#if you think people criticizing bigotry is more offensive than the bigotry itself

[yukirayu]

These I've also shared on Twitter, but I thought I'd share them here before someone tries any sort of libel.

You know what's funny about this whole discourse about the Slow Damage patch ? The whole discourse reminds me of game mods, in a way.

Game mods are made by fans, for free no less, for you to download, and only if you wanted, to help improve your experience with a game.

Whether it's improving the aesthetic (character or background design) or tweaking some of the gameplay elements itself. Or adding new elements, or even changing things purely for shits and giggles.

That way, mods are akin to patches. More often than not, mods are made because the base game had flaws in their design (technical or otherwise) that the mod intended to fix or improve.

But these mods are optional. And naturally, most mods are going to use preexisting assets from either the game they're modding or from another game, assets that they'll either refine or combine with other assets to make something better.

While some mods earn a raised brow, if the mod isn't to one's liking, most generally just ignore it.

Except in this specific instance, some don't like the mod that is the patch and feel that it doesn't sit right with them for whatever reason, believing that its existence would be "spitting" on the original game or because it no longer sounds as snarky as they themselves would like to read it as.

But instead of ignoring the patch, which they were explicitly advised to do if they take offense to it, they decide to make their dislike everyone else's problem, and by poisoning the well, no less.

And one quick way to ensure that is to accuse the patch of bigotry towards the LGBT community.

I'm already aware that this same accusation is spreading like wildfire, both in Reddit and especially in Twitter, and in some Discord spaces, most likely.

But did anyone, and this includes the accusers, even play at least 40% of the patched version, and intensively at that, before making that claim?

Oh, I'm all too aware that bigotry is a real, serious and widespread issue.

But in most online circles nowadays, accusing something of bigotry right off the gate is also one surefire method of turning people off of it before they can even check it out for themselves.

I mean, what better way of publicly dragging something you don't like through the mud than to spread accusations/misassumptions that are quick for others to believe before anyone can even try and personally fact-check anything?

Especially in a place like the internet itself.

The note stating the avoidance of using a specific pronoun for some characters to not assume their identity could've been phrased better, yes, and the patch team did clarify their stance on the matter. Alas, anything can still easily be misinterpreted and used as flame bait.

But what's odd is that the people who first touted this claim (either here or in other platforms) have one thing in common: they never checked out the patch (let alone played through one certain route in full) to personally confirm if that really is the case.

Taking all this into consideration, I think that no matter how the patch was presented, it'd get backlash.

Even long before any of us knew this patch was even going to be a thing, even giving constructive criticism about the localization and any mistakes/goofs it made already drew ire, and it's those same people who took offense that are spreading the hate about this patch.

It all really boils down to the matter of the patch even existing, since - as some detractors point out - it's what they call to be a disrespectful spit to the face, even without factoring the false accusations of transphobia and plagiarism.

Let's say they used the JP game files instead and have the patch work with that version. They'd get decried for copyright infringement and they risk a C&D order.

Use the EN files? We already get the claims that they barely did anything to the text, among other things. Why?

Because they didn't adjust every single syntax and change every single word in every single sentence… when English isn't exactly the most versatile language and there's only ways you can translate something, especially in the simpler sentences like "Who are you?".

Using a thesaurus on everything would make it sound weird. Heck, the patch being more verbose and detailed and impersonal (which is what's to be expected when it's third person and in a visual novel, no less) already got it accused of being no more than a fancy MTL.

And it doesn't help that many already assume that the statement that MTL can be a helpful tool is also the same as "MTL being the superior translator of all time", and people will find anything and I mean anything to hate on something and discredit it.

And as for the preferring 1st person over 3rd person and vice versa? It's a matter of preference, yes, and that can't be helped.

But let's get one fact out in the open: Out of N+C's 5 main VNs, only one is told in first person POV in the JP/original version, and that's DMMD.

The other game that used 1st person narration is Slow Damage's spinoff game, Clean Dishes, but not the main/parent game itself.

And even years before they got licensed, the fan patches followed the intended narration viewpoint of the first 4 VNs. Third person for Togainu no Chi, Lamento, and Sweet Pool, and first person for DMMD.

Their respective localized versions (except Lamento), also followed the intended narration viewpoint, and nobody complained because that was all they knew.

But because Slow Damage's localization took the creative liberty of changing the narration from third to first person, with people exposed to it, it's not really surprising some have gotten accustomed enough to end up preferring it.

Even when another version that retells the game in original narration comes up, for the past two years, the localization has been what they knew, and that is what many usually then decide to stick to.

In the scenario where the localization - even if it would still be a mess - never changed the narration, would people still say "Oh but they should've changed it to 1st person since it would've enhanced the story"?

It's telling that it never happened with Togainu no Chi, Sweet Pool and DMMD, no?

And before anyone tells me that I just hate localizations overall, you don't hear me complaining about the official translation of any of the BLVNs that Mangagamer licensed, do you? I also have plenty of gripes with DMMD's fan translation over what it did to Mink.

[crystaltoa]

There's probably an interesting conversation to be had about whether being "anti-terf" is or should be similar to being "anti-racist." My thinking is that it's probably quite different.

People who say and do racist things, typically, don't identify as racists. They think their views are the norm. Many people say insensitive and hurtful things without realising. Many decent people carry and act on unconscious biases and enforce racist systems. So pointing out the problems with these behaviours is helpful to them, and helps POC. Even people who openly express bigoted opinions knowing many people find them offensive typically don't identify as racist. They may identify with a particular political ideology in which racism is normalised, but being racist is not in and of itself an identity to them. Calling out that behaviour and letting them know their views are not shared or tolerated by you is still a useful thing to do. Often it makes them think twice about acting that way in future. Even if their opinions don't really change, it makes the world a marginally better place for POC to be in.

With TERFs, you have the problem that it's become an identity to them, and they wanna be oppressed so bad. The say and do the things that they do because they want conflict, they want to rile up trans women and their allies so that they can then point at them and say "see? I was right! They're all VIOLENT MISOGYNISTS". Chances are they've been told why their behaviour is shitty before, and they didn't listen then and won't listen now. On a more serious note, some TERF circles operate basically like cults, encouraging the unpleasant behaviour which leads to the terfs being isolated from normal people and getting further entangled with an increasingly small social circle and further and further out of touch with reality.

That's not to say that being explicitly anti-terf is a bad idea. It's just that the context of their behaviour is somewhat different from other forms of bigotry, and I wonder what the implications for meaningfully addressing that problem are.

Personally, online, I don't get involved in their debates. I block every TERF I come across. I don't reblog memes of, say, Shadow the Hedgehog pr whoever with a gun telling them to shut the fuck up. While it's funny on one level to see them overreact to that kind of thing, the reality is that this is a group of dangerous, hateful and volatile people who are adding fuel to each others' garbage fire over anything, and then using the resulting panicked mob mentality to spread propaganda and cause genuine harm to people.

I don't claim to know better than anyone else, and if and how one engages with these people is a personal choice. But from my perspective as somebody who isn't a trans woman, my reasoning is this: If I was to start riling up terfs up into an incoherent rage for my own amusement and/or sense of justice, I would likely suffer no serious consequences as a result... but it does potentially have consequences for trans people. I am not directly responsible for how another adult human being reacts to my actions, sure, but am I really being a good ally if I deliberately provoke cruel and volatile people who like targeting vulnerable minorities?

It's a little different with examples of casual IRL transphobia, since often the person saying it isn't actually a TERF, they're just ignorant and parroting nonsense a friend of a friend said one time, and I've found that asking them what experiences informed their views, or gently correcting misinformation, actually does lead to a productive conversation in many cases.

Again, not a criticism of OP's post or the concept of "anti-terf" in general. I would genuinely like to know how other people define what it means to be anti-terf in actual practice, since it seems subtly different from how one might respond to other forms of bigotry.

incase it wasn’t clear - i am and my blog is anti-terf 👍

[rjalker]

If you think people criticizing bigotry is more offensive than the bigotry itself, you are, in fact, a bigot.

[mafaldaknows]

wonka isn’t the problem Roald Dahl is. he’s racist and sexist. timmy shouldn’t be working with people like this it’s gross and we all know how him working with vile people go down (did anyone actually watch a rainy day in new york?) i’m very disappointed in him to take on a role from someone who doesn’t believe in equality.

Hello, Anon:

I understand what you are saying, and that’s your right to reject that which offends your sensibilities. You can be disappointed. That’s your prerogative.

Roald Dahl wrote Charlie and The Chocolate Factory in 1964. The world was a different place back then. Would it help you to know that Dahl himself was ashamed of the racist overtones of his iconic book and made an effort to rectify his mistake?

https://www.insider.com/classic-childrens-books-that-havent-aged-well-2019-5

Also, Roald Dahl died 31 years ago, so Timmy wouldn’t be working with him, as he did with Woody Allen in A Rainy Day In New York (2019).

I don’t think there’s any value in the wholesale rejection of a good story written in another era because certain details in it don’t hold up to our more enlightened contemporary standards. Why can’t the modern reboot be an opportunity for these archaic, offensive details to be addressed with greater sensitivity? Why must this controversy be such an all-or-nothing proposition?

By your logic, we all should also reject outright the work of the Disney Brothers. Walt Disney was a good friend of Roald Dahl and they shared similar views, some of which also appear in many Disney classics. https://www.insider.com/moments-themes-in-disney-movies-that-havent-aged-well-problematic

Better cancel your Disney+ subscription, if you don’t want to seem like a hypocrite, just saying.

So now what are we supposed to do?

There’s a lot of space to explore in between total acceptance and total rejection of a problematic classic. Rather than running from bigotry and misogyny as we find examples of them in classics from childhood, why not examine what’s terrible about them in a modern context, and use the material as a way to present solutions to prevent it in the future?

We don’t even know the specific details of this movie yet, and already people are sounding off about how disappointed they are in Timmy’s choices, based on very little actual information and a lot of speculation.

I don’t believe in canceling someone in a movie before the movie even exists, before even giving the problematic story a chance to redeem itself.

From what I’ve learned through interviews and articles about Timothée Chalamet, he seems to be a kind, caring, highly intelligent, emotionally aware, and socially conscious young man. I doubt highly that he would agree to work on any project that would compromise his values and principles.

Let’s give Timmy the benefit of the doubt. When we know better, we do better.

Thanks for your comment. 😊

[90363462]

Kanye West Just Lost Vogue And Anna Wintour As The Fallout Over His Racist Behavior And Online Bullying Continues

The reported decision by Vogue and Anna Wintour to sever ties with Kanye West comes as the rapper continues to deal with the consequences of antisemitic comments and other racist antics.

Ade OnibadaPosted 4 hours ago

Vogue magazine has become the latest major player in the fashion industry to drop Kanye West following a series of racist stunts, bullying, and antisemitic comments.

A spokesperson for the publication told Page 6 on Friday that neither Vogue nor editor-in-chief Anna Wintour would be working with the artist for the foreseeable future. Publisher ​​Condé Nast did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did a representative for Ye.

More than a decade since his first appearance on the illustrious red carpet of the Met gala in 2009, West, who now legally goes by the name Ye, has seen his ties to major fashion and corporate brands evaporate since his racist antics. On Friday, luxury fashion house Balenciaga announced that it would also be cutting ties.

Vogue’s decision to distance itself from Ye comes in response to the antisemitic rants, which resulted in him having his social media accounts temporarily restricted. In a now-removed tweet, Ye wrote that he planned to go “death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE,” sparking strong backlash from Black and Jewish communities.

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Vogue is also not on board with Ye’s support for the White Lives Matter movement, which was featured on shirts at his Yeezy show during the most recent Paris Fashion Week.

Shortly after the show, Ye was accused of bullying Vogue fashion editor Gabriella Karefa-Johnson, who criticized the offensive shirts, calling them “pure violence.”

“There is no excuse, there is no art here,” she said at the time. “I do think if you asked Kanye, he’d say there was art, and revolution, and all of the things in that T-shirt. There isn’t.”

Ye responded by mocking Karefa-Johnson on social media.

Vogue issued a statement of support for Karefa-Johnson, saying that it stood with her and called Ye’s behavior “unacceptable."

The two allegedly reconciled in a two-hour sit-down filmed by Elvis director Baz Luhrmann — at the request of Wintour.

The relationship between Wintour and Ye goes back over a decade, with Ye once bragging about having dinner with the iconic editor in his 2012 single Cold.

Ye’s campaign to have now ex-wife Kim Kardashian on Vogue materialized in 2014 when the couple appeared on the cover in the lead-up to their star studded wedding in Italy, cementing their status as a fashion power couple.

In an interview with Vogue, Kardashian confirmed that it was Wintour’s cosign that convinced the couple to name their first child North West, calling the decision “genius.”

Instagram

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Meanwhile, pressure is mounting for other collaborators to end their relationships with Ye. Adidas has said that it would be reviewing its collaboration with the Yeezy creator amid calls from critics, including Friends actor David Schwimmer, for the sportswear brand to drop Ye permanently.

Schwimmer took to Instagram on Friday to share an excerpt from the now-removed Drink Champs episode where Ye bragged that Adidas couldn’t sever ties.

"I can literally say antisemitic things and Adidas can't drop me...Now what?” Ye said.

Schwimmer posted the clip, along with the message "Now what," directed at the Adidas Instagram account.

Adidas did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Come on guys, we’re cyber bullying this company until they stand against bigotry!!!

we gonna need ALL the info on all their accounts. oh we lighting their asses UP!!!!!!!! We’re Light them tf up!

We’re definitely Getting on their necks and not getting off even if they drop him because we shouldn’t have to express outrage to make change

[remusawoooo]

Dumbledore did not create Voldemort.

"He was not treated nicely by anyone and ofc he would be vindictive of non-magicals" at this point Tom didn't know anything about magic/muggles. sure, he had some idea about him being special, but his view was that he was superior, better. (supported by text and his repeated actions). He bullied(or tortured) fellow students in the cave before Dumbledore came into the picture. ofc it can be argued that he was retaliating, but that's for your interpretation.

Dumbledore reprimanded him in the first meeting, for his thievery and bullying. sure he could've dealt with it better, but he didn't think he was rotten to the core. (Dumbledore states he never thought he met the dark lord in that moment) After coming to hogwarts, Dumbledore treats him like any other student but keeps an eye on him when teachers mention him a lot. Again, it's interesting to see why he would do that? did he think he was bad? the boy was actually getting his followers to call him dark lord by this point. I don't think there's canonical evidence that Dumbledore kept an eye on him before his supremacist tendencies (correct me if I'm wrong). I personally do think jkrs intent of making voldemort an "inherently evil" character kinda comes into play here because Dumbledore is a character that she uses to be the "objective truth" "no questions asked" relayer. it can be questioned, ofc, but I'm talking about the intent. so, yes, there are flaws in the way Dumbledore was written to be critical of Riddle but he wasn't responsible for his bigotry. that's quite offensive in fact. not every character is redeemable or was misguided troubled kid.

Voldemort turning out the way he did with the circumstances he was under is quite literally the antithesis of Harry Potter. They were both orphans in abusive circumstances... they couldn't be more morally different. Imo, Dumbledore and Tom's relationship or interactions were poorly handled and had more potential. Dumbledore wasn't even the biggest authority figure in Tom's life, he wasn't HM then, only one teacher.

Suddenly remembered Dumbledore defending leaving Harry with Dursleys by saying (not verbatim) that it'd keep him humble and not make him too egotistical cause of his fame (probably cause of his view of james). that's an insane thing to think about a child who just lost his parents actually. and while leaving him with people who despise anything magic ( I mean he should have some idea). what i mean to say is, this man is by no means a saint. so if Dumbledore is responsible for anyone turning bad, it's Harry. He played a larger and more active role in his life!! but the boy didn't turn evil!!

Also, a thing about Dumbledore and glory/fame/thinking you are special. he WAS that kid. he thought he was fucking special, and better than everyone. that he was soooo smart and no one gets him (until grindlewald). this pipeline led to his sister's tragic death, his estrangement with his brother and losing the love of his life. As an adult, he could've treated children better, sure. but he was flawed like many other adults in this universe. Dumbledore keeping an eye on riddle could be a result of this and him sending Harry away too! is it the best course of action? absolutely not. but it is a consequence of his character itself. and no one else actually stepped in to question his behavior. (McGonagall does with Harry, but in the end, simply chooses to trust albus) (again, not very responsible of her either)

ITS a convoluted mess atp, but Dumbledore in fact saw a child. he was just indifferent like he is with every other child. (his reaction when tom mentions parseltongue. Tom wants to be more special among what he considered special, but albus doesnt really give the reaction he wanted) Dumbledore isn't a nice guy but he isn't responsible for the evil dictator Tom turned out to be.

Friendly reminder that Tom Riddle didn’t create Voldemort. Dumbledore created Voldemort.

Tom was raised in a Religious Orphanage in the 30s and 40s. He was not treated nicely by anyone. Of course he would be vindictive and hate Non-Magicals.

Dumbledore on the other hand decided that an eleven-year-old was the anti-Christ and treated him like he was already a mass-murderer.

Tom was in the Orphanage in London when the bombs fell. Of course he would be terrified of dying. He was abandoned by his only living relatives. Of course he’d wish them dead.

Dumbledore looked at a child and saw a demon. If he had seen a child, Voldemort would never have existed.

Give me arguments if you disagree.

[rametarin]

TERFs are wrong. But, so are social constructionist Gender Theorists

You know it is not a question of one extreme or the other. As much as both like to think they are morally right and have “the science” on their side, they don’t. Both are god damned annoying, totalitarian, and are interpreting reality and what that means in order to browbeat and push others, both socially and legally, towards doing things based on what those mean.

Both are trying to control the parameters of all things based on the fundamentals by their interpretation of reality, not by the objective facts. Both are wrong.

TERFs are not wrong in that someone that is born with XY chromosomes and a standard male sex conforming body is male, and you need dysphoria in order to be trans. They are not wrong that your gender is not just a wily nily purely social construct.

They are, however, wrong about absolutely everything else regarding what those genders MEAN, where they’re derived from and why they were derived that way.

And the social constructionists aren’t wrong in that we should make exceptions to the biological rule for people with transgenderist disorders of the mind and brain. But, they are wrong in that so many are totalitarian. They do not want these exceptions to be exceptions, they want the very basis and fundamental understanding, how we define gender and sex, to change to be based not on biological empiricism, facts or truth, but by legal and social oughts and things they argue “should be held true else it demoralizes and oppresses a minority.”

There are not, “millions of genders.” There’s your basic standard assed functioning, and then there’s a disorder we otherwise can’t do anything with or about right now where it’d simply more healthy for everybody around if we let them live with the identity that is in their minds and body.

Furthermore, the nonbinarist movement needs to stop being such a cowardly little bitch and argue for itself outside the umbrella of trans rights, because it sits there demanding changes and exceptions and validations be made for it on the basis of bowing to trans rights, when it itself hasn’t stepped out of its parasitic sphere to fight for any on its own. Strategically using trans rights as a platform for both offensive and defensive purposes.

TERFs, up to now, have been virtually unchallengable because, “you must be a horrible right wing fundamentalist religious monster to oppose EQUALITY for WOMEN!” And they’ve just skirted on that since the 60s. Which was absolute hell trying to convince anybody that radical feminism was nonsense and harbored deep, authoritarian bends on takes with social ramifications. Yall were in their corner when they were talking about how, “society” needed to give women, exclusively, help to go to college because of past oppressions. But when someone tried to tell you they had weird obsessions with vaginas and using them as rubber stamps for whom gets special treatment and privileges and exceptions to defaults that make men do dirty work and women get clean pay? Deafening silence.

But the minute TERFs don’t want transwomen in their magical witch girl’s clubs, fucking with the cosmology? Ohho they’re visible now. You can see their bullshit now. They’re weirdos drawing female symbols and self-portraits with menstrual blood and making hacky poems about their uterus, now. They’re bad people now. You can actually see they weren’t, “being hyperbolic” or “just venting about the evil MEN around them” now. Hahahahaa. Hilarious.

TERFs are wrong. Point blank. But so are the social constructionist extremists and postmodernists behind the appropriated bandwagon of what calls itself the trans rights and nonbinarist rights movement in the west. The basis for which they’ve defined their norms is not one of reality, but “oughts” and “should be’s” and “must bes” and “or else”s. To the point where they invented a slur specifically to denounce those that do not share their view. “Bioessentialist.”

That makes as much sense as calling someone a dirty, “bioessentialist” because they say you need to be an elephant, to be an elephant. Yes, you do need the physical, biological characteristics to really BE that which you aspire to be. No, you don’t get to redefine what an elephant is to force the elephant to “identify” as an elephant so something that is not an elephant can also be an elephant.

If misgendering someone is triggering for a minority, it’s just as triggering when you deny someone’s sexuality or gender when they’re hetero and cis. And many are repulsed by the idea that the reason they’re compatible with their sex and gender conformation is because they, “made a choice.” For that matter, if you’re actually transgendered and not some bandwagoneering asshole, being trans isn’t a choice either. It’s a psychological and neurological impossibility to be anything else, not a lifestyle, not a hobby, not a “preferred state of mind.” Arguing anything else is arguing not for trans rights, but for psycho-social dominance in law.

And if you think misgendering someone that’s transgendered is bad, people that make up at MOST, 0.7% of the human species, and some say as few as 0.3% of the human species (people with cleft lips, born missing limbs and more are born more often) then what the FUCK do you think it is, redefining the identities and realities of 99.3% to 99.7% of the human animal, not to mention how every other animal works? (not counting some exceptions like clownfish.)

Gender is not, wholly, a social construct. It’s a derivative and pluto’s shadow from SEX. SEX is not psychological. Sex is not negotiable. Sex is biological and disease can make it express incorrectly or correctly to function as intended by natural selection. Gender is only a social construct in that some cultures have assigned thoughts and characteristics and responsibilities for people on the basis of said sexual role. That’s it.

But people that try to live purely in the psychological sphere or argue that sphere belongs in the dominant position for mankind try to argue it’s the only one that really matters, and while we’re at it, lets let the minority dictate what is normal and rational and good. So their believe gender as feelings supersedes sex as reality.

And why would they argue this? Because they’re, “just such big fans of trans rights?” No. Because they hate disparity and immutable, biological difference. And so want to use the arbitration of human law and culture to marginalize it and pretend it doesn’t exist- to where using technology to circumvent it and the penal system to enforce that view seems like a reasonable, moral thing to strive for. Trans rights for these people have always just been a nice coat of paint to put their real activism under.

And the biggest bitch of it all is, Radical Feminists and Trans Inclusive Radical Feminists and Social Constructionists all receive their marching orders from the same ideology. The same stupid take that says bugger reality, live in a communal fantasy and enforce everybody else to live in it, too. Else they’re a bad person. Else they’re a fascist. They merely differ in the rules and the fundamental parameters.

Know the difference between, “this person is bad and they should be shamed for their beliefs because they are bad,” and, “This person is bad because they’re sitting on a throne that I want to sit on as is rightfully mine.” TIRFs don’t hate TERFs because they’re wrong, they hate them because they’re in the middle of a power grab.

But we have the opportunity to end this “Critical Lens” shitshow forever. Both sides are exposed and showing their true colors as terrible ideologies and people. Both sides are showing their totalitarianism in the form of competitive propaganda and using the legal system to get their way based on past manipulations and exploitations they got from lying to a public that didn’t want to be misogynistic or prejudiced against the transgender.

All it takes is connecting the dots and understanding just how and why it’s not a matter of “bitter evil borderline-conservative Karens Vs. noble oppressed transgenders.”

TERFs are fucking NOT conservatives. They’re typically the same far-left assholes as the TIRFs. They differ ONLY in that they believe critical theory fucking STOPS at the immutable reality of biological sex, because they stand to lose dominance if it’s not immutable- so they demand it be CONSIDERED immutable. Their status as oppressed inherently, hinges on it.

So that’s it then. You’re left with no real heroes in this fight. But if you take anything away from what I’m telling you today, it’s that you can argue legally for trans rights. Just, on the basis as exception to the biological basis, as has been proven. Asterisks. Hyphens. Acknowledging the reality that the existence of the transgendered does not negate the reality of biological sex, nor those whose genders are a direct result of their biological sex as the norm.

It’s not bigotry to sexually discriminate to some degrees. When dealing with subjectives, it’s a matter of argument. When dealing with biological realities and imperatives, opinion is irrelevant to the self-evident realities, and interpretation matters less than the reality.

But to those that believe any discrimination based on physical differences or state is inherently wrong, just the idea of male and female being two different, named things, (”classes”, if you will) with different, “unequal” functions and capacity, fills them with rage.

Your moralism stops where nature begins. Period.

[serialreblogger]

You want to talk more about the bigotry in Harry Potter? Go ahead! I've actually heard stuff like that before, but have yet to do much research on it personally and it's been a while since I read it, so I'm interested.

WELL

Before we begin I should start with a disclaimer: this analysis will be dedicated to examining as many bigoted aspects of Harry Potter’s writing as I can think of, so--while I personally am more or less comfortable balancing critical evaluation with enjoyment of a piece, and strongly advocate developing your own abilities to do the same--I know not everyone is comfortable reading/enjoying a story once they realize its flaws, and again, while I think it’s very important to acknowledge the flaws in culturally impactful stories like Harry Potter, I also know for some people the series is really really important for personal reasons and whatnot. 

So! If you’re one of those people, and you have trouble balancing critical engagement with enjoyment, please feel free to skip this analysis (at least for the time being). Self-care is important, and it’s okay to find your own balance between educating yourself and protecting yourself.

On another note, this is gonna be limited strictly to morally squicky things to do with Rowling’s writing and the narrative itself. Bad stuff characters do won’t be talked about unless it’s affirmed by the narrative (held up as morally justified), and plot holes, unrealistic social structures, etc. will not be addressed (it is, after all, a kid’s series, especially in the first few books. Quidditch doesn’t have to make sense). This is strictly about how Rowling’s personal biases and bigotry impacted the story and writing of Harry Potter.

Sketch Thing #1: Quirrell! I don’t see a lot of people talking about Quirrell and racism, but I feel like it’s a definite thing? Quirinus Quirrell is a white man who wears a turban, gifted to him by an “African prince” (what country? where? I couldn’t find a plausible specific when I was researching it for a fic. If there’s a country which has current/recent royalty that might benevolently interact with someone, and also a current/recent culture where turbans of the appropriate style are common, I couldn’t find it). Of course, it wasn’t actually given to him by an African prince in canon, but it’s still an unfortunate explanation.

More importantly, ALL the latent Islamophobia/xenophobia in the significance of the turban. Like, look at it.

“Man wears turban, smells like weird spices, turns out to be concealing an evil second face under the turban” really sounds like something A Bit Not Good, you know? If you wanted to stoke the flames of fear about foreignness, it would be hard to do it better than to tell children about a strange man who’s hiding something horrible underneath a turban.

Also, Quirrell’s stutter being faked to make you think he was trustworthy is a very ableist trope, and an unfortunately common one. “Disability isn’t actually real, just a trick to make you accommodate and trust them” is not a great message, and it’s delivered way too often by mass media. (Check out season 1 of the Flash for another popular example.)

Sketch Thing #2: The goblins. Much more commonly talked about, in my experience, which is good! The more awareness we have about the messages we’re getting from our popular media, the better, in my view. 

For those who haven’t encountered this bit of analysis before: the goblins in Harry Potter reek of antisemitic stereotypes. Large ears, small eyes, crooked noses, green/gray skin, lust for money, control of the banks, and a resentful desire to overthrow the Good British Government? Very reminiscent of wwii propaganda posters, and in general the hateful rhetoric directed towards Jewish people by other European groups from time immemorial. 

I’m also extremely uncomfortable with how goblin culture is handled by Rowling in general. Like, the goblins were a people that were capable of using magic, but prohibited by the British government from owning wands. That was never addressed. They also had a different culture around ownership, which is why Griphook claimed that the sword of Gryffindor belonged rightfully to the goblins--a gift isn’t passed down to descendants upon death, but instead reverts to the maker. This cultural miscommunication is glossed over, despite the fact that it sounds like Griphook’s voicing a very real, legitimate grievance.

To be honest, apart from the antisemitism, the way Goblin culture is treated by the narrative in Harry Potter is very uncomfortably reminiscent to me of how First Nations were treated by English settlers in North America, before the genocide really got started. The Goblins even have a history of “rebellions,” which both raises the question of why another species is ruling them to begin with, and more significantly, is eerily reminiscent of the Red River Rebellion in Canada (which, for the record, wasn’t actually a rebellion--it was Metis people fighting against the Canadian government when it tried to claim the land that legally, rightfully belonged to the Metis. But that’s another story)

In sum: I Don’t Like the implications of how Rowling treats the goblins.

Sketch Thing #3: Muggles. Ok because we’re all “muggles” (presumably) and because I’m white, talking about this might rapidly degenerate into thinly-veiled “reverse racism” discourse, so please y’all correct me if I stray into that kind of colossal stupidity. However, I am not comfortable with the way non-magical humans are treated by Rowling’s narrative.

The whole premise of Harry Potter is that Evil Wizards Want To Hurt The Muggles, right? Except that it’s not. Voldemort’s goal is to subjugate the inferior humans, rule over non-magical people as the rightful overlords, but that’s hardly mentioned by the narrative. Instead, it focuses on the (also egregious and uncomfortably metaphorical) “blood purism” of wizarding culture, and how wizards would be persecuted for their heritage.

But muggles, actual muggles, are arguably the ones who stand to lose the most to Voldemort, and they’re never notified of their danger. We, the muggles reading it, don’t even really register that we’re the collateral damage in this narrative. Because throughout the series, muggles are set up as laughingstocks. Even the kindest, most muggle-friendly wizards are more obsessed with non-magical people as a curiosity than actually able to relate to them as people. 

I dunno, friends, I’m just uncomfortable with the level of dehumanization that’s assigned to non-magical humans. (Like, there’s not even a non-offensive term for them in canon. There’s “muggle,” which is humorously indulgent at best and actively insulting at worst, and there’s “squib,” which is literally the word for a firework that fails to spark.) It’s not like “muggles” are actually a real people group that can be oppressed, and like I said this kind of analysis sounds a bit like the whining of “reverse racism” advocates where the powerful majority complains about being insulted, but... it kind of also reeks of ableism. People that are not able to do a certain cool, useful thing (use magic) are inherently inferior, funny at best and disposable at worst. They suffer and die every day from things that can easily be cured with magic, but magic-users don’t bother to help them, and even when they’re actively attacked the tragedy of hundreds dying is barely mourned by the narrative. 

It gives me bad vibes. I don’t Love It. It sounds uncomfortably like Rowling’s saying “people that are unable to access this common skill are inherently inferior,” and that really does sound like ableism to me. 

Either way, there’s something icky about consigning an entire group of people to the role of “funny clumsy stupid,” regardless of any real-world connections there may or may not be to that people group. Don’t teach children that a single genetic characteristic can impact someone’s personhood, or make them inherently less worthy of being taken seriously. Just, like... don’t do that.

Sketch Thing #4: The house elves. Everyone knows about the house elves, I think. The implications of “they’re slaves but they like it” and the only person who sees it as an issue having her campaign turned into a joke by the narrative (“S.P.E.W.”? Really? It might as well stand for “Stupidly Pleading for Expendable Workers”) are pretty clear.

Sketch Thing #5: Azkaban. Are we gonna talk about how wizarding prison involves literal psychological torture, to the point where prisoners (who are at least sometimes there wrongly, hence the plot of book 3) almost universally go “insane”? This is sort of touched on by the narrative--“dementors are bad and we shouldn’t be using them” was a strongly delivered message, but it was less “because torturing people, even bad people, is not a great policy” and more “because dementors are by their natures monstrous and impossible to fully control.” 

“This humanoid species is monstrous and impossible to control” is, once again, a very concerning message to deliver, and it doesn’t actually address the real issue of “prison torture is bad, actually.” Please, let’s not normalize the idea that prison is inherently horrific. Of course, prison as it exists in North America and Britain is, indeed, inherently horrific and often involves torture (solitary confinement, anyone?), but like--that’s a bad thing, y’all, it’s deeply dysfunctional and fundamentally unjust. Don’t normalize it.

Sketch Thing #6: Werewolves. Because Rowling explicitly stated that lycanthropy in her series is a metaphor for “blood-borne diseases like HIV/AIDS”. The linked article says it better than I could:

Rowling lumps HIV and AIDS in with other blood-borne illnesses, which ignores their uniquely devastating history. And Lupin’s story is by no stretch a thorough or helpful examination of the illness. Nor is its translation as an allegory easily understood, beyond the serious stigma that Rowling mentioned.

That Lupin is a danger to others could not more clearly support an attitude of justifiable fear toward him, one that is an abject disservice to those actually struggling with a disease that does not make them feral with rage.

This definitely ties into homophobia, given how deeply the queer community has been affected by HIV/AIDS. Saying a character with a condition that makes him an active threat to those around him is “a metaphor for AIDS” is deeply, deeply distressing, both for its implications about queer people and their safety for the general population, and for the way it specifically perpetuates the false belief that having HIV/AIDS makes a person dangerous.

Sketch Thing #7: Blood Ties. This isn’t, like, inherently sketch, but (especially for those of us with complicated relationships to our birth families) it can rub a lot of people the wrong way. Rowling talks a big talk about the folly of “blood purism,” but she also upholds the idea that blood and blood relations are magically significant. 

Personally, I’m very uncomfortable with the fact that Harry was left with an abusive family for his entire childhood, and it was justified because they were his “blood relatives.” I’ve had this argument with ultra-conservative family friends who genuinely believe it’s a parent’s right to abuse their child, and while I don’t think that’s what Rowling is saying, I do feel uncomfortable with the degree of importance she places on blood family. I’m uncomfortable with the narrative’s confirmation that it is acceptable (even necessary) to compromise on boundaries and allow the continuation of abuse because “it’s better for a child to be raised by their Real Family” than it is to risk them to the care of an unrelated parent.

Genetic relations aren’t half as important as Rowling tells us. For people with a bad birth family, this can be a damaging message to internalize, so I’ll reiterate: it’s a pretty thought, the love in blood, but it’s ultimately false. The family you build is more real, more powerful and more valid than any family you were assigned to by an accident of genes.

I can think of one or two more things, but they’re all a lot more debatable than what I have here--as it is, you might not agree with everything I’ve said. That’s cool! I’m certainly not trying to start a fight. We all have the right to read and interpret things for ourselves, and to disagree with each other. And again, I’m not trying to ruin Harry Potter. It’s honestly, as a series, not worse in terms of latent bigotry than most other books of its time, and better than many. It’s just more popular, with a much bigger impact and many more people analyzing it. I do think it’s important to critically evaluate the media that shapes one’s culture, and to acknowledge its shortcomings (and the ways it can be genuinely harmful to people, especially when it’s as culturally powerful as Harry Potter). But that doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t enjoy it for what it was meant to be: a fun, creative, engaging story, with amazing characters, complex plots, heroism and inspiration for more than one generation of people. 

Enjoy Harry Potter. It is, in my opinion, a good series, worth reading and re-reading for enjoyment, even for nourishment. It’s also flawed. These things can both be true.

[jewish-privilege]

Last week, Rachel Shabi, a left-of-center British journalist, warned American progressives that anti-Semitism could one day tear apart Democrats just as it is now doing to the Labour Party. When I read her essay, just ten days ago, it seemed fantastical. Today, after watching progressives floundering about in the wake of Ilhan Omar’s smearing of pro-Israel activism as a form of dual loyalty, Shabi’s diagnosis looks prescient. It can happen here.

Shabi’s argument is that three conditions exist to help spread anti-Semitism among even progressives who are not inherently predisposed to it. The first is the right uses hyperbolic accusations of anti-Semitism to close off legitimate criticism of Israel. Second, the right is comprehensively more bigoted than the left. And third, the left itself is divided, so that when a member of the more radical faction is identified with it, “anti-Semitism quickly became part of an ongoing factional battle.”

All these conditions drive many leftists to form a protective cordon around their allies who promote anti-Semitic tropes. Only the most hard-core members actually defend anti-Semitic ideas on the merits. Most of them instead are driven into this position by polarization, defending anti-Semitism as an act of defiance against political enemies inside and outside the party.

The source of their ire at the moment is a new resolution by House Democrats denouncing anti-Semitism. It defines the term. In an implicit rebuke to Omar, to include ‘‘accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.”

If Omar merely spoke clumsily and didn’t intend to question the legitimacy of Jewish participation in the foreign policy debate, they could happily endorse the measure. It does not censure Omar, or even name her. The resolution also cites “the post-9/11 conditions faced by Muslim-Americans in the United States, including unfounded, vicious attacks on and threats to Muslim-American Members of Congress” as a form of unacceptable bigotry.

So, what is it about the resolution they object to? They resent a rebuke of their political ally. One viral tweet scolds Democrats for proposing a resolution against anti-Semitism while ignoring the much worse racism of Steve King. In fact, two months ago, Democrats also introduced a resolution denouncing King (by name, unlike Omar.)

The main theme of the defenses of Omar is deflection. Mehdi Hasan’s pro-Omar column lists all the anti-Semitism on the Republican side that has gone unpunished, and devotes not a single word to defending or even minimizing her offense. This has been a running theme of pro-Omar commentary on social media...

All these people are making the same argument: We must choose between condemning the greater evil of the opposing side and condemning the lesser evil of our own. We cannot do both. Obviously, this kind of logic is not peculiar to arguments from the left or arguments about anti-Semitism. It is a broadly popular form of deflection.

Daou’s phrase — “the problem,” which is also sometimes expressed as “the real problem” — is usually a tip-off that this kind of deflection is being employed. The very term “the problem” primes you into thinking there can only be one kind of problem. And since we know the other side is worse, it follows that our side cannot be the problem. Therefore, to criticize one’s own side is to ignore “the problem” (or “the real problem”). To rule out the possibility of multiple problems is to preclude internal criticism altogether.

In the Israel debate, like most issues, there are multiple problems. One is anti-Semites smuggling their biases into criticisms of Israel. Another is Israel supporters using hyperbolic accusations of anti-Semitism to shut down criticism of Israel. (Progressives sometimes use hyperbolic accusations of racism and sexism to shut down criticism also.) The trick is to navigate a middle ground that allows both calling out real bigotry and permitting open debate.

...Whether or not the United States should treat Israel as that kind of ally is a completely legitimate subject of political dispute. The place to make the argument is in the facts of the case — specifically, whether Israel merits such a level of support. Over the last decade and a half, as Israel’s rejectionist right has cemented almost permanent control of its foreign policy, I have grown more skeptical of the merits of the alliance. There is plenty of room to be much more critical than I am without falling into the trap of anti-Semitism.

Shabi’s advice analyzes the dilemma from the perspective of a party in a much more advanced stage of crisis. “Viewing American progressive politics today is like seeing the beginnings of a slow-motion car crash, one we’ve already been through,” she writes. As the Labour Party has embraced Jeremy Corbyn, acceptance of left-wing anti-Semitism has become a kind of totem of ideological virtue. The addictive pull of factional partisanship has produced an outbreak of anti-Semitism so deep and wide, the Jewish community is abandoning the party en masse.

...Progressives are right to object to bad-faith charges of anti-Semitism closing down questions about Israel. But defending anti-Semitism as “just asking questions about Israel” is not a solution. It is the opposite of a solution. Casting harsh condemnation of Israel as a stalking horse for anti-Semitism is easier if anti-Semitic insinuations are routinely smuggled into the debate.

Progressives are also right to object to the implication that bigotry should be thought of as a Democratic Party problem. The Democrats are a multicultural party that has built a strong culture of tolerance. This is of a necessity: The party could not survive without finding a political language that creates respect for religious and racial minorities as well as the majority. Those high standards can only exist if they are maintained. To change the subject to the lower standards of the Republican Party is eventually to adopt those standards as your own.

[not-terezi-pyrope]

TERFs: What you (don’t) want to know

CW: Overt discussion of transphobia, homophobia, racism, and acknowledgement of sexual topics.

So, for better or worse, I’ve found myself spending a lot of time observing (through chance encounter of via indirect commentary) TERF communities. TERF communities and rhetoric are something of a problem in-vogue right now, as, while TERF communities are generally fairly small, they are very vocal, and have managed to insidiously insert themselves into mainstream queer and feminist discourse through surface-level mimicry of progressive rhetoric. This is especially becoming an issue in my country, the UK, which is unfortunately now garnering a reputation as a hive-bed for TERF groups, something which has attracted some media attention as of late.

Given this, and because terfs thrive on misinformation campaigns, I thought I’d write up a sort of Q&A cheatsheet breaking down ideas about the “terf” movement and dispelling myths, malicious or otherwise. I think that confronting these people for what they are, and not letting them control the terms of the conversation by misrepresenting themselves and their opponents, is important as we strive for trans equality, and as a trans woman it’s a cause fairly close to my own chest. I may be putting a target on my chest a little by making a post like this, but then that’s par for the course. Also, keep in mind that this is all based solely on my own observations, experiences and reading, and you should probably seek out perspectives from other trans, feminist and queer people for a more diverse set of views. I am not an expert, and have probably made at least some mistakes as I’m not super knowledgeable in all these areas, so keep that in mind (and feel free to message me if I’ve made any really glaring errors).

So, here’s what you (don’t) want to know about The TERFs. (Long post under the cut: be forewarned).

What is a “TERF”?

TERF is a term used to describe a loose collective of conservative-leaning transphobes who couch their transphobic ideas within the framework of radical feminist rhetoric. The term “TERF” stands for “Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist”, and was popularized over a decade ago by a cis feminist to distinguish these transphobic individuals from more mainstream and intersectional feminists and radical feminists (a common lie spread by TERFs is that the term was create by trans women to attack them -  this is not the case). TERFs often self-term themselves “gender critical feminists” as a euphamism for their particular brand of transphobic ideology.

TERF ideology has its roots in second-wave feminism, including the writings of people like Germaine Greer (now fairly infamous for her transphobic views), and the work of long-since discredited pseudoscientist Ray Blanchard, known for his characterization of transgender people as motivated by sexual perversion in the 80s and 90s (and who now spends his time complaining about trans people watching anime on twitter).

The core tenets of TERF ideology are that gender is synonymous with gender assigned at birth, chromosomal type, and one’s physical genitalia. TERFs believe that sex is a strict binary, and that the role of women in society and the origins of misogyny are defined by one’s genitalia, and/or one’s capacity to reproduce. As such, TERFs believe that trans women are men who are “appropriating” the experiences of “real women”. This is a view fundamentally incompatible with the consensus in the scientific fields of genetics, reproductive biology, gender studies, and with almost all mainstream intersectional feminist discourse. Despite this, TERFs tend to ignore all evidence that contradicts their claims, as their primary motivation (as with most bigots) is to justify their pre-existing prejudices and avoid self-examination that contradicts their prior beliefs and assumptions. As well as transphobia, the implications of terf rhetoric are frequently variously misogynistic, homophobic, and racist, despite attempts by terfs to decry this (more below).

While gender roles are a social construct, and gender is definitely informed by societal context, the nature and expression of gender is in reality unique psychological experience and identity that may be related to one’s sexual characteristics but is not defined by it. The human experience of gender is a broad spectrum, with different ideas and experiences of gender existing in different cultures and communities across the globe.

Are TERFs feminists?

“No” would be a simple answer, but at the risk of falling prey to “No True Scotsman”, I will say that it depends on how you want to define the term. TERFs justify their ideology with the rhetoric of feminism, and claim that their perspective is based in a radical feminist deconstruction of gender. Their basic logic can be boiled down as such; “1. Gender, as a psychological experience, does not exist. 2. As such, the terms “man” and “woman” derive solely from one’s genitalia (or, depending on the context of the argument, chromosomes), and the axis of misogynistic oppression solely derives from one’s genitalia. 3. As such, trans women are not “true” women, and claiming that they are is misogyny and/or erasure of women”.

While this breakdown may entice cis people who haven’t examined concepts of sex and gender any more deeply than they did in their school biology lessons, this definition of manhood and womanhood is deeply reductive and is in and of itself misogynistic. Particularly concerning is the insistence of TERFs that womanhood is defined solely by one’s genitalia, or, as it is sometimes framed, one’s possession of a womb or ability to bear children. TERFs will often complain that describing people’s bodies in neutral, ungendered terms (e.g. “a person with a vagina”) is somehow objectifying, yet one of their core beliefs is fairly degrading idea that the be-all and end-all of womanhood is one’s genitalia, and one’s “role” in the reproductive cycle. This sort of Victorian era conception of gender is deeply rooted in misogynistic ideas about the role of women in society, and it is the sort of rhetoric responsible for legislation such as the recent horrific bill introduced in Utah which defines a woman as somebody with ovaries and who have “external anatomical characteristics that appear to have the purpose of performing the natural reproductive function of providing eggs and receiving sperm from a male donor.” It should be fairly clear that this sort of definition of womanhood as being defined by one’s “purpose” to reproduce is deeply reductive, sexist, and would be harmful (and erasing of) intersex people and cis women who are infertile or who have surgeries such as hysterectomy, even prior to considering the impact of these ideas on trans people.

On the topic of intersex people, it should be noted that their mere existence is a refutation to the TERF conception of gender as an absolute binary set before birth and static throughout life. TERFs tend to reject intersex people as “outliers” or aberrations when this point have brought up, and more recently have switched to the tactic of claiming that any trans person who tries to discuss intersex people during debates about sex and gender is “co-opting intersex narratives”, which is in essence an excuse used to stall debate on the subject and avoid addressing it.

More broadly with respect to feminism, in addition to the misogynistic implications of the TERF worldview, their brand of feminism is widely denounced by more mainstream feminists as being outdated, offensive and non-intersectional, as well as harmful to feminism as a whole. Here are a few articles talking about this; 1 2 3.

Is “TERF” a slur?

This is one of the most widespread myths spread by TERFs in order to delegitimize criticism, and to provide a pretext upon which to report and silence people who are attempting to discuss TERFs and their ideology. TERFs will claim that the word “TERF” is a slur created by trans women to persecute them. Usually, they will claim that the word is a derogatory term for women in general, or sometimes for lesbians.

This is blatantly false. Firstly, TERF is a neutral acronym that was popularized by a cis feminist to distinguish TERFs from other, non-transphobic feminists. It is an abbreviation of a description of their movement; self-described radical feminists who campaign for trans exclusion from women’s spaces and womenhood as a whole, as such, they are “trans exclusionary radical feminists”. TERF is often an insulting term, but it is such in the same way that being called a homophobe or a racist is “insulting”; it is insulting because it has accurately descriptive negative connotations.

The insistence that TERF is a slur, that TERF just means “lesbian” or “woman”, is a weapon used to shut down discussion, and a shield used to hide the fringe nature of their views. TERFs will often claim that all women are terfs, or that all “real” lesbians are terfs, and so that people using the term TERF are using it as a general slur for lesbians or women. This ignores the meaning of the word, and the reality at whom it is aimed. Not all women are terfs, not all lesbians are terfs, not even all transphobes are terfs. TERF describes a very specific subset of anti-trans activist, and the idea that it is a slur against other marginalized groups is to terfs simultaneously a useful lie and also a comforting self-deception that allows them to believe that their beliefs and community is far more widespread than it is, and that criticism of their ideas is rooted in some external bigotry rather than in the flaws in their own rhetoric.

Does “TERF” mean lesbian?

No. As explained above, this is an offensive lie spread by TERFs to further their own ends. Lesbians who I have talked to about this are generally disgusted with TERFs trying to associate themselves with them and misrepresent their community as being transphobic. While some TERFs may be lesbians (although they far from all are), they do not speak in any capacity for the lesbian community, no matter how much they may pretend to.

It is worth noting that TERFs have a history of erasing lesbians. TERFs claim that the only “true” lesbians are cis women who are solely attracted to women who were assigned female at birth. As well as (inevitably) denying the identity of trans lesbians, they erase the identity of cis women who identify as lesbian by claiming that any lesbian who is attracted to any trans woman is not a “real” lesbian and is instead bisexual. This, once again, is a nonsensical and abhorrent attempt to redefine terms to fit their own worldview.

Are TERFs conservative?

TERF rhetoric aligns very closely with conservative ideology regarding sex and gender. Although TERFs describe themselves as as feminists and as such see themselves as being “progressives” in a sense, they tend to have a distaste for the left as generally rejecting of their views, and ally themselves with right-wing conservatives in order to pursue their goal of marginalizing the trans people and seeking rollbacks of trans rights and equality. It is common to see TERFs “lament” that far right figures with deeply misogynistic perspectives on gender equality and other social causes are “the only ones” who agree with them, without stopping to reflect upon what implications this may have for the nature of their own beliefs.

As right wing sources and media are usually the only sources which backup their views on trans people, TERFs frequently share right wing or even far-right articles and writers to fuel their transphobia or to be used as “evidence” when arguing against trans rights. TERFs will often collaborate with right wing groups in order to further their fight against trans rights, even when such groups also pursue agendas contrary to the causes of gender equality, body autonomy and LGBT+ rights that they claim to support. A prominent example of this was exposed recently wherein a major TERF group was found to be engaging in legal action in partnership with ultra-conservative evangelical Christian group “Focus on the Family”, known for their opposition to same-sex marriage, abortion access, and women’s equality, in order to lobby against legal protections for trans people in the US. In another recent example, conservative group the Heritage Foundation paid for two prominent British TERF “activists” to be flown to America in order to interrupt a meeting between Sarah McBride, national press secretary of the Human Rights Campaign, and a colleague, in order to harass McBride for being transgender.

The nature of this relationship, wherein TERFs collaborate with, exchange funding with, and base their ideology on the publication of right-wing figures and groups, means that despite their cries to the contrary, TERFs as a movement should for all intents and purposes be considered right wing.

Are TERFs racist?

Writing this, I am a white trans woman and as such do not want to speak over trans women of colour who will have more nuanced and better informed perspectives on the links between TERF ideology and racism/white supremacy. You should definitely seek out the views and writings of trans people of colour who will be far more qualified to talk about and knowledgeable about racism in TERF circles than this one white trans girl. However, for the sake of this post I will provide a brief overview of some of the trends I have seen both in person and pointed out by others.

TERF’s feminism is by definition non-intersectional and tends to have a poor relationship with and understanding of how racial oppression intersects with feminist issues. A recurring theme in TERF politics is a condescension towards Muslim women and the stereotyping of actions of men of colour. TERFs also erase the particular intersection of transmisogyny and racism that trans women of colour experience by merely blaming their oppression on their actions as “men”. Moreover, TERF views about the gender binary are also ignorant of the diverse cultural conceptions of gender that have existed and continue to exist around the world that do not fall into their narrow binary. As did their colonial cultures before them, TERFs seek to apply their own binary conceptualization of gender to anyone and everyone they come into contact with. TERF-brand feminism is conceived therefore from a white, Western perspective and makes little effort to break free of this.

It is difficult to find articles discussing this aspect of TERF ideology specifically, but here are a few links in which instances of this are discussed. Examples are not difficult to find in documentation of activities undertaken by TERFs. I will also link this twitter thread that discusses TERFism as a gateway to white supremacy via the entry-point of transphobia.

What do TERFs think about trans men?

While a lot of discussion of TERF viewpoints centers their transmisogyny as the most visible manifestation of their transphobia, TERF ideology is also hostile towards transgender men, albeit in different ways to their hostility towards trans women.

A common TERF myth is that trans “genderists” are seeking to forcibly turn gender nonconforming cis people trans by “convincing them” (sometimes termed “brainwashing them”) into believing that they are of a different gender. As such, a common TERF belief about trans men is that they are simply GNC cis women, often characterized as “butch lesbians”, who have been “tricked” into thinking they are men by “transgender ideology”, or who seek to become men because they seek to escape misogyny. As such, a TERFs are often condescending towards trans men, pretending to empathize with an imagined plight of a “deluded woman”, while at the same time aggressively misgendering them and erasing their identities as trans men. While this idea bears no resemblance to the actual experiences of trans men, TERFs tend to have very little exposure to trans masculine people in general, and so, much like their conception of trans women, their ideas about the issues trans men face are largely based in a collection of myths that they themselves have invented.

This is not to say that TERFs will not be more overtly aggressive towards trans men; an alternative narrative peddled by TERFs about gay trans men in particular is that they are “fujoshis” who are obsessed with fictional gay couples to such an extent that they are compelled to try to become gay men. This idea is so blatantly absurd that it practically denies any sensible analysis even from a critical perspective, so I will leave it at that, however in this manner TERFs characterize trans men who they wish to attack with their more traditional aggressive, sneering countenance.

What do TERFs think about non-binary people (and queer people)?

TERFs do not believe that non-binary people exist. TERFs believe in a strict, immutable gender binary, and similarly to many people on the right and the “anti-SJW” crowd, they tend to characterize nonbinary people as all being teenagers who have been “deluded” by platforms such as Tumblr, and by progressive leftist spaces in general.

More broadly, TERFs have a narrow and regressive conception of sexuality and gender identity, and do not generally accept the existence of LGBTQ+ identities beyond Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual, which they view as being “rooted in biology”. Asexuality and pansexuality, as well as other identity labels and any non-binary gender descriptors, are dismissed offhandedly as being fads.

TERFs seek to gatekeep membership of the LGBTQ+ community by erasing the existence of people who do not conform to their strict definitions of “Gay, Lesbian, or Bisexual”. This includes reclassifying gay and lesbian people as bisexual if they have any sort of attraction to trans people, and a broader attempt to expunge any terms that might allow people wiggleroom within this rigid categorization. The push to reject the reclaimed term “queer” in LGBT+ communities of late has been largely fueled by TERFs, who ridicule queer people (see this post for a relevant discussion) and try to repopularize the characterization of “queer” as a slur as a tactic to drive out non-cis people and those who identify with sexualities that they do not recognize. This is part of the overarching TERF strategy of attempting to control language and narrative to further their ideas.

How can I recognize a TERF?

Many TERFs advertise themselves as such and can therefore be avoided fairly easily. Common themes found on dedicated TERF blogs include usernames and bios with references to radical feminism (which, while not being synonymous with TERF, is a label that they have heavily co-opted), references to XX chromosomes or genitalia, or even straight up declaration of their own “terf status” in their sidebars or blog descriptions.

That said, there has recently been recognition of the fact that TERFs are actively pushing their viewpoints on “secret” blogs without any overt references to their TERF ideology in order to spread their ideas and draw people who don’t know better into their toxic rhetoric and movement. However, even then TERFs can often be recognized through the collection of specific terms and dogwhistles that they favour in their rhetoric. Here are some examples of red flags to watch out for in discourse:

Trans women/men being referred to as TIMs or TIFs (trans-identified males/females), also sometimes as “Timothies” and “Tiffanies”.

The term “Gender Critical” or “Gender Critical Feminism”. This is a euphemism synonymous with TERF favoured by members of their own community.

Reference to Trans-Rights Activists (TRAs, designed to sound like “MRA”).

Loaded references to “trans ideology”.

References to “genderism”.

A particular focus on crimes committed by a few selected trans people used to smear the entire community.

Discussion of “men trying to enter women’s/lesbian spaces” is often a euphemistic reference to trans women as the “men”.

The same can often go for broad declarations that lesbians “should not let people tell them that they should be attracted to men”. While this is of course true, I’ve seen this in many instances be said specifically with the undertone of excluding trans women as the “men”.

The term “womyn” or “wombyn”, used by TERFs to differentiate their concept of a “real woman” from women including trans women.

Radical feminism being discussed in relation to any of the above points is a dead ringer for a TERF.

This is of course far from comprehensive, and TERFs have become good at hiding their ideas within the wrapping paper of feminist rhetoric and the language surrounding other types of progressive activism. The best policy is just to be sure to pay attention to how people discuss gender identity and transgender people, or perhaps how they pointedly don’t discuss them when they are expressing their ideology. Keep in mind to watch out for ideas that seem to stem from the above arguments.

Anything else I should know (and what can I do)?

I am going to stop here to avoid this post becoming even more excessively long than it already is, but it should be kept in mind that this is a far from comprehensive examination of TERF ideologies and rhetoric. I have, for instance, not touched on SWERFs and the attitudes of these communities towards sex workers, which is an ideology that often goes hand-in-hand with TERF ideas, nor the extent of the TERF communities on platforms such as reddit or Mumsnet, not the prevalence of TERF writers and thinkers in some parts of the news media, nor the actual members of TERF groups themselves, nor have I done anything more than scrape the surface of the extent or implications of TERF beliefs and activism. Others have written at greater length, in more detail, and far more eloquently than I ever could on these subjects and more besides, and I will link some additional resources below for people who want to investigate some of these things in more detail, and get perspectives more diverse than mine (I am only one person, and I am far from an expert on all this!).

Overall, though, the key takeaway from all this should be to spread awareness in the public sphere of the nature of TERF beliefs, the form that their “activism” takes, and the consequences for trans people and other marginalized groups. TERFs thrive on misinformation and control of the narrative, and add to their movement by preying on the lack of knowledge of easily influenced young newcomers to feminist and LGB movements. The best way to combat this is to spread awareness and knowledge, which is especially important as TERF perspectives gain more traction in the public sphere. Transphobia is above all things fueled by prejudice, fear of the other, and ignorance, and all of this can be countered by spreading trans narratives, boosting the voices of trans people and sharing truths about trans lives and trans experiences.

Some more good resources about TERFs and their transphobic activities/movements:

The TERFs

TERF on GeekFeminism

GenderCynical (cw: analysis of some distressing content)

TERFs on the Transadvocate

Trans-exclusionary radical feminism on RationalWiki

[fallen-wing-magic]

I do want to clarify that I don't think that writing what is essentially religious mythology fanfiction is actually bad. The only point I wanted to make is that if you *do* find it objectionablse to write religious mythology fanfiction of Indian religions, then you should find it equally objectionable to write religious mythology fanfiction of any other real religion or faith.

Personally? I don't consider religious mythology fanfiction to be inherently offensive and harmful. There is no reason that it should be considered any more offensive than historical RPF (real-person fanfiction). Just as a pious worshipper may be offended by fictionalised portrayals of their god(s), a patriot may be offended my fictionalised portrayals of their country's historical figures. Equally, many very religious and very patriotic people enjoy fictionalised portrayals of their respective deities and historical figures.

Of course, criticisms against Romance Club's Kali: Call of Darkness extend past just the one argument. There are far more obvious examples of bigotry in this series, from having the main character call Sana's religion a hobby, to having the MC call an Indian man a "savage", to using a non-Indian (European?) man as inspiration for an Indian character's design, to calling every item of female Indian clothing a "sari" even when it is not one, to misrepresenting divine femininity and divine masculinity as some kind of BS spiritual gender essentialism, to a lot more things, I'm sure. I might be willing to put the caste system issue down to poor research alone if not for the fact that bigotry and laziness tend to blur together in this writer's work...

In conclusion, the issue with KCD is not the subject matter itself but the ignorant, prejudiced way in which it was handled. This book would have done better in the hands of an (own-voices) Indian writer or one who is at least more competent and committed to making a decent, respectful story.

What bothers me about some of the criticism against KCD is that these people are acting like Romance Club has never done this before — at least, that they have never done this in a way that matters.

By 'this' I am talking about the 'appropriation' of religious mythology. Kali: Call of Darkness is not the first RC story to use religious mythology as building blocks for a story. Rage of the Titans and Path of the Valkyrie also do this.

"But surely those don't matter? No one follows those religions anymore!"

Wrong. This is simply wrong. Sure, very few people today serve the Greek gods or the Norse gods, but some people still do. Hell, I have *met* people who worship these gods. These people's religions are no more or less valuable than any other. All human faiths are important in their own way.

So, whether you consider KCD to be religious appropriation or not is up to you. But consider how you have acted towards other religions, their history and their mythology.

[bellboy905]

On July 15, President Donald Trump stepped onto the South Lawn of the White House for the third “Made in America” showcase.... Confronted with his tweets telling Reps. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib to go back to their home countries... [and] asked about criticisms that his comments were racist, Trump replied, “It doesn’t concern me because many people agree with me.”

[...]

These controversies are, in some sense, bad for Trump... but they’re also bad for the country. The people I fear are benefiting most from these spectacles are racists, who are seeing their views mainstreamed and watching the Republican Party contort itself closer to their positions in order to defend their president.... We in the media have amplified every moment of this horror show.

[...]

“What Americans... do now will define us forever,” wrote Adam Serwer in a powerful essay. But what if the thing Americans should do... or at least the thing the media should do... is stop playing our part in this nightmare? What if the right answer... isn’t to meet Trump’s worst invective with round-the-clock coverage but to deny him the thing he wants most?

[...]

As a writer, I have written tens of thousands of words about Trump’s worst comments. As an editor, I have assigned dozens of stories on them. I know the peculiar mix of moral urgency, journalistic values, and competitive pressure that generates our news cycles. But it is hard for me to look at American politics in 2019 and say that what we are doing is working. Is the public more informed? Are the incentives we’ve constructed leading to a healthier national debate? If the answer is no... we need to be open to rethinking the decisions that drive our coverage.

[...]

When I choose to cover racist comments like the ones Trump made, my implicit rationale... is something like... It is newsworthy that the president of the United States is an unreconstructed racist. It is important that the public knows he is an unreconstructed racist. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. But... sunlight isn’t only, or even mainly, a disinfectant. What sunlight mostly does is help things grow.

[...]

What I fear Trump is doing, with the media... as his accomplice, is suffusing one of the hardiest weeds in American life with sunlight. These controversies are a constant signal to racists... You are not alone. You do not have to hide. You have powerful allies.

[...]

What Trump is offering, so often, is pollution. His attacks are not a statement of policy. They are not honest or illuminating, save insofar as they reveal his own character. He’s designing a set-piece showdown... a symbolic clash over power in America, designed to aggravate the racial polarization Trump believes to be key to his success. Trump... is nothing if not a master of getting people to watch him fight. He chooses his enemies based on who he thinks will rile up his base. He uses outrageous, offensive insults to get the media to take notice... then he feeds off the energy unleashed by the confrontation... The amplification and opposition we offer him are part of his brand. Our sunlight doesn’t disinfect him. It’s the medium in which he grows.

[...]

The one thing the media is doing all the time... is choosing to amplify some subject while ignoring others. Yet we have almost no criteria (and certainly no transparent, rigorous criteria) for making those choices. The closest we come... is the concept of “newsworthiness.” But newsworthiness is slippery.

[...]

Part of the problem here is that the media isn’t a “we.” For all the claims of media bias or conspiracy, we’re actually a collection of outlets in competition with each other for the audience’s attention. When everyone else is covering something, it’s hard not to also cover that thing. Moreover, we’re... navigating a shaky business model. Trump coverage means traffic, and traffic is part of the business. In practice, those incentives do not enter our editorial conversations explicitly, but they are part of the context in which those decisions are made.

Trump, for one, understands this perfectly. “Another reason that I’m going to win another four years is because newspapers, television, all forms of media will tank if I’m not there,” he told the New York Times.

Still, there are easier... ways of making money than journalism. Most outlets are mission-driven first. If Trump’s comments didn’t fit our definitions of newsworthiness, they wouldn’t receive coverage. But they are newsworthy. It would be malpractice to suppress coverage of Trump’s racism. The question is whether it should receive continual headline coverage.

[...]

We knew Trump was racist before he said a word about Ilhan Omar. By suffusing the airwaves with his racism, were we further informing the public, or further polluting the ecosystem?

[...]

The effort to avoid normalizing Trump has been operationalized by... lowering the bar to covering Trump. We’re on high alert for his... moments of racism, sexism, or bigotry... outright lies... [and] flirtations with fascist ideas or autocratic leaders... so all he needs to do to refocus the political media and thus the country on the worst possible conversation is to make a comment that falls into one of these buckets. But what if... instead of lowering the bar to cover Trump, we raised it?

[...]

Perhaps offense and bigotry should be understood as... newsworthy... but not worthy of blanket coverage upon every utterance. Perhaps Trump should only get the coverage he seeks when he acts like the president rather than an internet troll.... Perhaps, to receive the coverage he seeks, Trump should have to normalize himself.

[...]

We ignore topics, and Trumpian set pieces, all the time.... The "Made in America" showcase was meant to be a spectacle.... The White House... lawn was covered in boats and motorcycles, missiles and buck knives. It was suffused in patriotic branding. It failed because the media didn’t care. The event itself released no energy. If a spectacle takes place and no one watches, it’s not a spectacle at all.

[preserving-ferretbrain]

City of … You Get the Idea

by Dan H

Thursday, 23 July 2009

Dan is almost positive about Cassie Clare’s City of Glass~

A couple of weeks ago, our Esteemed Editor got an email from A Reader asking if we were going to review City of Glass. Apparently they’d enjoyed my previous reviews of the books, and had felt that they articulated some of their own issues with the series. I can only assume that said reader’s issues with the series had been “this is shit, shit, shit and I want to tear my own eyes out rather than read another page of it” that being roughly the contents of the last two articles.

The reader particularly wanted to hear about City of Glass because their friends had told them that it was much better than the previous two books.

Well, random reader whose name I don’t know, it is and it isn’t.

A few articles back, I expressed the rather controversial opinion that a TV series (and by extension any other series, including books) doesn’t just suddenly get “good” after a couple of volumes or series of being “bad”. Rather it gets more polished, more competent and more sure of itself and therefore improves immeasurably in the eyes of people who were already sold on the basic premise.

I’d like to go further now, and add that one’s perception of the quality of any given work depends not only on the (to use a loaded term) objective merits of that piece of work but also on the context in which that work appears. In my review of Trudi Canavan’s Age of the Five trilogy (sorry, this article is getting really heavy on the self-linkage) I pointed out that I found the series a little disappointing not because it was actually worse than the Black Magician Trilogy but because it wasn’t much better, and I felt I’d already read a lot of the ideas in it before.

I found that City of Glass had the opposite effect. When you get right down to it, it has all the same problems as the previous two books. Clary is still an infuriating self-insert, Jace is still a whiny little prick whose self-destructive urges grow increasingly tedious, and the whole plot still makes virtually no sense at all. On the other hand once you've come this far, you start to take all that pretty much as read, and enjoy the demon-punching shenanigans.

The other factor that left me slightly better disposed towards City of Glass was, ironically enough, the fact that it still read like Harry Potter fanfic. For the first books, this was a weakness, since it invited comparison to the early Potter books, to which The Mortal Instruments compared unfavourably. The same issues in City of Glass invite comparison with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows which is a far better light to be standing in.

Indeed there's a lot about City of Glass that reads like an attempt to address common fan criticisms of, and disappointments with, the final volume of the Potter saga.

The point at which the similarities with Harry Potter got too much for me in the first book was the point where I discovered that a scruffy, paternal character who had been a little bit like Remus Lupin was actually a Werewolf and was therefore exactly like Remus Lupin. This turned into one of the saving graces of City of Glass. If nothing else, post Deathly Hallows “contains a character that is similar to Remus Lupin” can not be considered a point of comparison with the Potter books.

Okay, sarcasm aside, one of the big wasted opportunities that fans complain about with Potter is the various “seeking allies amongst the other magical races” arcs (Hagrid's overtures to the giants, Lupin's infiltration of the werewolves, and so on). There was a lot of buildup in the first five books based around the idea that even without Voldemort's influence, Wizarding society had deep-seated inequalities and bigotries which needed to be addressed and a lot of fans were rather annoyed that they weren't. A lot of fans were even more annoyed that the implicit racism of Wizarding society wound up being reduced to a way that the Wizarding elite could display their superiority.

Where was I. Oh yes, Lupin and Clare's Lupin-analogue. One of the seemingly-major subplots in books five and six of the Potter Saga involves fan-favourite Remus Lupin being sent to infiltrate the Werewolves in an effort to make sure that they did not support Voldemort. This lead to many fans making the foolish assumptions that (a) Lupin might actually do something in book seven and (b) that the Wizards might actually have to fight alongside the other races as equals. Of course what they actually got was Lupin marrying a teenager and dropping dead, and the other races fighting for the wizards in a manner that felt distinctly subordinate.

By contrast, pretty much the whole setup of City of Glass is that the Shadowhunters' only hope of victory is to ally themselves with the four races of Downworlders, and to do so in a way that genuinely involves giving the Downworlders greater respect and increased political power. Indeed, even Clary's super-speshul ability to create new runes is suborned into service to this goal, with her great rune-crafting triumph being the creation of the Rune of Alliance, which allows Shadowhunters and Downworlders to share their powers, creating a union that is part vampire, part lycan and stronger than both. Furthermore, this magic rune-crafting only seals the deal, it's Lucian the Lupin-Analogue who orchestrates the alliance, who brings the Downworlders together and introduces them to the Clave. Clary's role is important but ultimately secondary.

Indeed one of the interesting things about the plot of City of Glass is how little – comparatively speaking – it has to do with Clary and her super-specialness. Yes everybody still wants to do her, but in this volume a lot more attention is paid to the fact that ... well ... Valentine has come back and is fucking killing everybody. It ultimately isn't Clary's specialness that defeats Valentine, it's the support of the Downworlders combined with Valentine's own hubris. Set alongside the messianic delusions of Rowling's “protracted plea for tolerance” it seems oddly mature.

It's been over a thousand words now and I've been broadly positive, so as to avoid losing my internet cred entirely I should point out that there are a lot of things in the book that still annoy the hell out of me. There's still the odd what-the-fuck-inducing simile, although none of them stood out as badly as “almost precisely the colour of black ink”. The characterisation is still slightly wobbly. Alex's homosexuality in particular strayed close to what I would consider offensively tokenistic. A certain amount of page-space is given to Alex's relationship with Magnus Bane, with whom he does in fact wind up. The problem is that all of the page-space devoted to their relationship is devoted to them talking about the fact that they're in a relationship, with a side-order of coming-out angst, and no time or thought seems to be put into the question of why these characters are actually attracted to each other, beyond the fact that they are both males of the homosexual persuasion. I'm straying back into Minority Warrior territory here, but it has a nasty whiff of Clare wanting to include a gay character, but not wanting to actually think too hard about the nasty details of two men being a couple.

She also hasn't got over her irritating tendency to show off. As well as eleven out of the twenty chapter titles being pretentious literary allusions (for a full list see the comments section of this article) she keeps dropping in completely pointless psudo-highbrow references for no clear reason. Jace quotes Catullus for no particular purpose other than to show us that Clare has read Catullus, and there's a particularly egregious sequence which unfolds as follows:

Jace smiled. “De ce crezi ca va conversatia” Sebastian met his glance with a look of pleasant interest. “M-ai urmarit de cand ai ajuns aici,” he replied. “Nu-mi dau seama daca nu ma placi ori daca esti atat de banuitor ce toata lumea.” He got to his feet. “I appreciate the Romanian practice, but if you don't mind, I'm going to see what's taking Isabelle so long in the kitchen.”

Look at meeeee! Look at meeeee everybody! I speak Romanian! Isn't that awesome! Don't you want to have sex with me right now! And I've read Milton! And Rimbaud! And Lawrence! And Euripides! And the Bible! And Wilde! And Pope! Look at meeeeee!

What do you mean you expected something relevant to the story?

Anyway, long story short, if you liked the last two books, you'll probably think this one is, like an orgasm on toast or something. If you didn't like the last two books, you probably won't actually like this one either, but you probably won't want to throw it across the room in anger more than once or twice.Themes:

Books

,

Sci-fi / Fantasy

,

Young Adult / Children

,

Cassandra Clare

~

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~Comments (

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Wardog

at 22:20 on 2009-07-23What's *truly disturbing* about this whole business is that articles on the subject of Ms Clare have slipped over 3 which means SHE GETS HER OWN THEME! ARGH!

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Arthur B

at 22:28 on 2009-07-23Isn't it over 4, in fact?

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Viorica

at 23:13 on 2009-07-23

but it has a nasty whiff of Clare wanting to include a gay character, but not wanting to actually think too hard about the nasty details of two men being a couple.

She comes from fandom, and fandom is very big on fetishising gay relationships without actually respecting the particpants as *people*. Basically, there's a lot of porn, and angst is poured on lke chocolate sauce, but the characters themselves might as well be actors in a pornography for all the depth they get. That sound about right?

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Dan H

at 15:53 on 2009-07-24The weird thing is that it isn't even porny, it's totally perfunctory. The only evidence that they're remotely attracted to each other is the fact that they talk about it a certain amount.

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Arthur B

at 17:04 on 2009-07-24Sounds like tokenism to me - idly mentioning that two characters happen to be gay and into each other in order to tick the box, and then forgetting all about it.

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Arthur B

at 22:43 on 2009-07-25Behold:

the serpent eats its own tail

.

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Viorica

at 00:59 on 2009-07-26You know what's really funny about the whole thing? One of the first stories posted in that section was a well-known

Roswell

fanfic with the names changed. The best part was when one of the "author's" defenders pointed out that "Even CC used to borrow from people!"

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Leia

at 09:31 on 2009-10-14Now that I've finally got round to reading these books, I can finally comment on your reviews, Dan. What was your take on the incest?

The weird thing is that it isn't even porny, it's totally perfunctory. The only evidence that they're remotely attracted to each other is the fact that they talk about it a certain amount.

But can't one say the same thing about Clary & Jace or Simon & Isabelle & Mai? I mean, there isn't really much reason why the respective individuals have fallen in "love" each other (put in quotes because I am old and jaded and wary of using that word to describe teenage romantic relationships) in the space of a month other than they just are...

That aside, I am torn between really liking the original ideas that CC put in the books (and the trope reversion she did on some of the more derivative ideas) and despairing of the way the protagonists are portrayed. I have less problem with Clary being able to make new runes - there is at least an explanation for that in-story and the hero being "Chosen"/"Super-Speshul"/"Uniquely Powerful" is a trope as old as time and it's not going to change with this book - than I do with Clary being written as an inconsistent and generally unlikable person and at the same time as a character that the writer evidently expects us to love and admire.

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Dan H

at 16:02 on 2009-10-14

But can't one say the same thing about Clary & Jace or Simon & Isabelle & Mai?

To an extent, but I think there's a difference. Clary and Jace, for all its histrionics is actually given pagecount. Within the worldview of an adolescent power fantasy, meeting the Boy of Your Dreams and falling in love with him instantly is perfectly acceptable, and we get *genuine* evidence that Clary has feelings for Jace. She thinks about him all the damned time after all.

Simon's relationships are given cursory treatment, but they really are cursory relationships.

Basically Simon gets relationships that are like real teenage relationships, founded on convenience and vague physical attraction. Clary gets a relationship that is like teenagers *think* their relationships are or should be (q.v. Buffy/Angel, Bella/Edward etc). Alex gets ... sort of arbitrarily paired off with a man, because he is a gay.

I think you're right that Magnus/Alex is no *less* satisfying than Simon/Isabelle, but it's given greater significance within the text. Simon's relationships are secondary to his relationship with Clary, while Alex' "gay arc" is basically his entire story.

As for the incest, it didn't bother me, chiefly because I fully expected her to cop out at the end, which she duly did. On a more general note, I do find Fandom's obsession with incest slightly squicky, particularly when paired with its obsession with homosexuality.

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Leia

at 16:27 on 2009-10-14Well, I don't know if pagecount alone counts (pun unintended!) as substance. I mean, Clary's romance(s) will definitely take center-stage because she is the main character and naturally, anything that has to do with her will be the focus of the story. Also, TMI is pretty much a romance between Clary & Jace with the backdrop of a demon-infested Manhattan and an impending war to keep things interesting. But despite all the paragraphs used to describe their epic love, Clary's and Jace's feelings for each other don't seem to be anything deeper than physical attraction. Unless they're making out, they don't even act as if they *like* each other most of the time. The same can be said about Alec and Magnus. They apparently "love" each other because they're both hot and oriented in a way that make them attractive to each other.

Simon's feelings for Clary (and Alec's for Jace) are the only ones that might actually make sense - but again, you wonder why *anyone* would fall in love (not lust, but love) with people who resemble Clary and Jace in real life.

I'm miffed that she copped out of the incest at the last minute, especially after she claimed that she wrote TMI because of research done on Genetic Sexual Attraction and the Westermack Effect. There was something almost intellectual about the emphasis on Clary having no physical attraction to Simon because of their close history while she had a strong attraction to Jace because of the GSA effect. Then she nixed that completely and completely contradicted every attempt at intellectualism by adding the melodramatic and medieval angle of Clary being violently repulsed by Sebastian/Jonathan's kiss.

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Dan H

at 00:26 on 2009-10-15I think we're talking at slightly cross purposes. I don't think Clary/Jace is *functional* but I think it's *believable* not in the sense of being realistic, but in the sense of being something you can understand. You can understand that Clary is invested in the relationship.

By comparison, Alex/Magnus has a bit of the old Tonks/Lupin about it. It just kind of comes out of left field.

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Leia

at 07:35 on 2009-10-15OK, I see what you mean. I don't really agree with it. Alec/Magnus didn't appear out of the left field to me - CC's writing isn't particularly subtle. What seemed debatable was whether Alec was invested in the relationship and I think the scene with Jace, when Jace confronts him about his (Alec's) own crush on him (Jace) and Alec faces the fact that his crush isn't so much about love but about safety, covers this.

Er... I can't believe I am defending TMI! I'm not saying the Alec/Magnus romance was particularly well done... but it's about par to most of the other romances in the book. It certainly was better than the Jocelyn/Luke which was one that I really thought came out of the left field and was just CC's insistence on having a cookie cutter happy ending for all characters.

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Dan H

at 11:53 on 2009-10-15I think the thing is that in most of the other relationships I can see what the partners find attractive about each other, even if I don't necessarily agree with it. Clary is attracted to Jace because he's exciting, dangerous and forbidden. Simon is attracted to Clary because they're good friends and he'd like to be "more" (plus Clary is of course super-speshul).

By comparison, Alex seems to be attracted to Magnus because ... well ... because they're both gay. Part of it is simply that Alex isn't a viewpoint character so we don't get his perspective on things, but I do think that you have to be very careful with homosexual relationships in fiction not to reduce them to "I'm gay, you're gay, let's do gay together".

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Sister Magpie

at 15:20 on 2009-10-15Heh. You're reminding me of that movie Grand Canyon where a characters sets up two people he barely knows, telling them they're perfect for each other. And it turns out they do get into a great relationship. But then one day they realize that neither of them knew the guy very well...so why exactly did he think they were so perfect for each other when he didn't know either of them.

And then one of them says--quite possibly correctly: "Maybe we're the only black people he knows."

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Andy G

at 15:42 on 2009-10-15

"I'm gay, you're gay, let's do gay together"

This could have a certain appeal as a very direct chat-up line however ...

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Jamie Johnston

at 00:28 on 2009-10-16Ooh, I can one-up Sister Magpie's story with an anecdote from Real Life! A show I was in had two and only two gay men in the cast, and practically everyone else was seriously shipping them throughout rehearsals. I was all righteous and "Yeah but you're only saying that because they're the only two gay men", and everyone else said, "Mm, true", and then they got together and remain to this day a lovely couple. Don't you hate it when tokenism works?

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Leia

at 07:27 on 2009-10-16

Oh I certainly agree that one has to be careful with tokenism and there is a lot of tokenism in TMI. At the same time, I think - as much as I hate defend CC - that I'll have to give her the benefit of the doubt and say that she put just as little thought towards Alec's feelings for Magnus as she did to Isabelle's feelings for Simon and certainly more than she did to Jocelyn's feelings for Luke. In fact, that's probably not even a compliment!

I'm actually more miffed about the "Sebastian is eveeel" because he has demon blood when the whole series hinges on the concept that it is wrong to discriminate or persecute the Downworlders for their demon ancestry.

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Wardog

at 09:40 on 2009-10-16Just to throw in my two coppers, about a book I haven't read ... I think the difference is that thoughtless heterosexual relationships have, well, centuries of cultural precedence behind them. It is very easy to invest in heterosexual relationships because we join up the dots automatically even when the author doesn't bother to do it for us. It doesn't matter whether we personally find the *depiction of the relationship* convincing.

Take Clary and Jace - as Dan says above, The Dangerous One and The Superspecial One is a well-established trope.

The problem with homosexual relationships is that what you tend to get is The Gay One and The Oher Gay One.

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Dan H

at 10:25 on 2009-10-16

I'm actually more miffed about the "Sebastian is eveeel" because he has demon blood when the whole series hinges on the concept that it is wrong to discriminate or persecute the Downworlders for their demon ancestry.

Once again it's rather reminiscent of the treatment of muggles and muggleborns in Harry Potter.

Treating non-wizards as second class citizens because they can't do magic? Fine. Treating wizards as second class citizens because they have ancestors who can't do magic? Not fine.

At the risk of getting onto highly dangerous ground, it's a lot like some of the well-meaning-but-actually-rather-dodgy stuff you got post 9-11 about how you shouldn't be prejudiced against Muslims that all wound up saying "remember, some Muslims aren't terrorists, although they probably know people who are".

Although on a wider level, I think that might be a problem with using "demon" as a metaphor for "minority". There's a big difference between being black or gay and being a bloodsucking corpse that regularly kills people.

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Leia

at 10:46 on 2009-10-16

The politics of the TMI fantasy world certainly isn't very well thought out. The Shadowhunters are supposed to protect the mundies from demons... but they despise them and treat them like dirt. And like the Muggle/Muggle-born dilemma of HP, this is something that is never addressed in the books. If anything, the author supports the "Mundies suck!" rule when she turns Simon into a vampire so that he can be more of an equal to Clary and her new gang of super-speshul teens. Then going back to Sebastian - he's evil because he has demon blood as a result of Valentine's experiments but why aren't Clary & Jace saints for having angel blood?

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Dan H

at 23:42 on 2009-10-16

but why aren't Clary & Jace saints for having angel blood?

I'm not certain that we aren't supposed to think that they are...

Gosh that's a lot of multiple negation.

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Wordless

at 07:23 on 2009-11-12Im sorry I know this petty but did you notice the number of punctuation errors in the entire book. Comma splices, nonsensical metaphors....alright its a personal issue but when your grade average goes from A to B/C because of lousy grammatical errors in an essay and you see a grown woman publishes an entire fucking book AND its a bestseller!!! well...just makes you wanna piss on education doesn't it?

Jace smiled. “De ce crezi ca va conversatia” Sebastian met his glance with a look of pleasant interest. “M-ai urmarit de cand ai ajuns aici,” he replied. “Nu-mi dau seama daca nu ma placi ori daca esti atat de banuitor ce toata lumea.” He got to his feet. “I appreciate the Romanian practice, but if you don't mind, I'm going to see what's taking Isabelle so long in the kitchen.”

That just pissed me right the fuck off!!! the guy already SAID he speaks Romanian....I sat for another hundred pages waiting for the relevance of that. Well...at the point where Sebastian died, i realized there wasn't. call me an idiot but I thought there'd be a last little dialogue: Maybe a "remember what i said..." or something.that was a stupid piece of paragraph that was pretencious and made me wonder what people who actually read Romanian and felt like

you know, someone comes up to with a superior expression and says;

Hi My name is Kimberly. I speak English. How are You?

Plus Magnus as a character intrigued me for a while, at least in the beginning before the whole gay thing....i liked his little autobiography even thought he would be that gray character that was a little complex. then he said he loved Alec. then I threw up.

*sigh*no im not done yet.

but to speed it up I'll ask my problems in the form of questions.

Did anyone notice that Aldertree read like a mixture of Fudge and Umbridge?

Malachi was that new minister of magic watisface-the lion dude!

what was the point of he clave?-they did nothing significant from start to finish

where was the Urban fantasy? it read like a medieval one-no electricity, cars basically most of the stuff that makes urban life well...urban. Clares exact words were:"these urban landscapes hold their own reverence, beauty"blah blah blah... so yeah where was that?

ugh.

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http://quimtessence.livejournal.com/

at 01:51 on 2009-12-08Agreed. On everything. Agreed!

My point, however, is on the bit of Romanian that is gratuitously quoted above by you: It. Does. Not. Make. Any. Sense. At all.

Just... What the fuck? It's pointless. There are spelling mistakes in it. It's... so random. I feel violated, truly.

I wish I could add more to this, but the trilogy is just as bad as I always knew it would be from the instant someone mentioned to me that Cassandra Claire, known Harry Potter fan fiction plagiarist, had been professionally published.

*headesk*

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Bookwyrm

at 03:39 on 2013-02-06Oh the Mortal Instruments Series... how I loathe thee.

I'll spare you all rant about all the things I detest about this series and just ask a few questions about some major plot points.

(Spoiler Warning)

Do you think the reason that Clary and Jace's attachment to each other is a result of the angel blood? If I recall correctly the Faerie Queen said something about a predication about Clary falling for someone with the same blood. Maybe having angel blood creates some kind of magical soul-link or something.

When the angel gave Clary a wish why did she only use it to save Jace instead of asking the angel to resurrect all of the people who died in battle?

Also is it wrong that I somehow liked Sebastian better than Jace even though I knew he was evil before I read the book?

[loudlytransparenttrash]

The phobia of Islamophobia

Lol so I just had someone tell me that it is Islamophobic to tell Muslims that they aren’t being banned from entering the US and to not use the word “Islam” in tags.

It reminds me of those groups like the Interfaith Center, who demands films and television to edit and remove the words “Islamist,” “Islamic,” and “jihad”, even from documentaries such The Rise of Al Qaeda - referencing the 9/11 hijackers and their motives. They don’t want the public to think that Islamism or jihad had anything to do with Al Qaeda or the 9/11 attacks, because that would be “Islamophobia.”  

Everybody seems so afraid of this word. From the police who are scared to investigate Muslim human trafficking and child abuse rings in the UK, being afraid to make public the mass sexual and violent attacks committed by Muslim refugees across Europe, being afraid to report their fellow officers who expressed radical Muslim beliefs or the teachers being afraid to alert authorities when their Muslim students show warning signs of becoming radicalized. What we are dealing with is not Islamophobia, but Islamophobia-phobia.

As author Ali Rizvi says: “As a brown-skinned person with a Muslim name, I can get away with a lot more than you’d think. I can publicly parade my wife or daughters around in head-to-toe burqas and be excused out of “respect” for my culture and/or religion, thanks to the racism of lowered expectations. I can re-define “racism” as something non-whites can never harbor against whites, and cite colonialism and imperialism as justification for my prejudice. And in an increasingly effective move that’s fast become something of an epidemic, I can shame you into silence for criticizing my ideas simply by calling you bigoted or Islamophobic.”

For decades, Muslims around the world have rightly complained about the Israeli government labeling even legitimate criticism of its policies “anti-Semitic,” effectively shielding itself from accountability. Today, Muslim organizations like CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) have borrowed a page from their playbook with the “Islamophobia” label - and taken it even further.

In addition to calling out prejudice against Muslims (a people), the term “Islamophobia” seeks to shield Islam itself (an ideology) from criticism. It’s as if every time you said smoking was a filthy habit, you were perceived to be calling all smokers filthy, horrible people. Human beings have rights and are entitled to respect. But when did we start extending those rights to ideas, books, and beliefs? You’d think the difference would be clear, but it isn’t. The ploy has worked over and over again, and now everyone seems petrified of being tagged with this label.

The phobia of being called “Islamophobic” has been on the rise for some time and it has become much more rampant, powerful, and dangerous than Islamophobia itself. Not long ago, a white American man successfully convinced the Massachusetts liberal arts school Brandeis University that he was being victimized and oppressed by a black African woman from Somalia - a woman who underwent genital mutilation at age five and travels with armed security at risk of being assassinated. That is the power of this term.

The man, Ibrahim Hooper, is a Muslim convert and a founding member and spokesman for CAIR. The woman, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, is an unapologetic activist for the rights of girls and women and a harsh, no-holds-barred critic of the religious ideologies (particularly the Islamic ideology in Muslim-majority countries that she experienced first-hand) that perpetuate and maintain their abuse. Having abandoned the Islamic faith of her parents and taken a stance against it, she is guilty of apostasy, a crime that is punishable by death according to most Islamic scholars, not to mention the holy text itself.

Hirsi Ali was also involved with the award-winning documentary, Honor Diaries, which explores violence against women in honor-based societies, including female genital mutilation (FGM), honor killings, domestic violence, and forced marriage. Despite featuring the voices of several practicing Muslim women, the film was deemed “Islamophobic” by - you guessed it - the poor folks at CAIR. Again, they felt they were the real victims, wanting their own voices heard while silencing those of the victims of FGM and honor killing in the film. Astonishingly, this ludicrous argument was enough to convince both the University of Illinois and the University of Michigan to cancel their screenings of the film which leads to even more deafness and blindness of a very serious human rights issue.

Progressive Muslim Maajid Nawaz tweeted a cartoon with the caption: “This Jesus & Mo cartoon is not offensive & I’m sure God is greater than to feel threatened by it.”

The result? Vicious death threats. A petition signed by tens of thousands to have him removed from his candidacy. Targeting by Western liberal apologists. Admonishments from his own moderate Muslim counterparts. Tweets such as, “Have spoken to someone in Pakistan. They will have a surprise for him on his next visit. He is used to surprises in Pak.” The most tragic aspect of all this is what Alishba Zarmeen has coined the “Greenwald Syndrome” - the phenomenon of Western liberals, in a supposed show of tolerance, embracing an apologist stance in favor of the intolerant.

After being publicly accused by Glenn Greenwald of “spouting and promoting Islamophobia,” Sam Harris responded with these words, which should be read by everyone:

“Needless to say, there are people who hate Arabs, Somalis, and other immigrants from predominantly Muslim societies for racist reasons. But if you can’t distinguish that sort of blind bigotry from a hatred and concern for dangerous, divisive, and irrational ideas - like a belief in martyrdom, or a notion of male ‘honor’ that entails the virtual enslavement of women and girls - you are doing real harm to our public conversation. Everything I have ever said about Islam refers to the content and consequences of its doctrine. And, again, I have always emphasized that its primary victims are innocent Muslims - especially women and girls. There is no such thing as ‘Islamophobia.’ This is a term of propaganda designed to protect Islam from the forces of secularism by conflating all criticism of it with racism and xenophobia. And it is doing its job, because people like you have been taken in by it.”

The fear of being called Islamophobic once led many prominent Westerners to abandon their own values when they abandoned Salman Rushdie. It led Yale to publish a book about the Danish Muhammad cartoon controversy, but without the cartoons. It led Comedy Central to censor their shows for fear of offending Muslims, even though the show irreverently lambastes virtually every other religion on a regular basis, unhindered and it has led to countless people being attacked, doxxed, threatened, silenced and their careers ruined, all for having a different opinion.

This epidemic continues today except now people aren’t taking “Islamophobia” as serious anymore and with good reason so Muslims have begun to create hoax hate-crimes against themselves to try and bring some credibility back to keep non-Mulsims in check.

Remember the 18-year-old Muslim girl who was assaulted and called a terrorist on the subway by Trump supporters and they tried to rip her hijab off and all of the social justice warriors had a complete meltdown? It was a lie that she made up to cover her parents finding out she was out fucking a Christian dude and getting drunk. It gets funnier, her Muslim father has forced her to shave her head completely for bringing shame on the family and she was arrested for making false accusations.

Remember the Muslim student who was robbed, beaten and had her hijab ripped off and stolen by Trump supporters? It was a lie. She is now being charged for filing a false report.

Remember when those white supremacist, anti-Muslim Trump supporters burned down the mosque in Houston? It was a lie. While the mosque did get burned down, it was done by a black Muslim who had attended the mosque for years.

Remember the Ohio student who was racially abused and assaulted by Trump supporters? It was a lie. She made it up the day after the election and after she made a post that she wants all Trump supporters to die of AIDS.

Remember the Michigan Muslim student who was harassed and threatened to be burned alive by the Trump supporter if she didn’t remove her hijab? It was a lie. Surveillance cameras show that she wasn’t even in the location where she claimed the attack took place.

Remember the Muslim woman who had her hijab ripped and forced off by police when they took her in for questioning? It was another lie.

Remember the Muslim kid who was beaten up on the school bus by five white kids and it forced the family to leave the country? Yes, another fucking lie.

Remember the student who had her face slashed and was called a terrorist in Lower Manhattan? Yet another lie.

These anti-Islamic hate-crimes even reached the UK with an 18-year-old Muslim student from Birmingham being punched in the face for wearing a hijab. It was a lie. She’s been charged for lying to the police.

These are just some of the false claims made within the past year alone and they received nation-wide coverage and left-wing outrage and hysteria, all pushing the agenda that America is a racist, Islamophobic hellhole and nobody except white people are safe.

This is an effective deterrent. This is exactly how terrorism works. This is how perfectly intelligent, well-read writers, commentators, and broadcasters become silenced by the Islamophobia smear fear - and rationalize themselves into becoming unaware victims of it.

When you’re unable to introduce Islamic-style blasphemy Sharia laws in a secular, Western society, you have to find alternative ways to silence those who offend you, right?

And that’s where the “Islamophobia” smear comes in - the ultimate, lazy substitute for a non-existent counter-argument. Don’t fall for it.

[rametarin]

I really hate that phenomenon.

That Es Jay Dubbayew college professor sociologist technique of taking neutral, uncharged words that already have a given, common definition and meaning, and using them in ways deliberately designed to disarm, assume familiarity, but be radically different.

The point and purpose of them is to argue a concept close enough to a common thing that the unspoken, between the lines, omitted parts slip by without notice until the concept gets popularity and recognition, and then later clarifying, “oh, you misunderstood the full scope of what they mean.”

And designed so if you name the concept, it just sounds like a simple marriage of two already familiar concepts.

Such as, for example, Cultural Appropriation. Obiviously, given the context and how it’s used, with deceptive ambiguity and neutrality. one would naturally assume it’d be just as offensive for a Chinese man to cosplay as a cowboy as it would be for some white guy to dress as a famous Chinese nobleman/aristocrat. But no.

The asterisks. A common, recognizable bit of rudeness, insensitivity, or bigotry gets whipped and spun and redefined to accommodate another sociological concept and definition, to where since it has seized the neutral domain itself of cultural appropriation, it has been forcefully married to the idea, “it’s offensive for white people to do that because whites colonized and control everything, and the Chinese are colonized and controlled and disenfranchised in western nations.”

Meaning, you can’t even discuss cultural appropriation without that privilege theory, axis of oppression dichotomy in play. So sayeth the people that treat basic concepts like corporate products with trademarks and patents and ownership by sociology professors. By definition, they’ve used ordinary, uncharged words to make them seem neutral and benign, given them a sociologically charge and inserted them into the role of a fundamental niche. And married them to ideology. You think you’re buying Blueberry Jam, but Blueberry Jam(tm) winds up being the trademarked product of a company that sells imitation blueberry flavored bug guts, marketed as something else.

And it goes further. Terms like ‘Critical Theory.’ One would assume by “thinking critically,” one logically deduces a situation based on the purely empirical evidence and reason. ‘Critical Theory’ (wink) defines for them a very specific, ideologically driven, philosophical way to look at the world using Marxism, and the way different things play off one another based on the ideas of ‘class struggle theory.’ As if that’s the logical or rational thing to do.

We do not discus theft under the context and definition that, “not paying you $100 an hour to flip burgers,” but when you think about it, hitching Privilege Theory as a necessity for the definition of cultural appropriation IS as much a violation as insisting that be added to the definition of something as basic, fundamental and common as the word and concept of theft. But it’s the same principle. You go and try and have a conversation with one of these fucks about theft, and then they haul out, “You cannot steal from those more privileged than you. That’s what theft means. A privileged person taking from someone with none, or not giving a poorer person what they need. That’s theft.”

We know theft is simply the unlawful or unconsented or unwanted removal of a personal possession or piece of property from an individual, not bound nor even mitigated by concepts such as “privilege.” A rich man can steal from a poor man his personal property, and a poor man can steal from a rich man. No buts, no ifs. Theft is theft. No, “He has so much it doesn’t count as theft.” No, “He’s of a higher Class than this disgusting peasant, so it’s not theft.” Theft is theft. But if you asked one of these Bolshevist fucks, theft only counts as stealing someone’s personal property if you’re more privileged than them, or refusing to pay someone 40K a year (”A minimum livable wage”) to serve frenchfries.

This is using educational institutions to siege and control language itself so it’s impossible to argue with them, for any time you use a common word or concept, they’ll simply say, “that’s not the definition of that word.” Or, worse, you try and use the word, and they refuse to acknowledge the version that DOESN’T conveniently agree with their take on the situation. That just by calling it theft, they imagine you consent to their version of the word and calling it thievery defeats your argument.

But you don’t have a word that hasn’t been redefined by them to fit their convenient lexicon.

It removes tools from common parlance and turns over control to people that just have to conspire from the institutions hard enough to manipulate language. And it upsets me, greatly.

[foodtellsastory]

Ben Carson and the Fate of Soul Food

Ben Carson and the Fate of Soul Food

70. Dr. Ben Carson, a brilliant pediatric neurosurgeon, is now the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), because he’s….Well, I suspect the internal discussion went something like this: The U in HUD stands for “urban,” and, as Paul Ryan showed us, “urban” is a code word for “black.” So, let’s make Ben the head of HUD. A match made in Heaven or wherever, quod erat demonstrandum.

(By the way, this post will be about food. I promise.)

Anyway, back on March 6, 2017, his first day in office, Dr. Carson spoke to his HUD employees, declaring: “That’s what America is about, a land of dreams and opportunity. There were other immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships, worked even longer, even harder for less. But they too had a dream that one day their sons, daughters, grandsons, granddaughters, great grandsons, great granddaughters might pursue prosperity and happiness in this land.”

Let’s just say that the world of social media noticed. The Food Network’s Sunny Anderson had one of the more restrained reactions:

Carson’s statement did seem odd. When we think of “immigrants” coming to America, we probably don’t picture it like this:

Later in the day, on his first attempt to talk his way out of it, Dr. Carson appealed to a linguistic technicality: An immigrant might be defined as an individual member of a migration. Some migrations are voluntary, and some are not. (Ask the Cherokee people about the “not” version.) And so, it was as he first said: The enslaved were “involuntary” immigrants.

Well, ok. Some still objected. Jelani Cobb noted that calling an enslaved person an “immigrant” is like calling a kidnapping victim a “house guest.” At the time, slaveholders insisted that they were merely importing farm equipment, like a farmer today might import a Volvo tractor. The enslaved were considered property, not tourists. (Except when it came to seats in Congress. Then the slaveholders wanted their “property” to count the same as them. That’s where the infamous 3/5ths rule came in as a compromise.)

But even if we’re charitable and grant Dr. Ben that technical definition, it still wouldn’t explain his characterization that the enslaved had “worked even longer, even harder for less” in order to win the American Dream for their descendants.

On the face of it, it sounds like a backhanded argument against raising the minimum wage. Can’t make it on $7.25/hr? Stop whining, and work 16 hours instead of 8.

If that’s your politics, fine. But don’t compare it to life under enslavement. If we say they were working “for less” instead of “for free,” then we’re assuming that the enslaved at least got “paid” in free room and board, so it was ok. I mean, a hovel and a cup of cornmeal is worth something, right? There’s no free lunch.

And the rest of your “compensation”? Whippings were thrown in for free. Character-builders, I guess. Maybe Frederick Douglass wouldn’t have gotten up the gumption to escape and become an abolitionist hero if he hadn’t been beaten up so much.

Fact fact (not an “alternative fact”): Many of the enslaved who escaped made their way to Canada. What do we make of that? Carson said the African immigrants dreamed that their descendants “might pursue prosperity and happiness in this land.” But for many, “this land” was Canada, not America. So were they just un-American ingrates who didn’t realize how good they had it here? (See painting above….)

And while we’re at it, the enslaved weren’t quite allowed to have dreams for their descendants, because those descendants automatically inherited their enslaved status, simply by being born. They were, legally, the property of another person from birth. The tragic reality was something more like this newspaper clipping found by Michelle Munyikwa:

Before the day was over, the good Doctor was in full retreat. Carson insisted that he knows the difference between slavery and immigration. But that’s not so obvious. As Tera Hunter pointed out, this wasn’t the first time that Carson has waded into this swamp. He has compared Obamacare to slavery. He has compared reproductive freedom to slavery.

2014: One of the good ones had the guts to speak up

That rhetoric plays well on the right. Some insist on minimizing the horribleness of American enslavement, like Bill O’Reilly’s ridiculous comments last summer about “well-fed slaves.” We just don’t expect to hear it from a guy with ancestors who were, we assume, enslaved.

Bill O’Reilly, between lawsuits, pronounced slavery not so bad

But let’s turn the clock ahead to the early 20th century. Now, talk of “immigrants” (or more accurately, “migrants”) dreaming of a better life might be more plausible. We’re referring to the period known as “The Great Migration,” lasting from World War I into the 1960s, when millions of African Americans managed to leave the southern states for the north and west.

In this case, we certainly have the element of free choice. Indeed, as Carol Anderson summarizes in the second chapter of her book, White Rage, the southern white power structure used every tool at its disposal, short of starting another Civil War, to prevent African Americans from leaving. By that measure, it was the opposite of a forced migration.

We also have the motives that traditionally lured Europeans to America. Some went northward in search of better economic opportunities than were available in the segregated economy of the south. Others were running for their lives, seeking to dodge the renewed outbreak of lynchings and violence encouraged during the Woodrow Wilson administration.

In this sense, one might compare the experience of African American migrants in the north to the experience of foreign immigrant groups across our history, from the Germans, Irish, Scandinavians, Chinese, Italians, Mexicans, Koreans, and Vietnamese, to the Somalians, Ethiopians, and other more recent arrivals.

Food. Talk about Food…

For many reasons, migrants often seek out the food they ate back home. Opening small operations, such as cafes, food stands, pushcarts, and catering businesses has been a first step available for many minority groups in the face of racism, bigotry, and restriction.

Then, two things happen. First, the original “ethnic” dishes begin to take on the flavor of their surroundings. That was certainly the case for African American migrants. Some of the ingredients that were common and cheap down south were either unavailable in the north or their seasonality was more restricted. Much of today’s debate over yellow cornbread vs. white cornbread, for example, stems from the simple reality that up north, yellow cornmeal is what’s more likely to be on the grocery shelves. Northern wheat flour is different too.

We see this in the various menus of the Sweet Home Cafe at the Smithsonian’s new National Museum of African American History and Culture. What we probably think of as “soul food” is well-represented by the “Agricultural South” menu, with items like fried chicken, collard greens, mac and cheese, Hoppin’ John, and so on. The “Creole Coast” menu, representing the Low Country and Louisiana traditions, still sounds like soul food, with items like fried catfish (as a Po’Boy sandwich), and candied yams.

But as we move into the “North States” and “Western Range” menus, we run into items that don’t sound like “soul food” at all, like smoked Haddock, Yankee Baked Beans, “Son of a gun” Stew (with beef short ribs), and BBQ Buffalo brisket.

Sweet Home Cafe: soul food surrounded by history (NMAAHC photo)

These menus remind us that “soul food” is more than a particular list of dishes or ingredients. As a general rule, “soul food” dishes are characterized by close attention to seasoning, no matter what the dish is. There’s also that more esoteric quality of putting “love” or “soul” into the cooking. That’s impossible to pin down scientifically, but we know whether it’s there or not.

Both distinctions are important. Sometimes, we make “soul food” shorthand for “what black people eat.” By that measure, a Big Mac is soul food. In some areas, food redlining, like housing redlining, has helped create or reinforce segregated neighborhoods where people without sufficient money, transportation, or free time often end up going to the ubiquitous fast food places to grab cheap items made from government-subsidized ingredients. A Big Mac may not be a nutritionist’s dream food, but it is an economical way to get a lot of calories in a hurry.

No offense to the good folks at McDonald’s, but Big Macs are the antithesis of “soul food.” They’re not particularly well-seasoned, and it’s hard to put that indefinable element of “love” into food designed to be mass-produced quickly with minimal human intervention. There’s also no sense of down-home regionality in a Big Mac. Franchising’s raison d’être is that sandwich you buy in Bangor, Maine should taste like the one you buy in Pensacola, Chicago, Topeka, Sioux Falls, Salt Lake City,  Oakland, or whatever McDonald’s in DC is closest to the NMAAHC.

Just don’t call it soul food

On the positive side, the historic regional flexibility and adaptability of African American cuisine offers a key to its survival. Fair or not (and in this blog, we say Not), many criticize the traditional soul food menu as unhealthy. But there’s no reason why soul food restaurants can’t include lower fat, less sweet items or vegetarian/vegan items and still be made with love and good flavor. The African roots of soul food point to an emphasis on vegetables over meat, and developing flavors beyond what we can get from fats and sugar. “Soul food” was inherently adaptive, and still can be.

The other thing that happens to migrant foods is more challenging: As migrant groups become more fixed in the community, people from outside that group start frequenting the local eateries, and over time, the food itself changes to meet the tastes of the new customer base. Americanized versions of Chinese, Italian, or Mexican dishes are typically unrecognizable to visitors from those nations. The taco you buy at a Taco Bell in Minneapolis is not like the taco you might buy from a food truck in Los Angeles, let alone one from Mexico.

Midwesterners have discovered this with the influx of Latin American immigrants in the last twenty years. Here in Sioux City, when we’re sorting out dinner plans, “Let’s have Mexican!’ is inevitably followed by “You mean real Mexican or Taco Bell?” Many local Mexican restaurants cater to both tastes. For instance, you can usually order a taco “American style” (i.e., with cheese, ground beef, and no cilantro).

One meme put the issue succinctly. Don’t look up chingadera. Use your imagination.

Even the “real Mexican” menu is an invention. There is plenty of regional diversity in Mexican cuisine, and most restaurants pick and choose. Some “real Mexican” restaurants around here include Dominican or Guatemalan dishes, in an attempt to cater to the needs of as many groups as possible.

How far can “authentic” soul food be stretched before it becomes something else? I’ve heard it said that “southern” cooking is nothing more than soul food dumbed down in taste, fancied up in looks, and boosted up in price. I can order fried catfish and a side of collards at the Cracker Barrel, and it’s ok…but it’s not quite soul food either.

In real estate, “gentrification” describes the phenomenon of young white professionals moving into older, predominantly African American neighborhoods in search of cheaper rents or home prices. They fix up their houses, and open up coffee shops and such. In the process, property values increase, rents go up. Then, those without the incomes to support the new requirements find themselves being driven out.

In 2015, “Saturday Night Live” doctored up a real-life business in Bushwick to create their “Martha’s Mayonnaise” spoof of what happens under gentrification in Brooklyn.

Recently, this phenomenon of “gentrification” has been applied to soul food.

Two things happen with gentrification: First, we risk losing the historical significance of soul food. Think of it this way: There’s nothing more All-American than hamburgers and hot dogs, but we never think of their German roots. What was the “Hamburg” style of meat? Do we ever stop to think that “wiener” refers to Vienna? Does eating a chicken and roadkill hot dog oozing with white filler move us to seek out the rich sausages of the Central European tradition? Likewise, if soul food survives by the gentrification route, would it get disconnected from its soul?

Gentrified German soul food

Second, with gentrification, the people who created soul food may well be left out in the cold. On the eater’s side, Eboni Harris noted the phenomenon of how “‘ethnic’ foods are ‘discovered’ by well-meaning foodies – often white – who then raise the price of these meals until the original purveyors and consumers can no longer afford to eat them.”

Once upon a time, for instance, oxtails were considered so useless that some butchers gave them away for the asking. Today, oxtails are expensive, especially considering the small amount of meat on them. Barbecue aficionados have noted the same when it comes to brisket.

This is significant for soul food because one of the historic keys to soul food was in the ability of African American cooks to apply the legacy of West African cuisine to make less desirable foods, like neckbones or collards, taste great. But it’s hard for the average person to practice cooking and perfecting traditional dishes if the ingredients break the budget. (When I wanted to make oxtails, I practiced on cheaper stew meat before I dared invest in actual oxtails.)

On the cook’s side, we run into appropriation, aggravated by the multitude of ways in which institutionalized racism hinders African Americans from being able to capitalize on their food heritage. The difficulties faced by trained African American cooks in becoming chefs are quantifiable. We can work our way through the lists of the annual James Beard award winners. We can count up the black chefs that make it onto Chopped episodes, or check cookbook sales.

Last fall, there was a minor media fluff over Neiman-Marcus selling collard greens. We titled our reaction, “Greens for People Better Than You.” The gist of the piece was to wonder why anyone would pay so much for frozen greens rather than go to a local soul food restaurant and by some fresh greens for a fraction of the cost, and probably with superior flavor to boot.

Robert Irvine no doubt makes fine collard greens. Does it matter if his face becomes the face of collards, and his seasoning sets the standard?

For some, this is when “gentrification” begins to sound more like flat-out appropriation: white folks coming in and taking over, obscuring the history, and making money off of other people’s food traditions and hard work, while using the tools of contemporary segregation, such as equal access to capital, to shut out or shut down competitors.

It’s a double injustice. Many southern/soul food dishes were created or perfected by enslaved cooks paid nothing, or by underpaid cooks working under Jim Crow. Spin the clock ahead to 2017, and their descendants are feeling cheated again. Many soul food places are closing down just at a time when southern cuisine and barbecue are coming to national attention and popularity.

At that point, the broader quest for social and economic justice will have an impact on the fate of soul food. If the arc of the moral universe really does bend toward justice, the impact will be positive. The restaurant business is always challenging, but people who want to cook soul food, or include soul food dishes, will benefit from increased opportunities to follow their dreams.

Those of us who like to eat and/or cook soul food have a moral obligation to those who passed it down to us to invest ourselves not just in groceries but in the broader quest for justice. That requires, in the first place, knowledge. We should learn the history behind the cuisine, and also understand the current situation. More on that in a moment.

Soul food may also benefit from a renewed interest in home cooking. Some watch food programming on TV just for its entertainment value, but others get curious enough to try their own hand at things. I can tell from the new options on the grocery shelves at my neighborhood Walmart that people’s kitchen horizons must be broadening.

For some, cooking is a lost art. I’ve had the disconcerting experience of being asked to give advice, tips, or soul food recipes to younger African American women. I’m always flattered, but it just feels weird that they’re asking an old white guy for something that would be better learned from their parents or grandparents. What do I know? I’m just a student myself, and a pretty elementary one at that. I feel like John the Baptist meeting Jesus: “You want me to baptize you? Dude, you should be baptizing me!”

Cooking takes time and practice, a willingness to learn by trial-and-error, screw up a dish, apologize to your family…and then come back and try it again. The current level of interest in cuisines and cooking may give soul food a boost, both in terms of learning to cook them the old-fashioned way, and in adapting the classics to meet our interest in healthier options.

Hopefully, this hands-on practice in the kitchen may also get more people interested in the history behind the soul food. It’s in the nature of that cuisine that some of us are curious about what has gone into the “soul” part.

We know how this works in music. When Chuck Berry died in March, many of us on the downhill half of life’s mountain climb paused to reflect on the music of our childhood.

Chuck Berry in London, 1965. His music ended up teaching me more than music.

Like a lot of white teenagers in the 70s, I discovered Chuck Berry retroactively. I had learned his songs first from the covers done by the Beatles and the Stones. But then I got interested in going back and finding Berry’s originals, and that, in turn, led me to dig back even further into the roots of rock and roll in the r&b and jazz of the 1930s and ’40s. It wasn’t just the music either. Learning how the Delta blues became the Chicago blues, for instance, led to my introduction to the topic of the moment: the Great Migration.

The same has been true in exploring soul food. It prompted me to go back and learn a lot of history that I was never taught in school, and then to think about how that history continues to impact us. This blog reflects some of that journey. I’m sure some react to putting food and history together the same way that some react to putting pineapples on pizza. But I like it.

So, the question of authenticity may solve itself. Some will surely try to capitalize on dumbing-down soul food dishes for a broader audience, but others will respond by offering something more faithful to the living traditions.

Bottom line? Food is always in transition. Techniques, equipment, ingredients, and tastes change. “Soul food” isn’t a museum piece. It’s a living cuisine, and it would be inauthentic to try and somehow freeze it in time. Even the name may change. “Soul food,” after all, was a 1960s invention. The great Edna Lewis, it will be remembered, called it “country cooking.” But my educated guess is that it, whatever “it” is, will survive.