#i dont mean to contribute to any stereotypes but. I think these are accurate

[pilotofmysoul]

the funniest thing for me to think about is the stark differences between rocketman john and real life john rocketman john ; man i fucking hate everyone and everything, elton is a pain in the arse and i never loved him, im so tall and scary grrr real john ; man i am feeling like petting a dog today :)) did i mention how much i love elton? i love him so much, im so short and soft LIKE EKSGSKZHS TELL ME IM WRONG !!!

ur right…….movie john: wears sharp black suits exclusively, sociopathic and suave businessman, goes to the gym, incapable of love

real john: wears blue mascara and mickey mouse t-shirt, musical theatre nerd who cries easily, refuses to do any sports, is a human + capable of love

[bitch-in-a-bag]

can we talk about how the LGBT movement has changed in the past 15 years?

in the light of the events surrounding Chris chan, and people prioritizing pronouns over the rape of a woman with dementia, I think it displays just how... different things are.

i personally feel like it's been co-opted by the more loud and entitled mtfs/ males/penis-havers/whatever pc term exists for the XY chromosome'd, who go too far and aren't reasonably kept in check. I think terf no longer has meaning anymore because it's just become a word we use to silence anyone that disagrees with a trans woman. immediately you're going to call me a terf, I accept that, but please continue reading. I may suprise you. calling someone who's transgender a terf is kinda messed up anyway, and that's exactly why im writing this.

I also think that everyone else (allies, ftms, etc) have followed suit because they've written this messed up narrative that EvErYoNe iS VaLiD. except for trans penis-havers, bc they're the most oppressed and the most valid, actually, regardless of their experiences.

I never used to believe the above because it was always written off as terf shit, and ignoring it kinda benefitted me, but between seeing ftms getting bashed for refusing to follow new "TME" rules as if they aren't trans too, and seeing outrage around Chris chans pronouns, I think it's time to start saying things that may make people uncomfortable. innocent people are already getting hurt by this, and we need to do better. it's time to get uncomfortable.

I want to remind you that perception is both the relying factor, and also the downfall of newer lgbt theory. if my profile were mtf coded, maybe it currently is, you'd call me a self hating trans and I wouldn't be that big of a deal. terfs would probably target me.

if my profile was ftm coded, I would be absolutely skewered for daring to speak out about these issues, even though they do actually affect ftms disproportionately. terfs would try to convince me that being trans is a plague and a mental illness, and to just ~be a cis woman~!

and if assumed cis, I would 100% be assumed radfem terf, and everything I say would immediately be dismissed because of the genuine damage terfs have done. but terfs would still probably flock to this post and berate me for daring to validate trans people At All, because to them, being transgender is a mental illness akin to an eating disorder, and "giving in" to it is "self harm". clearly I don't believe that, so hopefully you'll give me at least some benefit of the doubt.

so, does my identity matter? i have a feeling you'll say yes, because it gives us a good idea of experiences I do and don't have expertise in, and thus room to talk about. but I refuse to directly identify what I actually am because I want the focus of any resulting conversation to be my message and not my self identification. if you read between the lines and figure it out that's just fine, but I would like to be heard first and foremost.

my profile is thus an attempt at being cis female coded, somewhat out of comfort, and that is likely what I'll be assumed to be due to the beliefs I am expressing, even though there is a substantial risk of getting misgendered and dismissed, no matter what my birth sex may actually be. i will give you a hint about my identity: I am transgender, on HRT and everything, and I have been personally affected by all of this. rest assured, this is well within my lane to speak about, and it does matter if you misgender me.

I want you to really think about that. before you respond, really think about if someone saying words on tumblr, talking about their OWN experiences and their take on recent history that applies to themself, really more worthy of being misgendered and harassed than... someone who said they transitioned so they could date lesbians, and then raped their own mother with dementia.

is that fair or just? or is this just a new way of letting people with penises do whatever they want? I personally think it's the latter. we need to hold people like Chris chan accountable without getting caught up on something as minor **in comparison** as misgendering and self identification. Is it sad and confusing that someone who self IDs as transgender became 1:1 with the most dangerous stereotypes that exist for trans women? Of course it is. But it doesn't mean that self identification is suddenly more important than a literal crime being committed.

I would normally dismiss it as a fluke or outright trolling if the evidence weren't so damning that this is in fact a real event that happened. If I hadn't seen this happen to other people, and if I didn't literally know another mtf person who used their dysphoria as an excuse for date rape on multiple occasions and never got any consequences for it.

It's not a one time thing, it's a developing problem that we need to stop before more people have their lives ruined. I can't even imagine how traumatizing and messed up it is for an FTM person to be date raped, by another transgender person no less. When I, an abuse survivor, told people of this MTFs red flags, people violently silenced me. People who didn't know I was trans called me a terf and transphobic. We, as a community, could've protected someone from getting date raped, and we didn't. Trans women can be awful, horrible fucking people, because they are people. Protecting them at all costs is wrong. Protecting them from transphobia is what we should be doing.

That being said, misgendering is still skeevy, and I haven't done anything like raped a disabled woman who is no longer able to consent, or date raped my own partner. if you give a shit about respecting my identity, please use they/them for me. if not, use visual perception and make assumptions that will most likely be incorrect, skew your own argument, and put me on the same level as a rapist, and arguably a fetishist. And I do need to remind you that calling someone transgender a rapist and a fetishist without evidence is still definitely classic transphobia, to the letter, so I'd appreciate it if you didn't do that.

as someone who is same sex attracted, I also want to bring this up as well.

in the US in the past 15 years, the movement as a whole pretty much went "YEAH BORN THIS WAY" with Lady Gaga, and then jumped ship to prioritize mostly mtfs at every angle. do mtfs need support? absolutely. but they don't need misguided toxic positivity, and that's what it's turned into.

it's gotten genuinely homophobic to the point where actually homosexual people are constantly being erased and demonized via "genital preferences are a fetish uwu", and vulva havers, especially the trans ones, are constantly being told to shut up about their experiences.

as much as you want to deny bioessentialism, its still very much well and alive with newer trans movement sentiments when we classify ftms as not worthy of speaking about their own issues with terms like "TME". it's also incredibly ignorant towards FTMs who pass, but dress feminine for comfort, and get mistaken for MTF, and treated like garbage because of it. They are not remotely exempt from misogyny, transphobia, or the intersection of the two, and it is not anyone's job to tell them they don't ever experience that when they do. Turning ftms and biological homosexuals into our enemies-- especially when the actual cause is transphobia and harmful gender stereotypes-- does nothing good or healthy for our movement.

Dont be mistaken, though, passing isn't the focus or end all be all here, it's the perception of others that ends up drastically effecting your experiences. There are words like misogyny that imply treatment via birth sex, however this too can be reliant on external perception. If an MTF individual either transitions very young, has an abundance of resources to transition, or just gets lucky and passes well, chances are she will experience a lot more misogyny than people may give credit to. inversely, someone who just started questioning yesterday, but lived as a male their whole life up until then, they genuinely cannot speak about misogyny with that much room because they simply haven't experienced it at an accurate enough angle or for enough time to understand it as a repeated and sociological force.

It works the other way as well, though; someone who's known that they're trans for a long time and haven't had the resources to transition, or do not or cannot pass in the eyes of society; these people suffer pain that we don't neccesarily have a word for yet, imo. It makes dysphoria worse and it makes living seem hopeless. And as a community, we deal with this is in a really messed up way by over-validating them instead of solving the core issue at hand. and people who suffer from this, but also acknowledge they can't claim what they haven't experienced, are left with nowhere to go.

And its important to acknowledge these things because they're integral to the over-encompassing trans experience. Instead of lying to everyone and telling everyone they pass/giving out unconditional positive regard, our focus should be making it so that it **doesn't matter if you pass**. that you're still worth respect and dignity if you're transgender, no matter what passing is or what it means to you, and no matter how you present. But also, if you do something awful, you still need to be held accountable, especially if you use yourself, your body, or your trans status to contribute to other axi of oppression.

Transphobia is a word that encompasses and addresses all of that, regardless of birth sex. "TME" shuts that down in favor of only letting MTF's speak. Which is still very bio-essentialist, and I can't help but feel like we've gone full circle.

Once upon a time you couldn't even get married if your partner had the same genitals as you. in the US, this was less than 7 years ago. and if you care about human rights activism, you know damn well that legal modification is not the end all be all. people who are genuinely homosexual are still oppressed, but the trans movement has started stepping on them to make ground we don't deserve. homosexuals are ok and valid. it's not a genital preference, and the prescence of trans people doesn't make conversion therapy sentiments ok, ever.

we've gone full circle, and it's not right.

[the-queer-look]

Butch is Beautiful

The scope of LGBTQIA+ culture and identity is incredibly wide. People in all parts of our community have grown up in different parts of a wider cishet community and culture, bringing those experiences with them. This constant injection into our community means that it is as hard to nail down a unifying sense of Queer Fashion, as it is to nail down specifics for gender identity. There will people who identify the same, but present different aspects of that identity, and there will likewise always be people who never feel comfortable with any labels at all.

- K

Name: Ciara

Age: 23

Gender: They/Them

Sexuality: Lesbian

Location: Summer Hill

Occupation: Cashier, studying fitness

My sexual identity I guess I would say is lesbian, but my gender identity is… a bit more nebulous. In some capacity it has its roots in womanhood, just because being a woman, and being raised as a girl has been very important to me in how I experience the world, but beyond that, I don’t have any particular attachment to femininity. But being raised as a woman, and experiencing the world as a woman has been so instrumental to me becoming who I am, that to completely disregard it when talking about my gender identity would seem a little disingenuous.

I’ve always been very insistent that people realise and remember among all this discussion about gender to remember that women can be masculine, and that butch and masculine women do exist. I’ve held onto that as a part of my identity for a long time, because it felt I needed to prove that it could exist, and I guess I feel that I still do. I don’t want to disregard my womanhood, because it’s very important to me, but I dont feel any attachment to the physical markers of my womanhood. For example, I want top surgery at some point, I guess because when I was a kid I was very happy with my short hair and running around shirtless and enjoying the androgyny that came with being a child. I started going through puberty and freaked out about now having to be different. Like the entirety of being a teenager was just about trying to be okay with that? So I feel like I spent my teenage years feeling like a defective woman. I used to hate when people would think I was a boy, so I would try to be more performative in my femininity, but there was something that felt so completely unnatural about it. I got to my twenties, and realised that it wasn’t working for me, though since embracing my masculinity, and realising that I want to be read as a masculine person, I’ve then become more comfortable with putting on a bit more femininity, as long as I can be read as someone who isn’t traditionally feminine whilst doing so.

I don’t identify as nonbinary, for the same reason that I don’t, on a personal level, identify as queer. I think the pure range of things that Queer and Non-binary covers, doesn’t feel particularly accurate to me. I appreciate that for many people, the broad blanket statements of Queer and Non-binary feel very comfortable, but for me it feels a bit too open ended. I certainly identify strongly with transmasculinity, but I’ve seen and known people who identify themselves as “transmasculine lesbian,” which feels like a better fit, even though it sounds like an oxymoron at the same time, and “lesbian” has nothing to do with gender identity… I guess I’m still working it out a little bit, but everything changes over time, and I can only ever be true to myself y’know?

When I was a teenager I’d get crushes on both men and women, but there was something about the crushes that I got on women that was just so...physical… Like I’d get so nervous around them that I just couldn’t talk, and my hands would start shaking when I saw girls I had a crush on. I just interpreted that at the time as physical anxiety about not being out as bisexual to a lot of people, but retrospectively I’ve realised that all of my crushes on women have been like that, and none of my crushes on men. I identified as bisexual from about sixteen till nineteen, and then.. I just sort of stopped being attracted to boys. I realised sometime when I was twenty that I just wasn’t attracted to men anymore, so I tried referring to myself as a lesbian to see how that felt, and it just sorta stuck, And I never liked a boy again! *laughter*

When I first came out, I was intensely scared of being read as too masculine. I’d be wearing these horribly fitting t-shirts, with push-up bras underneath, and these incredibly tight jeans, like a butch/femme fusion in the most uncomfortable way possible. But I sort of moved towards more more masculine clothing to see if it felt more comfortable. And it did, it did. I started wearing a binder from time to time, and wearing mens clothes, and it felt so good to just not be uncomfortable with how things fit me, and how my body looked under clothes. But because I’ve always been quite butch looking, I’ve never really had any problems signifying to anyone in, or out of the community that theres something very queer here. As an assigned female at birth, but masculine presenting person, I’ve never had any problems standing out in the community. Sometimes people read me as nonbinary, or transmasculine, or just a butch woman, none of which I mind. For the most part I dont mind what people read me as, I used to hate being mistaken for a boy, but not so much anymore depending on context. Out and about on the street, being mistaken for a boy is fine, but being yelled at for trying to use the womens bathroom? Not so much. I think, as a queer person, I have a huge privilege of being palatably androgynous, when I know there’s this immense pressure for many nonbinary folks to present this way for their gender identity to be considered valid. I can’t imagine how frustrating it would be to be under that pressure, because it’s just how my body is.

For me the internet has been important for doing research and having resources. Be that looking up “do other people like me exist?” or researching tips and tricks on presentation. I think that before having this community at our fingertips, it would have been incredibly difficult to exist as a queer person. But I feel that for all that social media contributes to comparing yourself to people in an unhealthy way, I feel that things like Facebook and Instagram have been helpful for me the be able to document myself. It helps me manage dysphoria, and moments of not seeing myself clearly, or moments of insecurity; I feel that it helps to have a consistent log of images taken of myself two or three times a month. I like sharing with people how I look, because when you do go through a lot of physical changes, it feels good to keep people up to date with that. If you met someone three years ago, it’s nice to know that if they have you on facebook or whatever, they get to see what you look like as your perception of yourself changes, rather than having this outdated image in their brain. Go off, take photos of yourself kids, selfies everyday.

I feel that historically that LGBTQIA+ community has had to use these quiet signifiers to signal their sexuality to other people in the know, whilst flying under the radar. I think that there’s nothing really wrong with fitting into queer stereotypes. I fit into a lot o stereotypes about both butch lesbians, and nonbinary people. I think that the worst that can, and does come from it, is that people who don’t prescribe to those norms tend to feel a bit invisible, like femme lesbians have major gripes about people thinking I’m straight, and the only time people think that about me is when they think I’m a straight boy, so I cant imagine how bad that is. It becomes bad when we assume that these stereotypes are the norm for the whole community, but I think that if people want to signify their gender or sexuality in these ways, then theres nothing wrong with that. As long as we don’t expect people to abide by these stereotypes, I think there is zero problem with them.

I feel like the mainstream media needs to catch up in terms of queer fashion. Theres a massive disconnect between what you see on tv, and in movies, vs what you see in person at a queer event, where everyone’s dressed… I cant even begin to describe how fashion it is. I went to an event over the weekend where everyone was dressed in just weird shit, which is actual queer culture, and queer fashion. It is important to recognise that queer fashion doesn’t actually exist. Because the culture is as wide and varied as there is in the broader mainstream community, that any attempt to capture an idea of queer fashion will alienate most of the community entirely.

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[melmothblog]

Ask Responses: Race and Racism in ballet. Part II.

I’m posting my response as a Part II to the post about the use of yellowface in ballet that went up yesterday.

Melmoth, can you imagine what would happen to ballets in Russia that has always been a staple and classic like La Bayadere if Russia experienced this wave of ridiculous Leftist movement screaming cultural appropriation like the West is experiencing? Of course, I am not saying we shouldn't respect cultures but as an Asian woman, I am completely fine with other people dressing up as Mulan for Halloween and such. I'm curious about your opinion and ty for your time!

I dont mean to offend anyone with my question but I know I will end up doing so. You have always seem well articulate in your answer while remaining fairly unbiased so I was thinking it would be interesting to hear what you think! I just can't imagine no more La Bayadere bc the dancers aren't Indian or the Chinese Dance taken out of the Nutcracker bc it offends ppl which obviously wasn't the intention of the whole thing. So thanks! :)

I have covered this topic before, though this is the first time I am writing about it from the “Western” point of view. In the past, I have tried to explain (and, to some degree, excuse) the relaxed attitude Russians have towards blackface. Now, I’ll explain why this attitude should be challenged.

Personally, it’s very easy for me to imagine what would happen to “La Bayadere”, “The Nutcracker” and similar ballets if the racially insensitive elements of these productions were altered: nothing. Nothing would happen to them. None of these ballets would be affected in any significant way and would continue to exist and delight audiences for many years to come. 

The updates made to NYCB’s “The Nutcracker” (addresses in Part I) are a testament to how simple alterations can contribute to a production, rather than detract from it. And it’s not like there’s no precedent for this sort of thing in Russia: the early interpretations of Spanish dance in various Soviet productions weren’t exactly accurate, and corrections were later made to the choreography to fix the errors. These updates weren’t an issue then and they shouldn’t be now. People who advocate for these changes don’t want to destroy entire ballets or even to erase characters from them; they want to replace caricature with character. 

Tsiskaridze, whether he realises this or not, may have opened the door for future changes when he dropped the blackface variation from “The Fairy Doll”. He was criticised for making the updates, yet the production remains in both the Mariinsky’s and VBAs repertoires and is very successful. 

It would take a very long time for me to explain why blackface and yellowface are degrading, demeaning and disrespectful to a great number of people. This is where your own will and desire for self-education should come in. And an open mind. 

I would use these articles as a starting point: 

The New York Times: Toning Down Asian Stereotypes to Make ‘The Nutcracker’ Fit the Times

Yellowface.org statement: Why are Changes Needed

And then, if at all possible, get your hands on a copy of Reni Eddo-Lodge’s “Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race”. I’ve always though of myself as a fairly *enlightened* individual, but this book challenged me big time.

And then, keep going. And if you take anything away from my response, let it be one word: empathy. 

Your question is pretty common and normal, but what bothers me about it is the way it is worded. The issues of cultural appropriation and racial representation in ballet - as well as theatre, film and TV - aren’t a matter of political correctness gone mad. These are valid problems that need to be, at the very least, discussed. 

Sadly, from what I have seen, this is a very popular sentiment in Russia right now: women’s rights, gender equality, feminism, #MeToo, LGBTQI+ rights, racial equality, disability rights, transgender rights and various other social and human justice movements are all written off as “ridiculous Leftist movements sweeping the West”. There is a strong feeling that if Russia gives in to these, something dreadful would happen ...like entire ballets from Russia’s classical heritage would cease to exist. 

Spoiler alert: They won’t.

Note: I didn’t address halloween costumes in this post partly because they are a whole other subject, but mostly because there is a world of difference between an insensitive costume worn to a party and a large-scale, world-famous ballet production seen by tens of thousands people from around the world a year. 

d i s c l a i m e r 

[shollyworld]

Content filters on sale due to consideration

To add my two cents as a comment to the proposals for the new EU copyright initiative it’s the last thing you needed. As an anti to the so called „content filter“ I don’t fit into the stereotype of emotions, because:

I’ve studied music

I’m selling content filter technology

I don’t get paid by Google

I’m a conscious member of CMOs 

I have music start-up experience

I know the music & licensing biz very well

And I don’t care, how influencers earn their living

And I wonder, if I’m a bot too, but I would like to think about that later …

Down to business and first of all: No, the wording „content filter“ is not used in article 13  for the enforcement of the planed copyright law, but to analyse millions of media files, user contributions per day to check violation or conformity one need recognition technology, which has to be linked with rule sets automatically. It’s like the analogy for defining a maximum of 8 hours travel time for the distance from Berlin to New York, what will work? The company car of Mr. Axel Voss or the e-bike of Mrs. Angela Merkel eventually?

In fact: Fraunhofer is the pioneer in recognition technology with AudioID sind 1999 and the 2nd generation was the pattern for Shazam with the mobile recognition. Since 2006 I’m connected with this and all following versions very well as with all competing applications (see list below) somehow. As a provider of music and video recognition technologies Fraunhofer should be very lucky with the foreseeable business future, but there are things, which can’t be solved by this or any other technology:

Even a 100% reliable recognition technology is only able to detect, what was put into a reference database before  

There are vendors of such databases associated with recognition technology, containing all properly licensed commercial tracks like used in Spotify & Co., however there is an extremely bad rate of track accurate distribution of revenues from platforms like YouTube, Facebook a.o.

Every alteration according to the reference content like mixes and mashups can only be detected untrustworthy or can’t be detected at all, only in theory and in in sales pitches of the vendors

Every new work, every legal cover version, every version or live recording from authors and artists won’t be included in such mostly incomplete reference database, therefore such tracks are not recognisable

Stupefying part I: Because of the inability of the music industry to link rights information and metadata from authors and artists in a global reference database for exploitation, 25 - 50% of the overall digital revenue is not distributed fairly to the original artists and authors („black boxes“) 

Stupefying part II: The music industry has no interest to solve this issue known as „metadata chaos“ for more than 15 years and there won’t be any database with such information in the near future

Conclusion: 

There will be a plethora of wrongly rejected media as measured by the daily amount of new audio visual media in platforms with user generated content. Maybe one creates thousands of new jobs to check rejected content manually … hmmm let me guess, at a place where work is cheap and no one is able to assume the context?

All these user generated, not recognised works (see above 3.+4.) will be blocked automatically, because commercial services and media enterprises are afraid of expensive fines from potential rights owners. This means my just in this minute created song will be blocked as well, even if I’m controlling my own rights to 100%, because this independent right is not registered!

If big and small sized companies pay a risk bonus or blowoff to rights holders in the case of not mandatory required recognition filters, then revenue from all new and independent works from authors and artists will go as payout in the pockets of the big rights holders. This is not decreasing the fairness of revenue distribution, to the disadvantage of the big majority of authors and artists. In the end this will be a party for lawyers because of the fatal misbelief in technology, which won’t be a solution without the commitment of the whole branch and the available data.  

Dear Mrs. Angela Merkel, Mr Axel Voss, dear lobbyists and parliamentarian: Stop to hide yourself behind your empty words for the fairness to authors and artists. Dear media industry: Stop to exploit the independent, creative artists and authors and their precarious and uninformed situation, just to secure your business. Better start to build a common database of your metadata and rights, so that we don’t baffle deals because of fear, but rather to develop and promote new ideas - and your business as well. 

Even if we keep aside all verifiable not functioning parts of the wish list, and there are:

a) perfectly working recognition technologies for all media files as well as b) all information about commercial content is available as a reference in a metadata (rights) database globally and updated,

… in any case all amateurs, teachers, independents, jokesters and EU citizens would be out with their creations anyhow, because the system won’t recognise the works, their sense of humour, our legal right under the actual wording of article 13. That scares me personally, because of everything we are going to sacrifice. We need a contemporary, fair copyright law urgently, but not such …

More sources:

Music legend James Taylor „52 Ways to Screw an Artist, by Warner Bros. Records…�� 

https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2012/09/19/jamestaylor/

Fair Music: Transparency and Payment flows in the music industry, A Project of Berklee Initiative Institute of Creative Entrepreneurship (BerkleeICE), Boston (USA),

https://www.berklee.edu/sites/default/files/Fair%20Music%20-%20Transparency%20and%20Payment%20Flows%20in%20the%20Music%20Industry.pdf 

Conclusion of the EU working group to the metadata chaos problem within the music industry:

https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/creative-europe/sites/creative-europe/files/ab-music-working-group_en.pdf

The income of authors, artist are not growing the same way like the industry revenue is growing because:

the lack of transparency and data infrastructure

the lack of trust and metadata

lack of interoperability, quality control and standards

Quote from page 26 of the report: „The point was made, however, that an efficient registry (i.e. an authoritative database) is the condition precedent for any automated, frictionless licensing system to function. It was also stressed that the lack of metadata standards has had larger business ramifications, that industry growth has been affected, if not crippled. As of today, the potential of technology is still being held back by this issue, despite numerous attempts by the tech community to solve it. 16 years after Napster (which was one of the first service to shed a light on the Metadata problem), the Metadata issue is now labelled by many as one of the most crucial issue facing the music sector in the post-internet era.“

List of content technology providers: 

Bach, BMAT, Content ID (YouTube), Echonest (Spotify), Fraunhofer, Gracenote, Mufin, SoundMouse, TuneSat uva.

German only

Tankred Schipanski digital representative of the CDU in the German Bundestag:

https://www.tankred-schipanski.de/19277  

My personal view according to the Staus quo of data in the music industry, Reeperbahnfestival opening Hamburg 2017:

http://shollyworld.tumblr.com/post/165756911222/liebe-musikindustrie-der-tisch-war-groß-die 

Sascha Lobo about content filter:

http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/angela-merkels-digitalpolitik-witze-uebers-eigene-versagen-a-1254205.html 

[binxrps]

Hey, I hope it's okay that I ask you a question about diversity in roleplaying. I'm a white girl and on the rp site I'm on it's 95% white playbys. Do you think it would be disrespectful for a white writer to roleplay with poc playbys? I don't want to be disrespectful or insensitive, being white myself. Should I leave poc characters to authors that dont have to research in order to learn about their culture, the issues they face because of their race?? Sorry if this is a silly ask.

this isn’t a silly ask but the fact that you’re asking me this makes it seem like you want an easy out. people ask us this all the time, and honestly you could’ve found this answer on any number of blogs. and if you’d rather ask me than go out and do the research and just play an accurate character, ask yourself why you did that. 

if you see a disparity and you notice that all the characters are white, by all means do your research and write a character accurately. we need more people writinng characters of color, but you have to be honest and you have to do it bc you want to accurately portray these characters and genuinely care about representation. not because you want a pat on the back. if you plan on leaving an anon in anybody’s inbox in the future like “i play a poc and im yt!” stop right now.  

basically yeah i think white people can and should play characters of color, but when you say stuff like “authors that dont have to research” that looks and seems insincere. we’re out here playing yt ppl when we don’t know what that privileged life is like? but we don’t say “hey should i write a yt person if i have to do the research?”. and yt rpers play aliens and werewolves when they have to do research, but they just do it. (that’s not to compare people of color to mythical creatures, but the way some yt writers approach us and our stories, we might as well be).

so do the research and play the character and contribute but only if you’re doing it for the right reasons and you’re not gonna play up a stereotype or ask for praise after the fact.