flag. It's a symbol of resistance to oppressors. They were to adopt the political views of the north. They were to speak like northerners. Viet people were to either flee the country or succumb to their rule, abandoning southern Vietnamese culture.

It became more than speaking "like northerners". "Pre-75" and "post-75" aren't just synonyms of "souththern-like" and "northern-like". If we hear some northern Viet people speaking here in the U.S., they could be refered to as "pre-75". So what is "post-75" when referring to northern Vietnamese?

North Vietnam is pretty close to China. Like right next to it. It's only natural that Chinese people immigrate to north Vietnam, but after the Vietnam war, the case was different. China and north Vietnam fought together during the Vietnam War, and since the north won, Chinese influence began to spread, and the Viet language was affected especially in the north.

I said that "hearing northern Viet people speak is like hearing a British person speak", and this was brought to another level after the war. The post-75 northern accent is often indiscernable even to my fluent parents. Sometimes, my parents can't tell if people are speaking Chinese or Vietnamese in a Facebook video. Why can't we even tell Viet people apart from Chinese people? (All Asians look the same joke here)

In addition to the obviously new sound, two other suggestions were recently made to change the dynamics of the Vietnamese language: 1) Change how words are spelled in a major reform. 2) Teach Chinese in schools from a young age.

1) One retired professor had a galaxy brain idea to change consonants in the Vietnamese language to simplify them since they had the same pronunciation. Think like the letter S in silicone and C in cerulean. They make the same sound, so why not change words with that C in it to have the letter S instead? Serulean?

Well, his idea to do this in Vietnamese wouldn't work since the letters he said were pronounced the same were actually different, and native Vietnamese speakers would know this. Pre-75 Vietnamese speakers learned these differences first, so there wouldn't be any confusion. Is spoken Vietnamese taught differently post-75 in a way that makes some sounds obselete?

It's pretty skeevy that the proposed writing system makes Viet words look more like pinyin, romanized Chinese. Our current latin alphabet came from French colonization, and it's pretty new. Even my Grandmother remembers using Chu Nom, the writing system that came from Chinese imperialism, before using the latin alphabet. Why are we going back to Chinese influence? Is this a way of evolving post-75 language to be even less Vietnamese?

Someone on the internet also spotted out that in the new proposed writing system, the word for "difficulty" would turn into the spelling for "dick". Alright.

2) Teaching Chinese (probably Mandarin) in school. My parents told me that they were required to learn either Chinese, Russian, French, Japanese, or English in their time. Some of these have obvious reasons. France and Japan occupied our land. Russia was Communist. China is our neighbor, they controlled Vietnam for 1000 years, is communist, and supported the north in the war, so they had to be an option. English is obvious.

I understand the reasons for having all those languages required at the time. The requirement is no longer needed nowadays, and these nations are not controlling us anymore, but having Chinese and only Chinese required now is, again, skeevy. The spoken dialect in the north already changed so drastically to sound less Vietnamese and more Chinese.

How far is the government willing to change the Vietnamese language now? We've lost so much of our culture after being imperialized that this isn't a "wahh immigrants stealing our jobs and speaking their language instead of mine :((" sort of thing. It's a matter of us, ourselves, having our own language altered and eradicated after being beat down by our oppressors in the present day.

[esprit-de-corps-magazine]

Death came knocking: the search for an Ottawa neighbourhood’s fallen

By Dave O’Malley

Young men and woman who are killed on active service are said to have paid the “supreme sacrifice”. I guess that is true. There's not much more you can give than that. But I posit that the greatest sacrifice of all is borne by the families of those killed in the line of duty. Aviators, soldiers and sailors who die in battle are lionized, and rightly so, but it's their mothers, fathers, wives and families who are conscripted to carry the burden of that sacrifice to the end of their days. 

The neighbourhood I live in is called the Glebe. It's a funky 130-year-old urban community in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada—red brick Victorian homes, some stately, some working class, excellent schools as old as the neighbourhood, tall trees pleached over shady streets, open-minded and highly educated people, happy kids, diverse, desirable and timeless, close to everything, surrounded on three sides by the historic Rideau Canal.

People come from all over the city, the country, even the world to walk its pathways, attend its festivals and sporting events and skate the canal. You may find a more upscale neighbourhood, a trendier one, a more affordable one, but you will never find a better one.

It is a truly perfect place to raise a family, build a business and live out a life as I have done. It is safe, historic, dynamic, walkable, serene and peaceful . . . but once, it must have felt like the saddest place on earth. Its shady avenues ran with apprehension and despair, its busy serenity masked the constant high-frequency vibration of anxiety and the low pounding of sorrow. Behind every door and every drawn curtain hid anxious families. Behind many were broken parents, heartbroken wives, memories of summers past and lost, the promises of a future destroyed, children who would never know their fathers. These were the years of the Second World War, and the decades following that it took to wash it all away.

A neighbourhood affected by war

There was nothing particularly special about the Glebe that brought this plague of anguish, nothing it deserved, nothing that warranted special attention from death. Indeed, the Glebe was not singled out at all, though it may have felt like it. Every community in Canada and across the British Commonwealth took the same punishment, felt the blows to its heart, felt its life blood seeping away. During those six long years of war, every community across the land stood and took it, blow after blow after blow. Parents stood by while their sons and daughters left the family home, left the routines that gave comfort, the futures that beckoned, and began arduous journeys that would, in time, lead most to war and great risk of death.

Some would die in training, others in transit. Some would die of disease and even murder. Some would die in accidents close to home, others deep in enemy lands. Some by friendly fire, others by great malice. Many would simply disappear with no known grave, lost to the sea, a cloud-covered mountain, a blinding flash, a trackless jungle. Some would die in an instant, others in prolonged fear and pain. Most would make it home again. An extraordinarily high number would not come home in one piece. 

Though it was not alone in its sorrow, the Glebe was the first community in Canada to feel a blow. The first Canadian to die in the war and, in fact, the first Allied serviceman who died in the war, came from here. Pilot Officer Ellard Alexander Cummings, a former Glebe Collegiate Institute student, was killed just a few hours after war was declared on September 3, 1939, when the Westland Wallace he was piloting crashed into a mountain in Scotland in fog. 

The first Canadians to die on North American soil in the Second World War were from Ottawa, including Glebe resident Corporal David Alexander Rennie. He was lost in early September 1939, along with another Ottawa aviator, Warrant Officer Class II James Edgerton “Ted” Doan, when their Northrop Delta airplane experienced an engine failure and crashed into the New Brunswick wilderness while en route to Cape Breton to join in the search for German submarines. Corporal Rennie lived with his parents on Ella Street, just a few blocks from my home. They were the first of many, many families in the Glebe whose lives would be destroyed by the war. Their son would not be found for another 19 years. [The wreckage of the Northrop Delta was found in July 1958 by two J.D. Irving, Limited, employees who were conducting an aerial survey of the area. The company placed a plaque commemorating the two aviators at the crash site.]

Over the years, I have written or published many other stories about Canadian airmen during the Second World War; several have intersected with my neighbourhood. David Rouleau, who lived just north of my home, was lost in 1942 at Malta. Lew Burpee, who lived just a few blocks away, was killed a year later during the near-mythical Dam Busters Raid on the Ruhr River dams. In that same one-year span, two cousins who lived right across the street from me were lost on operations: Jim Wilson and Harry Healy. Several blocks north lived Keith “Skeets” Ogilvie the last man out of the tunnel during the Great Escape. He narrowly escaped being murdered by the Nazis upon his capture, survived the war, and served in the RCAF until 1963.

All these men walked the same streets that I do. I can pass their homes any day, enter their churches, visit their schools. They all went to the Mayfair, Rialto and Imperial Theatres to find out the news about the war or just to escape from it. They played hockey on the frozen canal. They used the same butcher. This immediacy, this connection is a very powerful thing. It brought home to me the loss in a very personal way. 

When I wrote a story about 617 Squadron Lancaster pilot Lewis Burpee on the 75th Anniversary of the Dam Busters Raid in 2018, I pinned his and the homes of others I had written about on a map of the Glebe. Seeing these homes and their physical relationship to me and to each other had a very powerful effect on me. In fact, it obsessed me.

I began to wonder how many other stories there were in these streets and avenues. How many more had been lost? How many families were affected? What I found out left me speechless. In the age of the “infographic”, I set out to demonstrate visually what that number of fallen meant to my personal community, by mapping death's footprints. 

I commenced my search by writing to all the churches in the Glebe and surrounding areas that existed in the Second World War and still exist today. Following the First and Second World Wars, many churches in Ottawa dedicated large bronze plaques to commemorate those members of their parish who died in the war. I had seen several over the years. Several churches had photos of these plaques on their websites, while others wrote back to me, attaching photos of their plaques.

There were four major public high schools in downtown Ottawa in 1939: Glebe Collegiate Institute, Lisgar Collegiate Institute, Ottawa Technical High School, and the High School of Commerce. Of these four, only Glebe and Lisgar still function today. In the lobby of Lisgar, I found a bronze plaque with the names of those former students who had died in the Second World War. On the Glebe Collegiate website, I found a list of all those Glebe students who had died. I also found an entire section of Glebe Collegiate's website where students had researched most of the names from the plaque and had compiled short histories of each of the fallen alumni. 

The quest to map the Glebe

At the end of May, I began my quest to find and map the fallen in the Glebe. To do this, I would have to find the addresses of every young man listed on these plaques and in Casualty Lists published in the Ottawa daily broadsheet newspapers. In the case of the Glebe history project, many of these addresses were part of their research.

I cross-referenced every man on every plaque in every church and school with the Canadian Virtual War Memorial site in the hopes of finding their stories, addresses and photos. I also purchased a Newspapers.com membership and began cross-referencing the dates of each man's death. Though, for privacy reasons, you would never see this today, newspapers almost always included the address of the next of kin. If he was married, both the address of parents and wife could be mentioned. If both were within the boundaries of my map, I used the parental home. I did not map both addresses. 

Starting with the posted date of the serviceman's death, I scoured every page of each issue of the “Ottawa Journal” moving forward until I ran into a story about each person's loss. Five months into the search, the “Ottawa Citizen” became available online and more fallen came to light. All of the men who qualified were mentioned in one of the hundreds and hundreds of official casualty lists published in both papers. I did not differentiate the manner of their deaths, though most died on active service. A small proportion died of disease, motor accidents, train wrecks and heart attacks, but if they qualified to be on an official casualty list in the local papers and on the “Canadian Virtual War Memorial”, then they qualified for this map.

If the man died in Canada in training, the story usually appeared in one to two days, but if he died overseas on active service, it could be weeks before his name appeared in a story or on an official casualty list as either missing in action or killed on active service. If a man was missing in action, then his story would appear in the paper again in one of two ways. In a few months, if he was alive, a story would appear informing readers that he was a prisoner of war. If he was dead, the wait would be a bit longer, but in six to eight months, another piece would appear in the paper stating that he was, for official purposes, presumed dead. As 1944 turned into 1945, the tone of newspaper stories took a turn for the better. With the war winding down, the airman or soldier's photo might be accompanied by short headlines such as “Safe in England”, “Liberated”, or “Returning Home”. Still, there was fighting to be done and the Glebe was not out of the woods yet. The killing continued.

In the Glebe, as in most urban neighbourhoods at the time, the Grim Reaper took the form of the telegram boy who had the duty to deliver both good and bad news. Mothers, looking out from their front porches, fathers from their parlours, wives from their washing, must have cringed to see the young man from the Canadian National Telegram and Cable Company pedal or drive down their street, and willed him to move on. In all cases, the next-of-kin was informed by telegram before the official casualty lists were published in the paper, but on a few occasions, happy stories (award of medals, a marriage, etc.) about a serviceman appeared in the paper after the next-of-kin had been notified of his death. These must have been difficult to read for the parents and families.

Search parameters

My original goal was to map only residents of the Glebe or former students at Glebe Collegiate who were killed or died while on active service. To map these men, I needed to extend the map of the Glebe beyond the recognized boundaries of the neighbourhood, as many students of the high school lived outside the neighbourhood. In the end, it seemed the full complete story could not be told unless I mapped each and every one of the fallen—aviator, soldier or sailor—whose next-of-kin resided within the edges of my map, regardless of their connection to the Glebe. 

Each pin on the map represents the home of the fallen's next-of-kin. For the most part, this meant the parental home or the marital home (the residence shared with a wife), but in a few cases, where parents were deceased, this could mean the home of a grandparent, uncle or even sibling. I used only addresses that were mentioned in Casualty Lists or as reported in the daily broadsheet newspapers.

The men I was able to put on my map represent only a tiny fraction of the men and women who died in the war. But among these names I found the complete picture of the war as it affected my country. There were men who died in the opening hours of the war and men who died in the closing days. There were men who died on Valentine's Day, D-Day, Canada Day,  Remembrance Day, Christmas Day and New Year's Day. Most died on active service and in combat, but some died of disease or even murder. There were men who died in car accidents overseas and training accidents in Canada. 

Virtually every major battle that Canadians were involved in is represented by someone in this group: The Battle of the Atlantic, the Battle of France, the Battle of Britain, Battle of Hong Kong, of Ortona, of Monte Cassino, of El Alamein, of Anzio, of the Scheldt Estuary, the Dieppe Raid, Dam Busters Raid, D-Day, Battle for Caen, Battle of the Falaise Pocket, the Siege of Malta, the North African Campaign, the Conquest of Sicily, the Aleutian Campaign, Bomber Command, Fighter Command, Coastal Command, Transport Command, the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, Burma, Singapore and more.

Some were lost in the Mediterranean Sea, the North Sea, the Irish Sea, the Atlantic Ocean and the English Channel. Some died before they could get to the war, others on their way to the war. Some died after the war but before they could get home. They are buried in Holland, Italy, Great Britain, Germany, France, Belgium, Canada, North Africa and, of course, at sea. Many have no known grave and are commemorated on the Runnymede Memorial, the Malta Memorial, the Halifax Memorial, the Bayeux Memorial, the Groesbeek Memorial, and the Ottawa Memorial. 

392 names

In the end, I found 392 names of servicemen who were included on casualty lists and for whom I found an address. I have another 50 or more names of men who I know were killed but for whom I can't find addresses. There are, I am convinced, others who I haven't yet found on casualty lists. The 392 are by no means all of the men who died and who came from the Glebe area—they are only the ones whose stories I found. I welcome any additions and omissions. I am currently working with my web developer to display this data on Google Maps, thus enabling us and you to add to the list and, perhaps one day, map all of the approximately 110,000 Canadians who died in wars since the Boer War.

This project began as a result of curiosity and then became a Remembrance Day Project that I struggled for months to complete. Sadly, I was still adding names well after the 11th of November. It is now simply an homage to a generation of parents, brothers, sisters, wives and grandparents who carried the terrible weight of sacrifice well into the 21st Century. An homage to the Silver Star Mothers, the broken fathers, the shattered families and the solitary wives. God bless them and may we never forget them.

[whiteanti]

um i need your opinion on something. it kinda rubs me the wrong way how its kinda "expected"? in online culture /or at least the part of it where i always end up/ from nonwhite children who grew up in a white country to hate said country? im filo but my parents moved to spain before i was born so thats really where i spent my childhood and i still do and i love the country. ofc there's shit that needs to be fixed but lbr thats... everywhere and every country has such issues. //

but by the way its expected from us to hate the country we live in especially from our people who still live in our motherland it reduces our childhoods and lives in general to just racism, microagressions and bad memories. and even if that werent the case i still think its odd. what do you think, have you ever felt this way abt the uk?

sorry for answering this so late but as u’ve probably seen I’m trying not to b on tumblr as much lately! I’m glad u feel that way abt the country u grew up in ofc different ppl will react in different ways to the same situations and no one should expect u to hate anyone. each poc’s esp immigrants of colour’s relationship/feelings w the country they live in is different and deeply personal. but a lot of us express hatred for the country we live in online bc thats the only place we can do that…… immigrants (esp poc) are expected to be ultra grateful to every amazing thing that moving here has given us and esp for 2nd gen immigrants or 1st gen who moved as young children the feeling is different from 1st gen immigrants who moved as adults. I get criticised for being critical of the uk I get ppl telling me to ‘go back to where u came from if u don’t like it so much’ when I talk abt issues w the uk. its the same w a lot of other ppl its why so many poc hate whites online bc its a safe place where we can actually have discussions abt these issues w other poc. I get that this ‘pressure’ to hate ur country can b uncomfortable but I don’t think u can justifiably criticise poc for talking abt this online.

as for me personally all I can say is that I don’t outright hate the uk. I’m grateful ofc for living here and getting the benefits of living in a 1st world, rich, peaceful country that has relatively good human rights. I wouldn’t b alive if I didn’t live in this country. but at the same time there r so many horrifying things that are so ingrained in British culture that it scares me. the complete ignorance abt British imperial history especially (and the way that politicians have and continue to actively erase many parts of British history from popular memory). racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia are so deeply ingrained in British culture and all of them affect me on a daily basis. living here has made my life simultaneously easier and harder but in different ways. its a conflicting feeling being British and not British (and definitely treated as not British 99% of the time) and for most poc its the same. most of us have conflicting feelings abt this I don’t think I’ve spoken to anyone who just hates the country they live in 100%. its personal and its different for everyone.

[ladymazzy]

This is all true, however I don't think you can neatly extract race as major factor. Racism and xenophobia are more often than not the reason why governtments render people stateless/refuse to recognise any obligations of citizenship. The people primarily affected by this ad hoc approach to nationality and potential statelessness will be Black, Asian, and - to a degree - minority European (particularly Eastern European, and especially Romani).

Over the past 50 odd years, we've seen how racism was an active factor in how Asians who held British passports were initially rejected by the UK when they were sent into exile by Idi Amin in Uganda. The Windrush scandal revealed how so many Britons of commonwealth heritage could easily be kicked out when the state (conveniently) 'loses' any documents that confirm your right to remain. UK imperialism has played fast and loose with Chagossians right to their homeland. This government already routinely kicks out Black people who've lived most of their lives in this country, and have no ties in any other country. Just the other month, Priti Patel was boasting about her 'regular drumbeat' of deportation flights to Jamaica.

People like me (Black, British, born in the UK to parents who were British subjects at birth courtesy of British imperialism) have grown up with a perpetual sense of Otherness and the prospect of 'deportation' constantly hanging over our heads - despite our birth certificates, passports and living here all our lives. I'm always a little paranoid whenever I renew my passport in case it's conveniently 'lost', and everything goes downhill from there. The fact that it has been so easy for so many people to simply assume that Shamima Begum would have Bangladeshi citizenship is unsurprising and very telling

When you're of African or Asian heritage, people asking 'where are you from originally?' or 'are you one if us?' is still the norm. When people talk about how the London accent has changed in the last 3 decades, they frequently describe young londoners as 'sounding Black' rather than recognising the linguistic evolution as ubiquitous amongst Londoners of all backgrounds with multiple influences, but being native to London. This specific accent shift is seen as absolutely Other despite all the other accent shifts and the influences behind them over the centuries

It's particularly important to underline the ways in which race and ethnicity are factors given that the last two home secretaries have been of Asian heritage. The UK's general understanding of racism tends to lack nuance ( despite - or maybe because of - the fact that historically, the UK was amongst the prime creators and beneficiaries of this wretched racial hierachy), so both Patel's and Javid's ancestry can easily be misused to dismiss accusations of racism. As if Black and Asian people have never tried to 'respectability politik' their way into acceptance by reinforcing the status quo...

I know of one case of a white kid with a Canadian parent & dual nationality from birth who had his uk citizenship revoked due to his involvement with daesh/isis (jack letts).

The government is never going to use a white Briton's distant Hugenot ancestry as a reason to deport them to France or render them stateless. It will be British person with a Ghanaian parent/Pakistani grandma/who left Nigeria when they were two.

We need to talk about the Shamima Begum case.

It's important to understand that making someone stateless basically strips them of their rights. The "human rights" we have in our society are basically dependent on being a citizen of a state willing to provide for those rights. By making someone stateless, they are effectively deprived of the ability to access healthcare, education or work- i.e. their options for survival become very limited.

In effect, what has happened in this case is that the UK government have said if you do something they can persuade people is abhorrent enough, they can strip you of your citizenship and your rights.

It sets a precedent which is deeply, deeply uncomfortable.

A lot of the arguments I've seen around this case point to the fact she was a 15 year old girl, point to the racism involved, but I don't think that's the key issue. I think the key issue is that governments should never be allowed to make people stateless, ever.

And this case has wide ranging implications. There's loads of people in the UK who have theoretical rights to citizenship elsewhere through their grandparents. We're already deporting people for minor crimes. How long before we start making more of them stateless too?

[xtruss]

British Pakistani Muslim Nurse, Doctor Latest Medical Staff to Die of Virus

Friends remember charitable nurse Areema Nasreen, 36, and Mohamed Sami Shousha, a gentle consultant who taught many.

— by Aina Khan | April 3, 2020 | Al Jazeera English

Areema Nasreen, 36, became a nurse in 2019 after dreaming for years of a career in medicine (Courtesy: Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust)

London, United Kingdom - A British Pakistani woman who worked as a hospital cleaner for 15 years before realising her dream and graduating in nursing has become one of the first nurses in the United Kingdom to die of COVID-19.

Areema Nasreen, a 36-year-old mother to three children, was described by friends as positive, spiritual, funny and open-hearted.

Despite having no underlying health conditions, Nasreen lost the battle with COVID-19 early on Friday in an intensive care unit at Walsall Manor Hospital, where she had worked for more than 15 years and where she contracted the coronavirus two weeks ago while supporting patients who had tested positive.

"Areema was such an amazing person," Shabeena Kousar, Nasreen's friend of 16 years, told Al Jazeera. "She always used to greet everyone with a smile. She was the type of person who would do anything for anyone.

"She had so much left to do, but Allah has called her. Our prayers are with her family, her husband, her children, and her parents," added Kousar, who said she felt "completely lost".

Describing Nasreen as a giving person who was always the first to get involved, the two friends organised several charity and public events together with the local Muslim community.

Nadia Shabir, who went to school with Nasreen, said: "If you were upset, you'd ring her and she'd put so much courage in you. She'd always say, 'Read your prayers, turn to God'.

"Everything about her was so positive, nothing negative. She was the kind of person, if you sat in the room with her, she would make you laugh. Anything she had, she would give that to you. She was so giving and open-hearted. She was definitely an angel."

Nasreen fulfilled her lifetime dream and graduated in nursing in 2019.

"All she wanted to do was to make something of herself, and she did it," said Shabir. "She graduated and became a staff nurse in the same ward where she was a cleaner for over 15 years."

Nasreen used her own story as a motivational speaker to encourage others to pursue their ambitions.

In a tweet she posted celebrating her graduation at the University of Wolverhampton, she wrote: "Never thought I could see this amazing day. Thank u to Walsall Manor Hospital for believing in me ... dreams do come true."

"Areema was perfectly fine. She had no health issues. She was always out and about. She was like a rollercoaster she was. It can happen to anybody," said Shabir.

At least 3,605 people have died from coronavirus in the UK, including dozens with no underlying health conditions such as 13-year-old Ismail Mohamed Abdulwahab - believed to be the youngest victim in the UK, a country where 173,784 have tested positive.

Dr Salman Waqar, the general secretary of the British Islamic Medical Association, said: "Areema Nasreen's death serves as a stark reminder that COVID-19 can affect anyone, and we must all do our part and take the pandemic seriously. Social distancing is critical to controlling the outbreak. Individuals with families who show symptoms must isolate and take precautions. Stay at home, save lives, and protect the NHS."

Her death came hours after Mohamed Sami Shousha, a prominent British-Egyptian consultant, became the fifth doctor to succumb to the disease. He was 79.

Although he did not treat COVID-19 patients, Shousha was admitted to hospital after contracting the virus on March 23.

He died in London on Thursday, leaving behind his wife and two daughters.

His nephew, Abdulrehman Shousha, said: "My uncle was an honest, kind and hardworking person; he was humble and loved to serve his family and friends."

Shousha was an expert in histopathology who trained at the Royal Free Hospital and the School of Medicine, London.

He had worked at Charing Cross Hospital in west London since 1978, where he oversaw the breast histopathology service.

Omar Qassid, a consultant breast pathologist who trained under Shousha in 2012, described him as a "superman".

"He was the most polite man, a gentleman. He was always very kind to the junior doctors. He left a treasure of knowledge in each junior doctor's pocket. For me personally, he trained me because of my interest in breast cancer, and that's what I do now. I do exactly what he used to do.

"He was the kind of person who would break the wall between a senior doctor and a junior doctor. He was very approachable. He was also that kind of person who wouldn't withhold any knowledge from you.

"Whatever I have done and achieved now, is because he had that positive impact on me when I was a junior doctor."

Mohamed Sami Shousha was described as a kind and polite gentleman who gave his time generously to teach junior doctors (Courtesy: Abdelrahman Shousha)

Charles Coombes, a professor of medical oncology at Imperial College who worked with Shousha for 30 years, said: "He was the kindest, nicest academic I’ve ever worked with. His personality was such that even though the NHS has been under tremendous strain, he was always well mannered, kind, considerate, and just an outstanding colleague.

"His humanity and lightness of spirit, kindness always seemed to have time for one. He was always interested and willing to help, and at the same time incredibly modest."

An honorary professor at Imperial College, Shousha published more than 290 papers on diagnostic breast pathology.

"He was a wonderful, caring and inspiring man, deeply loved by all, and even as a consultant taught me so much about not just the pathology of cancer, but cancer and people in general," said Justin Stebbing, a professor of cancer medicine and oncology who worked with Shousha for 14 years.

Dr Neha Tabassum, a mentee of Shousha, posted a tribute on Twitter: "It's so sad to hear this news, I am in tears!! Professor Sami Shousha was one of my mentor. Without his support, my PhD would not have been possible. He was such an amazing human being. May his soul RIP."

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA NEWS

[anastpaul]

Saint of the Day – 11 September – St John Gabriel Perboyre C.M. (1802-1840) – Martyr, Priest, Missionary, Teacher (6 January 1802 at Le Puech, near Mongesty, Cahors diocese, southern France – lashed to a cross on a hill named the “red mountain”, then strangled with a rope on 11 September 1840 at Ou-Tchang-Fou, China).   He was Beatified on 10 November 1889 by Pope Leo XIII and Canonised on 2 June 1996 by St Pope John Paul II.  His Major Shrine is at the Vincentian Motherhouse, Rue du Bac, Paris, France.

The formation years: The Church of France had at that time just emerged from the throes of the French Revolution with the red-colored garments of martyrdom for some and with the pain of the apostasy of many.  The panorama at the beginning of the 1800’s was desolate: buildings destroyed, convents sacked, people without pastors.   Thus, it was no accident that the ideal of the priesthood appeared to the young man not as a feeble arrangement for life but as the destiny of heroes.

His parents, surprised, accepted the choice of their son and accompanied him with their encouragement.   Not by chance, his paternal uncle Jacques was a missionary of St.Vincent.   This explains why in 1818 the missionary ideal matured in the young John Gabriel.   At that time, the missions meant principally China.   But China was a faraway mirage.   To leave meant never to find again the home milieu, taste its flavours, enjoy its affections.   It was natural for him to choose the Congregation of the Mission founded by St Vincent de Paul in 1625 for the evangelisation of the poor, the formation of the clergy but above all to push those very missionaries toward holiness.   The mission is not propaganda.   The Church has always demanded that the proclaimers of the Word be spiritual persons, mortified, full of God and charity.   In order to illuminate the darkness in people, a lamp is not sufficient if there is no oil.

John Gabriel did not think in half-measures.   If he was a martyr it is because he was a saint. From 1818 to 1835 he was a missionary in his own country.   First, in his formation period, he was a model novice and student.   After his priestly ordination (1826), he was charged with the formation of seminarians.

The missionary attraction:

A new factor, certainly not haphazard, modified John Gabriel’s life.   The protagonist was once again his brother Louis.   He also had entered the Congregation of the Mission and had asked to be sent to China where the sons of St Vincent had had a new martyr in the person of Blessed Francis Regis Clet (18 February 1820).   During the voyage, however, the young Louis, only 24 years of age, was called to the mission in heaven.   All that the young man had hoped for and done would have been useless if John Gabriel had not made the request to replace his brother in the breach.

John Gabriel reached China in August of 1835.   At that time the Occident knew almost nothing about the Celestial Empire and the ignorance was reciprocal.   The two worlds felt a mutual attraction but dialogue was difficult.   In the countries of Europe one did not speak of a Chinese civilization, but only of superstitions, of “ridiculous” ceremonies and customs.   The judgments were thus prejudices.   China’s appreciation of Europe and Christianity was not any better.   There was a dark gap between the two civilizations. Someone had to cross it in order to take on himself the evil of many and to consume it with the fires of charity.

After getting acclimated in Macau, John Gabriel began the long trip in a Chinese junk, on foot and on horseback, which brought him after eight months to Nanyang in Henan, where the obligation to learn the language imposed itself.   After five months, he was able to express himself, though with some trouble, in good Chinese and at once threw himself into the ministry, visiting the small Christian communities.   Then he was transferred to Hubei, which is part of the region of lakes formed by the Yangtze kiang (blue river).   Even though he maintained an intense apostolate, he suffered much in body and spirit.   In a letter he wrote: “No, I am no more of a wonder man here in China than I was in France … ask of Him first of all for my conversion and my sanctification and then the grace that I do not spoil His work too much…” (Letter 94).  For one who looks at things from the outside, it was inconceivable that such a missionary should find himself in a dark night of the soul.  But the Holy Spirit was preparing him in the emptiness of humility and the silence of God for the supreme testimony.

In chains for Christ: Unexpectedly in 1839 two events, apparently unrelated, clouded the horizon.   The first was the renewed outbreak of persecution which flowed from the decree of the Manchurian emperor, Quinlong (1736-1795), which had proscribed the Christian religion in 1794.

The second was the outbreak of the Chinese-British War, better known as the “Opium War” (1839-1842).   The closure of the Chinese frontier and the pretense of the Chinese government to require an act of dependence from the foreign ambassadors had created an explosive situation.   The spark came from the confiscation of loads of opium stowed in the port of Canton;  this action harmed the merchants, most of whom were English. The British flotilla intervened and the war began.

The missionaries, obviously interested only in the first event dealing with the persecution of Christians, were always on their guard.   As often happens, too many alarms diminished the vigilance.   And that is what happened on 15 September 1839 at Cha-yuen-ken, where Perboyre lived.   On that day he was with two other European missionaries, his confrere, Baldus, and a Franciscan, Rizzolati and a Chinese missionary, Fr Wang.   They were informed of the approach of a column of about one hundred soldiers.   The missionaries underestimated the information.   Perhaps the soldiers were going elsewhere.   Instead of being wary, the missionaries continued enjoying a fraternal conversation.   When there was no longer any doubt about the direction of the soldiers, it was late.  Baldus and Rizzolati decided to flee far away. Perboyre hid himself in the surroundings because the nearby mountains were rich with bamboo forests and hidden caves.   As Fr Baldus has attested for us, however, the soldiers used threats to force a catechumen to reveal the place where the missionary was hiding.   The catechumen was a weak person, but not a Judas.   Thus began the sad Calvary of John Gabriel.  The prisoner had no rights, he was not protected by laws but was at the mercy of the jailers and judges.   Given that he was arrested it was presumed that he was guilty and if guilty, he would be punished.

A series of trials began. The first was held at Kou-Ching-Hien.   The replies of the martyr were heroic: – Are you a Christian priest? – Yes, I am a priest and I preach this religion. – Do you wish to renounce your faith? – No, I will never renounce the faith of Christ.

They asked him to reveal his companions in the faith and the reasons for which he had transgressed the laws of China.   They wanted, in short, to make the victim the culprit. But a witness to Christ is not an informer.   Therefore, he remained silent.

The prisoner was then transferred to Siang-Yang.   The cross examinations were made close together.   He was held for a number of hours kneeling on rusty iron chains, was hung by his thumbs and hair from a rafter (the hangtze torture), was beaten several times with bamboo canes.   Greater than the physical violence, however, remained the wound of the fact that the values in which he believed were put to ridicule: the hope in eternal life, the sacraments, the faith.

The third trial was held in Wuchang.   He was brought before four different tribunals and subjected to 20 interrogations.   To the questioning were united tortures and the most cruel mockery.  They prosecuted the missionary and abused the man.   They obliged Christians to abjure and one of them even to spit on and strike the missionary who had brought him to the faith.  For not trampling on the crucifix, John Gabriel received 110 strokes of pantse.

Among the various accusations, the most terrible was the accusation that he had had immoral relations with a Chinese girl, Anna Kao, who had made a vow of virginity.   The martyr defended himself.   She was neither his lover nor his servant.   The woman is respected not scorned in Christianity, was the sense of John Gabriel’s reply.   But he remained upset because they made innocents suffer for him.

During one interrogation he was obliged to put on Mass vestments.  They wanted to accuse him of using the privilege of the priesthood for private interests.   But the missionary, clothed in the priestly garments, impressed the bystanders and two Christians drew near to him to ask for absolution. The cruelest judge was the Viceroy.   The missionary was by this time a shadow.   The rage of this unscrupulous magistrate was vented on a ghost of a man.   Blinded by his omnipotence the Viceroy wanted confessions, admissions and accusations against others. But if the body was weak, the soul was reinforced.   His hope by now rested in his meeting God, which he felt nearer each day.

When John Gabriel told him for the last time:  “I would sooner die than deny my faith!,” the judge pronounced his sentence.   John Gabriel Perboyre was to die by strangulation.

With Christ priest and victim: Then began a period of waiting for the imperial confirmation.   Perhaps John Gabriel could hope in the clemency of the sovereign.   But the war with the English erased any possible gesture of good-will.   Thus, on 11 September 1840, an imperial envoy arrived at full speed, bearing the decree confirming the condemnation.

With seven criminals the missionary was led up a height called the “Red Mountain.”   As the criminals were killed first, Perboyre reflected in prayer, to the wonderment of the bystanders.   When his turn came, the executioners stripped him of the purple tunic and tied him to a post in the form of a cross.   They passed a rope around his neck and strangled him.   It was the sixth hour.   Like Jesus, John Gabriel became like a grain of wheat.   He died, or better was born into heaven, in order to make fall on the earth the dew of God’s blessing.

Many circumstances surrounding his last year of life (the betrayal, the arrest, the death on a cross, its day and hour), are similar to the Passion of Christ.   In reality, all his life was that of a witness and a faithful disciple of Christ.   St. Ignatius of Antioch wrote: “I look for him who died for us; I yearn for him who rose for us. Behold, the moment is near in which I will be brought forth!   Have compassion on me, brothers!   Do not prevent me from being born to life!”

John Gabriel “was born to life” on 11 September 1840 because he always had sought “him who died for us.”   His body was brought back to France but his heart remained in his adopted homeland, the land of China.   There he gave his witness to the sons and daughters of St. Vincent who also wait to be born to heaven after a life spent for the gospel and for the poor.

After the then-obligatory waiting period of 50 years after death for seeking a person’s canonization had expired, a cause for him was introduced to the Holy See.   In the meantime, his remains were returned from China to France, where they were entombed for veneration in the chapel of the Vincentian Motherhouse in Paris (see images above).

(via AnaStpaul – Breathing Catholic)

[hellofastestnewsfan]

The United States was formed through rebellion against the British empire, but well after the Revolutionary War ended in 1783, resistance to that empire continued to shape America’s history. The civil rights movement, for instance, was not only deeply influenced by the thought and practices of the Indian anticolonial movement, but it was also part of a wider antiracist struggle in the era of decolonization that connected activists across Asia, Africa and beyond, mobilizing the global diasporas of Asians and Africans that colonialism had created.

Those diasporas extended to the United States. The British shipped enslaved Africans to the Americas starting in the 17th century. Indians were also in the United States from the start, such as the Bengali woman Mary Emmons, who was Aaron Burr’s servant and mother of two of his children. More Indians, many of them refugees from colonialism, arrived from the 19th century.

And so, freedom struggles abroad merged with the struggles of people of color in the United States. If Martin Luther King Jr. was inspired by Mohandas K. Gandhi, Indian anticolonial activists in the United States, like Lala Lajpat Rai, found inspiration in the Black struggle there from the early 20th century.

These intertwined histories of displacement and struggle have profoundly affected America’s current political moment. Two of the most powerful politicians in the Democratic Party, Barack Obama and Kamala Harris, are the product of families shaped by the global anticolonial and antiracial optimism of the 1960s, by the bonds of progressive young people around the globe who attempted to make new kinds of societies at a moment in which empire seemed to be completing the process of disintegration that had begun in 1776. As Kamala Harris vies for the Vice Presidency, a complete recounting of her formation requires recognizing her as both a quintessentially American politician—because of, not despite, her being a child of immigrants—and part of a global story of the former British empire.

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For Obama, that story goes back to colonial Kenya. His grandfather, serving with British regiments there, saw much of the British empire, including South Asia, during World War II. In the 1950s, he was detained for six traumatic months in the brutal camps the British established to crush anticolonial rebellion in Kenya. His son, the senior Barack, was arrested and jailed for his anticolonial involvement at the age of 20, before coming to the U.S. for university in 1959, on the eve of Kenya’s independence, to study economics. Economics, specifically development economics, was the discipline of the decade for the leaders of the emerging “Third World.” Questioning the theoretical assumptions that had justified colonialism, they strove to remake the discipline for the postcolonial era. With its technical power, they hoped to unleash the progress that colonialism had stifled in their nations.

President Obama’s moving memoir Dreams From My Father recounts his visit to Kenya in 1988, where he realized how profoundly colonialism had shaped his grandfather’s and his father’s lives, including his father’s blind faith in Western technocracy. In fact, the future president concluded, progress depended on “faith in other people.” He saw his work as a community organizer in Chicago as a continuation of his Kenyan forefathers’ struggle for freedom. Equality in America was, to him, part of global anticolonial struggle.

Obama also encountered Indians in Kenya, where, as in many African colonies, they had been brought by the British as indentured workers. When his relatives criticized the community’s seeming disloyalty to Kenya, Obama reassured them with stories of South Asian solidarity with Black struggle in the United States. Alongside the history of Indian anti-Blackness is this history of antiracist solidarity. Thus, after the predominantly white-settler government of another British African colony, Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), unilaterally declared independence in 1965, the Indian government deputed P.V. Gopalan to newly independent Zambia (formerly Northern Rhodesia) to help its government cope with the resulting regional refugee crisis.

In 1969, his 5-year-old granddaughter visited him there; that granddaughter was Kamala Harris. In India, Gopalan, like Obama’s grandfather, had begun his career working for the British colonial government. According to his granddaughter, he participated in the Indian freedom struggle and frequently talked to her of the importance of civil rights and equality.

Kamala had come to Zambia with her parents. Her father, Donald Harris, had been born in another British colony, Jamaica, in 1938, a year of massive anticolonial rioting. There, too, people of Indian and African heritage lived together: after slavery ended in the 1830s, the British shipped in Indian indentured labor to work the plantations. A year before Jamaica’s independence in 1962, Donald arrived in the United States aiming for a PhD at U.C. Berkeley—in, again, economics, to foster his newly freed country’s growth. There he met a PhD student in endocrinology, Shyamala Gopalan, through common involvement in the civil rights movement on campus; their daughter Kamala also became part of that history as a young girl bussed to school for desegregation.

The common outlines of these family stories reveal the broader, historical forces that made these two influential figures, Obama and Harris, possible: parents daring to alter their societies in the early ’60s by overturning colonial-era hierarchies. Global history has shaped this national historical moment in which Kamala Harris, a woman of Black and Indian heritage, is the Democratic nominee for Vice President. The dividends of past progressivism continue to be paid out today.

Recognizing the way anticolonial bonds forged in the British empire has have shaped our Democratic Party leadership can combat pernicious falsehoods. Those who ignorantly question the American-ness of Obama’s and Harris’s Blackness must contend with the fact that African-American, Caribbean, African and Asian struggles and experiences have always informed one another. The British empire shaped the birth of the United States, and continued to shape its struggle to fulfill the promise of freedom.

Certainly, Obama and Harris are no radical Leftists, whatever their anticolonial inheritance. And yet, they show us that however Left the Democratic Party is today, it has much to do with the way in which the struggle for equality in the United States has been shaped by allied global struggles. After all, the forces of inequality—capitalism, imperialism, slavery—are themselves global, too.

Historians’ perspectives on how the past informs the present

Priya Satia is Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History and Professor of History at Stanford University and the author of Empire of Guns: The Violent Making of the Industrial Revolution and the forthcoming Time’s Monster: How History Makes History.

from TIME https://ift.tt/3aIhcnu

[paullassiterca]

Vitamin D Deficiency Can Lead to Increased Allergies

Food allergy, a serious and potentially life-threatening medical condition, affects a growing number of Americans. According to Food Allergy Research and Education (FARE), 1 in 13 children now has a food allergy and every three minutes a food reaction sends someone to the emergency room.1

Food allergies are also estimated to affect nearly 4 percent of adults, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).2 While they are most common in babies and children, food allergies can develop at any age. Adults may even develop an allergy to foods they’ve previously eaten for years with no problem.

More than 170 foods have been reported to cause allergic reactions, but the eight major food allergens include milk, eggs, peanuts and tree nuts, wheat, soy and fish.3 However, as evidenced by the British teenager who recently died after eating sesame,4 this seed is also an emerging concern. The number of hospitalizations for food allergies have tripled from the late 1990s to the mid-2000s.5

Nearly 40 percent of children with food allergies have experienced a severe reaction, such as anaphylaxis. Typical food allergy symptoms may begin with hives, rash, nausea, vomiting or diarrhea. This may be followed by coughing and wheezing. In severe cases, anaphylaxis can occur, which is when your throat swells and you may not be able to breathe.

The rising prevalence of food allergies has been particularly noticeable in the West, where there is also rising numbers suffering vitamin D deficiency.6 Nearly 7 percent of children in the U.K. and 9 percent of those in Australia suffer from food allergies.7

Is It a Food Allergy or Intolerance?

Sensitivities and food reactions are often mistaken for allergies. A true food allergy is mediated by the immune system and triggered by an antibody reaction to a protein in a specific food or drink. While most develop during childhood, the most common allergies known to develop in adults are allergies to shellfish, tree nuts and peanuts.8

Food sensitivity, also called food intolerance, is an unpleasant — usually gastrointestinal — reaction to something you’ve swallowed, but is not mediated by your immune system.9 For instance, a true allergy to milk is different from lactose intolerance, which triggers gastrointestinal symptoms from an inability to digest proteins in the milk.10

Type 1 food allergies involve immunoglobulin-e (IgE), an antibody in the blood and mast cells found in all body tissues. Food allergies mediated by IgE are triggered after you’ve eaten a food for the first time, after which cells produce IgE for the part of the food triggering the allergic reaction, called an allergen.

IgE is released and attaches to the surface of mast cells. This process sets the stage for the next time you’ve eaten a food with the specific allergen. The protein interacts with IgE and triggers mast cells to release histamine. Since some food allergens are not broken down by heat or stomach acid, they cross immediately into your bloodstream and may cause reactions throughout your body.11

IgE reactions may start with itchiness in your mouth, followed by symptoms of vomiting, diarrhea and stomach pain. If the allergen reaches your blood, it can trigger a drop in blood pressure; in your skin you may experience hives or eczema; and in the lungs it may trigger wheezing. Each of these reactions can take a few minutes or a couple of hours to develop and signal an immediate food allergy.

A second type of food allergy, Type 3, also called delayed food allergy, is mediated by immunoglobulin-g (IgG). These reactions occur hours and possibly even days following your exposure to the allergen. Individuals who suffer from Type 3 food allergies are often allergic to more than two types of food, and larger amounts of food over multiple meals are needed to provoke this reaction.12

You may experience some of the same types of symptoms, making it difficult to distinguish between an IgE and an IgG response. Foods triggering an IgG response are often favorite foods eaten in larger amounts. IgG responses do not typically show up on a skin test.

Rising Prevalence of Allergies Corresponds to Increasing Vitamin D Deficiency

Food allergies associated with IgE affects 3 percent of the population, with severe effects on daily life. Manifestations of the allergy are not only gastrointestinal, but also affect other organ systems and may lead to an anaphylactic response.13

While vitamin D also has known effects on lung and immune system development, as well as support of the immune system after birth,14 including asthma and allergic responses, it is also significant in the regulation of IgE.

The increase in allergies and sensitivities to foods is likely related to environmental factors and Western lifestyles. Developing nations have lower rates of allergic responses, and individuals with allergies are likely to live in urban rather than rural areas.

Although there is no single explanation for the rise in prevalence, one significant factor is the overwhelming vitamin D deficiency suffered by those who live in urban areas.15

The link between vitamin D deficiency, which has almost doubled in just over a decade in the U.S.,16 and poor regulation of IgE responses, may be a significant factor. Both of these play a role in the development, severity and course of allergic diseases, and help explain, at least in part, why so many adults are now developing food allergies.

Australia has the highest rate of confirmed food allergies, with one study finding 9 percent of 1-year-olds suffering from egg allergy.17 Australia initiated one of their most successful health campaigns to increase use of sun screen in 1981 with the slogan “Slip! Slop! Slap!”18

At the time, the campaign was aimed at lowering melanoma rates, which the government believed was the result of spending too much time in the sun.

Today, nearly 25 percent of Australia’s population is deficient in vitamin D. Despite these numbers, Choosing Wisely Australia, an initiative of NPS MedicineWise,19 does not recommend having routine testing for vitamin D unless you’re specifically at risk, including those who:20

Have a health condition affecting vitamin D absorption from their diet

Cover their body completely when outside

Are a baby of a vitamin D deficient mother

Spend the majority of their day indoors

Take medications affecting vitamin D

Avoid the sun completely

Have naturally dark skin

Suffer obesity

Considering the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency, I strongly recommend getting your vitamin D level tested regardless of whether you fit into a high-risk category or not, and to make sure you’re actually within the ideal range of 60 to 80 ng/mL, and if below 60 ng/mL, take proactive steps to optimize your level. The fact of the matter is, most people are at high risk for vitamin D deficiency these days.

Early Exposure to Allergens May Reduce Allergy Risk

In addition to vitamin D deficiency, a theory of dual allergen exposure may also explain the rise in pediatric food allergies. This was the basis for the LEAP study from King’s College London, in which they evaluated how early exposure to peanuts may affect the development of a peanut allergy.21

The prevalence of peanut allergy in children has doubled in the past 10 years in countries where parents are advised to avoid exposure to peanuts during pregnancy, lactation and infancy.

The researchers randomly assigned 640 infants, 4 to 11 months old, with a history of severe eczema, egg allergy or both, to either eat or avoid peanuts until they were 60 months old. The children were assigned to groups based on preexisting sensitivity to peanut extract, determined by a skin-prick test.

Of the 98 participants treated who initially had a positive peanut allergy test, 35 percent of those who avoided peanuts had a peanut allergy at 60 months, compared to just 10 percent of those who consumed peanuts. Dr. Gideon Lack, lead investigator for the study, commented:22

“For decades allergists have been recommending that young infants avoid consuming allergenic foods such as peanut to prevent food allergies. Our findings suggest that this advice was incorrect and may have contributed to the rise in the peanut and other food allergies.”

These results have been validated in subsequent studies, finding late introduction of fish and eggs is associated with an increased risk of allergy development.23 A metadata analysis from the Imperial College London, which evaluated 146 studies with over 200,000 children, also concluded that feeding egg between the ages of 4 and 6 months may reduce the child’s risk of developing an egg allergy.24

Other Health Benefits of Vitamin D Optimization

Vitamin D deficiency has become so widespread it’s been called a pandemic by a Harvard Medical School researcher.25 The short list of health benefits attributed to vitamin D optimization include improving your immune system, strengthening muscles, bones and teeth and improving your cardiovascular health.

Over the past decades, thousands of studies have evaluated the benefits of vitamin D and have linked low levels to a host of chronic health conditions. In fact, this site was one of the leaders to help catalyze interest in vitamin D over 15 years ago.

Unfortunately, some studies claim supplementation at amounts over 4,000 IUs/day may lead to health problems. Research by GrassrootsHealth negates such concerns, showing toxicity is not an issue until you hit 30,000 IUs a day.26

What’s more, the recommended vitamin D level and dosage established by the National Academy of Medicine is actually the result of a mathematical error that has never been corrected. You can read more about this in my previous article, “Are Americans Really Getting Too Much Vitamin D? A Critical Look at Recent Media Warnings.”

There is a long list of studies confirming the correlation between vitamin D status and cancer risk. Maintaining sufficient levels of vitamin D also helps to lower all-cause mortality and risk of Type 2 diabetes.

During pregnancy, optimal levels of vitamin D help to reduce the percentage of preterm birth, and subsequently higher risks of ADHD, asthma, autism and vision problems associated with early birth. Low levels of vitamin D are also associated with depression, metabolic syndrome,27 cardiovascular disease28 and lung disease.29

Maintain Healthy Levels to Help Prevent Disease

My recommendation is to get your vitamin D level tested twice a year, when your level is likely to be at its lowest (midwinter) and highest (midsummer). This is particularly important if you’re pregnant, planning a pregnancy or if you have cancer.

Research30 suggests it may require 9,600 IUs of vitamin D per day to get a majority (97.5 percent) of the population to reach 40 ng/mL, but individual requirements can vary widely. If you’ve been taking a certain amount of vitamin D3 for a number of months and retesting reveals you’re still not within the recommended range, then you know you need to increase your dosage.

Over time, with continued testing, you’ll find your individual sweet spot based on your usual safe sun exposure and have a good idea of how much supplementation you need to maintain a year-round level of 60 to 80 ng/mL, which research suggests is the ideal range for optimal health and disease prevention.

GrassrootsHealth offers vitamin D testing through its D*Action study, and has an online vitamin D calculator you can use to estimate your vitamin D3 dosage once you know your current serum level.

The Synergism Between Vitamin D3, Magnesium, Calcium and Vitamin K2

Pamela Lutsey, public health researcher at the University of Minnesota, points out excessive vitamin D may cause over absorption of calcium, which in turn may result in calcium deposits in your heart and kidneys. Indeed, it is important to maintain not only the proper balance of vitamin D and calcium, but also magnesium and vitamin K2.

Lack of balance between these four nutrients is why calcium supplements have become associated with increased risk of heart attack and stroke, and why some experience symptoms of “vitamin D toxicity.” I use quotation marks here, because the problem is not so much excess vitamin D as it is a lack of vitamin K2.

Part of the explanation for these adverse side effects is that vitamin K2 is what keeps calcium in its appropriate place. If you’re K2 deficient, added calcium can cause more problems than it solves, by accumulating in the wrong places. Similarly, taking megadoses of vitamin D supplements without sufficient amounts of K2 can lead to inappropriate calcification, which is what Lutsey is suggesting.

While the optimal ratios between vitamin D and vitamin K2 have yet to be established, Dr. Kate Rheaume-Bleue (whom I’ve interviewed on this topic) suggests for every 1,000 IUs of vitamin D you take, you may benefit from about 100 micrograms (mcg) of K2, and perhaps as much as 150 to 200 mcg.

Maintaining an appropriate calcium-to-magnesium ratio is also important, as magnesium helps keep calcium in your cells so they can function better. Historically, mankind ate a diet with a calcium-magnesium ratio of 1-to-1,31 but Americans tend to have a higher calcium-to-magnesium ratio in their diet, averaging about 3.5-to-1.

Magnesium and vitamin K2 also complement each other, as magnesium helps lower blood pressure, which is an important component of heart disease. So, anytime you’re taking magnesium, calcium or vitamin D3, remember to take all the others into consideration as well, as they all work synergistically with each other.

from Articles http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2018/12/26/vitamin-d-deficiency-can-lead-to-increased-allergies.aspx source https://niapurenaturecom.tumblr.com/post/181420869551

[jerrytackettca]

Vitamin D Deficiency Can Lead to Increased Allergies

Food allergy, a serious and potentially life-threatening medical condition, affects a growing number of Americans. According to Food Allergy Research and Education (FARE), 1 in 13 children now has a food allergy and every three minutes a food reaction sends someone to the emergency room.1

Food allergies are also estimated to affect nearly 4 percent of adults, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).2 While they are most common in babies and children, food allergies can develop at any age. Adults may even develop an allergy to foods they've previously eaten for years with no problem.

More than 170 foods have been reported to cause allergic reactions, but the eight major food allergens include milk, eggs, peanuts and tree nuts, wheat, soy and fish.3 However, as evidenced by the British teenager who recently died after eating sesame,4 this seed is also an emerging concern. The number of hospitalizations for food allergies have tripled from the late 1990s to the mid-2000s.5

Nearly 40 percent of children with food allergies have experienced a severe reaction, such as anaphylaxis. Typical food allergy symptoms may begin with hives, rash, nausea, vomiting or diarrhea. This may be followed by coughing and wheezing. In severe cases, anaphylaxis can occur, which is when your throat swells and you may not be able to breathe.

The rising prevalence of food allergies has been particularly noticeable in the West, where there is also rising numbers suffering vitamin D deficiency.6 Nearly 7 percent of children in the U.K. and 9 percent of those in Australia suffer from food allergies.7

Is It a Food Allergy or Intolerance?

Sensitivities and food reactions are often mistaken for allergies. A true food allergy is mediated by the immune system and triggered by an antibody reaction to a protein in a specific food or drink. While most develop during childhood, the most common allergies known to develop in adults are allergies to shellfish, tree nuts and peanuts.8

Food sensitivity, also called food intolerance, is an unpleasant — usually gastrointestinal — reaction to something you've swallowed, but is not mediated by your immune system.9 For instance, a true allergy to milk is different from lactose intolerance, which triggers gastrointestinal symptoms from an inability to digest proteins in the milk.10

Type 1 food allergies involve immunoglobulin-e (IgE), an antibody in the blood and mast cells found in all body tissues. Food allergies mediated by IgE are triggered after you've eaten a food for the first time, after which cells produce IgE for the part of the food triggering the allergic reaction, called an allergen.

IgE is released and attaches to the surface of mast cells. This process sets the stage for the next time you’ve eaten a food with the specific allergen. The protein interacts with IgE and triggers mast cells to release histamine. Since some food allergens are not broken down by heat or stomach acid, they cross immediately into your bloodstream and may cause reactions throughout your body.11

IgE reactions may start with itchiness in your mouth, followed by symptoms of vomiting, diarrhea and stomach pain. If the allergen reaches your blood, it can trigger a drop in blood pressure; in your skin you may experience hives or eczema; and in the lungs it may trigger wheezing. Each of these reactions can take a few minutes or a couple of hours to develop and signal an immediate food allergy.

A second type of food allergy, Type 3, also called delayed food allergy, is mediated by immunoglobulin-g (IgG). These reactions occur hours and possibly even days following your exposure to the allergen. Individuals who suffer from Type 3 food allergies are often allergic to more than two types of food, and larger amounts of food over multiple meals are needed to provoke this reaction.12

You may experience some of the same types of symptoms, making it difficult to distinguish between an IgE and an IgG response. Foods triggering an IgG response are often favorite foods eaten in larger amounts. IgG responses do not typically show up on a skin test.

Rising Prevalence of Allergies Corresponds to Increasing Vitamin D Deficiency

Food allergies associated with IgE affects 3 percent of the population, with severe effects on daily life. Manifestations of the allergy are not only gastrointestinal, but also affect other organ systems and may lead to an anaphylactic response.13

While vitamin D also has known effects on lung and immune system development, as well as support of the immune system after birth,14 including asthma and allergic responses, it is also significant in the regulation of IgE.

The increase in allergies and sensitivities to foods is likely related to environmental factors and Western lifestyles. Developing nations have lower rates of allergic responses, and individuals with allergies are likely to live in urban rather than rural areas.

Although there is no single explanation for the rise in prevalence, one significant factor is the overwhelming vitamin D deficiency suffered by those who live in urban areas.15

The link between vitamin D deficiency, which has almost doubled in just over a decade in the U.S.,16 and poor regulation of IgE responses, may be a significant factor. Both of these play a role in the development, severity and course of allergic diseases, and help explain, at least in part, why so many adults are now developing food allergies.

Australia has the highest rate of confirmed food allergies, with one study finding 9 percent of 1-year-olds suffering from egg allergy.17 Australia initiated one of their most successful health campaigns to increase use of sun screen in 1981 with the slogan “Slip! Slop! Slap!”18

At the time, the campaign was aimed at lowering melanoma rates, which the government believed was the result of spending too much time in the sun.

Today, nearly 25 percent of Australia's population is deficient in vitamin D. Despite these numbers, Choosing Wisely Australia, an initiative of NPS MedicineWise,19 does not recommend having routine testing for vitamin D unless you're specifically at risk, including those who:20

Have a health condition affecting vitamin D absorption from their diet

Cover their body completely when outside

Are a baby of a vitamin D deficient mother

Spend the majority of their day indoors

Take medications affecting vitamin D

Avoid the sun completely

Have naturally dark skin

Suffer obesity

Considering the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency, I strongly recommend getting your vitamin D level tested regardless of whether you fit into a high-risk category or not, and to make sure you’re actually within the ideal range of 60 to 80 ng/mL, and if below 60 ng/mL, take proactive steps to optimize your level. The fact of the matter is, most people are at high risk for vitamin D deficiency these days.

Early Exposure to Allergens May Reduce Allergy Risk

In addition to vitamin D deficiency, a theory of dual allergen exposure may also explain the rise in pediatric food allergies. This was the basis for the LEAP study from King's College London, in which they evaluated how early exposure to peanuts may affect the development of a peanut allergy.21

The prevalence of peanut allergy in children has doubled in the past 10 years in countries where parents are advised to avoid exposure to peanuts during pregnancy, lactation and infancy.

The researchers randomly assigned 640 infants, 4 to 11 months old, with a history of severe eczema, egg allergy or both, to either eat or avoid peanuts until they were 60 months old. The children were assigned to groups based on preexisting sensitivity to peanut extract, determined by a skin-prick test.

Of the 98 participants treated who initially had a positive peanut allergy test, 35 percent of those who avoided peanuts had a peanut allergy at 60 months, compared to just 10 percent of those who consumed peanuts. Dr. Gideon Lack, lead investigator for the study, commented:22

“For decades allergists have been recommending that young infants avoid consuming allergenic foods such as peanut to prevent food allergies. Our findings suggest that this advice was incorrect and may have contributed to the rise in the peanut and other food allergies.”

These results have been validated in subsequent studies, finding late introduction of fish and eggs is associated with an increased risk of allergy development.23 A metadata analysis from the Imperial College London, which evaluated 146 studies with over 200,000 children, also concluded that feeding egg between the ages of 4 and 6 months may reduce the child’s risk of developing an egg allergy.24

Other Health Benefits of Vitamin D Optimization

Vitamin D deficiency has become so widespread it's been called a pandemic by a Harvard Medical School researcher.25 The short list of health benefits attributed to vitamin D optimization include improving your immune system, strengthening muscles, bones and teeth and improving your cardiovascular health.

Over the past decades, thousands of studies have evaluated the benefits of vitamin D and have linked low levels to a host of chronic health conditions. In fact, this site was one of the leaders to help catalyze interest in vitamin D over 15 years ago.

Unfortunately, some studies claim supplementation at amounts over 4,000 IUs/day may lead to health problems. Research by GrassrootsHealth negates such concerns, showing toxicity is not an issue until you hit 30,000 IUs a day.26

What’s more, the recommended vitamin D level and dosage established by the National Academy of Medicine is actually the result of a mathematical error that has never been corrected. You can read more about this in my previous article, “Are Americans Really Getting Too Much Vitamin D? A Critical Look at Recent Media Warnings.”

There is a long list of studies confirming the correlation between vitamin D status and cancer risk. Maintaining sufficient levels of vitamin D also helps to lower all-cause mortality and risk of Type 2 diabetes.

During pregnancy, optimal levels of vitamin D help to reduce the percentage of preterm birth, and subsequently higher risks of ADHD, asthma, autism and vision problems associated with early birth. Low levels of vitamin D are also associated with depression, metabolic syndrome,27 cardiovascular disease28 and lung disease.29

Maintain Healthy Levels to Help Prevent Disease

My recommendation is to get your vitamin D level tested twice a year, when your level is likely to be at its lowest (midwinter) and highest (midsummer). This is particularly important if you're pregnant, planning a pregnancy or if you have cancer.

Research30 suggests it may require 9,600 IUs of vitamin D per day to get a majority (97.5 percent) of the population to reach 40 ng/mL, but individual requirements can vary widely. If you've been taking a certain amount of vitamin D3 for a number of months and retesting reveals you're still not within the recommended range, then you know you need to increase your dosage.

Over time, with continued testing, you'll find your individual sweet spot based on your usual safe sun exposure and have a good idea of how much supplementation you need to maintain a year-round level of 60 to 80 ng/mL, which research suggests is the ideal range for optimal health and disease prevention.

GrassrootsHealth offers vitamin D testing through its D*Action study, and has an online vitamin D calculator you can use to estimate your vitamin D3 dosage once you know your current serum level.

The Synergism Between Vitamin D3, Magnesium, Calcium and Vitamin K2

Pamela Lutsey, public health researcher at the University of Minnesota, points out excessive vitamin D may cause over absorption of calcium, which in turn may result in calcium deposits in your heart and kidneys. Indeed, it is important to maintain not only the proper balance of vitamin D and calcium, but also magnesium and vitamin K2.

Lack of balance between these four nutrients is why calcium supplements have become associated with increased risk of heart attack and stroke, and why some experience symptoms of "vitamin D toxicity." I use quotation marks here, because the problem is not so much excess vitamin D as it is a lack of vitamin K2.

Part of the explanation for these adverse side effects is that vitamin K2 is what keeps calcium in its appropriate place. If you're K2 deficient, added calcium can cause more problems than it solves, by accumulating in the wrong places. Similarly, taking megadoses of vitamin D supplements without sufficient amounts of K2 can lead to inappropriate calcification, which is what Lutsey is suggesting.

While the optimal ratios between vitamin D and vitamin K2 have yet to be established, Dr. Kate Rheaume-Bleue (whom I've interviewed on this topic) suggests for every 1,000 IUs of vitamin D you take, you may benefit from about 100 micrograms (mcg) of K2, and perhaps as much as 150 to 200 mcg.

Maintaining an appropriate calcium-to-magnesium ratio is also important, as magnesium helps keep calcium in your cells so they can function better. Historically, mankind ate a diet with a calcium-magnesium ratio of 1-to-1,31 but Americans tend to have a higher calcium-to-magnesium ratio in their diet, averaging about 3.5-to-1.

Magnesium and vitamin K2 also complement each other, as magnesium helps lower blood pressure, which is an important component of heart disease. So, anytime you're taking magnesium, calcium or vitamin D3, remember to take all the others into consideration as well, as they all work synergistically with each other.

from http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2018/12/26/vitamin-d-deficiency-can-lead-to-increased-allergies.aspx

source http://niapurenaturecom.weebly.com/blog/vitamin-d-deficiency-can-lead-to-increased-allergies

[ralphmorgan-blog1]

The women standing up for science

The female winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics has criticised a senior scientist's comments that physics was "invented and built by men" as "silly". But what do other women in science think?

Dr Donna Strickland became the first woman in 55 years to win the award shortly after the remarks by Prof Alessandro Strumia, who worked for European nuclear research centre Cern, emerged.

He has now been suspended from working with the centre.

Image copyright Richard Grant

Skip Twitter post by @JennyRohn

It’s damned difficult to do great science when you’re always navigating the minefield of bias and disregard, the expectation that you must make the (psychological) tea; when asserting yourself makes you a bitch - even getting a word in without interruption can be a challenge

— Jennifer L. Rohn (@JennyRohn) October 1, 2018

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End of Twitter post by @JennyRohn

Jennifer Rohn, 50, a British-American cell biologist at University College London (UCL)

Getting into it: I can't remember a time when I didn't want to become a scientist. I was voted "most likely to become a scientist" in high school. I was unabashedly geeky and read lots of books. I grew up with no role models in science and was not aware of any famous female scientist. I didn't even meet a scientist until I went to university.

What are you working on? I got tired of the abstract and wanted to work on something that would make an impact. I'm now working on a cure for urinary tract infections. It's the most common reason in the UK that an antibiotic is prescribed - and the most common infection in elderly people, yet few studies have been done on it.

Currently antibiotics can't reach inside the bladder so we are using nano-technology to create little particles of antibiotics that can go inside the bladder wall. We're hoping clinical trials will start late next year, and a cure could be available quite soon afterwards.

Prof Strumia's comments: If you took them at face value, they could be quite demoralising - he is a big-shot professional. Most of what he presented has been debunked and there's been a swift universal rebuttal from the science community of his comments.

Greatest achievement: Managing to cling onto my job. Most women I know were forced to leave. There aren't that many jobs and most go to men.

Memorable moment: An elderly male professor assumed I was the research nurse when he first met me in a lift.

What I've learned: I have been in science for 30 years. I've never seen any evidence that women are not as good as men at science. It's a pervasive view but is simply not true, in my opinion.

Hope for the future: I'm just looking forward to that day when we can be accepted into the club on our own terms. I don't know if that will ever happen.

Image copyright Jessica Wade

Skip Twitter post by @jesswade

When people in positions of power in academia behave like this and retain their status they don’t only push one generation of underrepresented groups out of science, but train others that it’s ok to propagate this ideology for years to come.

— Dr Jess Wade 👩🏻��🔬 (@jesswade) September 30, 2018

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End of Twitter post by @jesswade

Dr Jess Wade, 29, physics postdoc at Imperial College London

Getting into it: I had a really great and supportive physics teacher when I was at school, as well as very supportive parents - though they were both medical doctors and that put me off working in the NHS! They did inspire me though to do something I loved and to always be asking questions.

What are you working on? I work with carbon based materials for light emitting diodes. Think of the pixels in your TV screen or your mobile phone. We are looking at light, low-cost, high efficiency and flexible displays.

Prof Strumia's comments: They are really damaging to the community. Most of us realise that having diversity, having people who think differently to you, is so important to research. If you only have people who look and think the same, you will never progress.

Greatest achievement: For me, it was when I was asked to take part in the International Visitor Leadership Programme in the US. There were 48 people representing different countries, and I represented the UK.

Memorable moment: The thing is that the challenges women face in the field are less overt than a moment. There are biases when you apply for a new job, with peer reviews... and it affects non-Western scientists too. Sometimes we are facing sexism and we don't even know it.

What I've learned: There are challenges, but if we work closely together, we can overcome them.

Hope for the future: That we won't have to be excited about one women getting a Nobel Prize in physics and that it instead becomes a yearly occurrence.

Seven trailblazing women in science

Viewpoint: Everyone must fight sexism in science

First woman Physics Nobel winner in 55 years

Image copyright Dr Richard Gillams

Skip Twitter post by @DrSylviaMcLain

I'm still fuming ... yes fury, because it's inordinately dumb https://t.co/QcrP9zuHrt

— Sylvia McLain (@DrSylviaMcLain) October 1, 2018

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End of Twitter post by @DrSylviaMcLain

American-born Dr Sylvia McLain, 50, is a bio-physicist at the University of Oxford

Getting into it: She spent a long eight years getting a zoology degree as she had to work intermittently cleaning houses, delivering pizzas and working in gas stations to pay for her fees. She became a lab technician but the low pay prompted her to return to her studies, and she got a PhD in chemistry at 36. "I wasn't deeply passionate about science but I was pretty good at it and could earn some decent money."

What are you working on? Research lecturer in the biochemistry department at Oxford University.

Prof Strumia's comments: I think he's weak and feeling threatened. In nature, some oak trees kill off small oak trees so they can grow bigger and stronger.

Greatest achievement: Helping my students achieve their goals or giving them the courage to do something else.

Memorable moment: I'm a middle-of-the-road scientist but I always funded my own research. Every single time I got an award, at least one person would tell me: "You only got it because you are a woman." It's, like, thanks!

What I've learned: I used to want to be seen just as a scientist but you are prejudged for being a woman before you even walk through the door. They don't mean to do it.

Hope for the future: It's very important to listen to each other. I hope we get to the place where people take this seriously.

Related Topics

Physics

Women in science

Women

Sexism

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