#islamophobia ≠ racism against arabs

[a-very-tired-jew]

The Columbia University Taskforce on Antisemitism 2nd Report is out. And it's a doozy. https://president.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/content/Announcements/Report-2-Task-Force-on-Antisemitism.pdf

Before I get into the nitty gritty of it let me pretty much summarize and paraphrase the Taskforce's position: "Holy shit the antisemitism on campus is so much worse than we thought, and it's repeatedly done by people saying they're 'just anti-Zionists'".

Let's start with the Taskforce's working definition of antisemitism.

Fig. 1. Columbia Taskforce on Antisemitism definition of antisemitism

This is a pretty good definition as it includes such things as Holocaust Denial, perceived ties to Israel, double standards, and all the usual things. It pretty much encompasses everything we have witnessed and experienced since Oct 7th. However, the Taskforce then follows it up with this bit.

Fig. 2. Columbia Taskforce on Antisemitism says their definition should not be used outside of training and education.

By saying that their working definition of antisemitism should not be used outside of training and education purposes the Taskforce is pretty much admitting upfront that the antisemitism they are reporting on falls well within their definition and breaks Columbia University code of conduct to the point where the perpetrators would and should receive various punishments ranging from suspensions to expulsions to revocations.

This is an example of the double standards that Jews experience. If this was a taskforce working to find evidence and address any other form of bigotry and racism then there would be recommendations made using the working definition. The irony is that they talk about double standards right in their definition. Now, of course the whole argument comes down to First Amendment Rights. But speech that induces and instigates violence against individuals and/or ethnic/racial groups is not protected. Considering that the Taskforce found calls to violence against Jews then this is not covered. Furthermore, while supporting terrorism is covered by the First Amendment, material support includes distributing terrorist approved and produced materials, of which many students and groups like CUAD are on record doing (even on their own social media) is not.

The report then does what we always, always, always see when it comes to anything with antisemitism. It recommends training on antisemitism AND islamophobia. Now, I am for this personally. A lot of others might be like "Why link the two?! It's always like this!" but I think training on both serves a purpose.

Explicit training and education on what is antisemitism and what is islamophobia. Such things as criticism of the Israeli government's actions, Hamas's actions and rhetoric, the Nakba and the Farhud, the Arab League, and so on being the things that come to mind as examples of not antisemitism or islamophobia. Then getting into the things like stereotypes and conspiracies and how criticism can easily fall into these, how people often seed in "innocuous" conspiracies that are actually the gateway to more serious hateful ones and how to recognize that ploy.

By having courses and training on what is and what isn't either of the two you start to address that leftover guilt since the 9/11 era that has prevented any and all criticism of Islam, Islamic groups, and Islamic regimes for fear of being labeled "Islamophobic". We have seen since Oct 7th the projection of "Jews are weaponizing antisemitism to prevent criticism of Israel" from groups that defend the use of Hadiths that call for the death of Jews under the guise of "you're being Islamophobic" as a means to prevent criticism.

Now, will such education and training actually address these issues? Of course not. They'll likely be opposed and never implemented.

Let's move on, shall we? The report then gets into it's introduction and tells us that they heard from nearly 500 students ranging from undergrads to post-docs about their antisemitic experiences. These testimonies come from Zionists, anti-Zionists, non-Zionists, and those the Taskforce couldn't exactly label. Furthermore, those that did not attend the listening sessions did what we've seen all antisemite do since 10/7; they denied the experience of these students and the Taskforce acknowledges this.

That's huge.

Acknowledging that the greater Columbia University community is denying the antisemitic experiences of these students whom are across the political spectrum and academic experience is signaling to the antisemites that the victims will not be drowned out by the mob with pitchforks.

They then follow it up with this.

Fig. 3. Acknowledgement that the antisemitism students are experiencing does lead to physical violence and has historical precedent.

The Taskforce is admitting and acknowledging that Columbia University has failed in fulfilling part of its mandate in protecting students and addressing acts of bigotry, hate, and violence towards students and students of a particular group. By also acknowledging that antisemitic rhetoric has a historical precedent of leading to physical violence they are also admitting that they know how bad it is and it needs to be addressed.

They then recommend that the university change its policies because of the utter failure to address these incidents. Further elaborating that some of the incidents actually violate state and federal law and that the university is culpable in such cases and the university itself is, once again, adhering to double standards for its Jewish and Israeli students.

The report then goes into the incidents students experienced starting with section 1B. Student Experiences in Day-to-Day Encounters. I will not go over that here in detail, but it contains multiple testimonies and excerpts from testimonies about the antisemitism the Jewish students experienced since 10/7. What is important to note is that the Taskforce acknowledges the "slippage" of anti-Zionism into antisemitism in the majority of these incidents, that the perpetrators don't think they're doing so, but to everyone else it is very clearly happening.

Fig. 4. Taskforce stating that anti-Zionist activities have fallen into classic antisemitic tropes and canards on Columbia's campus(es).

Furthermore, the Taskforce acknowledges that Jewish and Israeli students purposefully had their words misinterpreted to villainize them. Any attempt at facilitating discussion or understanding was dismissed with heavy prejudice.

The Taskforce also talks about how social media has played a role in the harassment of Jewish and Israeli students.

Fig. 5. Student testimony and screenshotting of antisemitism online from Columbia students and orgs.

Moving on to section C. Student Experiences in Clubs, we find one of the most heinous incidents.

Fig. 6. Founder of an LGBTQIA+ group defends their antisemitism then acknowledges it and brags that they got away with it.

This incident highlights one of the issues we have seen since 10/7 where people place Jews as "white oppressors" to validate their antisemitism. They engage in open antisemitic conspiracy and defend it through the use of progressive language that makes it difficult, if not impossible, to address their bigotry. Why? Because a person like this will fall back to being a minority themselves to say that they can't be a bigot. This type of defense is hypocritical and is solely used to silence any attempt to address their hate, to which this student fully acknowledges as she bragged that she got away with it.

This is why Columbia University apologizing to Khymani James after expelling them for their comments about "Zionists don't deserve to live" and that we were "lucky" they weren't out there killing them right now is so abhorrent. Across the internet we saw accusations of white supremacy and silencing BIPOC and queer voices because of Khymani's sexual identity and ethnicity. Is this not the kind of weaponization that antisemites accuse Jews of? This is projection and the testimony above and the Khymani incident highlight this type of behavior. You don't get to be a hateful bigot simply because you're a minority, but the double standard for Jews is a consistent issue.

As the report continues we then find out that the CUAD is not just one group, but actually a coalition that has multiple student clubs and organizations underneath it. CUAD demands that its member clubs and orgs adhere to its mission and rhetoric. According to the report, any student in a club or org that didn't express outright (((anti-Israel))) sentiment was silenced and eventually ousted and/or removed. In almost all incidents, any group signing on or joining the CUAD coalition did not abide by their own rules and excluded any and all Jewish and Israeli students from the process. If they spoke up they were told their opinions did not matter and were removed.

This coalition is further expanded upon in section E (I'm skipping D as it is about curriculum issues and is much shorter). Testimony points out that CUAD is a coalition made of over a hundred student organizations and that they are also bringing in outsiders to the campus. So the claims of "outside agitators" are moot because it was CUAD who brought them there in the first place. The intent was also never to be a peaceful protest or encampment as multiple testimonies talk about the violent language and actions within the encampments and across the campus(es). Specifically the language being used during "vigils" was not about peace or in memorium, but celebrating death and highlighting violence. The issues that the Taskforce learned are, I think, best encapsulated by this paragraph from page 36 in section G.

Fig. 7. Paragraph highlighting how Columbia is now seen as an antisemitic university.

I can attest to Columbia now being seen as the antisemitic university. Its reputation is entirely tarnished by the administrations refusal to act on the very real and violent antisemitism that has been present on its campus since the days after 10/7. I know professors who have turned down jobs, grad students that have withdrawn applications, and donors that have stopped giving.

This report by Columbia University's own personnel provides evidence that contradicts the narrative we have been told by members of the CUAD encampment(s) as well as people across social media; that the antisemitism is fake and made up to prevent criticism of Israel. The Taskforce admits that they were astonished by how bad it actually was and that the university refused to do anything. This should be telling to anyone who has witnessed these claims by people trying to dismiss concerns regarding antisemitism in the pro-Palestine movement. We've seen this across social media and this site where antisemites accuse Jews of being Nazis while they themselves spew antisemitic rhetoric straight out of the Protocols and the Third Reich.

Antisemites will always try and paint Jews as the actual perpetrators of hate, violence, and villainy while they themselves commit those very same acts (that is not to say that no Jew has every committed a crime or any such act themselves, but the projection that we have seen by antisemites is massive). This Taskforce report has multiple testimonies of Jewish students just trying to exist and go about their lives to only be harassed and assaulted for the crime of living while Jewish.

I am going to end this post here as the next section after the testimonies and incidents of antisemitism goes into recommendations for the university and actions to be taken. That is a separate post that will be couched in this one later on.

[boreal-sea]

So a common argument I see is that Jews use antisemitism as a bludgeon to shut down conversations and to avoid being called out for their own bigotry.

Anyone can be a bigot. Being from a marginalized identity does not insulate you from this. So can Jews be bigoted? Yep! Ben Shapiro exists, after all.

But the things I see people "calling Jews out" for, particularly claims of fascism, racism, and Islamophobia, just aren't.

Things that are not fascism, racism or Islamophobia:

Being Jewish

Being Israeli

Living in Israel

Calling out people's antisemitism in their pro-Palestine posts

Saying Jews are indigenous to the Levant

Supporting Jewish self-determination in their homeland

Calling Hamas a terrorist organization

Calling out Hamas for the atrocities it has committed for the past several decades against both Israelis and Palestinians

Calling Oct 7th an act of terrorism

Pointing out that the history of the Levant is complicated

Calling out the governments of surrounding Arab countries for their long history of antisemitism

Asking for safety on college campuses

[rotzaprachim]

I’m going to disagree with a little thing. I don’t think it’s easy to be pro-Palestine and against antisemitism, because we are all enmeshed in cultures that have Islamophobia, anti Arab racism, imperialism, AND antisemitism at their core. It’s a constant learning process and because anti-arab racism and antisemitism are embedded into these cultural contexts infinitely older than the modern state of Israel, we cannot automatically assume that any stances we hold on these issues are automatically “moral” or “pure.” I think I’m on a journey of unlearning that will go on for a long, long time. It doesn’t “cost zero dollars not to be antisemitic” because antisemitism is an extremely delicious, useful conspiracy to explain just how the world works and is central to the operational logics of conspiratorial thinking about how the world works. It will cost you a lot of dollars, just like it will cost you a lot of dollars to stand up for any other oppressed group. I don’t assume myself to be morally pure either- I have so many of my own biases, including racism, Islamophobia, and a continued fight with internalized antisemitism, and we Won’t get anywhere until we can face these issues head on and interrogate the nuances. I’m so burned out on people claiming fighting any of this is easy. It’s not. Do it anyway.

[xclowniex]

Okay so, there has been misinformation spread, which I myself had done with one post which I've since revoked and turned off reblogs, so I want to get some facts straight about the Amsterdam pogrom.

The "fuck arabs" chant

Some, including myself, were assuming it was a football chant to support the Israeli soccer team. The video mainly shared was one with the start cut off and background music which to a lot of different Hebrew speakers, did sound like the chant, and to many others sounded nothing like it.

A video from a different perspective of the chant, as well as longer and without background music was shared, and they are saying "[something] and we'll win, we will fuck the arabs" - The Hebrew word used Nezayen has two meanings "fuck" and "defeat". So far there has been no additional context to say which meaning it is. Link for the new video

At best, the chant was in reference to winning the war against hamas, which still deranged to do that outside of Israel and honestly not super out of character for drunk football fans. Still not good, but also not the worst case.

At worst, it was racist chanting, which is even more fucking deranged.

This does not mean an attack was at all warranted.

Firstly, looking at the sheer number of people attacked, it was more than just those who chanted, meaning people who did not participate who were jewish or Israeli were harmed.

Secondly, there have been reported of jewish owned businesses being broken into.

Two things can be true at the same time. What the chanters did was fucked up, and the attacks were not warranted, and the attacks have gone much further than just those who chanted. A much more proportional reponsed would've been to chant back, not escalate and attacks jews and Israelis in general.

Jews in Amsterdam are being told to stay inside and not wear any visible symbols of Jewishness if they have to go out. This shows that it extends far past just retaliation against the chanters.

What we are not going to do is A) assume a group of people, which is a super small amount of jews worldwide and Israelis, represent the opinions of jews and Israelis world wide and B) Assume that every arab and muslim want to attack and harm all jews

You can and should, criticize both the Israeli and Jewish chanters and the Arab and Muslim attackers.

You should not veer into antisemitism, Islamophobia, and anti arab racism.

[cluelessbees]

I just wanna say it’s really important that when you talk about the prejudice against Palestinians. It’s so important that you don’t just say islamophobia.

It’s also anti-Arabism/racism.

In America specifically Arabs have been erased as a racial group and people tend to forget that a lot of the Islamophobic stereotypes at its core is based on anti-Arabism. This erasure is partly why people don’t realise their own racism towards Arabs.

Also,

Not all Palestinians are Muslims too.

Because this isn’t about religion. No matter how much Zionists want to push that narrative. It’s not a religious thing of Muslims vs Jewish people. It’s Isra*l attacking and genociding Palestinians.

[is-the-owl-video-cute]

trying to talk to zionists is like trying to explain the Cold War to infants.

The Holocaust wasn’t bad specifically because the people dying were largely jewish, it was bad because it was genocide.

Being Jewish does not mean you’re incapable of committing genocide any more than it means you’re incapable of committing murder, but that is the claim being made. The idea that it’s antisemitic to compare the genocide of Palestinians to the genocide of the Jewish people during the Holocaust is dependent on you believing that the Holocaust only occurred because the primary target was the Jews.

In an essence it is depicting the Jewish people as weak and innocent, incapable of committing crimes against humanity based solely on their ethnicity and/or religion. That is antisemitic for the same reason it’s misogynistic to portray women as demure and fragile and pure.

When people say “never again” it is not intended to simply mean we won’t let Germany turn to nazism again. It is intended to mean that we will stand up to genocide, if nothing else when we are made aware of it.

It isn’t “complicated” simply because the ethnostate is made up largely of ethnic Jews (hm how did it get to be that way). It isn’t “complicated” simply because the victims are primarily Arabs.

It’s simple.

It’s genocide.

If you only stand up for antisemitism and endorse islamophobia and racism, don’t try to pick a moral high ground.

[jewish-microwave-laser]

You’re someone who supports the two-state solution and reblogs posts from people who’ve made deeply racist comments about Arabs and Muslims — so don’t act like you’re the victim here. That anon had a point calling you out, because at the end of the day, you’re still standing by a colonial regime.

↑

if you think i support medinas yisrael you must be new here

i do my best to call out racism and islamophobia where i see it, it's something i'm continually working on. i have unfollowed people and talked to people both publicly and privately for that sort of behavior before, i'm sure you can find examples on my blog. however i cannot dig through the blogs of every single person on every single post i interact with. if i accidentally rb a dogwhistle or something that steps into the racist/islamophobic territory, people are always more than welcome to let me know and help me learn. after all, judaism teaches us we're all lifelong students, and i for one love to learn

i support peace in whatever form it can come in. i have talked positively about a two state solution in the past because it seems to me, with the information that i currently have, to be the most pragmatic "solution" in the current climate. if anybody's curious about why i've come to this conclusion, i'd be happy to word vomit my thoughts. but personally i don't spend much time thinking in a large scale about this sort of thing. i think a few people imposing their personal "solutions" on the matter are what have caused a lot of pain and conflict in the world, not just eretz yisrael and/or palestine, but also in other parts of the swana region, africa, asia, and so on. i throw my time and effort into small-scale changes and activism, because i've found in my life that this is where i feel the most fulfilled and less like it's me vs the world. (this is also why i'm much more vocal with my support for groups like pcff and cfp!) ultimately, any sort of governmental change must be matched by popular sentiment, otherwise it's going to fail again. you can pass a law saying it's bad to discriminate against trans people, but transphobia won't stop until people start viewing trans people as fellow human beings, yk?

anyway, בוקר טוב وصباح الخير yall

[radfemsiren]

(This is about racist TikTok drama, just a heads up if you don’t care about gossip topics lol )

Y’know , I talk a lot about how white-guilt ridden liberals shut down valid criticism of any non white patriarchal society, esp middle eastern, but it’s not just them.

So many people sabotage these conversations, and it’s always racism against Arab people that I find at the root of this problem. It’s esp bad with non middle eastern Muslims that will go to the ends of the world to defend a culture they are not a part of. It’s pure entitlement to speak over members of a race or ethnicity about their own culture. This specific tiktoker is a prime example: layloqasim

There was an Egyptian tiktoker with a small account that spoke about his experience visiting rural Egyptian communities. He didn’t like how these rural folks would refer to women not by their name, but only by their fathers or husbands name (daughter of, wife of). He found it clearly misogynistic, which it was. He was also a tiny account, less than 50k followers.

Here comes Laylo, a Somali woman, not Arab, not Egyptian, not even North African, who attacked him. She got him cancelled and he had to issue out an apology for “Islamophobia” and “racism”. She canceled him for critiquing his own culture.

The entitlement is insane, I can’t stand when people conflate race and religion, esp. because it breeds entitled and ignorant people like her to speak over us. And get this, this was the same time she was getting mad at TikTok for not sending her as much influencer shit as white influencers, saying TikTok was racist and white creators were benefitting from racism. Girl! You’re benefiting from racism too, it’s just people are so ignorant they can’t tell the difference between a Muslim and an Arab so you can treat us however you like 😭

She’s so annoying lol, shes like the poster child of toxic Muslim TikTok

[jewish-sideblog]

I got accused of racism and islamophobia because I said Arabs and the religion of Islam originated in Arabia. they only CONQUERED the Levant. they weren't FROM there. Stating that historic fact (as a gentile) made me a bigot in their eyes. (Apparently I am "pro genocide" too. Which was news to me.)

I know quite a few Muslims and non-Muslims who have been educated to believe that Jews are simply white European invaders. Exactly like white European colonizers in the Americas and Oceania and South Africa.

A book blogger I respect recently stated that they wanted to read more books by "oppressed minorities" and included in their list of "oppressed minorities" Muslims.. but not Jews. When I questioned her dubious assertion that Muslims are an "oppressed minority" by pointing out that there are nearly 2 BILLION Muslims in the world (it is the second largest religion in the world, Muslims make up the majority in more than 50 countries, there are almost as many Muslims in the world as there are Christians, etc.. all easily verifiable facts).. vs, for example, the fewer than 15 million Jews.. she blocked me.

Calling Muslims an "oppressed minority" is as patently absurd as calling Christians an "oppressed minority".

She didn't include Jews or Buddhists or Hindus or Sikhs or atheists in her list of oppressed minorities that she wanted to read more of. No, she lumped Muslims in alongside indigenous people, LGBTQ+ people, people with disabilities, fat people, immigrants, the neurodivergent and other "historically marginalized identities". Not Jews, though! Nah. Nothing oppressive ever happened to them folks.. 🙄

That's such a ridiculously narrow and Western view of minority oppression. Like yeah Muslims and Arabs are definitely discriminated against in a ton of countries all around the globe. But like you said, ethnic Arabs are also the majority in nineteen countries, and Islam is the majority religion in fifty countries. There are (depending on how you count) only 193 countries on the planet. More than a quarter of countries total on the Earth are Muslim-majority. Jews get one.

Just because someone perceives that Muslims are more of an oppressed minority in their home country than Jews are doesn't mean that's the universal truth. That doesn't even necessarily mean that's true in the country being perceived, because so much antisemitism goes unnoticed. I'd love it if people who claim to be open minded and woke would get their heads out of their asses before speaking on global topics. Or at least listen when they're told that their perspective is skewed.

[edenfenixblogs]

New Pinned Post: How This Blog Approaches The Conflict

I am not normally a politically-focused blog. I am normally a personal blog that enjoys fandom and occasionally processes my own past trauma. As this war goes on, I am finding that it is against my personal ethics and morals to stay silent when I have the ability to educate and remain more patient than most. (My patience is not endless. I’m still human). So, while disinformation/misinformation, and propaganda abound on all sides. I feel like the best way I can help lower the temperature is to put my skills to use.

Primary Political Goals:

1. Emphasize humanity above all and use verifiable information and good faith education and discourse to reduce tension.

2. Do my absolute best to move the conversation away from polarizing, accusatory discourse that forces Jews, Muslims, Arabs, Israelis, and Palestinians to play a desperate game of defense and toward a shared mutually beneficial peace that honors each grouped indigeneity culture, and connection to their ancestral homeland.

3. Demonstrate and emphasize both Jewish-Muslim solidarity and Israeli-Palestinian solidarity.

Primary Blogging Goals:

As a diaspora Jew, my primary goal is threefold

1. Educate about antisemitism and Islamophobia—including calling it out and explaining it to the best of my ability.

2. Elevate responsible, verifiable voices—regardless of religion or nationality—and information to the best of my ability.

3. Demonstrate effective activism and provide insight and encouragement for other to find their most effective way to contribute to fostering peace.

Elaboration:

1. I have the most experience with an understanding of antisemitism. I am more of an expert in antisemitism and have more ability to identify and educate about it. That said: I will not tolerate any Islamophobia or racism and if I don’t have the ability to educate about it, you will be blocked. If I have the ability to educate about it, I will do so and give you the chance to read about it and adjust your behavior. If you do not do so, I will block you.

2. This does not mean equal representation of all nationalities and religions. It means the best informed and most reliable voices AND the voices I personally have the best ability to vet, verify, and substantiate. This will often mean Jewish voices and Israeli voices. This is me staying in my lane, not choosing to suppress any voice. I will not elevate purposefully divisive, tokenized, or uninformed voices. This does not mean that I won’t elevate Palestinian, Muslim, and Arab voices as well. I will. But my primary goal here is responsibility. To do that, I have to stay in my lane.

3. I am most effective as an educator on this matter, a guide to finding reliable peace-oriented voices, and an example of patience. There’s a great desire among many to protest or create videos detailing their opinions and stances. Not only is this primarily performative—especially among non-Muslim/non-Palestinian goyim—it has the potential to be extraordinarily damaging to Jews both in Israel and in Diaspora as well as to Arabs, Muslims, Palestinians, and South East Asians worldwide. If you truly desire to help and not just feel like you’re helping, the best thing you can do is follow the lead of much more experienced activists with a demonstrated track record of effectiveness and good faith in their areas of expertise. As I stated: mine is primarily education and greater than average (though not limitless) amounts of patience. If you want to donate money or engage in more direct action and aid, I suggest finding pro-Palestinian Israeli voices and peace oriented Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian voices as well as organizations with experience in this conflict that do not rely on eliminating any population or erasing anyone’s connection to the Levant. Follow their lead on that matter. If you are only just engaging in this conflict for the first time due to current events, you likely do not know nearly as much as you think you do about any of this. Being uninformed and spouting disinformation has actual dire consequences that can get Jews, Muslims, Palestinians, Israelis, and Arabs killed. It is vital that you’re responsible in your engagement on this matter. Learning dogwhistles and how to spot bad faith arguments is a must. And to be effective, you should spend more of your time learning than you’re doing protesting or arguing. This is a 2000+ year old conflict. There is a lot to know and understand. And there are a lot of people willing to prey on your newcomer status and manipulate your existing beliefs to use you as a pawn to further their bad faith aims. The only consistent, trustworthy principal is to trust those who repeatedly affirm their goal as peace and shared prosperity and who reject any form of demonization based on ethnicity or religion. This is not a game. This is not the west’s fight. This is a conflict between two horribly oppressed, traumatized, and nearly exterminated ethnoreligous groups.

I am begging you to think, listen, and learn before joining the fray.

Note: I also don’t claim to be perfect. If I mess up or reblog something that causes unintended harm (which is very easy to do when engaging in discussions and activism about this conflict), I will say so and issue a correction. There’s no need to be hostile in informing me about this. Just message with your concern and I’ll evaluate from there.

Additionally, I will not interact with Hamas apologists. Hamas is a terrorist organization.

Anyone trying to make me feel like this is an Us vs. Them situation will be blocked.

[ladyimaginarium]

fellas. canadian fellas. canadian folx. canada. y'all better fucking vote for the ndp in october 2025. we're not like in america where there's only two major parties & a few minority parties, there's more than two major political parties to choose from ! the ndp specifically are fighting for all of these things:

like. idk about y'all but all of this seems a lot better than what we have rn. if you give a fuck about indigenous peoples, if you give a fuck about black people, if you give a fuck about asian people, if you give a fuck about people of color & racialized people, if you give a fuck about human rights, if you give a fuck about queer rights, if you give a fuck about two spirit rights, if you give a fuck about trans rights (ALL trans rights, they've called for specific care approaches for trans girls & trans women, trans boys & trans men & for nonbinary people too!), if you give a fuck about intersex rights (they support the ban of intersex genital mutilation until intersex children are old enough to consent if they want cosmetic surgery or not & have spoken about intersex issues!), if you give a fuck about women's rights, if you give a fuck about reproductive rights, if you give a fuck about feminism, if you give a fuck about intersectionality, if you give a fuck about religious freedom, if you give a fuck about multiculturalism, if you give a fuck about workers' rights, if you give a fuck about farmers, if you give a fuck about sex workers' rights (they support the decriminalization of sex work & stigma of sex work!), if you give a fuck about addicts (they support decriminalization of drugs & stigma of drug addiction!), if you give a fuck about the poor & the homeless, if you give a fuck about people with HIV/AIDS, if you give a fuck about disabled & neurodivergent people, if you give a fuck about autistic people, if you give a fuck about the environment & the earth sea & sky, if you give a fuck about palestine (they support the statehood of palestine & have been actively been calling out antipalestinian racism & have been calling the government to stop sending & selling weapons to the israeli government & have called for a ceasefire!), if you give a fuck about lebanon, if you give a fuck about sudan & congo (they actively support the sudanese & congolese people!), if you give a fuck about armenia, if you give a fuck about ukraine, if you give a fuck about jewish lives (they adamantly are against antisemitism & have spoken out about protecting jewish people & bringing the israeli hostages home to their families!), if you give a fuck about arab & muslim lives (they have actively spoken out against antiarab racism & islamophobia!), if you give a fuck about international peace, if you give a fuck about immigrants, refugees & asylum seekers, if you give a fuck about prisoner's rights, if you give a fuck about people living in rural & remote & reservation & northern communities, if you give a fuck about free universal healthcare, if you give a fuck about free mental healthcare, if you give a fuck about free eye & free hearing care & free dental care & infertility procedures & prescription drugs, if you give a fuck about food sovereignty, if you give a fuck about antiterrorism & antiextremism & deradicalization, if you give a fuck about the demilitarization of the police & using alternative methods like social workers & psychologists, if you give a fuck about taxing the ultra rich & billionaires & polluters, if you give a fuck about renewable energy, if you give a fuck about affordable childcare & housing & abolishing the poverty line, if you give a fuck about affordable post-secondary education & affordable quality internet & cellphone service & transportation all across the country, if you give a fuck about affordable groceries so everyone can feed their families, if you give a fuck about healthy food in every community, if you give a fuck about your children, if you give a fuck about the elders in your community, you'll vote for these guys. & on TOP of that? the leader of the ndp, jagmeet singh, is a son of immigrants & an indian punjabi man of color & a SIKH, he's not some privileged ass white guy, he's been on the ground himself as an activist & has actively been fighting for all these rights with quite literally everything i've seen so far. noncanadians are also encouraged to reblog too!

[ameliarating]

I'm thinking about how when certain nation-states commit terrible acts, some circles in the West jumps on them and their entire populations and their entire existences in a way they wouldn't for other nation-states and those nation-states are often the ones with populations that have been heavily stigmatized and racially or culturally othered as less than or untrustworthy.

I see this in reaction to for example, Israel*, Iran*, and China* (famously countries that are majority Jewish, Muslim, and, well, Chinese) and how quickly rightful cries against their governments' violent policies against minorities and/or dissidents turn into rehashing of old prejudices until it's no longer clear if people are protesting against the governments or against the people itself or even against entire cultures.

It leads deep disgust for Israelis and Jews, Iranians, and Chinese people in diaspora who may still feel and vocalize a deep love and connection for their homeland because countries and lands are more than government and military actions.

(I'm thinking of people demanding Jews disavow any ties with ~the Zionist Entity~, including being told not to speak Hebrew or be legitimate targets of harassment, of Iranians (often conflated with Arabs and vice versa) assumed to be violent and dangerous to the point where I know Iranians who have chosen to be called Persian only to escape the stigma, of the demand to completely turn away from Chinese media and literature and business and innovation lest it be the government in disguise. Of people being told their cultures are illegitimate propaganda rather than the accumulation of thousands of years of scholarship and art.)

All of this also, of course, leads to hate crimes domestically against people connected to or perceived to be connected to those countries.

Prejudice, racism, anti-Semitism, and Islamophobia are insidious and they will find their way into how we respond terrible injustices and crises in the world. I don't know how to stop that from happening, but at the very least, we should be sensitive and watchful for it.

*These are three example countries that are and have been in the news a lot recently but this could apply to many, many more.

[thowawayuntilfurthernotice]

The sad reality is that a lot of liberals who are trying their hardest to stop the fascists from taking over don’t want to admit that they consider all the Palestinians who are being killed to be a “necessary sacrifice” for the “greater good.”

This is what happens when Anti Arab racism and Islamophobia become normalized, everyone eventually starts to assume that it’s okay to be racist against Arabs or indifferent because Arabs are no longer seen as people within society.

And when politicians are called out on their racism, they’ll just plead ignorance.

“Oh, I didn’t say anything racist about Arabs. I was criticizing Islam. Islam isn’t a race!”

Never mind the fact that “Muslim” has become a blanket term for Arabs in the West for two decades now.

[olderthannetfic]

https://www.tumblr.com/olderthannetfic/740123102285086720/all-the-griping-about-ownvoices-claiming-to?source=share

Re: your response:

It's interesting because in the DS9 slash shipping fandom and particularly with Garashir, a lot of people DO write Julian Bashir, a character of color as their perfect woobie they projected on to - he probably gets that more than any other character in that fandom. And then there ended up being a backlash that people were "writing him as white," including in an actual academic paper I saw from someone who is on Tumblr, while they were willing to explore writing him as fully queer and neurodivergent headcanons in fic.

Which is interesting to me because most of the stuff that writes him as queer is stuff that just ships him with Garak or another dude, but doesn't spend a ton of time on his queer *identity*. And I'm personally fine with that; I've read enough coming-out stories and didactic identity explanations in both fic and professionally published/released original work to last me a lifetime. But if writing a COC without drawing attention to their racial/ethnic/cultural identity is "writing them as white," shouldn't writing a non-heterosexual character without drawing attention to their queer identity similarly count as "writing them as straight"?

Anyway, I go back and forth on this because I also understand how Islamophobia and general racism against MENA works, how the "good Muslim" or "good Arab" is one who is as assimilated as possible, and how it can feel with fic that has a COC but doesn't go into their background like that person is only ok with POC *up to a point*. As well as the issues with how in canon, Star Trek's diversity shows a lot of POC but has only started to recognize actual non-Western "cultural" touchstones very recently. (E.g. When they referenced literature, it was always Shakespeare or the ancient Greeks or Poe, never the Romance of the Three Kingdoms or Rumi.) I get that. At the same time, I've definitely read stuff especially by non-MENA people which wrote about "his culture" in a very exotifying way that seemed to suggest that that kind of cultural identity is only "real" if it happens in a very stereotypical way. And I also think especially with a character who is so heavily framed as British, with a British accent, played by an actor who is half-English and grew up there.... I've also seen the brainworms in fandoms from Star Wars to Bridgerton with how people can't accept European characters/actors of color as European, and I do wish people would consider how they're suggesting that English identity can only be "white" by acting like it's wrong to ever portray Bashir as English. Something I've heard plenty of British POC complain about as like an attitude in their country that actually harms them.

I think these questions are complicated, because you have racist phenomena on both ends. There definitely are racists who only accept POC if they are as un-POC as possible, if they are assimilated, and see them wearing or saying or doing things that mark them as culturally different as "threatening." But there are other racists who think the only right way to write "diverse stories" is to have them be heavily cultural and represent stereotypes - the poor, urban black American, the Arab who lives in the desert and wears a thawb and is a devout Muslim - and that POC who are not like that talking about their own lives are somehow not "authentic enough." The thing that the movie American Fiction is about.

--

Yeah. Fandom isn't nearly as bad about characters of color overall as some wank would say. Fandom fucking loves Asian characters who are the unmarked leads of Asian media (and no, I don't think it's just because they're pale or because some idiots in the 90s thought anime characters were white).

Bashir was treated in canon in a way that fandom likes. Naturally, fandom took note.

My own woobie blorbo is Rico from Miami Vice. He's much less the single perfect tear woobie than Sonny (his buddy cop partner who is white), but he still comes in for lots of whump and screen time and narrative focus. Ye Olde zine fandom was unkind to him, at least in the m/m parts (though a lot of that is because all of the old slash zines were edited by the same couple who were... like... kinning the ship that he's a rival to).

But a lot of fans who watch that show see a very pretty, very cultured man with epic buddy cop tension with his partner, nice suits, and tons of whump plots, and they're like "God damn, where is the fic???" If canon provides, the fannish interest will be there to at least some degree. (Getting enough good writers in the same fandom at the same time to launch it as a place readers will stick around is another story, unfortunately.)

My personal view, admittedly as a white girl, is that Sturgeon's Law means what we really need is a bunch of canons that dangle tasty blorbos at us and much less policing of fic. And then a solid reccing culture to sort through the bad stuff.

I've seen a lot of complaints about writing characters as "white", and they often strike me as clueless or disingenuous. I'd rather have a bunch of "Oopsie, Garak caught Bashir using the holodeck for kinky roleplay about himself" fics than people with no clue trying to inject MENA stuff that wasn't in the show and that they aren't personally competent to handle. And half the time, this complaint seems to be some sort of unintentionally racist bilge where the speaker thinks the fic is making someone too cultured or too upper class or too kinky or some other shit that has nothing to do with anything.

Honestly, I sometimes think that the real complaint is "How dare fandom sound like the upper-middle class suburbanite bookworms that so many of us are?!?!"

[2023himbotournament]

CONTACT YOUR GOVERNMENT AND DEMAND A CEASEFIRE FOR PALESTINE

For Eu look up:

Voices in Europe for peace

For Usa look up:

US campaign for Palestinian rights

BOYCOTT FOR PALESTINE

FOA (Friends of Al-Aqsa) have organized a boycott in support of palestine. Here are the key companies to boycott:

HP (Hewlett Packard)

Coca-Cola

Israeli produce

We will be ending our call to boycott

PUMA once the contract with IFA officially dissolves in 2024. Until then, we encourage you to continue boycotting PUMA products.

Please help to spread the word by sending this copypasta to as many blogs as you can and/or going to FOAs website where you can find posters to download and print out

Ok I'm not a copypasta person unless it's memes but like. Look I'm not Palestinian but I'm also a Southwest Asian and my mental health has definitely deteriorated seeing just. Everything. Especially the increase in racism and islamophobia (I'm also muslim) and seeing all the hate crimes and knowing that someone could probably shoot me in the head while I'm writing gay fanfiction in public and justify it by saying that I could've been a dangerous terrorist and therefore my entire family tree must be eradicated-

basically what I'm trying to say is that I'm hoping that making this post on the himbo tourney blog will get some eyes on this. Like. I've been feeling really powerless about this and kinda just like shriveling up and dying lately. Tbh. The world is fxcked right now. In the year of our lord 2024 /ref, here we are post undertale we are being pro-genocide how funny is that haha. It's not funny. It's. It's not. It's not funny . I can't. I've seen too many videos of children dying and crying and I just. I saw the one thing about the kid with cerebral palsy whose parents got shot right in front of them for literally no reason and then they got yelled at by soldiers and like. People literally will look at this and call these people animals?? I saw that term get thrown around a lot. It's just disgusting and like.

have people seen the bingo the literal genocide bingo. People are treating this like a joke like. Do people not realize that Southwest Asian people are like... people??? We're people you know. Like this is mainly targeting Arabs but I've seen stuff about people discriminating against the rest of us too (mainly because they can't tell the difference. Because the idea of not treating Asian cultures as interchangeable applies until you get to Southwest Asia I guess even in progressive circles everyone just says Arab for everything even here I've seen people like-). I'm Persian and I'm still scared someone will cut my life off. I'm 16. Nowruz is next week and I just want to live to it with my family. My mind is inundated wit the tears of the families that had never gotten to have their celebrations. Because of one group on one day.

one group on one day. One group on one day. it's always that. it's always that for people like us.I feel like I'm going insane. It's just 9/11 in America all over again. I wasn't even born for that. But you can just feel it all around you. And now we have the sequel, across the world. But it's used the same way. 7/23. Can't wait for the memes /s. This one thing happens therefore we can dedicate multiple months to killing all of you just making you suffer stripping your dignity you don't deserve anything and we'll make the world hate you because fxck you and then the world goes along with it because nothing good ever happens and I just want to escape from this but every time I go on tumblr it's just this and I know if I ever stop seeing this it means that the worst has happened anyway

and then people try to act like YOU'RE the bigot because you're trying to hold a country's government and military force responsible for war crimes just because the country has its branding in minority groups. How about I make this crystal clear: I don't give a flying fxck about what Israel is, it's what it's doing that matters. I'd be saying nearly the same shzt if they were PERSIAN, and that is MY ETHNICITY. I literally do not care. It doesn't matter. Because killing people is wrong and that should not be a controversial statement but I guess some people like the sound of screams in the morning. The Palestinian death toll has surpassed the 7/23 death toll. And it's still going. And not all the deaths have even been accounted for because bodies are still buried under rubble. Because they're still bombing people and they won't stop. And no one will make them stop.

like I don't give a fxck about Hamas either, I heard some of the members did genuinely say some like directly quoted antisemitic shzt and also they like condoned a racist caricature of a black woman in a magazine I think but I'm not sure about the second one (I know the magazine thing definitely happened but I'm not sure of their like involvement at all-) like. I don't need to suck there dzcks like some people do it's one group of fxcks like I don't. They're just the excuse being used for this. You're bombing the entire population of a country where the majority population is fzcking tater tots. You're attacking children. You are killing children. Paint yourself purple. Dammit. Just. Again it's 9/11 all over again but in another country.

even then like it's like. You know that trope in cartoons that shows up more often than you'd think that was in like Avatar and Korra and RWBY I think where there's like a fictional minority that is oppressed and wants rights and then active protest is represented by an evil terrorist group who attacks people and is the villains of the media and passive protest is always portrayed as good and active protest is evil and there's no nuance and also they just frame the group as just like evil spawned out of nowhere not addressing that they literally would not exist if not for the truly evil system of oppression that basically created them. Like.

You know Hamas only exists because Palestinians were already treated like shzt right? Like they were already displaced and didn't consent to the whole Israel thing and like look up Nakba it's fzcking awful like. Hamas is just a symptom of the disease and there will just be another Hamas if you try to knock it down without actually like. Doing anything about. the fact that Palestinians are oppressed. but people will just act like you can keep punching at Hamas like that'll result in anything like they're the flowers not the roots y'know-

also I'm calling it here, this entire thing is gonna definitely be used down the line by Neo-nazis I mean it kinda already is being used to justify antisemitism but like I saw the stuff of people trying to redefine antisemitism to be synonymous with antizionism and make isrseli and jewish synonymous and to basically gatekeep jewishness from anti-zionist jews (I'm not kidding I actually saw shzt like that) and it's like. Y'all they're gonna turn around in a year or two like "ohhh look at the big bad scary jews- I mean Israelis their identity is literally tied to the genocide of Palestinians they are inherently evil there is no denying it!" (Ignoring the fact that the USA and other bastards of colonization did the same shzt as Israel literally the same story history is repeating itself but we have social media brands this time-). And then like what the fxck do you do about it when the word antisemitic now means anticolonialist so no one takes it seriously anymore. What the fxck are you supposed to do about that. And when they probably made themselves right because they probably contributed to Palestinian Genocide themselves they don't care they're just using them as props in their fxcking jew hatred. But like. Yeah you are now tied to this nationality that is tied to fxcking genocide what do you do? It's like perfect to use for fearmongering around Jewish people since the shzt they used before somehow worked despite literally being pulled out of their xss istg like where the fxck did any of the bank stuff come from like. The fzck?-

im tired. I'm so tired. Both in the literal "It's past 1am" sense and the less literal "make the stop" sense.

I just don't want people to die. I just want people to be happy. I just want people to not suffer but every day it feels like it's getting worse and I just want something to change for the better and I'm scared. Why do people act like it's a bad thing to not want people to suffer? I don't understand. I just. I just don't understand. I. am I naive? For this?

does this wish make me naive?

[tfem-confessions]

a transneutral fox's thoughts on growing up in the "middle east" and being lgbtq:

i left a few months before i turned 12.

somebody stole my diary in school, outed me as a "lesbian" (i'm bisexual) and people started ganging up on me. the vast majority of the people who did that to me were arab muslims. if i had left even a week later than i did, i would've been the target of mass harassment, spearheaded by them.

why is their ethnicity relevant, you may ask? it's because i see people trying to justify their islamophobia by taking experiences like mine and attempting to portray them as universal. bullshit! fuck anyone who does that! i experienced WORSE by the hands of my own "countrypeople"- some remnants of it still cling to me.

shit STINKS of racism. you ain't as slick as you think you are.

This is so trueeee!!! I grew up away from my home country, which I am fairly thankful for, and experienced so much islamophobia, coupled with the trans/homophobia. Its such a complex mix to experience and I really do empathise with you anon!

Its insane how a lot of people seem to think they have the right to 'justify' their fucking islamophobia with 'oh well they're homophobic'.

Like have we all collectively forgot CHRISTIANS??

The only reason the middle east and other muslim countries tend to be more violent towards lgbt is because of the aftermath of colonisation (this is something i could go into further but not really the point of this blog) and American influence.

I'm glad to hear your experiences my friend, and I do hope people stop using our own fucking trauma against us, its so gross, especially when it comes from members of our own community! like I'd expect this shit from conservatives, but come on??