#caste-oppressed

[makingcontact]

The Trauma of Caste: A Dalit Feminist Meditation

Book cover for “The Trauma of Caste” Credit: Penguin Random House Caste—one of the oldest systems of exclusion in the world—is thriving. Despite the ban on Untouchability 70 years ago, caste impacts 1.9 billion people in the world. Every 15 minutes, a crime is perpetrated against a Dalit person. The average age of death for Dalit women is just 39. And the wreckages of caste are replicated here in…

[commsroom]

you're remembering this wrong. (by @hehearse)

[angel---eater]

tbh the whitest trolls to me are the zahhaks and the makaras bc of what kind of internet-people equius and gamzee represented at the time. juggalo culture is predominantly white working class folks or white folks on the poverty line, and in the US bc of segregation, that meant a lot more mixing of cultures than you see in middle class and up areas. its the same with canada and the UK. so you see a lotta black influences in there bc of how US class structures have been constructed. its a melting pot made by and for the working class. a lotta irl juggalo stuff is pretty chill from what ive heard? as a movement they want to demolish class heirarchy and build community. ofc theres room for abuse in the lifestyle though, thats not unique to juggalos. gamzee as a rich white boy living a juggalo lifestyle but not getting it right and actually reinforcing what irl juggalos fight against makes perfect sense for his character

equius on the other hand is like belligerently Hegemonic White Cis Dude coded to me. he represents young white cis boys on the precipice of falling into the manosphere pipeline, imo. specifically bc theyre lonely and insecure. his spot on the hemospectrum is perfect for breeding that shit. he's been told his whole life that hes better than most of the ppl he knows. hes higher up caste wise than most of his friends, particularly nepeta, but still feels inferieor to his friends who ARE higher up than he is, which is what sparks that hyperspecfic brand of insecurity in white cis boys. their only real problem is that someone else whos even more priviledged is looking down on them. and gamzee also being white just kind of compounds that bc of the sense of 'competition' between white guys or whatever, to be The Whitest Squarest* Guy who is On Top (haha) Of All Other White Square Guys

everyone else? nah. its so obviously not whats happening. which really just highlights the fact that large swaths of fandom still believe that white is default in terms of character design. and its insane to me how ppl can say w/ their whole chest that the hemospectrum has nothing to do w/ race, its just abt class, when racism and class are intrinsically tied. like theyre horrible twin sisters, man, you cant rlly have one without the other. enforced class models in society dont work unless theres someone up top deeping someone else Deserving of having less bc theyre not the exact same type of person as them

*using the term Square here not to denote any kind of 80s movie nerddom but to try to describe hegemonically cishet (and homogenized white) normies who are toxic abt it and think everyone else should be like them

[eskildit]

i think a lot about hot sauce and jeannemary. two young girls so ready to kill and to die. a comparison made all the worse when you recall that hot sauce lost all her family to the cohort, that she can specifically recall fourth style necromancy (using corpses as bombs). a fourteen and thirteen year old that could easily have been on opposite sides of the same front line. 

[the-punforgiven]

Do y'all ever get nightmares that just like, aren't scary?

Like you can tell your brain is trying to make this scary, but you just feel nothing?

[genderkoolaid]

the more i think about it the more i feel transunity is vital. i dont mean this hatefully and theres no way to say this that wont be misconstrued by someone but. i feel like so much trans activism has been focused on aligning trans women with other women in feminism (itself not a bad goal) but that as the end all be all of trans activism intrinsically hurts other trans people. so much baeddel rhetoric relies on "there is no trans community/trans people it should only be about trans women" and i think its extremely extremely important to talk about transness as its own class, and fully embrace how trans liberationism must involve completely deconstructing cis-centric analysis of gender/the patriarchy to include the full extent of trans oppression. the idea that transphobia is fundamentally and exclusively based in misogyny & is ultimately a part of women's oppression is just fitting transness into the cis-centric binary system we've always had. transphobia has to be seen as its own thing and transness as its own class, for the better of all trans people and especially transmascs & transneutrals who are otherwise forced to choose between misgendering/detransition or being left out of class analysis/treated as oppressors even while being oppressed. transness is not just a subsect of womanhood it has to be seen as its own thing. transunity or death

[mikimeiko]

L'amica geniale | Season 3 (2022), Saverio Costanzo

[kithj]

the more people complain about genderlocked characters i feel like the more stubborn i get about it...

i just feel like. there's a fine line between wanting to see yourself reflected in the art you engage with (everybody wants this to some extent) versus just straight up refusing to engage with any kind of art that you can't personally relate to.

and sure you can argue it's not that deep when we're just talking about romance games i guess but usually this extends beyond just IF romance games, i see it on bookstagram or in mainstream video gaming circles, too... and particularly in IF & gaming it tends to lead to this very entitled attitude where if the thing doesn't appeal exactly to what you personally want, then it's Bad and Wrong.

i definitely understand in some instances, as a butch lesbian there is like... no game even off the top of my head that i can think of that actually has someone that looks like me in it (except for the stuff i've personally written. lol) and i do really like the gender-selection mechanic for this reason. most of the time it's the only way we get sapphic ROs. but to me that's just a band-aid and not a real solution, especially when a lot of authors tend to lean on bioessentialist ideas to depict the gender-selectable variants, and most of the time don't even seem to be aware that they're doing it.

i would much prefer actual female characters, or actual trans characters, over gender-selectable characters. because the other thing we see is that a lot of the time the male variation is the most popular, and is seen as the "default." this is through no fault of the author, really, it's just how the cookie crumbles, i guess.... i don't really know what the solution is but i do really wish people would be more mindful about... well. all of it. authors and readers alike. and maybe broaden your horizons and read something that's different for you, or write something challenging outside of your comfort zone. i get that a lot of these games are pure wish fulfillment, and that's fine, we're not all going to like or want the same things. but when most games don't include people like me, i'm forced to pick from a much smaller pool of fish than everyone else, and i don't agree with that. both in that i wish there were more options for me, obviously, but also that i shouldn't only limit myself to games that "represent" me and am still willing to reach for something different and still give it a chance. both things can be true.

now when a game is intentionally excluding entire groups of people, of course that needs to be called into question. because then it's just bigotry, and we all know bigotry is bad, yes? a game that... let's say. only allows white mcs. is going to attract a particular kind of audience. we know this we can acknowledge this. but i do also kinda think it's a waste of time to try and appeal to authors like this... i'm not against offering feedback but at the end of the day these authors excluded these people for a reason and they have no interest in us. don't bother. there are other authors out there that are writing women and trans people and poc that you can read instead of trying to get a misogynist or a racist or a transphobe to write about people they clearly don't give a shit about.

and i really feel like that encapsulates why i both like and dislike the gender-selectable mechanic... again it's just a temporary band-aid. it lets me play a sapphic mc for a little while. but the larger problem still remains which is that there are no depictions of butch lesbians (or lesbians in general) in most of these games, and there are not a lot of authors out there willing to even try. there are a lot of instances where i feel the gender-selection mechanic is just... a cop out. there's no thought or effort put into it.

i dont think every single author needs to start genderlocking or anything (that would be stupid) i just wish it was something both authors and readers would spend more time thinking about, rather than just automatically defaulting to gender-selection. people approaching Blood Choke and then complaining that it's all genderlocked but... the story is About being a lesbian. it would not exist in any other way. and the beautiful thing is that you can still read it even if you're not a lesbian! in fact i wish more people would. again, reach for something different and you might find that you actually like it. you might even connect with it in a way that surprises you. meanwhile The Northern Passage has a lot of options for the mc both in the character creator and when it comes to romance options. i have a gender-selectable character there, and a lot of people enjoy that, and i do too. and i also chose to lock Clementine originally because i knew i wanted there to be a nonbinary RO that could not be ignored (and then the other two followed shortly after once i started writing).

there's Nuance. there are lots of reasons to genderlock and there are lots of reasons why someone might not. there are games out there that let me play with an all female cast that i hate, other games with a mixed, genderlocked cast that i love. there are authors out there that do handle their gender-selectable characters well, some of my favorite games utilize it! and there are genderlocked games that are all just skinny white cis people that make me recoil. there are downsides to both. this is not an either-or situation. it's just something to think about, both when creating a character as an author and when engaging with a work as a reader.👍

[bfpnola]

please reblog and share across as many platforms as you’d like! this person is one of our former youth volunteers and one of the many children i mentioned in my final note about BFP. she means the world to me, so i would appreciate the support!

— reaux (she/they)

[messianicfigure]

i’m meant to be finishing stormlight before wind and truth comes out but i accidentally fell down a red rising shaped rabbit hole and tragically there are so many compelling freaks in this universe i simply cannot look away until i am caught up

[ad1thi]

if you're celebrating rdj being cast as Doctor Doom you are celebrating the deliberate (and repeated) erasure of roma characters in the mcu just btw

[novella-november]

Is this fanfic friendly? I feel like an outlier.

I guess this is my sign it's time to throw together a FAQ post to link to lol.

Yes, every event for this blog is fanfic friendly :D

Though as I mentioned on my Ominous October post, for events that include multiple short stories, I encourage everyone to flex their creativity and take one of their planned short story fanfics, and at least *attempt* to turn one of them into something entirely original; rebuilding a character and story from the ground up to stand on its own two legs is no easy feat, and that is what makes it so fun!

It really gets your creative gears turning, to make an "au of an existing material" to be something entirely original, and you can be pleasantly surprised about the things you come up with!

As a few people say, its not just a matter of "filing the serial numbers off" -- you have to add in just as much *or more* as what you take out when you are turning a fanfiction into something that is original and completely divorced from its original source material / inspiration, and that is a hard, but very rewarding challenge!

Obviously, this is not a requirement (there's no hard requirements for any of the challenges, other than no cheating, including no using AI),

but if you would like an extra challenge for the short story events and you're planning on doing entirely fan-fiction, I highly recommend trying it out at least once, and seeing where it leads you--

you may find yourself pleasantly surprised by what you find down that rabbit hole!

[vileacademyofficial]

what the FUCK do you have against Lin Manuel FUCKING Miranda?

excluding the antiblackness and racism of hamilton and its fanbase? he publicly supported an “economic stability” bill that closed 200+ public puerto rican schools, implemented devestating labor ‘reforms’ that have gutted puerto rican workers’ access to sick days and vacation time, cut funding to the university of puerto rico, and began the privatization of puerto rico’s electrical authority.

so yeah no i don't like the guy lmao

[batsarebetterthanpeople]

No offense to anyone who makes these posts but I'm not interacting with any Barbie posts that suck Greta G's dick about Ken's """"MRA/incel"""" arc without acknowledging how fundamentally stupid it was to give it to someone canonically oppressed on the basis of their gender. Patriarchy wasn't appealing to him because he's losing his power it was appealing to him because Barbies have all the power but in patriarchy he's in control I'm beating every last one of you with a copy of Judith Butler I am making you read Bell Hooks like it's clockwork orange I am sneaking into your house and putting Angela Davis audio books and speeches on while you sleep I'm exposing you to real feminism by any means necessary until you understand that patriarchy about fuckin POWER not who has long hair and boobs.

Like I just want you to imagine how fundamentally stupid it would be to give any character played by Ryan Gosling other than Ken the speech that Gloria gave Barbie and have it have the same effect on him that it has on the Barbies. That is the level of idiocy we're operating on here

I'm just.... Hm... It's not even how dumb it is that makes me mad it's how everyone just seems to think it's genius when it's the dumbest shit I've seen in a while. My problem is that I'm the only one I see casting doubt on this MRA thing and I'm the only one who immediately thought "oh he's like terfs and the terminally online rad fems who brag about doing misandry" and was surprised when the internet brought up the manosphere.

[roetrolls]

misc schooling headcanons because bulk anon got us chatting about it

To the surprise of no one, I, the art student, am most interested in examining how Alternia's fascist dystopia would affect the advent of "high/low class" art (the distinction of which is in itself a means of suppressing marginalized voices)

[snixx]

you want to subcategorize caste-based reservations to make them more intersectional? because you care about poor people right? cool! does that mean you're gonna increase reservations for EWS from the unreserved category to reduce/eliminate the creamy layer of the general category too (or god forbid actually conduct a caste census to get actual data) or do you only care about economic inequality when it's at the expense of acknowledging caste-based discrimination exists outside of class too...?