#funny how white supremacy is a them issue now

[pumpumdemsugah]

White colonialists thought anyone who wasn't white was disgusting and dirty, so if you think or call anything, i like disgusting, that's colonialism and white supremacy. That's how parallels work.

Aren't I so smart as a white American that I feel so comfortable flippantly bringing up colonialism and white supremacy like that? all the time over anything connected to my identity. This isn't connected to anything. This is just what community and inclusivity are. Everything has to include little white me

[cryptocism]

Since I think about clones like I’m getting paid for it, I've been rotating those alternate universe "what if Bart and Thad were actually raised together" scenarios in my brain, with Thad either post-redemption-arc or pre-villainy. Because adjusting Thad's character to fit an ally role while still keeping true to his core motives and personality is so so fascinating to me.

Like I think there's an immediate first instinct to slot Thad into a "bad" twin category: ie rebellious and prickly, doesn't get along with people, mean lil shit. And obviously it's not wrong bc we're outside the realm of canon, but the reading still feels a little left of center.

Because Thad is mean and prickly in canon. In the Impulse comics he belittles Bart and Bart’s friends/family constantly in his appearances. He loves to goad, and monologue about his own superiority and intelligence. He’s very Not Nice, and he causes many problems, and he even does it on purpose.

But, I think it’s important to consider the context. From the jump Thad knows very little about anything except which team he’s on and who he’s playing for. He gets his orders from an unseen authority and he carries out his tasks because success means his team wins.

For all his self-aggrandizing talk, everything he does is in service of an end goal that doesn't actually center him. He's trying to get revenge for grievances he's never personally suffered, retribution for actions never committed against him. Everything he does is on someone else's behalf.

Thad sees in black and white, us or them. Up until the final few issues of Mercury Falling, Bart and co. are Thad's enemies, of course he's not going to be nice.

So Thad's motivation seems pretty simple: Thawne Supremacy™.

But it’s in Mercury Falling where this starts to fall apart, and the real core of his motivation gets revealed. Thad pretends to be Bart and suddenly Helen is nice to him. Bart’s friends think he’s funny. Bart’s teachers are impressed with his grades. Max ruffles his hair and gives him hugs and tells him he’s done a good job.

If he was actually an inherently mean and standoffish character, if Thad actually had significant personal stake in the Thawne VS Allen conflict, the weight of such tiny acts of kindness wouldn’t completely break him the way that it does in canon.

Thad thinks his goal is superiority and revenge and Thawne Supremacy™, but he's chasing validation. Thad doesn’t have a personal stake in the Thawne VS Allen conflict. He wouldn't get much satisfaction if he actually destroyed Bart and his family. Thad's personal victory would be the recognition after the fact: the praise and attention from the other Thawnes (a group of people he has literally never met) for his success.

He wants validation. That's basically it. And the fact that he gets it so easily from Bart's family and friends doesn't align with how he's told himself things are supposed to work.

Actually tangentially, Bart and Thad’s respective relationships to authority is so diametrically opposed and tbh kind of subversive in a superhero narrative. Where the hero is the one carving his own path without regard to social or societal rules, no fucks to give what anybody thinks of it. And the villain is a chronic people-pleaser.

Just based on Thad’s reaction to simple praise and affection from Max I really think Thad’s motivation has more to do with the response he gets than whatever the details are of any given task. He has no actual personal convictions beyond getting positive attention, and whatever he did have crumbled as soon as Bart’s friends laughed at his joke one time. Which of course leads into the core of his whole conflict at the end of Mercury Falling. He cares too much about Bart’s friends and family now, he doesn’t want to kill them, but worse than that, he’s faced with the sudden realization that he’s on the wrong side.

The Allens gave Thad everything he actually wanted and needed, but his conception of himself is inexorably tied to the Thawnes: who gave him jack shit. These two facts are in opposition to each other, and he can’t reconcile the reality of it.

Anyway all this to say, in an AU where Bart and Thad are raised together or Thad gets an actual redemption arc etc etc, I think my personal take on Thad’s personality whether it be pre-or-post-villainy would be one that is extremely socially conscious. He is much more of a people-person than Bart. Whether he's actually accurate in assessing people's feelings and how to respond to them can be hit or miss, but he wants to behave in a way that gets people to like him.

Pretending to be Bart isn’t remarked upon as, like, a difficult task for Thad. In his internal monologue he’s literally bragging to himself about how easy it is. But what’s especially notable to me is where his act differs from Bart's typical MO. Everyone notices, and lots of people comment, and presumably if Thad didn’t have the excuse of Max’s illness to “motivate” Bart to do better he would’ve been found out immediately. And those things are, specifically: paying attention in class, doing his chores, staying on task, and being helpful around the house. The one thing about Bart he chooses not to emulate is Bart’s rebelliousness.

Thad wants to prove himself, constantly, to whatever authority he respects (probably Max in this scenario) and will do whatever it takes to make that happen. In contrast to Bart, who only listens to authority when the shit they're saying actually makes sense to him. It’s excessively difficult to convince him to go against his own interests. (And I think a key part of that is Bart’s security in knowing that no matter how much he fucks up or doesn’t listen, the people he loves will always love him back.)

Thad’s got the people-pleaser in him that has to deserve whatever he’s given. It’s why he’s happiest when he’s given a clear goal or objective to complete, because it gives him an opening to prove himself.

All this to say that if we are quantifying Bart and Thad as a "good" or "bad" twin, in the eyes of every authority: Bart is the bad twin. Bart is the bad twin, Bart is the bad twin. Bart is the one who doesn’t care about school and whose grades vary wildly depending on his personal interest. He’s the one who goes off to do dangerous shit for fun and gets in trouble constantly and doesn’t do his chores and is thoroughly unconvinced by any authority figure trying to sell him bullshit. 

Thad is the one who needs to know all the rules just so he can experience the joy of following them. Relentlessly obedient. He'll put all his effort into doing all the right things that’ll endear him to whoever he wants to impress - meaning he’s the asshole who reminds the teacher about the assigned homework. Bart might be the most popular boy in school, but Thad is a pleasure to have in class.

Like Thad can (and should) still be high-strung and short-tempered and sarcastic and edgy and mean, because he is. But he can’t be doing all that without rhyme or reason. Colouring every interaction has to be that one-zero binary of ally or enemy. He needs to have somebody he’s proving himself to: a team he’s on and a team he’s against. He’s not an inherently rebellious character. He can go up against The Enemy, whoever he deems as such, but it has to be in service of a hypothetical future in which somebody eventually tells him he did a great job.

And in the interest of continuing to beat a dead horse, it connects to their respective upbringings. Thad and Bart were both raised in VR, but Bart’s experience had the side effect of basically hard-wiring him against insecurity. His world was a playground tailor-made for him, and he was never made to feel bad or insufficient about any aspect of himself. His first interaction with a real human person was Iris moving heaven and earth to save him, without him knowing her, without her knowing him, with no reasoning for the act needed beyond Being Her Grandson. Which is probably a significant factor in why Bart moves through the world with frankly atomic levels of autistic swag.

Thad’s VR upbringing installed self-consciousness in his psyche before any other personality trait. As in: he is immediately made conscious of himself and his relationship with everyone he will ever encounter. He’s told two things: he’s a clone of someone else (inherently derivative, lesser) and that he was made to be superior (a status to achieve). Which is such an instant clarifier for Thad’s everything. Where superiority is a condition that everyone either has, or does not. It’s the one-zero binary again: are they better than me or am I better than them. Being above others is mandatory, and if his superiority is ever challenged by hard evidence or god forbid nuance Thad’s brain physically cannot take it. He needs to be better, to be worse is unthinkable, and there is no other way to be.

And this status of better or worse is, crucially, not up to Thad to decide. He needs The Authority to validate him. Bart never tries to prove himself because he has nothing to prove. Thad’s entire identity hinges on the self-worth he gets from doing a Good Job.

It is such an inherent part of his motives in the Impulse comics canon, which is why it always feels a little off when he’s interpreted as a jackass indiscriminately.

Like I don't think he needs everyone to like him. But I do think he has either one person or a set of very particular people that he needs to like him. Everyone else is either in that circle or outside of it.

(Which is why Bart is such a great foil for Thad tbh. There is no set of words or behaviors that’ll change Bart’s opinion of Thad, because Bart is unaffected by obedience or charm. So ironically Bart is probably one of few people that Thad doesn’t bother to put on even a little bit of an act for.)

While Bart goes with his instincts, his personal beliefs and convictions at all times, Thad is hyper-conscious of big-picture goals. They balance each other out that way. Thad's keeping track of whatever expectations he has placed on him, and how his actions reflect on him and the team beyond short-sighted solutions. He's a team player. AND he's an asshole.

[yuri-for-businesswomen]

i just now learned about a recent case where a german man kidnapped and did unspeakable acts to two boys. one was german, one was a refugee. the first one was immediately treated as a missing case, but the second one was not because the cops were afraid the mother was hiding her son to avoid deportation. and the worst part is, that little boy was kidnapped in a government institution (lageso in berlin) where his mother went for help! its infuriating beyond belief.

racism is so deeply engrained in german institutions, its not funny. yet police refuses any reforms or real investigations and deny even the notion - despite mounting evidence - that there is an issue with systemic racism in german police. and we dont have an independent institution to control the cops, you know who investigates their failures and issues? other cops. and we all know how they stick together like literal shit.

but it also made me think about „missing white woman syndrome“. does anyone really care about an eastern european white woman who goes missing while being exploited in the west through prostitution, in the domestic field, nursing, or as a „mail bride“ dependent on her husband? does anyone care about a white woman in the usa going missing from a trailer park? does anyone care about a white woman who was homeless, mentally ill, drug addicted, disabled, impoverished, prostituted, or otherwise marginalised going missing? and do people not care about white men going missing?

and it also made me think about this current trend of oversimplifying and decontextualising racism. one thing i hope we all can agree on is that anti black racism is very persistent. i cant think of a single country where black people are treated preferably over other races, best case is to be treated equally as a black person, and even that is not the case in most countries. but this doesnt just apply to white majority countries. in japan or korea, or under the kafala system in the arabic gulf states, for example, black people are systematically discriminated against and exploited too. white people are also not the only ones guilty of colonialism and imperialism - albeit i dont want to minimise the scale of portugese, spanish, french, british/australin, german, dutch, belgian (neo)colonialism or the north american slave trade.

i dont know its just, everything always has to be put in context and looked at from an intersectional perspective but i feel a lot of people who fault white supremacy for everything dont do that. and dont get me wrong, white supremacy is the root of a lot of inequality and issues, but despite the name its not merely a black and white problem, its complex. for example, even if a roma or jewish person is white, neonazis dont consider them the same race as white people. or i remember my turkish professor once saying, „in turkey im considered white, but in germany im a person of colour“. because race is not just phenotype, it is also culture, nationality, location and ethnicity that matters for who is holding power and privilege.

meanwhile a lot of the same people will refuse to agree that sex matters. or claim that sex - which is a lot less ambiguous than race by the way and nobody argues that mixed race people prove that race is not real or doesnt matter the way they argue intersex people prove that sex is not real or doesnt matter - is a spectrum while chanting „black lives matter“. and i know that black communities do have that conversation about colourism and how whiteness is something even people of colour are supposed to „strive for“, which is why for example the harmful practice of bleaching your skin exists. so it is being acknowledged that race is a spectrum, but some of the same people who rightfully talk about black lives and how blackness is its own social category will call you a bigot for talking about female lives and how being female is a social category.

im not going anywhere with this, just some thoughts that came up regarding discussions on racism and sex and how they intersect too. feel very free to chime in especially as a person of colour obviously!

[beardedmrbean]

Oh I mean when I say do leftists see history as a Disney cartoon because how they talk about people

“Indigenous people wouldn’t do that to their native lands!” Well that because most tribes learn from the mistakes of their ancestors, like modern American farming-

Holy shit Dave is right that they never left their metropolis area

But there this complaints how geeks spaces don’t want black people in it

Black activists: Why don’t white people want us in it?!

Me: Every since we somehow switch from racial equality to black supremacy

Hmm what we done in media? Oh yeah let start in black Panther where

1. They made a oversized shantytown with different African cultures, many of which hate each other guts

2. Expect to believe that everyone with sympathies with the main antagonist, now the movie did point out Killmonger was a hypocrite because he took a mask that didn’t belong to wakandans because he felt like it. And did the exact things he bitch about white colonizers to Wakanda

Though the irony is that Killmonger represents a lot of bitter black supremacists with a pan Africa fetish

Oh oh fantasy, my Indian friend pointed out that the issued with modern fantasy is that they are using a post mayflower American structure vs any form of feudalism

Because my chimera republic made realize it more easier to create black fantasy characters in a colonial and beyond world like ones based off George Carver or Bass Revees

Also like that black elf in rings of power and black Aragon, the problem to me that they look like larpers especially the black elf

Pssst modern Hollywood hairstylists, the fade was a post ww2 thing black men started after vets return from duty, so it automatically stick out for most black people

Also if you want to use Middle Ages hairstyles for black characters. Just go to the tribes that exist as many hairstyles we use today are thousands of years old and if you stretch it to the 13 century you have enough resources for reference

Actually someone pointed out that lot of fantasy places have LA demographic structure, this got me thinking and I’m paraphrasing

Who more bigoted?

My countryhick West Virginia friend who gave me a lot of insight on American history including my people and you who help me try to research west African cultures like the Yoruba?

Or the colored hair, glasses, usually upper middle class feminists that rarely interact with non whites unless they’re genetrifed and lived in gated communities?

Keep in mind a lot of them write or influence current fantasy stuff

Oh I mean when I say do leftists see history as a Disney cartoon because how they talk about people “Indigenous people wouldn’t do that to their native lands!” Well that because most tribes learn from the mistakes of their ancestors, like modern American farming- Holy shit Dave is right that they never left their metropolis area

Not all of them, but for the most part ya, it's respect for the land created after generations of learning that it's important to respect the land, with a additional healthy sized dose of religion and remembering to thank the land and everything else that provides for their needs.

"Noble Savage" is the term you're looking for there, "soft bigotry of lowered expectations" is another one you'll see a lot and not just for natives.

Low hanging fruit in Berkeley talking about why voter ID laws are bad and racist because black people may not know how to get one, or be able to afford one, or even get to the dmv.

Forever funny

But there this complaints how geeks spaces don’t want black people in it

Geek spaces are welcoming and inclusive, they just want you to geek out with them and not start trying to force changes, I honestly don't blame some people for gatekeeping their hobbies. People are coming in and demanding changes to fit their sensibilities and what not and when they're done the 'space' completely different.

That and all the other stuff you mentioned as well.

The question to ask is, why are you in this particular fan space if you are going to change 80% of it, can you maybe just make your own instead?

Oh oh fantasy, my Indian friend pointed out that the issued with modern fantasy is that they are using a post mayflower American structure vs any form of feudalism Because my chimera republic made realize it more easier to create black fantasy characters in a colonial and beyond world like ones based off George Carver or Bass Revees

Look up the show Firefly, if you don't already know about it. There's two really good SciFi western tv shows and neither of them are Westworld, the one besides Firefly is The Adventures of Briscoe County Jr. and it's there in my list because it stars Bruce Campbell.

Which actually you might give that one a look too,

Keep forgetting how much of a giant Julius Carry was, it's got a lot of steampunk elements and it's funny as heck.

Mentioning Bass Reeves made me think of that.

Also like that black elf in rings of power and black Aragon, the problem to me that they look like larpers especially the black elf ECT

Never saw the show, but everything I did see told me they had zero respect for the source material so I didn't expect respect for anything else to appear.

Hair thing we have current year references that since as you said, they haven't really changed them up much in the last few thousand years.

Who more bigoted? My countryhick West Virginia friend who gave me a lot of insight on American history including my people and you who help me try to research west African cultures like the Yoruba? Or the colored hair, glasses, usually upper middle class feminists that rarely interact with non whites unless they’re genetrifed and lived in gated communities?

I'm sure you already know the answer. As a generalization at least.

The joke about internet racists being a tolerant group of people, 'they don't care what race you are so long as you're racist' actually pans out to be fairly true a lot of the time.

Granted a lot of them aren't actually terribly racist, they just like to be able to rip on each other and like doing it Eric Cartman style, le edgy people.

The "Anti-racists" are the ones to watch out for, that's the people from berkeley in that video up there.

It's performative for them, look at how tolerant and accepting I am.

Like this.

I know it's what you want there my whatever you are, but there's a multitude of reasons why this

won't be happening, but I'm sure you've managed to take great strides in the effort to eradicate racism and didn't just totally become a joke for millions of people of all colours.

Except maybe this creature

I love how that's become a insult to people for some reason, she just called him a individual thinker and is mad because he doesn't support the hive mind.

Granted any positive accomplishment in the black community is greeted with several different cheers about how they all share in that accomplishment, but when bad shit happens all of a sudden we're not a monolith.

That's human psychology tho so not much more to expect from that honestly.

Multimillionaire tv host saying she's oppressed and that black people can't make it in the US will forever be funny to me, also sad because that sentiment is holding people back by saying things like that, since it's discouraging, why should I try if I've got no chance to make it anyhow.

May as well just get mine any way I can or maybe lay down and give up.

[petewentzssilkpress]

Yuh know seh wicked cyah done?

Thank you for informing me that I am dating a white person. I wasn't aware that was going on in my life so I'm happy you figured it out and let me know! Last time I checked I was single but apparently not, my mistake, thanks again.

Furthermore, the search function on here isn't half bad and I found everything you're saying you didn't see pretty easily. One search of jamaica and I found it all, and as an aside, I was reblogging stuff about dancehall music up to yesterday morning so like... what?? Also you don't have to pretend, mi know seh yuh nuh like battyman, it's fine. Your interpretation of my "Jamaicanness" is fine by me cause there's a lot in our culture than needs fixing so if I fall short of being the "perfect" Jamaican to you I'm cool with that.

Also funny you should say all of that when I've had a Ukrainian in my notifications saying that I'm racist because I called them out for their treatment of POC. I'm not begging friends with any white people either so we can agree on that point.

I haven't scrolled through your page so see you advocating to black Palestinians so I didn't know you were referring solely to their cultural paradigm in the context of this video. Reiterating, I was simply trying to clarify as I do when I think people are confused and I want to do some reading.

I'll admit that my activism & education hasn't been equal on all issues. Yeah I'm aware that antiblackness exists in every culture on Earth, and upon further introspection I can certainly speak more about the things going on in Africa and about issues black ppl elsewhere are facing.

I don't know everything about everything, but jeez your outlook on the world seems bleak. I don't think "not being a monolith" is inherently a bad thing. After a nuh we one, and I'm not saying just because other cultures do something we should follow them. However, I like muticulturalism, and it isn't necessarily a symptom of our disunity/disaggregation. And it's so dark not to have hopes for the future generation cause how are you gonna look at children and automatically assume they're gonna be demons? Sorry but that's just too dark for me, call me naïve but if I was to think like that then may as well mi drop dung and dead cause by that logic there's no hope for future generations of black kids to rise above the shit we face. We're always gonna be oppressed and they'll always be oppressors, no use to even fight it.

At the end of the day, I was never trying to beg you to support a cause, just trying to make you see why I do what I do and why I'm speaking up the way I am. I don't believe in telling people to side with their oppressors and my bad if it ever came across like I was doing that. The way I see it, this is a part of the fight against white supremacy and that's what I'm prioritizing right now. That isnt your priority and that's fine, but lowe me mek mi do my thing.

[nkjemisin]

ooh i saw your tags on a post about horizon forbidden west! do you mind me asking, what didn’t you like about the game? was it some of the writing or characters? my guess would be the Ancestors and/or Sylvens….. but i admit, the plot was secondary for me because I was having so much fun running around as Aloy: riding sunwings and exploring subterranean Las Vegas and swimming in the San Francisco Bay. and like you said, it’s SO visually beautifully, so i have on rose-colored lenses when it comes to both games. but i’m always interested in what other folks think about them because no game is perfect. anyway thanks! :D

Well, I tried to explain this once before and Tumblr ate it; let's see if I can do it this time.

My biggest issue with the game was that it had worldbuilding fails in specific areas -- namely wherever the devs were reluctant to let go of their own culture. It's a common flaw in worldbuilding that I talk about all the time; I did a Masterclass that addressed it in greater depth, but since I can't share that, here's a presentation I did a few years ago. (Note that the slides are meant to be accompanied by my verbal explanations and examples, so if something's not clear, that's probably why.) Anyway, in that presentation, I don't really have a name for this "fear of straying from the familiar," but I note that it's everywhere in SFF, and it's one of the reasons that so many "original" fictional cultures end up feeling like "us all over again, but they wear funny clothes." Usually those "us again" cultures feel a lot like medieval Europe, specifically, for reasons of historical racism and Eurocentrism -- and in the game, that's the Quen, Oseram, and Carta. Like, clothes aside, Avad was more Louis the XIV (also called the Sun King) than Rameses II or Moctezuma -- and there was no real reason for the Carta to feel familiar at all. And I'm pretty sure this is also why the few societies which structurally resembled any Indigenous American cultures (Tenakth, Nora, Banuk) were framed as innately tech-backwards and dangerously superstitious -- because that's how white supremacy and scientific racism have taught us to think about them, even though many Indigenous societies had tech advancements colonial Europe hadn't mastered (offhand: public health and sanitation, agricultural techniques, land management techniques that are damn near terraforming, much more). But it fit the pattern: all the places where the worldbuilding fell flat were where the creators could not for whatever reason give up the things they found familiar and comforting about our current world, whether they made sense for the future or not. I also think this is why the story in the second game landed squarely on racial and gender/sexual tropes that most writers know better than to deploy unironically these days, like The Black Guy Dies First and Depraved Homosexuals, and more. And I think this is the source of the game's cringier moments, like the weird nostalgic paeans to Vegas and the US military.

Then there's the game's United Colors of Benetton-style handling of race -- lots of superficial diversity, but a curious aversion to exploring its implications in any meaningful way. There was none of this aversion when it came to exploring disability, class, or sexuality. And meanwhile they can animate every strand of Aloy's flowing locks, but only one character gets kinky hair? (Why would anybody remark on Aloy's hair color when Varl is the real hair-unicorn in this game?) That made it obvious that the problem was unease with the whole concept of race on the part of the decision-makers, in-game and IRL.

So tl,dr; the devs couldn't or wouldn't decenter themselves, and so sacrificed story quality and plausibility in order to maintain completely unnecessary Americentrism, jingoism, patriarchy, capitalism, etc.

Now, I want to emphasize: I also play the shit out of this game, and will buy the third game whenever it happens. It is genuinely beautiful and mostly does a good job of creating a world that feels plausible and lived in. It comes so close, in fact, that I suspect editorial interference; that is, I suspect some of the flaws I see were inserted by non-writers at the company, because they're too glaring for writers of any skill -- the skill necessary to make everything else we see in the game -- to have missed. Maybe I'm letting the writers off too easy, but I always try to remember that writing within a corporate environment for a multimillion dollar investment, with decision-makers whose egos must be appeased, is a whole other ballgame from writing for yourself. But it's frustrating to see good writing, and see so obviously that it could've been great writing.

Well, maybe in the third game.

ETA: Minor edits for clarity, because that’s how I roll.

[bookofmirth]

I saw your recent response to an anon where you mentioned the drama that occurred the other day based around bookprofessor’s post. Obviously you don’t have to respond to this or publish it if you do not wish but I just wanted to bring up that while it is important to focus on the real life issues at hand, the OP was hypocritical in her post which is why people were getting upset. She was preaching against ableism while simultaneously flaunting her IQ and degree which is a form of ableism. She was speaking out against racism while ending her post using the racial slur “cracker” when talking about the possibly Caucasian Twitter elriels.

Obviously she had some important points but it was completely overshadowed by her participation in the hate speech and prejudice that she was speaking out against.

This does not in any way justify the nasty messages she received but on the same hand, I do not blame anyone that called her out for her hypocrisy. I hope you can understand why her post was so negatively received and how flawed it was. My hope is that one day everyone can just ignore the negativity, report those who are being racist/prejudiced in any way, and block those who are just being loud and who you don’t wish to see content from. But unfortunately I do not see that happening any time soon.

There are a few things I want to address in this because I think it's a good moment for the fandom to step back and reflect on how we treat one another, how we react to such issues, and how we behave moving forward.

First off, thanks for explaining your point of view without being antagonistic. I do think that everyone's emotional reactions to the post were valid. I do NOT think their responses, in terms of words and actions, were valid. Now before I move forward, I want to clarify that when I use the word "you", I am referring to anyone who may have had the response I am describing - not you personally, anon. Also please don’t freak out about how long this is, as a majority of it is a response to the fandom in general, not you in particular.

What was - and wasn’t - said in the original post

In this post, there were completely valid criticisms of the way that people in this fandom behave, and it wasn’t “generalizing” a certain group, it was literal, actual proof of things that had been said, by multiple people. I’m not going to get too into what Alyssa argued because her critiques of those tweets was flawless. The original post had very valid criticisms of what was happening on Twitter. Alyssa exposed the actually racist, homophobic, and imperialistic underpinnings of those tweets.

However, a lot of people are stuck on the bits before and after those critiques. @bookprofessor apologized for different aspects of her post in a few different asks. There were perhaps better ways that some of those things could have been phrased, some things that could have been left out. And she apologized. People can accept that apology or not but we can’t act like it didn’t happen. Like she didn’t reflect and learn to do better.

However, the people she was calling out have not done the same thing, and if anything, comments that focus more on Alyssa’s tone than why she wrote the post in the first place lets those people off the hook.

On cracker - Using the word "cracker" is not racist in the same way that using racial slurs against POC is. Is it prejudiced? Yes. But you cannot say that it is the same thing when that is demonstrably untrue, given centuries of oppressive history. No one has been oppressed for being white. Those are not the same. Reverse racism is not a thing because a white person punching down on POC is NOT AT ALL the same thing as a POC punching up at white people. The actions look the same, but the impact is so unequal it’s not even funny.

Racism is a systemic, institutionalized problem. It is not defined by individual actions, though those actions can either support or challenge racism. When someone calls a white person a cracker, there isn’t centuries of oppression giving power to and reinforcing that statement. That is not a “gotcha” moment.

Saying “I have x IQ” or “I have X degrees” is not ableist. I’m sorry to whoever told you it was ableist (again, not you specifically anon but people who had read the “aw shucks guys” vagueblogs about it), but it’s not. Those are facts. I have no idea what my IQ is, but I have five degrees from institutions of higher education. Me saying that is in no way ableist. 

Often, people mention those things to be elitist, yes. Sometimes, they can be used to say “hey I know more about this than you”. They can be used in a way that tries to make themselves feel superior. I suspect that this is the impression that a lot of people got of the post. However, there is a fine line between saying “hey that’s elitist” and professing anti intellectualism. Which is perhaps a side issue so I’ll let that go for now.

Another reason that people mention their degrees or qualifications is to establish their background knowledge and credibility. If I were to say “hey y’all I have two MA degrees” (which is true) I am not being ableist! It is a fact! It is factual! And I worked my ass off for those, I will be in student loan debt until I die for those, I have every right to mention them if I want to, and often I do so in order to establish my credibility, to explain the position I am coming from. And my prior knowledge of these topics is relevant when we are talking about literature since that’s what my degrees were on - literature and linguistics. That is why Alyssa mentioned her background, though she did pair it with comments about other people, for which she has apologized.

My final point about this is that I 1000% understand feeling insecure or less than because of educational attainment. I dropped out of high school. I had a complex about that for a long, long time. But I also know that if I took offense at someone else saying they had a PhD, then that offense is about me, not them. Someone else’s inferiority complex is not reason for people to pretend to be less than they are.

If those two comments are what overshadowed the bigger, more important issue for a lot of the readers of that post, then y’all allowed them to overshadow those more important issues. I am 99% sure that someone right now is reading this and thinking “but Leslie, it was the way that she said it!” Boy have I got some news for you!

How we react

This next section is not specific to this ask; instead, it is a discussion of how the fandom responded. If it were only one person who had said “but her tone” then I wouldn’t need to make this point. The fact that multiple people are exhibiting the behavior explained below is what makes this a cultural problem within the acotar fandom.

The main argument I saw on the post itself, and indeed any time I see people bring up how nasty Twitter can be, is that “it was a joke” and “that’s how stan Twitter works”.

No.

Those responses were quite useful for this post, though! So buckle up everyone, because I am going to talk about gaslighting, racism, respectability politics, and tone policing. While I understand that some people might have taken personal offense to what was said, there is a much bigger issue at stake that has nothing to do with individual feelings, and everything to do with ensuring that POC stay silenced and white supremacy is upheld. 

Back to the “but it’s a joke” thing. Thanks for gaslighting! Great example of that, person I’m not going to tag! Gaslighting is when you make someone question their experiences, when you try to make them think “wait, did I really feel that way? Is my feeling about that valid? Do I need to re-evaluate my response to this?? Am I blowing this out of proportion???” And saying “it’s just a joke” is a perfect way to do that. Did I say something accidentally sexist? It’s just a joke, nbd! Now you’re the problem, because you didn’t understand my joke and laugh!!! 

Saying “it’s a joke” or “oh they are old/young/ignorant, they will learn” is not a good response to... anything. It takes the responsibility off the people who are doing the harm, and putting it onto the people who were hurt. And in this case, anyone who read those tweets and found them harmful (which should be everyone?) is completely valid. You aren’t lesser for being angry or emotional or for seeing a problem where other people saw a joke. The people who see those things as acceptable jokes are the ones in the wrong.

This is a tactic that is used against women all the time. Any time a woman is sexually harassed at work or online, for example, and she gets upset about it, and someone chimes in with “oh they weren’t serious, can’t you take a joke?” So you can imagine what this is like for women of color.

It is a very, very common tactic for people of color to be silenced via tone policing and respectability politics. Tone policing and respectability politics are very closely related, especially in this context. The idea is that if Alyssa had just written that post in just the right way, it would have been more palatable to white people, and therefore okay to write. The idea that if she had tried to be “understanding” or “see it from their perspective” or understand that it’s “just a joke” are all ways to silence and de-legitimize any accurate, valid criticisms that were made of those tweets. It effectively re-routes the conversation away from the real issues, and to the person trying to bring them up. It’s essentially an ad hominem attack in disguise. 

We see respectability politics in media when people of color who act or dress or speak like white people are afforded more respect. Or any time that a person of color is pulled over and people say, “well if they had just done what the police officer asked...” There is a pervasive idea that if people just “act” properly, aka if you act white, then the police won’t feel antagonized and try to kill arrest you. If we are nice enough, meek enough, smile enough, etc. then we will be accepted.

When we tone police, we refuse to allow marginalized people the right to be angry. We say that "hey, we can only have this discussion if you leave emotion, which you rightfully feel, at the door, and we can only continue this discussion if you behave in a way that makes me feel comfortable." But guess what? It isn’t about you! These discussions are often highly uncomfortable. There is no nice way to tell someone they are being racist. And yet somehow, that is the ever-moving goalpost. It seems reasonable, right? “Just be civil, be nice, don’t insult each other!” And there is that. But those criteria change constantly, to the point where anyone (white) at any time can say “WHOA WHOA THIS IS MAKE ME UNCOMFORTABLE???” Then we find ourselves at zero, and suddenly the focus of attention has shifted away from the actual problem.

Before we go further, I want to say this: people have a right to be angry. They do not need to make their anger palatable or tasteful for the consumption of others (read: white people). 

We saw this last summer, and I’m not sure how the message didn’t get across. But people are rightfully angry about racism. They are angry about the murder of people of color by police, they are angry about lack of quality education, or clean water, of centuries of oppression that have led to this very moment when all of that ceases to matter because a white woman’s feelings got hurt one time. 

And that is what pisses me off so much. There is no way in this world that we could criticize tweets like those that everyone would agree with, and that everyone would “approve” of, that would be “nice” enough and yet still be impactful and make the authors of those tweets understand the gravity of what they have done. 

The least we can do is allow one another to express our anger, our outrage, because it’s highly likely that those people know exactly what the fuck they are doing, and they do not fucking care. By criticizing a woman of color for the way in which she chose to engage with this topic, we are avoiding the issue and letting the people in those tweets off the hook. 

There were many responses to that post that were positive, that agreed with Alyssa. There are a ton of people who disagree with those tweets, who find them disgusting, who understand exactly how and why they are problematic. That should be what we are talking about. Getting to the core of the argument, on that post or any about racism or other problematic behavior in fandom, requires getting past our own egos. It requires us to be able to step back, say “hm this thing is frustrating but there is a bigger picture here”. It’s not easy, and I recognize that. 

The fact that it is a common tactic though? To say “hey this hurt me personally and so I’m going to ignore any valid points you made?” That feeds directly into centuries of white supremacy because it, once again, silences POC and makes them try to play a losing game. And they will always lose, because no matter how hard they try to play the white game, the goalposts are constantly shifting. So you know what? Fuck the game, and fuck respectability politics, and fuck tone policing and “uwu be nice guys” because when it comes to things like racism and sexism, I don’t expect the people who deserve to be criticized to be nice. In fact, trying to be nice only serves to fuck POC over in the end.

Indeed, in response to that post, certain blogs have taken the opportunity to position themselves as “the nice ones” or “the ones who would never” or “uwu let’s be nice guys” while completely ignoring the fact that a woman of color was attacked for calling out racism. And yes - that was the point of her post. People getting hung up on mentions of her degree are (intentionally or not, it doesn’t matter) completely obfuscating the fact that that is not what her post was about, which was to call out disgusting behavior. idk how many words the post actually was, but essentially, people are focusing on 5% of it to the detriment of the 95% that was actually really important shit. These types of vagueblog posts about the issue fall into exactly what I am talking about - these are people who have decided to look at this issue, see how Alyssa (and anyone else who dares speak up) has approached it, and intentionally try to act like they are “better” because they can be “rational” and “kind”. Newsflash, if you don’t have something to be angry about, then being “nice” about racism isn’t that much of a flex. If it didn’t bother you, then congratulations. That doesn’t make you better than people it did bother. You just got lucky this time, and decided to use that to your advantage to look like the good guy.

I am not saying that all calls for peace are doing this. Obviously it’s what we all want. This is the worst I have seen this fandom in the 4+ years I’ve been here. But we cannot have that by ignoring the real problems and pretending that if we are all just nice to each other, then we will solve racism and sexism and all bullying in the fandom will stop. 

So combining all of this - the gaslighting, the tone policing, and what do you get? You get a fandom that refuses to actually engage critically with its own problems and take accountability for them. You get a fandom that decides that it’s easier to be distracted by this one mean comment over here than it is to engage in the fact that you know what, the culture in this fandom has actually turned incredibly disgusting and a lot of people are just okay with it. You’ve got a fandom that is using the tools of white supremacy to avoid the discussions that should actually be taking place. Maybe people don’t realize that that’s what they are doing. But if someone still thinks that after reading this post, then godspeed my friend, I hope you enjoy Twitter.

Okay so my last thing I want to say is that I didn’t come to all of this knowledge fresh from the womb. I do a lot of work, in my personal life and my professional life, to be better. So here is a list of books that I have found particularly helpful:

How to Be An Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi

Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America also by Ibram X. Kendi

White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo (side note, I was kinda meh about this one but the chapter “White Women’s Tears” is particularly helpful)

So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo

Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment by Patricia Hill Collins

I’m not going to talk specifically about Alyssa’s post anymore, but if anyone wants to continue talking about these broader issues going on in the fandom, I am game. (I really should be grading papers though, so it might take a bit.)

[specialability]

Andor Ep 5: The axe forgets but the tree remembers

I wrote *this* thousand word meta essay when I could barely keep my eyes open and then when I gave up and went to bed I couldn't fall asleep. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

A theme of "The axe forgets but the tree remembers" seems to be: how the personal becomes political.

You are meant to be uncomfortable with Syril's overbearing control freak mother because it clearly shows their relationship and why he has grown into an adult incapable of making adult decisions. They are always framed at the kitchen table, encircled by the walls, stuck together in this toxic relationship. He could leave but he doesn't. He could go somewhere else, do anything else, but he doesn't. He is like the teenager who says they want to be treated like an adult but then sulks and acts childish when things don't work out. That is what the space cereal is about. She is infantilizing him throughout their scenes together.

At the same time, she is positioning herself as subordinate to whoever Uncle Harlo is. She prides herself on her understanding of the hierarchies of the world. And it seems to me she has dedicated her life to teaching her son how to navigate being subordinate. She wants him to be absolutely perfect because that's what you have to do to integrate yourself with the powerful. Nagging him about his posture. The way she describes to him how she asked for the favour, the words she used, the attitude she held, is all very intentional. "This is the Correct way to behave because this is how powerful people behave" and "This is how you make powerful people like you". It's about having the appearance of being the 'right kind of person' so you fit in and hide your shameful weak real self.

By the way, this isn't just fascism, it is absolutely classic white supremacy.

It would not be shocking to me if the mother grew up in poverty and bootstrapped her way up to this little apartment that briefly gets sunlight every day. The way she dresses and wears tall heels even when just sitting around the house. The pristine clean kitchen. When you've been taught that you have to be perfect above all others to be worth something you can't possibly ever even admit to yourself that you failed. It has to be someone else's fault.

I would not be shocked if Uncle Harlo turns out to the kind of person who "makes things happen" for Imperial higher-ups, a kind of tacitly accepted mobster, or even a leader of a radical militant wing of Imperialism who act under orders but with plausible deniability. The fact that it is a "family" favour and not a favour owed to the mother herself is also interesting but I don't know where it will lead. It implies the family member in question is dead or gone.

The other awkward family dynamic comes from Mon Mothma's family. Sniping at each other over the breakfast table is very familiar to me and I'm thankfully far enough away from it now to find the similarity funny. The child learns by watching their parents that you don't just have conversations, you have to win every interaction. You have to pick people apart and find their weak points so you can stick the knife in them before they do it to you. You also see how the daughter has probably in the past been forced to choose between her parents. This time, she has chosen her father. Mon Mothma clearly does not understand where he daughter is coming from, only sees the betrayal. The child seems selfish, but she is allowed to be. She is a child. It is the adults in her life who should be acting more maturely.

Putting it simply, Mon Mothma's work as a career politician and revolutionary may be done with an end goal of making the world a better place for many people, but she is making life miserable for her own daughter. How is that righteous? And is it worth it? The mother forgets the damage she has done, but the daughter remembers.

And it's possible that down the line this very personal issue of familial relationships will have an impact on the Rebellion itself. Because as much as everyone wants to believe they chose their political beliefs through reasoning, a lot of it simply comes down to our own secret wounds. Why would the daughter choose to oppose the Empire when it seems quite clear to her that it is the liberal members of the Senate and the Rebellion – in the shape of her mother – that have wronged her? (This question may have already been answered in the lore, but I'm not going to look it up.)

The final reference to family and personal connections is from Skeen. Since we are automatically on Cassian's side Skeen seems irrationally threatened by Cassian. His actions seem overblown and paranoid. But we learn that he was a (probably conscripted) soldier, possibly in the kind of war where he fought against other anti-Empire people. And we learn that his brother was cruelly driven to suicide by a petty official who destroyed his ancestral farm. He is used to mistrusting people as a method of survival and especially outsiders. It's not an excuse, but it's an explanation. Cassian admits he is being motivated by money, and seems quite uncomfortable with the concept of fighting for a cause. He is skeptical of the whole group because of that. But once he learns that someone else is there for a "petty" reason like revenge, he understands better his own relationship to this fight. It doesn't really matter what has brought him here, only that he is here. (Of course by having this emotional reveal Skeen has raised a huge death flag, so good luck Skeen!)

So we arrive at the final theme of the story: the weak and wounded remember what was done to them and that is what motivates them to fight. What side they fight on can really just depend on who they think wielded the axe. But at the end of the day, the the Empire is hurting everyone. It seems extremely likely that no matter how hard Syril tries to redeem himself he will never win a position in the sun. Even those who seem to have more power are struggling in a trap. No one is free.

[pumpumdemsugah]

Back when there were lots of Black people on here, when Black women would talk about our experiences it would be about desexualisation, hyper-sexualisation, people treating racialised misogyny as if it's not misogyny but now when Black women come up it's a bunch of whites saying Black women experience transphobia and never actually going into any detail about why Black trans women in Brazil and the US high murder and poverty rates ( it's the sex industry, white supremacy impoverishing Black people and their families kicking them out ). Cis women can never relate or experience what trans women do but somehow an entire race of them is experiencing transphobia, this isn't race related though, don't ask how because that's how the fascist win : )

Turning Black women into a modern pseudo 3rd gender because of our race ( and intersex ppl which is funny coming from the genitalia doesn't equal gender crowd) isn't wildly racist and othering because trans white people get to feel included . Now the stereotyping of Black women created by slave masters to excuse mass rape and chattel slavery wasn't dehumanisation but Black women having actual weird bodies that just don't fit because there is ONE type of 'Black body' but this isn't white supremacy

White supremacy is never the core issue for white people playing solidarity so they always get to be relevant in Black women's stories

White supremacy and the legacy of slavery is never central when these people bring up Black women just vaguely gesturing at transphobia without explaining ( why avoid race ?) even though Black men are subject to the same legacy of slavery, they're not experiencing some weird gender body thing, unlike Black women but this isn't misogynoir. This type of othering isn't racist because it's solidarity if you shut your brain off so now radiqueer whites feel comfortable bringing up Black women unprompted when they're questioned on saying something stupid. This isn't using Black women as rhetorical shields because some Black person on twitter agrees with me and is also pushing using different pronouns for when Black and white people talk to them. This person doesn't have a self hate issue and hasn't internalised being Othered because they agree with me

Almost like they're opportunistic racist that are scared of Black men so don't bring them up unless they're downplaying sexism and misogyny that Black women never experience in a "normal" way because whitey said so. Treating Black women as Othered things to compare themselves to to feel human isn't racist because they said the right combo of catchphrases and said intersectionality.

[aro-comics]

Fashion Analysis (Part 2: Outside of Amatonormativity Alone)

[Note: This post is a part of a series analyzing self-expression, fashion, aromanticism, and how they interact with other parts of identity. For full context please read the whole thing!]

Outside of Amatonormativity Alone: Sexism, Homophobia (and/or Transphobia), Racism, Ableism, and Other Factors That can Impact Self Expression 

My comic was originally meant to be a light hearted joke. I’d always been told I’d want to dress up one day, be pretty and feminine once I fell in love with a boy (BLEGH). I was so certain that I would never do that, and now … here we are. I put lots of effort into my appearance, present feminine, all in the hopes I’ll impress a very special someone - a potential employer at a networking event. I think there’s a certain irony to all of this, and I do find it funny that I managed to both be wrong and completely subvert amatonormative stereotypes! 

But having the chance to think about the whole situation, I realize now that my changes in presentation reflect far more. The pressure I felt to dress differently are still influenced by fundamental forms of discrimination in society, and I would be remiss to not address these inherent factors that were tied with my experiences alongside my aromanticism. So in this section, I will briefly cover some of these factors and summarize how they can influence people’s self expression as a whole, before discussing my own experiences and how these factors all intersect. 

Sexism

The pressure on women In This Society to uphold arbitrary norms is ever present and often harmful, and while I wish I had the time to discuss the impacts of every influence the patriarchy has on personal expression, to even try to cover a fraction of it would be impractical at best for this essay. Instead, since the original comic focuses on professionalism and presentation, this is what I will talk about here. 

Beauty standards are a specific manifestation of sexism that have a deep impact on how people perceive women. It’s a complicated subject that’s also tied with factors like capitalism, white supremacy, classism, and more, but to summarize the main sentiment: Women are expected to be beautiful. Or at least, conform to the expectations of “feminine” “beauty” as ascribed by the culture at large. 

They also tend to be considered exclusively as this idea that "women need to be beautiful to secure their romantic prospects, which subsequently determines their worth as human beings. The problematic implications of this sentiment have been called out time and time again (and rightfully so), however there is an often overlooked second problematic element to beauty standards, as stated in the quote below: 

“Beauty standards are the individual qualifications women are expected to meet in order to embody the “feminine beauty ideal” and thus, succeed personally and professionally” 

- Jessica DeFino. (Source 1) 

… To succeed personally, and professionally. 

The “Ugly Duckling Transformation” by Mina Le (Source 2) is a great video essay that covers the topic of conforming to beauty standards through the common “glow up” trope present in many (female focused) films from the early 2000s. 

“In most of these movies, the [main character] is a nice person, but is bullied or ignored because of her looks.”

Mina Le, (timestamp 4:02-4:06)

Generally, by whatever plot device necessary, the ugly duckling will adopt a new “improved” presentation that includes makeup, a new haircut, and a new wardrobe. While it is not inherently problematic for a woman to be shown changing to embrace more feminine traits, there are a few problems with how the outcomes of these transformations are always depicted and what they imply. For starters, this transformation is shown to be the key that grants the protagonist her wishes and gives her confidence and better treatment by her peers. What this is essentially saying is that women are also expected to follow beauty standards to be treated well in general, not only in a romantic context, and deviation from these norms leads to the consequences of being ostracized. 

The other problematic element of how these transformations are portrayed are the fact that generally the ONLY kind of change that is depicted in popular media is one in the more feminine direction. Shanspeare, another video essayist on YouTube, investigates this phenomenon in more detail in “the tomboy figure, gender expression, and the media that portrays them” (Source 4). In this video, Shaniya explains that “tomboy” characters are only ever portrayed as children - which doesn’t make any sense at face value, considering that there ARE plenty of masculine adult women in real life. But through the course of the video (and I would highly recommend giving it a watch! It is very good), it becomes evident that the “maturity” aspect of coming of age movies inherently tie the idea of growth with “learning” to become more feminine. Because of the prevalence of these storylines (as few mainstream plots will celebrate a woman becoming more masculine and embracing gender nonconformity) it becomes clear that femininity is fundamentally associated with maturity. It also implies that masculinity in women is not only not preferred, it is unacceptable to be considered mature. Both of these sentiments are ones that should be questioned, too. 

Overall, I think it is clear that these physical presentation expectations, even if not as restrictive as historical dress codes for women have been, are still inherently sexist (not to mention harmful by also influencing people to have poor self image and subsequent mental health disorders). Nobody should have to dress in conformity with gender norms to be considered “acceptable”, not only desirable, which leads us to the second part of this section. 

Homophobia (and/or Transphobia)

So what happens when women don’t adhere to social expectations of femininity? (Or in general, someone chooses to present in a way that challenges the gender binary and their AGAB, but for the sake of simplicity I will discuss it from my particular lens as a cis woman who is pansexual). 

There are a lot of nuances, of course, to whether it’s right that straying from femininity as a woman (or someone assumed to be a woman) will automatically get read a certain way by society. But like it or not, right or not, if you look butch many people WILL see you as either gay, (or trans-masculine, which either way is not a cishet woman). This is tied to the fact that masculinity is something historically associated with being WLW (something we will discuss later). 

This association of breaking gender norms in methods of dress with being perceived as a member of the LGBTQ+ community has an influence on how people may choose to express themselves, because LGBTQ+ discrimination is very real, and it can be very dangerous in many parts of the world. 

I think it’s very easy to write off claims in particular that women are pressured into dressing femininely when it is safer to do so in your area; but I really want to remind everyone that not everyone has the luxury of presenting in a gender non-conforming way. This pressure to conform does exist in many parts of the world, and can be lethal when challenged.

And even if you’re not in an extremely anti-LGBTQ+ environment/places that are considered “progressive” (like Canada), there are still numerous microagressions/non-lethal forms of discrimination that are just as widespread. According to Statistics Canada in 2019: 

Close to half (47%) of students at Canadian postsecondary institutions witnessed or experienced discrimination on the basis of gender, gender identity or sexual orientation (including actual or perceived gender, gender identity or sexual orientation).

(Source 3)

Fundamentally this additional pressure that exists when one chooses to deviate from gender norms is one that can not be ignored in the conversation when it comes to how people may choose to express themselves visually, and I believe the impacts that this factor has and how it interacts with the other factors discussed should be considered. 

Neurodivergence (In general): 

In general, beauty standards/expectations for how a “mature” adult should dress can often include clothing that creates sensory issues for many autistic people. A thread on the National Austistic Forum (Source 6) contains a discussion where different austistic people describe their struggles with formal dress codes and the discomfort of being forced to wear stiff/restrictive clothing, especially when these dress codes have no practical purpose for the work they perform. If you’re interested in learning more on this subject, the Autisticats also has a thread on how school dress codes specifically can be harmful to Autistic people (Source 7). 

In addition to potentially dressing differently (which as we have already covered can be a point of contention in one’s perception and reception by society as a whole), neurodivergence is another layer of identity that tends to be infantilized. Eden from the Autsticats has detailed their experiences with this in source 5. 

Both of these factors can provide a degree of influence on how people choose to express themselves and/or how they may be perceived by society, and are important facets of a diverse and thoughtful exploration of the ways self-expression can be impacted by identity. 

Also, while on this topic, I just want to take a chance to highlight the fact that we should question what is considered “appropriate”, especially “professionally appropriate”, because the “traditional” definitions of these have historically been used to discriminate against minorities. Much of what gets defined as “unprofessional” or otherwise “inappropriate” has racist implications - as an example, there is a history of black hairstyles being subjected to discriminatory regulation. Other sources I have provided at the end of this document (8 and 9) list examples of these instances.  

Racism (being Chinese, specifically in this case): 

For this section, I won’t be going into much depth at all, because I actually have a more detailed comic on this subject lined up. 

So basically, if you were not aware, East Asian (EA) people tend to be infantilized and viewed as more childish (Source 10). In particular, unless an EA woman is super outgoing and promiscuous (the “Asian Bad Girl” stereotype, see Source 10), IN MY OPINION AND EXPERIENCE it’s easy to be type casted as the other end of the spectrum: the quiet, boring nerd. On top of this too, I’ve had experiences with talking to other EA/SEA people - where they themselves would repeatedly tell me that “Asians are just less mature”,  something about it being a “cultural thing” (Yeah … I don’t know either. Maybe it’s internalized racism?). 

Either way, being so easily perceived as immature (considering everything discussed so far) is also tied to conformity to beauty standards and other factors such as sexism and homophobia, which I believe makes for a complex intersection of identity. 

[Note from Author: For Part 3, click here!]

[manforsale]

It’s funny considering yesterday they were trying to save face by getting a Puerto Rican fan (called them Mexican bc what other country are Latines from??) to tell them that their fic wasn’t violently racist. And now a little over 24 hours later they’re apologizing again saying that they understand what they did wrong. Really do you understand? Do you understand that upholding white supremacy is a serious issue and a mindset that takes more than a day to start removing yourself from from or is it just because the big meanies on tumblr started calling you out?? And then the transphobic vitriol that’s present in every disgusting “femininity is better than masculinity” post they make and there are SEVERAL. It falls into borderline TERF rhetoric if it isn’t already terfy. It’s hilarious at this point how pathetic they are because they STILL found little ways to victimize themself in that apology. They AGAIN put the blame on trans people and people of color for ‘misrepresenting’ them. This is a person who goes on doing all the crap they do until someone calls them out and that’s when they’re like “oh but I never meant to do that I never knew that that was a bad thing uwu” and then after a bit of time passes they do it again. People like Koraliss never learn from their mistakes because they’re too concerned with how they feel indignant about being called out and not about the people they hurt.

[icarus-suraki]

Since I seem to enjoy Starting Shit on the Internet today, I'm going to share some thoughts on the OnlyFans debacle.

First: sex work is real work. I said it, I believe it, that settles it.

It seems a lot of people (often young women, I've noticed?) are really celebrating OnlyFans banning all NSFW content. They’re having a great time saying things about how they hope all the (cis) men who liked NSFW OnlyFans content die mad about the NSFW ban and so on. It’s downright gleeful. And it seems like they're celebrating on the grounds of stopping trafficking and protecting minors and so on. And that's a noble thing, ending trafficking and protecting minors--do not misunderstand me: trafficking and abuse of minors is a real and serious issue and I absolutely support ending trafficking, rescuing victims, and protecting minors.

It is my opinion (insert Vine here) that OnlyFans banning NSFW content is going to hurt sex workers and also will do absolutely nothing to protect minors or stop trafficking.

A considerable number of people here in the US lost their jobs during the pandemic. And, among those people, are those who desperately need income. They're of age, they're legally allowed to do these things, and they need some way to survive. And, in the absence of a UBI or even a country that seems to care about the wellbeing of its own citizens, you have to find a way to survive. And a lot of the people who found themselves unemployed discovered that they could earn enough of an income through OnlyFans to actually survive. They could keep the lights on, get food, pay for medication, put gas in their car so they could drive to job interviews. It became a means of self-employment.

Are you thinking of the people on OnlyFans and elsewhere who are doing sex work as actual people? Or are they just a mass, just a concept, onto which you can project your ideals of Purity Culture? You’re giggling gleefully about unhappy men with blue balls, but I feel like you’re forgetting the women who are still stuck in a Capitalist situation.

"But they didn't start doing it willingly!" You can't prove that that's true for everyone on the site. You cannot prove that. You do not speak for everyone. Maybe some people turned to OnlyFans out of desperation, sure. But others may have felt relieved that they had it there. Others may have even felt liberated or enjoyed the work. I don't know. And you don't know either.

"But if you make sex work legal, that makes trafficking easier!" Yes, yes, I've seen the whole "Nordic System" argument. I've read it. My issue with it is that everyone is using it in the wrong way.

Remember when Oregon decriminalized possession of small amounts of most drugs? It was a decision made on the grounds of harm reduction. If you won’t get arrested for having some crack in your pocket, you can feel safer. Look at what the War on Drugs has accomplished: legal slavery and police brutality. It doesn’t work. And it’s an excellent experiment to try something else.

If sex work is declared protected or legal (and banks and credit cards cannot therefore refuse payment made to legal providers of the service), then any sex worker who is threatened, abused, harmed, attacked can make a report without fears of repercussions for doing sex work. Do you know how many sex workers are killed? If only there were some way to report a threat or a risk to the police without repercussions...

Beyond that: if someone is trafficked and they make a report about what's happening to them, it can be taken seriously because sex work is considered a legitimate area and trafficking would be very much outside the laws related to sex work. Same thing with minors in the same situation: it’s outside the laws, so it’s a crime, but someone reporting it would not be held as a criminal themselves. Collateral damage.

To go back to Oregon for a minute: if you decriminalize possession of small amounts of drugs, are you going to stop drug deals altogether? No. Oregon knows that too. But you can assist the people who do use drugs when they come forward with information about, say, murders connected to drug deals. And you can also provide a means for them to leave their situation if they so choose. 

Yes, ACAB, but we can at least provide a measure of protection to people who need assistance. See how this works? If a sex worker knows about minors being abused or trafficking going on and they make a report about it, they themselves don't have to worry about getting caught up and charged for also being engaged in sex work.

More protection for more people.

Lastly, and this might make you mad, you can thank the US Conservatives for a lot of this.

It’s the good ol’ Moral Majority come back from the dead. Again.

Any time someone yells about pedophiles or trafficking, it gets everyone concerned--and rightly so. But the problem is that it immediately becomes "if you're not overtly against it, then you must be tacitly for it, so agree to this bill." And so, anyone who's progressive or vaguely left-leaning signs off on legislations or statements about how sex work is bad and sinful.

But in doing this one thing, the US Conservatives and especially the Conservative Evangelicals of the US, can then convince more and more people to sign off on a longer and longer list of laws or beliefs that the Conservative Evangelicals want to push through. That’s their goal: to push through their ideas of a Good and Wholesome Christian Nation, with all the white supremacy and misogyny and homophobia and transphobia that entails.

So you start off with the existing laws regarding sex work, then you start sliding into "all of these kinds of sex work are illegal" and then "all sex work is illegal" and then "all pornography of all kinds is banned" and then you start slipping into lawmaking like ending access to birth control (because that encourages casual sex) and ending the rights of LGBTQ people (because "perversion"). You've seen it before, you could see it again. (And yet we can't seem to get child marriage completely banned in the US. Funny how that works.)

I don't mean to "slippery slope" this stuff but, trust me, it seems bad now but it can get so much worse. And I hope it doesn’t get worse.

“If you’re a feminist, how can you be in favor of sex work?” Because sex work is work. And, if you look back through history, you’ll find that banning sex work and punishing sex workers didn’t make things better, it drove everything down deeper and made everything worse. Less safety, less security, more risk, more punishment.

It seems like a shallow version of feminism if all you’re doing is sneering at cis men and turning up your nose at sex workers. I think you ought to reexamine your beliefs.

[tired-fandom-ndn]

I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on RPF, if you’re willing to share? /gen

RPF is a very complicated thing that I have varied thoughts on?

RPF is, honestly, not about the people themselves. It's about their public personas, characters that share their names and some things with the people they're based on. We don't actually know anything about the celebrities that we write about, only what they choose to share (and how much of that is true is up to them).

(Disclaimer: I'm using a general "we" here. I do not write or read RPF.)

RPF is actually something that people have been writing for centuries, about royalty originally and then shifting over to over public figures. It's not like it's something new or surprising or even particularly weird.

With that being said, the way we approach RPF now has radically changed because we lack the distance between ourselves and these figures. We can interact directly with these people, and often do, through things like twitter and those people can access the things written about them if they choose to. Some writers send those people their RPF directly.

That lack of distance means a lack of privacy and personal boundaries. People ask their favorite celebrities invasive questions about their relationships and personal lives, try to pressure them into coming out as [insert identity], pick apart every interaction they have with other people, and have a direct impact on their relationships.

You could argue that this is normal, that fans are interacting with the persona rather than the person, but that about internet celebrities? Youtubers and podcasters and the like, people who are just chilling and doing their own thing and having fun? They're not real celebrities, they don't have PR teams or people managing their social media or anything like that. Many of them are still active on sites like tumblr or part of fandom spaces themselves.

We're at a point where we as fandoms need to really sit down and rethink the "rules" we've had for RPF because things are changing and we can't continue this way. Many of the internet celebrities people are writing about are minors, some of them related, and I'm worried for their health and safety with people treating them like they're characters.

Historical RPF is both more simple and more complicated than modern RPF for different reasons. The privacy issues aren't relevant here, but what about the social messages we're sending?

When we write stories about slave owners being so uwu cute, or turn people who orchestrated the deaths of thousands of Natives into a fun cartoon character, what are we telling the people directly impacted by those things? Is it ethical to write funny stories about a man who was known for raping slaves? What about someone who used biological warfare to commit genocide? In this age of civil rights movements and rising prejudice and the revival of white supremacy, can we afford to do anything that sanitizes the actions of those before us?

Don't write about school shooters. No, I don't care what your reasoning is. I don't fucking care. Those people still have living victims. Their dead victims still have grieving family members. Many of those families are still being harassed and accused of faking their loved ones' deaths. Have some fucking compassion.

[itsclydebitches]

Never seen the musical Hamilton (big fan of Daveed Diggs though), but I saw someone go off on how terrible he was. How the musical glories a slave owner and all that. How should we go about telling stories of our history The musical is mostly POC and seeks to retell this story for a modern audience. Is that right? Should we glorify our founding fathers who were kind of shitty people. Or do we support this reinterpretation by the very minorities who weren't even considered human back then?

People tend to use the term “glorify” and the similar “romanticize” without understanding what those words mean. They’re used as catch-all terms for “Thing I don’t like” because it’s understood that (like “problematic”) they’re hot-button words that immediately make people wary. That’s the point. If you say, “Hamilton romanticizes slave owners” that sounds so damning that most people will accept the argument at face value. Those three words do the work for you because if a story is romanticizing/glorifying a Bad Thing or the story is just all around problematic... I don’t want to be the one to defend that. Those terms are useful for shutting down conversations before they’ve even begun. 

Thing is though, Hamilton doesn’t romanticize the founding fathers. To romanticize/glorify something is to present it as unjustifiably good, to idealize it unrealistically and work to make it more appealing than it actually is. That doesn’t happen in Hamilton. Putting aside the work Lin did reclaiming that history and retelling it for a cast made up almost entirely of people of color, the story itself acknowledges all the flaws these men had, including the horrors of slavery. Though not the centerpiece of the show, it’s far from ignored. Laurens is working to end slavery. There’s a refrain about “Are we free?” as it applies to the war and the answer is continually “No” because others are still enslaved. Jefferson’s perception that he “can’t believe that we’re free” is looked down upon. He’s explicitly called out by Hamilton in the cabinet battles, reminding the audience that most of his holier than thou attitude stems from the boost slavery gave him: 

A civics lesson from a slaver, hey neighbor Your debts are paid 'cause you don't pay for labor “We plant seeds in the South. We create.” Yeah, keep ranting We know who's really doing the planting

That’s in no way romanticizing! Despite how staggeringly negative this is, some people seem to want a heavy-handed disclaimer. Like Lin should pause halfway through the show, speak directly to the audience, and go, “Hey, everyone. I just wanted to take a moment and remind you that slavery is, in fact, very bad. I know the show has been sending that message from the get-go and that we’re a cast of those most impacted by that legacy, but just in case it wasn’t clear: none of us support that the founding fathers did this.” 

The founding fathers were absolutely shitty people. You know what’s beautiful about Hamilton? It shows them being shitty people. I could give you a laundry list of times in the show where they’re depicted as both flawed and truly horrible. Again, not glorifying. The viewers may choose to glorify them in fic/art/conversations/etc. despite all the work Lin did, but that’s not the fault of the show. It’s likewise not his fault if people are unable to tell the difference between romanticizing and acknowledging accuracy. Meaning, real life isn’t like a cartoon. The bad guys we see around us - like the founding fathers - are not going to be mustache-twirling horrors with no redeeming qualities because we find that simplicity comforting. Evil people are charismatic. They’re intelligent. Witty, humorous, kind to so many others provide they’re the “right” kind of person... Writing Thomas Jefferson as the kind of guy you might want to be friends with isn’t romanticizing, it’s accurate. And it’s really important to acknowledge that. Racists aren’t villains hiding out in some super evil lair just waiting to commit hate crimes. They’re the friend you grew up with and love to death... who is also now going to Trump rallies. It’s your brother who is great to you but talks shit at the dinner table every night. It’s your upstanding boss, pillar of the community, beloved by all... who is using that power to get away with heinous things. It’s important to acknowledge - and teach - that this is what racism looks like and it’s something Hamilton does beautifully. Part of the point is to create that discomfort. The feeling of, “Wow! I love Jefferson in this. He’s so cool, charming, funny and - oh fuck yeah he’s got slaves, shit.” Because that’s what real life is like. The racists aren’t going to come out on stage spewing their rhetoric so you understand precisely how horrible they are from the get-go and never, ever have to acknowledge that there are parts of their personality you really like. They’re the Thomas Jeffersons of the world: charming you in the morning and raping his slave at night. 

To acknowledge that isn’t glorifying him. Hamilton the story is explicitly anti-slavery while likewise acknowledging that the founding fathers were complex human beings who, yes, achieved some great things even while they did other, truly horrific things. To deny that is to teach that racists aren’t anything like that person in your life who also did this great thing... even though they are. Hamilton didn’t shy away from that and it’s a story that expects a certain level of critical thinking from its audience. Frankly a pretty low bar of, “We’re a group of minorities forcibly taking this narrative for ourselves and using it to comment on these issues... that is in no way the same thing as glorifying those issues.” It’s basically fanfiction with Lin (the fan) taking an incredibly offensive canon (history) and going, “I’m going to reclaim this as best I can without, you know, totally erasing what I was given.” It’s also like fanfiction in that it is fiction. Hamilton takes a great many liberties with history because that’s what art does. It’s not a textbook. To claim that anyone who enjoys the Hamilton version of Thomas Jefferson is a bad person is like saying you’re a bad person for liking Darth Vader, or Hannibal, or any other bad guy given a sympathetic twist. The acknowledgement, “Just because I like this horrible person in a story doesn’t mean I agree with them...” applies to Hamilton too. We’re not discussing the historical figure here. We’re discussing a semi-fictional amalgamation Lin created for a broadway show. 

Is Hamilton perfect? Of course not. No story ever is and if we tear all two hours and forty minutes of it apart we’ll undoubtedly find something objectively “problematic” because that’s just how creating art works. But overall I think the show did an excellent job of getting its - complicated - messages across. Those who are #cancelhamilton aren’t paying attention to what Hamilton is: a reclaiming of white supremacy, a commentary on the malleability of narratives (that is, what narrative does America normally spout about how great this country is?), and an acknowledgement of the complicated face of racism - among other things. Again, if people are reducing that to “You made me like a slave owner character therefore you’re romanticizing him” that’s not the fault of the text. 

[synthmusic91]

thoughts? kjfhlkjdfh asking bc i rb'd the original post from u a bit ago because i agreed w/ original poster but i just saw this rb of it and wanted to know what u thought. ciaran(.)tumblr(.)com /post/652413157345820673/there-is-a-genre-of-posts-thats-obsessed-with-the

well first of all i hope this isn't a bait ask. this reply really doesn't deserve the time and effort i put into refuting it, but there was a point in time when i was emotionally confused by these..."arguments", so whoever u are, anon, i hope this is helpful. i also recommend some distance - literally, "go outside and touch grass", which is a lot more difficult than it sounds, but it needs to be done. anyway, here's my "analysis":

for context, here's what the post in question said:

and the tags:

at a high level, we can see that what ciaran is saying doesn't really respond to what OP was talking about. for this reason, i'm not going to bring in much of what OP said, because it's uncontested in this context, and look at ciaran's reply. i'll try to break this up...

EDIT: i had a long-ass response here, but then i realized it was dumb because the source material is dumb. i cut out most of it, but here are the highlights.

"there is a genre of posts that’s obsessed with the notion that fandom is something much larger, more prevalent, and more able to affect the way media is processed and consumed, than it actually is in reality."

so, as we can all see on tiktok and, indeed, on the electronic lore olympus billboard that takes up a side of a literal skyscraper, fandom is no longer the niche thing that "fandom olds" make it out to be. also, we can't ignore how many (white) fandom players go on and work in the industry (cassandra clare, whoever wrote 50 shades, man idk much of anything so there's probably many more). so this comment is sort of myopic. and since this is what characterizes the rest of the reply, well...it's not great.

also don't look up lore olympus; it's basically a dd/////lg fanfic that happens to be one of the most popular series on the line webtoon app, which is rated for teens...and for $1 to the creator's patreon, you can view not sfw p*dophilic art, so. also obviously i didnt do that; there was a video essay about this. i can't find it though

"ironically but understandably, these posts are made by people who are so terminally fandom-poisoned that they ascribe phenomenal power to it, and think of it as some great evil that must be defeated (by making posts on tumblr, which is obviously a very influential thing to do)"

"fandom-poisoned" is such a nebulous term, especially since it appears to mean "has had some really significant, (in this context) bad experiences with fandom." this is, first of all, a huge assumption to make about a stranger, and second, not the own they think it is. i'm just going to link this post, and hopefully you can see how it relates.

anyway, the "making posts on tumblr is meaningless" is um...interesting, seeing as off the top of my head i can think of two very influential tumblr blogs that talk about really important issues, Gradient Lair and Red Light Politics. I don't know as much about Red Light Politics, but Gradient Lair is frequently cited by academics (not getting into academia nonsense now but... -_-). also, they sound more pissed that the original post did gain traction, but whatever. this paragraph doesn't really make sense, but nothing here does, because i wasn't given much to work with.

"...and then because these people have basically no imagination and unfailingly pick on others for their own faults, they project their own experiences on everyone they perceive as being more ‘in fandom’ than them,"

jesus christ. i'm going not say anything about the tone of this because i put too much effort into this for some rando to call me a cyberbully.

i think what they're thinking about is how there appear to be some "fandom critical" people who try to, holistically, "ruin everyone's good time" by "stirring up drama" about popular fandom artists/writers/whoever else idk. oftentimes these people will also make jokes about fandom whatever, seemingly picking on random people's interests.

however, if you look at the long history of fandom racism, fandom's normalization of p*dophilia, and even general fandom harassment, and then you look at fandom's visceral, unwarranted reaction to criticism regarding these things, you can quickly see that disillusionment towards fandom is entirely reasonable. as for the joking, well...this an oversimplification but not everyone needs to like what you like. it sounds like they just need to get over themself.

and go “You, a 27 year old queer blogger who is into [tv show/anime/movie] an embarrassing amount, are now going to be the face of Capitalism” with no self-reflection or critical thought given to how fucking cringe it is-"

so, i'm regretting putting so much effort into this because this is so fucking long and i have to analyze this nonsense...it feels like i'm back in my feminist thought class. nightmarish. but anyway, this seems to deal with- [CUT FOR LENGTH. nothing important was missed].

EDIT 2: actually here's a summary of what I had. it deserves better than to be a response to this nonsense, but first it detailed how this took 1. the op's post and 2. a comment that we don't even know if op agreed with and misinterpreted that, and threw quite a fit about this- and i hate to say this because this term is misused so often by redditors, but- strawman.

I then went on to discuss how, for example, PoC can uphold systems of white supremacy. while obviously no person of color is going to be the "face" of white supremacy, the discussion still needs to be had, especially within that group. similarly, while fandom constituents may not be the face of capitalism, there needs to be a discussion, within fandom, on how they support and are defined by capitalist (and other) systems.

it was really too good of a point to be making for this trash reply. I could go say more, but I'm still trying to stay on topic, unlike ciaran.

"to act like random people on the internet, end users with no influence over corporate decisions, are the ones personally responsible for the fact that late-stage capitalism has destroyed popular art and culture in an increasingly sordid attempt to make money."

we've been over the "no influence" bit - because in fact fans do have influence, especially since media creators are literally fans, etc etc. i'm tired of people acting like they have no power and using that as an excuse to support and perpetuate harmful, easily avoidable behavior.

also, to act like the nebulous system of late-stage capitalism is the only cause of bad media is ludicrous. first of all, someone has to make these so-called "corporate decisions", and the people making artistic decisions are, again, overwhelmingly members of "fandom." this comment is really trying to keep marvel trash and lore olympus-esque nonsense in the same atomic, indivisible category lest someone catches a whiff of nuance.

"the above post is a great example of this phenomenon because op admits freely that they only think fandom is destroying media because they have been spending more time in fandom and thus have an over-inflated sense of its importance in greater culture. posting your own Ls indeed."

i'm so tired. this person literally has 120 works on ao3 like...who is spending more time in fandom.

and the tags:

#i assure you that fandom has no bearing on my actual real life #and if it does on yours. then that is your problem #it's also a very funny problem to

now this is just egregiously tone deaf. you do not need to do more than a cursory google search to find a bottomless well of examples of fandom harassment, threats, doxxing, and violence, much of which is racially motivated. you can see why it would be bad to make fun of this. 

also the way that “fandom has no bearing on their actual real life“...120 fanfics on ao3. 120.

conclusion:

the reply clearly misinterprets of op's point, and as such, does not refute it. they responded to another issue altogether, which is that of the sanctity of their ~coping mechanism~ or whatever it is. their argument in this respect was, in my opinion, delusional and pathetic, especially given that they wrote it on someone else's unrelated post.

FINAL NOTE: i cut out lots of this because the reply went in so many different directions, so some stuff might not make sense. let me know if you have any questions.

[thosemintcookies]

Ok it's wild how for my entire life up until now, I felt like there's been this messaging of "Asians don't have it as bad as other poc"

And like, yeah, you know what? That's true in some ways, especially in terms of the realtive wealth of Asian Americans compared to other poc counterparts.

Its worth it to note that historically, Asians were not enslaved by Whites, and we are settlers, this is not our ancestral land. I think it goes to show that culture and thought is complex. Like, Asian American racism is especially pernicious because statistically, its not as visible as other forms of systemic racism.

(Sure, we've been saying it for decades that stereotypes of our sexual docility or inadequcy, the exoticization and cultural disgust for our food, the lack of media representation, etc etc have been hurting us, but it was always treated like there were bigger issues.)

The thing is, this racism is like this:

1. Asians, being a group thought to voluntarily migrate (and due to a long history of immigration suppression, this migration has to be relatively recent, and therefore conceptually voluntary) are seen as a people who are "more assimilable" and therefore, "better" than other poc

2. Due to the aforementioned recency and voluntary nature of Asian migration to the Americas, the people who are able to migrate tend to be from families with the socioeconomic means to do so. Richer families, higher education. Many Asian Americans are therefore, in a better spot to take on "higher paying" jobs in 2nd gen because we were brought up to value education and wealth. This is a systemic thing, not that "Asians are inherently smarter." Back on our ancestral countries, the seeming "racial" disparities in intelligence disappear.

3. Bans on misegenation and women migrants, preventing Asian men from seeking out sexual intimacy, along with Asian sexual exoticization and fetishization from war propaganda, and then later on, the simultaneous desexualization of our men and hypersexualization of our women. We are seen as sexually unaggressive to White Women and yielding to the White Man.

4. So, here we have a triangulation of things that comprise the Asian American identity in relation to Whiteness. We are seen as malleable and childish, a microcosm of White Settler Colonialism, because after the White people have Colonized, we have become their pet project. The model minority, who are special because we are not seen as incongruous with White supremacy, we are seen as wanting to pander to it through assimilation. And look! We came to the Americas because we *wanted* to! We were not forced here through violence, and we did not suffer genocide! That's practically privilege!

5. Let's not forget that our backgrounds make us Good Workers. We are taught, because of our parents who were able to migrate due to their privileges, that structure is good. Work hard and become more than yourself. And being in a capitalist system, white people are more than willing to exploit that.

6. Unfortunately, Asianness is then pitted against other experiences of racialization and racial injustice. Again, we did not suffer genocide. The removal of our generational stories, the labour we produce, its all painted as voluntary. Nevermind that the feeling of being decentralized in diaspora is only ever so voluntary. How much pain do I feel when I cannot share in the brilliance of my family due to my mother tongue being lost to me?

(But White people can wash their hands of it. We "chose" this)

And yes, it's true that there are ways we have not suffered. We are not seen as dangerous "gangsters". We were not murdered en masse for conquest.

But the deep, rotten root of it all is the same. We could never be equal to White People because they still considered us "not quite human"

That Asian-americans are statistically better off doesn't reveal the true ugliness of our dehumanization because our dehumanization is based on the very notion that we're "White-lite(TM), keep working hard, bud, you'll get there eventually"

But the reality is, it's not a dial that places us closer to social parity. It's a switch. "Dehumanized" or "human". These are the only two options. Thus far, it has been manifesting in our infantilization and exoticism. Patronizingly, we have been given some cessions so that White Supremacy can claim progress because it seems there is a race that is not outright hated by Whites.

But the expression of that racism can turn on a dime, and we can face racist violence and it is completely unsurprising because the logic, the cultural understanding of Asians has stayed consistent. We are still not seen as people.

I want no part in siding with white supremacy. I don't care if Whites have historically given us peanuts which were denied our other poc brothers and sisters. I'm not going to fight for scraps, I'm going to seize the table. There is no future but poc solidarity because the same logic of White Supremacy has been keeping us all down. Our relation to each other is not a hierarchy of race where Asians are in the middle. It is the same dehumanization all around, even if it shows in different ways.

The reality is: my parents being cussed out for their lack of English ability. Them working long, hard, low paying jobs so that we could eat and go to school. My father dying of health complications from being overworked. Never being able to share our generational stories because our tongues are not mutually intelligible. The reality is: being pulled over when we did nothing wrong because the cop thought my parents couldn't argue being ticketed (they couldn't. I've had to deal with cops at 8 years old to speak for them). The reality is: growing up ugly, with a funny name that would be changed to "gung hay, fat choy" and "Ching chong". The reality is: my academic achievements being undervalued because I'm Asian and anything above 80% didn't count. The reality is: "Oh I love Asian women." The reality is: "your English is so good!" The reality is: "Koreans are so much nicer than Chinese, and Indians are way too loud." The reality is we were never welcomed with open arms, and we were never made to feel like we belonged here

I'm going to take a nap now.