#just like any sexuality/gender/ethnic/racial/cultural identity

[flimsy-roost]

a side effect of the medical framing of neurodivergence that I haven't yet seen articulated, is that it makes it hard to engage most neurotypicals on the topic, because it exists in their minds either as

a) private medical information that cannot be discussed in polite company, or else should defer to medical literature, or else is uncomfortably TMI for all but the people closest to you,

or

b) a mental health issue that can be "fixed" or alleviated with community support, and should only ever be addressed in the service of healing and growth, but is considered a separate entity to the individual, similar to how general depression and anxiety are viewed today.

but like you shouldn't be squeamish, it's ADHD, not a tapeworm. and as much as I appreciate understanding from friends and family when I'm struggling, I don't want to summon a pity party or toxic positivity parade whenever I send an autism meme to the group chat. I think I favor identity over diagnostic labels because the former better articulates all the good, bad, neutral, and mundane parts of my existence.

[deception-united]

Let's talk about writing POC characters.

Diversity's important in writing. It reflects the reality of our world, where people of various backgrounds coexist and contribute to society. Including POC (people of colour) characters not only enriches narratives with authentic perspectives but also promotes empathy, understanding, and inclusivity among readers, fostering a more equitable and representative literary landscape.

When writing characters of color (POC), it's essential to approach the task with care, sensitivity, and awareness of the complexities of identity and representation. Here are some key considerations:

Avoid stereotypes: Steer clear of relying on clichés or stereotypes when portraying POC characters. Instead, focus on creating well-rounded individuals with diverse personalities, motivations, and experiences.

Research: This is so, so important. Take the time to research the cultural background, history, and experiences of the specific racial or ethnic group your character belongs to. This will help you portray them authentically and respectfully.

Avoid tokenism: POC characters should not be included simply to fulfill a diversity quota or as tokens. Ensure they have depth, agency, and contribute meaningfully to the story.

Consultation: If you're not from the same racial or ethnic background as your character, consider seeking input from individuals who are. Sensitivity readers or consultants can provide valuable insights and help you avoid unintentional biases or inaccuracies.

Complexity: Just like any other character, POC characters should be multidimensional. They can have flaws, strengths, ambitions, and fears that go beyond their racial identity.

Intersectionality: Recognize that POC characters may face intersecting forms of discrimination or privilege based on factors such as gender, sexuality, class, or ability. Explore these intersections in your character development.

Language & dialogue: Be mindful of the language and dialogue you use for POC characters. Avoid dialects or speech patterns that could come across as caricatures or offensive stereotypes.

Avoid monoliths: POC communities are incredibly diverse, with individuals from various backgrounds, beliefs, and experiences. Avoid portraying them as a monolithic group with uniform characteristics or perspectives.

Cultural sensitivity: Respect cultural traditions, customs, and practices when depicting POC characters. Avoid appropriating or misrepresenting aspects of their culture.

Authenticity: While it's important to research and be respectful of cultural differences, remember that no single individual can represent an entire race or ethnicity. Your character should feel authentic and true to their unique identity.

Character agency: Ensure that POC characters have agency and are not merely passive participants in the story. They should drive the plot forward and make meaningful choices that impact the narrative.

Happy writing!

Previous | Next

[writingwithcolor]

How do I respectfully discuss the topic of diversity with a co-author, as well as assigning a race to an “ambiguous” character?

Anonymous asked:

My co-author and I, for context, are both white and in highschool. For the main cast of our story, each of us ended up creating three characters. All three of her characters were white. Two of mine were white as well, alongside one character who is ambiguously brown-skinned. Do you have any advice on respectfully bringing up the subject of diversity to a co-author, even if it means potentially changing our established characters? Additionally, do you have any advice on retroactively assigning a race/culture to a character? I now understand after reading this blog that “ambiguously brown” characters should be avoided, but I did not when initially creating him. I worry that I could fall into stereotypes— while portrayed positively, he’s somewhat of a “nerd” archetype. But I don’t want to whitewash him either.

“Hey, why’d you think we made a mostly all-white cast?”

In other words: Just be normal about it. As you yourself note, you also didn’t exactly put a great deal of thought into the racial/ ethnic identity for your single brown character either, so it’s not just about your writing partner. This is about how you guys like to create as a team, and what sources of inspiration you both tend to gravitate towards. If a pair of high school students who write together can’t have a chill conversation about the races of the characters they are creating, then I’d worry more for their dynamic as a creative team. Discussions of race are only as weird and awkward as people decide to make them, and that’s often framed by the baggage each person is bringing into the conversation.

Whether or not you change the characters is up to you.

“Diversity is a marathon, not a sprint!”

Write diverse characters when and because you want to. I think the push for diversity is best when it’s self-motivated. Strangers on the internet telling you to do something is definitely not the reason to do it. I’ll note the same applies IRL. Otherwise, you’re changing your behavior for the sake of peer pressure. Writing groups on the internet like our blog do not exist to sit in judgment of your work. These are venues to discuss, critique and receive feedback, but the final choice always rests with you.

There’s not enough info for me to tell if the experience of whiteness is so intrinsic to your characters that changing their race will alter them greatly. I would argue the same for gender and sexual identity. Sometimes, changing dimensions of a character’s identity alters a lot about who they are. Other times, particularly if the character is not thoroughly fleshed out, changing their race only adds to their characterization. Only you can say which scenario applies here.

Other mods have written on how to handle your dilemma of “white as default” in an earlier post available here. Please explore our #POC Profiles for more inspiration. 

Your third paragraph can be answered by re-reading all 3 sections of the FAQ and exploring our archives using the tags. 

Marika.

[the-shipper-center]

*. ! MY DNI LIST 🌟

Disclaimer !! DNI lists are made so you can know what kinda of people i don't want following me or even trying to befriend me. I know I can't control who is gonna rb, see, or like my posts all the time, but I can block ppl who follow/dm me. DNI lists are not up to debate or discussion. I will not reply to ppl starting arguments about what they think is wrong about my DNI. My DNI is hella long, and i'm proud of that 🌟 Note: it may have some typos.

!! DNI IF YOU ... 🪻

Queerphobe:

— Hold beliefs that are queerphobic.

— Support conversion therapy or believe in the pathologization of queer identities.

— Attack people’s pronouns( is against xeno/neutral/neo or graphic pronouns).

— Radical feminism (radfem) and trans-exclusionary radical feminism (TERF), transmed(A person who believes that medically-diagnosed gender dysphoria or medical transition are essential traits of being transgender), transcum(A person who believes that gender dysphoria is an essential trait to being transgender).

— Deny the validity of xenogender identities or believe that only neurodivergent individuals can be xenogender.

— If you deny trans individuals access to gender-affirming care, whether medical, psychological, or social.

Racist and xenophobic:

— Support or spread white supremacy, neo-Nazism, anti-Black, anti-Asian, anti-Indigenous, anti-Latino, or ethnic nationalism.

— Use racial slurs, mock ethnic traditions, or engage in cultural appropriation.

— Deny the existence of systemic racism or dismissed movements like Black Lives Matter.

— Has xenophobic beliefs against immigrants or foreign cultures.

— Advocate for fascism, Nazism, or far-right extremism.

— Promote harmful conspiracy theories that demonize marginalized communities.

— Engage in or support political violence against minorities or dissenters.

— Spread antisemitic conspiracy theories or rhetoric.

— Support Zionism or justify actions that harm Palestinian people.

— Defend Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or promote Russian propaganda.

— Support Israeli policies that lead to the oppression of Palestinians.

MAP/NoMAPs:

— Support MAPs, NoMAPs, Zoopride, or any notion that minors and animals can give consent to sexual interactions or relationships.

— Deny that paraphilic individuals can seek recovery or that their paraphilias might harm others.

— Anti-para that believe that paraphilics should be "killed" or harmed.

— Pro contact of any kind.

— Believe that paraphilias are just harmless kinks, ignoring the need for recovery when they are causing harm.

— People who use terms like "cp," "cheese pizza," "kiddie corn," etc, when referring to CSEM.

Misogyny or sexist:

— Disrespect people for their gender and if you perpetuate harmful stereotypes about gender roles—such as believing women should solely fulfill domestic responsibilities or that non-binary individuals are invalid.

— Support or excuse rape culture and dismiss the prevalence of gender-based violence. If you believe that victims are somehow responsible for the violence inflicted upon them or if you make jokes about sexual assault.

— Deny the existence of trans individuals or refuse to accept them as their identified gender. Anyone who refuses to acknowledge the identities of trans individuals or insists on misgendering them is not welcome here.

— Spread harmful myths about trans individuals, such as calling trans people “predators”. If you hold the belief that victims of harassment or assault are responsible for the actions taken against them based on their behavior, clothing, or choices, you are perpetuating harmful narratives that silence victims and protect perpetrators.

— If you believe that certain traits or behaviors should be confined to specific gender(such as associating emotional expression with weakness in men or suggesting that ambition is unbecoming in women).

— If you promote toxic masculinity, it refers to cultural norms that encourage men to be aggressive, unemotional, and dominant while discouraging vulnerability and compassion. If you believe that men should conform to rigid standards of masculinity that harm not only women but also men themselves, you are contributing to a harmful environment that perpetuates violence and emotional repression.

In Kink:

— Shame others for their kinks or sexual preferences. Everyone has the right to explore their sexuality without judgment, as long as it involves consenting adults.

— If you are an adult who interacts with or attempts to involve minors in kink-related activities or discussions, you are crossing an ethical and moral line.

— Think that kink should not be in pride.

— Advocate for the normalization of kink in inappropriate spaces. Respecting boundaries is key; discussing kink should happen in contexts where all participants are consenting adults and comfortable with the topic.

In Fandom & Others:

— If You harras people over fiction.

— If you think that AO3 should be censored.

— If you mock or invalidate individuals who engage in reality shifting.

— If you invalidate or attack those who identify as alterhuman(individuals who feel a connection to non-human identities or experience their identities in non-human ways) such as Therian, otherkin, dollkins and more.

— If you actively express disdain or negativity towards the furry community.

— If you engage in shipping real individuals, such as celebrities or public figures, especially in ways that invade their privacy or misrepresent their relationships. It's okay if they publicly expressed that they are okay with it.

— If you think that it is valid to identify as "kin" of real individuals, such as celebrities or historical figures. Additionally, claiming kinship with deities, gods, or religious figures(such as Jesus).

— If you enforce strict criteria on who can be considered a part of a fandom or who can engage in certain shipping practices.

— Mock or ridicule individuals for their interests or passions.

— Mock people's boundaries.

— If you can't tell the difference between real life and fiction.

— If you propagate stereotypes that characterize fandom members as obsessive, socially awkward, or harmful, you contribute to the stigma surrounding fandom culture.

— If you target individuals who identify as lolicons, shotacons, or lolishos by calling them pedophiles. Not all individuals who enjoy or engage in lolisho content condone real-life harm against minors.

— If you express disdain for self-shippers.

— If you harass or belittle self-shippers who have s/os that are characters fictionals minors, animals, or with incestuous dynamics.

— Pro/neutral about AI.

[jascamille]

Blog Post 4 - 9/19

How can we use our understanding of intersectionality to understand the people around us? 

To understand intersectionality we need to look at how it works and affects people. Intersectionality involves the different groups that make up someone’s identities; this can be race, gender, religion, age, and sexuality. By understanding one you need to understand all and how they interact with one another. Kimberle Crenshaw mentions how racial stereotypes not only impact someone’s life outside but also within the classroom which can cause disruptions to their education. Using intersectionality can also help us find flaws in the justice system. 

What did technology do for African Americans?

When technology first started off the atmosphere of certain programs were mostly pertaining to White Americans. This goes back to last week's discussion post about how algorithms have made assumptions about black and brown communities not having access to the internet. As a result of African Americans not having access to the internet, they learned very late as to what the internet contains. In the end, African Americans remained resilient against the biased algorithms that were created to exclude them from society. Just like any other community African Americans have used the internet to find one another and share their experiences with each other. 

Does bias play a role in technology? 

Yes, bias does play a role in technology. Technology is a man-made art and is coded to do certain things and is limited to what it can do. As the “Race After Technology” mentions scientists created a study at Princeton University to test if the algorithm they’re using is biased towards White-sounding names as compared to Black names. As we mentioned in class, bias is also shown when Black women use a facial scan and is shown as an error. 

Does privilege come with certain names?

In California, there's an array of different cultures, and with other cultures come different names, meaning something different to everyone. As there are many different ethnicities, stereotypes are then created, not only based on what's seen but also on the moment we're born. Stereotypes come along with assumptions, which is very harmful. In "Race After Technology", a hashtag is mentioned called "CrimingWhileWhite" where people will post themselves doing illegal activities that will usually get a person of color arrested. So yes, the privilege does come with certain names.

Everett, A. "The Revolution will be Digitalized".

Benjamin. "Race After Technology".

Noble. "Algorithms of Oppression".

Crenshaw, K. "Defines Intersectionality".

[sidneyfirefae]

Hello!! I'm Sidney (she/fae). Welcome to my blog!

This is just my personal blog so it doesn't really have a theme or anything, just me reblogging stuff that interests me or feels important or is funny, etc. There's also an about me section further down, but first off, I wanna make sure to say this is a welcoming and safe space for:

TL;DR

All genders/gender identities (neopronouns/xenogenders included)

All romantic & sexual orientations

Intersex folks

Neurodivergent folks & mentally ill folks (if and when the distinction is important)

Self-diagnosed folks

All systems (traumagenic, endo, tulpa, etc)

Disabled folks (physical and mental disability)

Fat, plus-size, and other non-dominant body types

All religions & spiritual beliefs

All ethnic/cultural backgrounds

Kink

Furries

Probably forgetting some but will come back and add

Longer version

Queer folks!

This includes all members of the LGBTQIA+ community/communities outside of the Western episteme around what is considered "queer". Neopronoun users, intersex folks, ppl who are xenogender, and probably a lot of other things I can't think of are all welcome.

Neurodivergent & mentally ill folks!

Brains are Weird and the range of human experiences with said brains is very broad. There's still so much we don't really know, but I know to be kind. Self-diagnosis is valid! We are intimately familiar with the gaslighting and systemic/financial barriers involved in the diagnosis process and that diagnosis is not nearly as simple a thing as it's made out to be. People who self-dx have almost always done vast amounts of research into themselves and their experiences. Mental illnesses count as ND, as we have definitely experienced with OCD (although that's hardly the only exquisite flavor of brain sauce we have going on). It's still important to distinguish the two and be mindful of the nuance, especially since people's relationships to their own minds vary greatly.

Systems of all kinds!

Whether that be traumagenic, endo, tulpa, or any of the many other kinds of systems, plural folks are all welcome. I'm part of a traumagenic system myself and can only restate the previous point that Brains are Weird. Plurality is a broad spectrum and can be both healthy and not; in our experience, having each other has been critically helpful and we can't imagine life without each other. Syscourse is ... a lot and we try to avoid it, and I think ultimately it falls into the same issues any sort of excessive online discourse does, which is forgetting to account for diverse lived experiences and the real people experiencing them. Don't fakeclaim people.

Disabled folks!

Mentally and physically disabled folks, spoonies (or users of other systems) and all. No matter your needs, no matter how far you stray from that terrible concept of "normal", you have a place here. I'll do my best to be as respectful as I can, but there's still a lot I don't know about, so I apologize in advance and thank you for bearing with me. We identify with the label of disabled, but our experiences are unique just like everyone else.

All ethnicities/racial backgrounds!

Just like everything else here, this should go without saying, but I just want to be clear. We have studied anthropology and the history of conceptions of race/racism, and we know how ridiculous it all is. We're all just people. We are POC, but our experiences are only of our own ethnic background, and we're always trying to learn more about other cultures and experiences.

Religions of all sorts!

Any and all religious/spiritual beliefs and practices, so long as they are not used to harm people. We're not religious, but we also know that religion and identities that have historically been targeted by religious institutions can and absolutely do co-exist. Like a lot of things here, we're not very knowledgeable about many religions, but we hope to express nothing but respect and curiosity.

Kink!

I'll admit I don't know much about kink -- I'm aspec and an incredibly romantic sapphic with OCD -- but just because I don't personally vibe with the incredibly kinky stuff y'all be getting up to doesn't mean it's wrong in any way. Sexuality means different things to different people, and as long as it is explored consensually and healthily, there's nothing wrong with it. One of our system members is quite kinky, so I know firsthand that mutual understanding and acceptance of varying sexual preferences is absolutely possible. I'm also not a furry and don't entirely get it, but y'all are lovely and just as welcome here.

There's probably a lot I'm forgetting, but when I remember I'll make sure to add it. Basically, don't be a bigot. People are people, and I love you all.

____________________

About me

Howdy! You can call me Sidney Firefae. I'm a grey-ace nonbinary sapphic trans woman who uses she/fae pronouns. I'm part of a nameless system with a range of interests, and consequently I'm currently the only one of us who uses tumblr.

Anyhow, thanks for reading. I know there's probably stuff I've missed, hopefully I remember and can come back and add it.

Have a nice day!

[rametarin]

Theory of Hubris.

Just a little blahblah thinking to myself.

Alright, so. We know that Class Struggle Theorists expressed their political theory by trying to wade into existing conversations in medias res, and take them over.

Conversations that needed to happen about race, they made damned sure to strike while the iron was hot, take them over and taint the conversation so it wouldn't be allowed to take place without them bringing themselves along as the basis for it. Any time people wanted to talk about racial disparity, up came the Marxists screaming about class struggle theory and those fucking "critical lenses." And their proposed solutions based on how they characterize this relationship, divorced from reality and existing only in their theory.

Then they moved on to sexual orientation and tried to capitalize on the next hot civil rights discussion, in order to again make the discussion about classes and their ideas of justice. Bandwagoning on that struggle and ridering on like Yoko Ono or Courtney Love.

Then they tried to champion for the disabled. And did. And quietly still do. But there appear to have been some... snags in the way of successfully doing that.

Then they moved on to gender identity, to get in on the ground floor of that.

And now they're really, genuinely trying to champion 'fatness' like it's supposed to be the next minority demographic.

To really understand the absurdity of their beliefs, you have to understand that they treat each of these things they designate as Classes with the same veneration as they do something that's ACTUALLY static and unchangable, like race or sex, or ethnic background. To these people that see these Capital C Classes as their everything, when you adopt their logic to an emotional level, you see every person that loses weight in the same vein as a person that is "throwing their culture away to be homogenized" or culturally assimilated into the empire. That's not hyperbole, I mean it as sincerely as possible.

To them, they see fat people becoming regular weighted people in the same vein as victims of that rare experiment decades ago where someone tried to use X-rays to lighten the skin of black people so they'd "better fit in." Or Jewish people trying to outwardly live as if Christian. Or gay people putting on aires as heterosexuals, complete with marriage to gay people of the opposite sex, to maintain that charade.

But why then did they kind of... bunt the call when it came to the disabled? They do, kind of, quietly, try to use the language like this in regards to disabled people, but only sometimes and with certain groups. The deaf, for example, is one pool of people that have a large population of people that've swallowed it hook, line and sinker and now act like society needs to accommodate everything for, "deaf culture," including sign language, above and beyond what would be logical or practical for accessibility options, and that not doing it allows them to characterize people rebuking their weird militant extremism as just hating deaf people. Or, The Deaf(tm).

But they don't do this as much now. In the 90s they used to do this a lot. But I guess the Americans with Disabilities Act was enough for them. Maybe it wasn't. I don't know.

All I do know is that the disabled number about 13%, or 45,000,000 in the US. So if Class Struggle Theorists were serious about capitalizing on championing for the Disabled as a means of making their money, being quiet about it and choosing selective language might be the wisest move. That's one theory.

The other may be that due to diversity of thought, there are too many people that disagree with trying to pathologize being Disabled as if it's a demographic in the same vein with being a race (like, black people) or a religious minority (Jewish people, for example. And too much resistance to allowing the group to think of themselves like this.

The hallmark of disability is that it's defined by its absence of what should be a regular, out-of-the-box ability. Like functional legs. Or arms. Or eyes. Or lungs. Or bowels. And part of that is, if people could choose to have those things that life and its randomness made them deficient in, they'd have it. But, part of being in the Disabled demographic is... not having those things. Kind of integral to the whole, 'My ability to live independently is compromised by circumstances of my existence outside of my control.' And unlike something like being born into a religion, an ethnic group, a national identity or a sex, being disabled is inarguably a designation DEFINED by an impairment.

I think the people that would otherwise scream and cry about how being Disabled is an oppressed demographic know that coming medical advances will be able to fix and correct this, and if the well isn't already dry on the idea of using disability as a way to scream for minority rights, it will be within the next 50 years.

I suspect in the future, remaining disabled when you have the means to undergo a cheap, VERY effective operation to fix something, or many things, would be considered a personal, luxurious choice. Kind of like if a guy tried to argue for their rights to wear a diaper around in everyday life and try to force someone else to change them. There is absolutely no justifiable reason whatsoever for that beyond the persons weird entitlement and infatuation with trying to make other people clean up their shit, because they choose not to. So choosing to remain disabled when you have a safe, very effective means of fixing the problem, either through cybernetic/bionic prosthesis or regenerative medicine, would not be subsidized by the government.

So that leaves these charlatans that try to pathologize different people and magnify them into capital P People and Movements based on making them into designated classes with a lack of options. They've bandwagoned on the great social and civil rights conversations for racial groups (minority and otherwise), sex (male/female), sexual orientation (straight/gay), gender identity (cis/trans) and.. tried to boggart the disabled.

Okay, kind of hitting the bottom of the barrel for sexy, big recognition romantic struggle stories here that they can use to forcefully associate with their ideology. The kind that hit raw nerves and allow the artists to do big histrionic theatrical pieces to appeal to the youth that This Is Their Generation's Civil Rights March moment. So what is the next group to get the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade and Colonial America Slave Movie treatment? One where class struggle theorists can piss and moan and try to get their own civil rights leaders to put up on statues as great advocates.

The obese, I guess.

They really would love to champion the disabled as something that "shouldn't have to be cured or fixed for society to manage" or consider curing blindness to be tantamount to ethnic cleansing or eugenics. But, they have no other option but to beat against that or threaten to utterly lose the youth's support. That's what I think. They'd love to go, "Isn't it sad how this man can't walk!? We should erect ramps and the government should mandate wheelchair access and elevators in public schools!" And as said, mandate that society should flip itself around to provide for everybody as if every human inside of it was a functionally invalid person stuck on life support and factor that into the costs of taking care of people.

But that simply isn't going to happen. The means by which to eliminate disability will occur, the majority of people with disabilities would voluntarily fix them if the process was safe and success was high. It's simply easier to fix a person, when the means present themselves, than it is to radically rejigger all of society's standards to act as if wheelchair access and blindness were majority needs. This avenue has a ceiling, and they're going to have to really say the quiet parts out loud and start screaming about how people can be, "trans-Abled" and how a person voluntarily trying to void use of their extremities or give up control of their lives should be respected and the government should finance taking care of that.

So rather than the Next Big Civil Rights Push be for the disabled, and in lack of any successor demographic to play icon, we... get the obese. And objective propaganda about "health at any size." When, we know, objectively, being obese strains the organs, the circulatory system, bones, you name it. Trying to say that's all doctor propaganda by "the skinny" and then citing California's absurd eating disorder fashion problem and how our culture cares too much about California as proof "society puts the skinny on a platter" is just middle child level whining.

And this movement has had more air escape it like a popped balloon from the widespread uses of Ozempic in reducing obesity than you'd believe. So... uh...... dead in the water, I guess.

The final frontier for new toys of civil rights movements is probably transhumanism itself. And that's it. I can't imagine a single thing afterwards, unless you count things that should also be considered transhumanist civil rights arguments. The right to try and argue that robots with no genetic components are human ("because a human is not defined by their meat!") The right for a human being to not consider themselves legally human and thus not be subject to laws about humans.

I think they'll still try to find new icons to make into untrod territory and throw around [blank]-phobia for that shock reaction and interactions between youths to polarize and stratify them. But they just won't have the same punch as people ostracizing others for "their racism/sexism/-phobia"

So we just kind of have to watch this ridiculous drama as they try and make fat people into the next civil rights icons and capitalize on that to use Class Struggle Theorist language, largely to use the movement's actual arguments and unaddressed problems for their own ideological validation, play out like the lame duck it is.

[skruffie]

hair thoughts

So I finally decided to try growing my hair out and the last time I had the back and sides buzzed down was in May 2023. Last time I went to the salon I let my stylist know what I was thinking of doing, and I've been seeing the same woman for haircuts for years. She basically trimmed up the top a bit but kept the back and sides shaggy. This was a few months ago, and this is where I'm at now:

(Also got new glasses last week)

I waffled on if I wanted to grow it out for a couple years before I finally decided to go for it. Part of it was that I was just getting bored of having the same sort of haircut since I had variations on it for over ten years. Part of it also was because during reconnecting to my Indigenous heritage I kept seeing a lot of talk about hair and how it's sacred. I'm not tradish by any means as I'm still learning, and that's a loooong road to be on, but I wanted to challenge myself to see if I would be able to understand the symbolic meaning of long hair while I underwent it.

This has come with some emotional challenges. throwing under the cut because like every post I make this one is a bit of an essay.

If you're anywhere near the periphery of online Indigenous spaces, especially twitter, you've probably seen a lot of discourse around "the pretendian problem" and now with the term descendian slowly making the rounds I had to give this decision serious pause. It's very obvious for anyone who sees me that I have a majority European heritage and I walk through, am perceived, and therefore largely treated as white. I never get clocked with the possibility of mixed ethnicity. I had to really work through how I self identify to even get to this point and settled into racially white + ethnically mixed as probably the best way to put it... I've put in years of trying to identify where my family is from and reach out to relatives. I want to travel to meet in person. None of this would matter to the "pretendian" hunters and I'm aware of that. I'm fully aware that growing my hair out probably would very quickly be seen as similar to the actual frauds that also grow their hair long and dye it black or put on awful fake tans. If I gain any notoriety in this life I already know speaking about all this is gonna probably come into question.

I went for it anyway.

The other emotional part for this is my haircut has been an extension of expressing my gender and sexuality from even before I realized that I was non-binary. Now I know that hair length and style don't equate gender or sexual orientation but it's been the best way I've been able to express it to the world. I've been clocked by other queer people with my short hair and in turn it's helped others feel safe when they see me. Multiple people have said that just by knowing me they've been able to explore their own gender identities because they didn't realize other options were even a thing. Growing it long in this regard is something of a loss.

like reconnecting I'm finding I'm stuck in between. I could still reconnect, learn ancestral languages, learn culture and have the gayest haircut on earth. I'm still agender with long hair. There isn't a comfortable middle ground. Right now I'm still letting it grow because I'm kinda curious to see if there's going to be a breaking point before I reach for the clippers, but there also this curiosity of wanting to play with my natural hair texture for kinda the first time in my life. I've realized that I've always had somewhat wavy hair but never did anything to bring the natural waves out, so growing it long gives me an opportunity to see what I can do with it.

[dancingadopteethoughts]

*Important!!* “What to Expect from This Blog”

Blog Background:

I originally created this blog to share my adoptee-related writing and while I still post my adoptee-related writing here, what I reblog and post has developed over time, so in this post, I hope to clarify what potential viewers can expect from this blog

I am an adult and will occasionally be posting things related to adulthood and adult themes

What I will be posting:

Check out my Tags Masterlist to see a breakdown of my tagging system

As I stated above, this blog was originally created to share my adoptee writings, so you can expect posts that include essays, book reviews, fanfiction, short stories, short screenplays, and poems I have written that will touch upon topics of mental health, family, racial and gender identity, and more and how they relate to adoptee experiences

On this blog, my reblogs and non-adoptee writing posts will relate to culture and adoptee experiences (with culture being defined in the broadest sense and relating to common attitudes, practices, and beliefs among certain groups of people) and these posts will touch on topics such as racism, attitudes towards family, and cultural significance of art

All of my posts and reblogs, unless I have tagged them otherwise as NSFW (not-safe-for-work), will be non-graphic and/or SFW (safe-for-work) besides the occasional swearing

I will occasionally reblog and post things related to current events and politics as a left-leaning person, so if that makes you feel uncomfortable, you are welcome to block me

At the same time, please don't take my occasional reblogs/posts on current events/politics to be representative of everything I am doing or believe regarding a particular issue; of course, I'm not perfect and I have my blindspots, but I have a life outside of Tumblr and if I reblog/post something about a particular topic here, it does not mean that I am ignoring other issues or not doing other things to support particular movements in my life outside of Tumblr

I like talking about my identity, particularly as an adoptee, as such, you can expect some content on that topic; once again, if that makes you uncomfortable, I do not mind if you block me

Notes about NSFW tagging:

On this blog, I will tag posts NSFW if they describe or show sex, violence, gore, severe wounds, nudity, slurs, and pornography in extremely graphic detail

For me, non-graphic means that posts can still mention directly or indirectly any of the above as long as it is not shown/described in extreme detail, so I still encourage you to block me if you feel uncomfortable

Just because I tagged something NSFW does not mean I believe the original post to be bad; I am just protecting potential viewers who may be coming to my blog with histories and backgrounds I have no idea about

If you have questions, concerns, or suggestions regarding how I tag NSFW content, please DM me or send me an ask; I am happy to discuss and listen

What I would appreciate from viewers:

Please do not repost my essays, book reviews, fanfiction, short stories, short screenplays, and poems without permission to other sites or copy and paste them into a separate Tumblr post; you are, of course, welcome and encouraged to reblog, comment on, and like them though if you choose to

If you’re confused about something I wrote, shared, or reblogged, I encourage you to DM me or send me an ask; I am always happy to clarify and listen to concerns made in good faith

This should go without saying, but you don’t have to agree with me; it’s okay to comment on and/or reblog my posts with counter-arguments, ignore a post I wrote/reblogged, or, as stated above, reach out to me for clarification because like everyone else in this world, I’m not perfect and I am always happy to learn from different perspectives

On that note, if you are arguing with me that people of certain races, ethnicities, gender identities, sexual/romantic orientations, religions, etc. don’t deserve to exist, be respected, or fight for their liberation or rights without any intention of listening to and learning from the perspectives of people from marginalized backgrounds, then I will not engage in dialogue with you; in other words, racism, xenophobia, sexism, anti-trans bigotry, ableism, classism, colorism, or any other form of bigotry will not be tolerated

Critical thinking is so important to me and I completely believe you do not need a college degree to take a few moments and think through context, emotions, evidence, etc. to make a strong argument and critique others’ (including mine!!)

Another thing that should go without saying is that you are welcome to block me if any of my posts make you uncomfortable; I don’t know your history and background and while I try to be sensitive in what I post and reblog, I know I’ll make mistakes without realizing it, so please do what you have to in order to protect yourself

[world-love-government]

They might ask you "what attacked the black family unit?"

Its the Illuminati testing the human race - they released meth to the nazis, and crack cocaine to the blacks, what does that tell you? Anyway I have a whole bunch of thoughts on this as you might imagine. Can we answer "technology" , economic/sociological development, political/social agendas, government/private institutions, etc. - what is it really? I think a typical response will sound something like "well this is the influence of eurocentric/colonial society, something outside of racial identity/being/consciousness". On a deeper level requiring more analysis are things like drugs/economics and even things like attacks on sexuality, all requiring slightly more lengthy arguements. Instead a more interesting perspective I had in mind discussing are philosophical-spiritual concepts. I tend to view the African-descended people as individuals who are challenged by the worst elements of materialism in their life experience. When I say materialism I refer to the nature/experience of consumption, difference, the unknown, non/distant connection with God, risk/choice, experiment, probability, time, nature, physical, illusion, and even darkness in a symbolic sense (the metaphorical "inability to see", etc.). What of conscioussness itself? Is there a racial quality to it or a "stream/track" that can be followed that may reveal patterns in experience? This is not to just ask a question like "well is the African-American experience different than the White American experience when it comes to consciousness in the long run. Its to ask if there are cyclical patterns in themes of experience, and to understand why there may be similarities or differences.

And so for whatever reasons, currently the consciousness of African-American people is facing the themes of materialism in substances and sexuality. This includes all challenges and benefits brought by these themes. And so on an overt/mundane level, people I think will tend to say oh well its because of colonialism, economics/culture/social norms, etc. What I think is more interesting to think about is the idea of consciousness for all identities, including ethnic/racial/geographic. This begins to take the human race down the avenue of the currently unexplored because we have to start asking questions like "are we all, have we always been the racial consciousness of the race we're currently in the body of?" and this sort of thing we should be asking as a human race. Do you even believe in reincarnation? Do you believe you can incarnate into different civilizations and groups of people? Do people choose to be a race, gender, or group over many life experiences? One thing we must agree upon I think is that "we're all born into the skin we're in". On a physical level we're undeniabely of a certain ethnicity in the human race. We may or may not choose what ethnicity, gender, or group identities we may be a part of, but in any event we identify with such consciousness.

[imaginedmelody]

I’ve been seeing a lot of people in the last few days who have some mixed feelings about Rachel’s storyline on Mythic Quest this season, since it kind of seems like the show is really picking on her. And I wanted to examine that a bit, because I think the writers are actually doing some interesting things with her character in the grand scheme of things.

Rachel gets a lot of pushback from the other characters for being “annoying,” and on the surface they often seem to mock her for being self-righteously focused on “social justice.” And I get people being sensitive about that; being vocal about issues facing marginalized or underprivileged groups is not a negative trait, and it feels dismissive to play it off as weird or embarrassing. But I don’t think that’s really what the show is making fun of her for. I think that was the entry point to establishing her character, and now- like with many of the characters this season- they’re going beyond her initial qualities of “shrill” and “annoying” and “SJW” to examine her deeper flaws.

Rachel’s real issue is twofold. First of all, she falls back on the “SJW stuff” almost to a fault. She is always ready to call out others for perceived slights against marginalized or underrepresented groups, but she honestly doesn’t have that nuanced an understanding of how those play out in reality, even if she can recite the socially-correct talking points. She doesn’t seem to really listen to people, or know much of anything about them. We’re seeing this play out a lot with Dana right now: the way Rachel doesn’t understand her remark about “working twice as hard to get half as far,” the way she gets so worked up about the correct dynamics of Dana’s possible sexual or gender identity in the lead-up to asking her out that she doesn’t just connect with her on a personal level. Even the way Dana clearly didn’t feel comfortable telling her about her decision to study at Berkeley shows that Rachel isn’t making space for Dana to share complicated or difficult things. She’s earnest, and she tries, but she just gets so caught up in optics and theories that she doesn’t focus on the complex, nuanced, real-life people in front of her.

And then the second thing I think the show is bringing forward as a flaw in Rachel is this: she’s become so consumed with seeing the world through these sociological dynamics that she has wound up with no clear sense of self. This is what Ian is constantly getting on her case for. She says a lot of stuff, but when it comes down to it- when someone actually makes time and space to listen to her- she finds she has nothing to say. She can say all the “right things” but they’re all broad, general statements, even when they pertain to demographics she actually belongs to. She starts half of her sentences with “as a woman/a woman in gaming/a woman of color,” but the statements that follow are generalities; she never has a personal experience to relay. Which leads her to these misfiring soapbox moments that don’t land because they’re not connected to her, only to things she purports to know more about than she does.

I even think this was the purpose of the joke in “Please Sign Here” about Rachel being half-Asian but not knowing any Thai. Personally I think that joke fails to land because it’s a little invalidating; people’s identities and racial/ethnic backgrounds are valid even if they aren’t able to perform them ideally or haven’t grown up with a connection to that culture. But I think the intent of the joke, however flawed, was to further display this quality in Rachel: her inability to speak from personal experience on a meaningful level, and the way it prevents her from orienting herself to the world around her beyond buzzwords and social principles. She has a women’s studies major, but no practical understanding of where she actually fits into the world (not as a woman generally, but as herself with her own unique experiences) because of it. And she has gotten so wrapped up in the historical and theoretical principles of inequality that she is unable to evaluate the actual inequalities (or opportunities) in front of her- and unable to imagine her own possibilities through her self-fulfilling prophecy of how the world will see and treat her.

This is why her best character moments are when she actually gives ground and listens to someone else’s experience. I love the scene where she teaches CW to play video games and he introduces her to the beauty of cutscene storytelling. It’s a prime example of how, instead of making an assumption about someone, she lets them show her who they are, and reaches out to communicate something about herself in turn. That’s the journey she needs to make- to get off her high horse, not by giving up her “SJW viewpoints,” but by integrating them with an understanding of the real people she encounters. And I think the other characters are right to call her out for needing to learn that lesson.

[graces-of-luck]

Carnival of Aros: Call for Submissions March 2021

The Carnival of Aros is a monthly blogging carnival with themes related to aromantic and aro-spec identities and experiences. More information can be found here.

Theme/Prompts

This month’s theme is on intersectionality and inclusivity within the aromantic community. You are welcome to use the prompts below, but feel free to take this in whatever direction you feel necessary.

Prompts below:

A Google Docs version is available for better readability here.

As aromantics, we can be marginalized. Thanks to the efforts of many in the aromantic community, activism has been increasing visibility and awareness of aromanticism and pushing towards community building and organization. However, we can also have other marginalized identities that intersect with our aromanticism or influence the way we experience it. “We do not live single issue lives,” as Audre Lord put it. The past year, aro(ace) organizations have released statements regarding racism and diversity, signaling an increasing awareness of tackling racial justice in aromantic spaces, but it is just the beginning. Additionally, there are other marginalized groups that need to be included when discussing diversity. An intersectional standpoint is therefore necessary for reaching collective justice and creating a community that is for all of us. 

Should there be space for intersectionality and social/collective justice in aromantic organizations and communities? What are the experiences of aromantics who experience marginalization in other areas of their lives, and how can we make sure that everyone has a space in the aromantic community?

General

Do you feel that other marginalized identities are sufficiently represented/uplifted by the aromantic community and organizations? What has been your experience? What could be improved?

Do you think aromantic organizations and communities should be held accountable for being inclusive of other identities? Do you think aromantic organizations and communities have a responsibility to upholding social justice in the aromantic community? What could be done better here?

Race/Ethnicity and Culture

Aromanticism and asexuality are often seen as “White” identities, and generally BIPOC* and/or Hispanic/Latine* people do not always feel welcome in queer/LGBTQIA+ spaces. If you are BIPOC, AAPI, and/or Hispanic/Latine, do you feel comfortable and/or welcomed in aromantic spaces? What are your experiences in the aromantic community? Do you feel that there is space for you to express your aromantic identity in a way that reflects your racial/ethnic background?

The aromantic community can also be US-centric and Westernized. For those who are outside of the US or within the US but have non-Western backgrounds, do you feel there is a space for non-Western cultures and heritages in aromantic spaces? What about for religions that are not Christianity? What are your experiences? Do you feel that there is space for you to express your aromantic identity in a way that reflects your culture/heritage and/or religion?

Neurodivergence, Disability, and Physical and Mental Illness

Many aromantics are also neurodivergent, disabled, and/or experience mental and physical illnesses. If you are neurodivergent and/or disabled and/or experience mental and physical illness, do you feel comfortable and/or welcomed in aromantic spaces? What are your experiences? Do you feel that there is space for you to express your aromantic identity in a way that reflects your lived experience as a neurodivergent/disabled/”ill”** person?

Other Queer Identities

Do you identify with other non-arospec queer identities (sexual/romantic orientation and gender) in addition to aromantic? Do you feel comfortable and/or welcomed in aromantic spaces? Do you feel that there is space for you to discuss and share how your other queer identities impacts your aromanticism?

General Intersectionality

How do your different identities intersect? Are there other marginalized groups or identities that intersect with your aromanticism that are not recognized? How does this influence your experience?

Allies

If you don’t experience other forms of marginalization, do you find it important to uplift voices of aromantics from other marginalized groups? How can you help to make the aromantic community more inclusive to your fellow aromantics who experience other forms of marginalization?

Notes:

*BIPOC means Black, Indigenous, and People of Color and can encompass a wide group of Indigenous, Black, and Brown folks as well as Asian (AAPI) peoples. BIPOC is not to say that all marginalized people of color share the same experiences or that they can be lumped together, however. I’ve separated Hispanic/Latine because some Hispanic/Latine people are White or White-passing, but they do not necessarily share the same privilege as White Americans or White Europeans, for example.

**I use ill with quotation marks here because illness, especially mental illness, can be socially constructed and people can have different relationships with the term- some embrace it and use the label whereas others do not.

How to Participate

Write a blog post or create content related to the theme- any platform is acceptable as long as it is public and has a link. 

Then, submit the link to me through Tumblr, Discord (gracesofluck#9245), or email (gracesofluck@gmail.com). You’re also welcome to post the link in this thread on Arocalypse. 

If you don’t have a place to post your own work, you can email it to me or submit it directly to my Tumblr, and I will host it for you on my Tumblr. 

If you would like me to include particular pronouns or (user)names with your submission post in the round-up, please let me know.

Deadline and Round-up

Please submit your posts by Wednesday, March 31st. I plan to release the round-up on Thursday, April 1st.

Additionally, AUREA will be taking points from this Carnival of Aros to learn more about the experiences and needs of marginalized aros as they mention in this month’s What’s Going On.

Feel free to reblog this post. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me! Happy blogging!

[woman-loving]

minimizing and maximizing lesbian identities

Selection from “Identity Crises: Who is a Lesbian, Anyway?” by Vera Whisman, in Sisters, Sexperts, Queers: Beyond the Lesbian Nation, ed Arlene Stein, 1993.

This process of defining who is a lesbian is much more than a word game. It is a collective attempt to make sense of our history, figure out our present, and strategize for our future. It lurks beneath contemporary debates about bisexuality, butch-femme roles, and s/m sexuality. It haunts our discussions of political strategies, such as separatism and assimilation. And lately, this process of definition is posing vexing questions which seem ever more difficult to answer.

The theory of lesbian feminism once promised an alternative to patriarchal culture, where differences of race and class would disappear under the force of sisterhood, and where differences in sexual tastes would disappear under the force of consciousness-raising. But many women not only refused to ignored difference, they actually began to embrace it, and to rub up against boundaries. We haven’t all rallied around a shared identity as lesbians; today we don’t even agree on what the word means. Does that mean our movement is losing its base--or that the base is becoming broader and more diverse? [...]

Every definition has placed some lesbians in the blessed inner circle and some outside it. Is a woman who identifies herself as a dyke but who’s never slept with a woman a lesbian? Is a lesbian who sleeps with men really a lesbian? What about a lesbian who sleeps with women, but has had a primarily heterosexual past? If she becomes involved with a man next year, was she ever a true lesbian? [...]

Identities are often difficult to pin down. They are diverse and multiple. It’s impossible to identify with a single conception of a “woman” or a “lesbian.” For we can only believe in “the lesbian” by downplaying differences, by obscuring parts of our lives. in the 1970s, lesbians who would not ignore gender chose lesbian feminism over the gay rights movement. Today, a generation of younger lesbians, refusing to ignore differences of sexuality, are helping to construct the new queer culture. Women from both age cohorts are claiming the importance of their ethnic, racial and class identities. And, increasingly, we are all realizing that identities are multiple and complex.

As Shane Phelan, a philosopher, puts it, “The struggles of lesbians over the past thirty years should tell us that people are not ‘actually like’ anything.”[14] But if there is no timeless and essential lesbianism, what is the proper hook on which we can hang our political actions? What, in other words, are our common interests? What do lesbians really want? If “the lesbian” is nothing more than a shifting definition, is there any way to answer these questions?

If we can answer them at all, we may have to do so in a tentative fashion, specific to our time and place. That means dealing with contradictions. It means abandoning the search for consistency. To use critic Ann Snitow’s term, sometimes we need to “minimize” lesbian identity by constantly pushing against the borders; at other times we need to “maximize” it.[15] We minimize identity when we refuse to be controlled by it, when we expand the ways to be a lesbian. There are ways in which both lesbian feminists and lesbian queers dream of a world without sexual identity, a world where homosexuality doesn’t exist because heterosexuality doesn’t exist either.

But even the dreamers have to deal with the world, a world where it is at times necessary to maximize our shared lesbian identity, to proclaim our common needs and demand that they be met. Our politics must negotiate this duality; neither maximizing nor minimizing lesbian identities is sufficient in itself.

We have seen the problems of the maximizing approach--the construction of rigid, suffocating, and at least implicitly racist understandings of “lesbian” and her culture, ethics, and politics. But wholesale minimizing runs the risk of making us disappear before we’ve changed the world. If we deconstruct before they deconstruct, we end up in a situation where “the rich as well as the poor are forbidden to sleep under bridges,” where equality is defined as blindness to real difference. We have to minimize and maximize, create unities and simultaneously see them as false, build boundaries around ourselves, and, at the same time, smash them.

Years ago, I pried myself loose from a white, middle-class, vacuous culture and ran into the protective arms of the “lesbian community.” Now, as the basis of that community is revealed to be a fiction, I feel cut adrift. I ask my lover, “Where does all of this leave us? Out there?” But she cannot talk. She’s out on strike and is on her way to walk the picket line. In her union, she has pushed for domestic partner benefits, for a sexual harassment policy, and for the biggest raises for the lowest-paid. Through her efforts, I’m beginning to acknowledge that it is not uniformly ugly “out there.” But the path that once seemed clear to me has more twists and turns now, and I can only see what’s just ahead.

What is a lesbian? Who is a lesbian? One woman says it’s her lust that makes her a lesbian, even if she admits that she likes men, too. Another says that it’s her choice to surround herself with a community of women. A third talks in terms of her deeply felt sense that she is different, queer. In the end, a lesbian must simply be any woman who calls herself one, understanding that we place ourselves within that category, drawing and redrawing the boundaries in ever-shifting ways. For there is no essential and timeless lesbian, but instead lesbians who, by creating our lives day by day, widen the range of possibilities.

[noshitshakespeare]

I would be interested in knowing more of how to understand/approach early modern dramas, Shakespeare especially, but other writers from his time too if you know more about them, fron the angle of race/other. Do you have resources/references on how to approach early modern drama this way? I do realise this might be a broad topic, I'm looking to expand my readings and the way I approach/read Shakespeare as a non-black POC who is very fond of his works.

As you’ve said yourself, this is a really huge topic. And as you may imagine, it’s one that’s been getting more focus now than ever (though it has existed as a topic of interest since at least the 1980s). I don’t think I could do justice to the topic in just Shakespeare, let alone in all early modern drama. But let’s see if I can make a reasonable start. 

Because the term ‘race’ didn’t signify what it does now, and because Shakespeare was living in a time before England established itself as a major centre for slave trade, the first thing to be aware of is the difference of understanding. We can’t unproblematically apply modern standards and notions of race and other any more than we can talk about Shakespeare in terms of our modern understandings of sexuality and sexual identity. This isn’t to say that people didn’t notice colour, as can be seen from the terms like ‘blackamoor’ that were being used, but the question of otherness was, then as now, caught up in the more complex issue of religion, and colonisation. Because the Ottoman empire was one of the greatest powers in the world at the time, and Islam was perceived as a major threat to the European countries, difference in skin colour could also denote a difference in ideology (I talked about this a little in relation to Othello once). But sometimes an equal threat was perceived in those who didn’t look different, but who didn’t hold similar beliefs. 

Given that your question is about otherness in general, this is very relevant, and broadly speaking, we can categorise otherness in terms of 

Those who come from abroad

Those who look different (black, brown, even a slightly different shade of white)

Those who have different belief systems (Jewish people, Islamic people, Catholic people)

Those who look different and have a different belief system. 

What to make of early modern treatments of this difference is very difficult, because there isn’t a homogenous viewpoint. There’s never been a time when everybody thought the same thing, and so one can find all sorts of perspectives on race and otherness in early modern writings. Some are missionary perspectives, seeing difference as a mark of heathenism, and wishing to ‘help’ them by converting them, which went hand in hand with those who considered them subjects to be colonised and ‘civilised’ (see for instance Richard Hakluyt, Reasons for Colonisation, 1585). But there were people even at the time who saw the colonial project for what it was, and denounced the cruelty of the conquistadores (Bartolomé de las Casas’ The Spanish Colonie, translated into English in 1583 is a very interesting read), and even people like Michel de Montaigne, who admired what seemed to be a state of prelapsarian paradise in the people of the new world (see ‘Of Cannibals’). In the other direction, looking from Europe towards the East, the great and far superior power of the Ottoman empire manifests itself in a kind of awe, fear, and Islamophobia, but less in a desire to civilise or convert. Often you’ll even find in military and conduct guides a favourable description of the Ottoman nations to the detriment of European cultures. Part of this might have something to do with the fact that Elizabethan England had treaties with the Ottoman empire, but it might be a tactic to shame to west into better practices too. 

Many scholars now attribute the notion of ‘otherness’ in the early modern period as part of the creation of ideas of ‘nationhood’ in a time when nationalism was really beginning to take shape. It’s an age-old notion and one that Shakespeare points out in Henry V that patriotism and national unity is made stronger by demonisation of others. By contrasting themselves with the Catholics, the Protestants could define their own faithfulness, by contrasting themselves with Jewish and Islam religions, the Christian nations could achieve a more unified identity, and by comparing themselves to the less ‘civilised’. In that sense, sometimes more fears are expressed in relation to those one can’t differentiate easily by physical characteristics, like Jewish people, or, for that matter, Irish people.  In fact, there are some very interesting depictions, for instance in The Merchant of Venice or Marlowe’s Jew of Malta in which the so-called Christians condemn the ‘other’ (Barabas, Shylock) for things they do themselves. Barabas, while playing the stereotypical bogeyman of a Jew, will criticise the Christians for their hypocrisy in the way they quote the bible to steal his money: ‘Will you steal my goods? / Is theft the ground of your religion?’ (I.ii.95-96). Shylock is accused of cruelty for essentially buying Antonio’s flesh, even though the Christians have ‘many a purchased slave / Which, like your asses and your dogs and mules, / You use in abject and in slavish parts’ (4.1.89-91). The same applies to more physically different characters. Aaron from Titus Andronicus is a problematic character, almost a cardboard cutout of an evil villain, but though he’s undeniably cruel, so are so many other characters in Titus, and strangely, while internalising the idea that black = moral blackness, he nevertheless shows more love for his child than Titus (who kills his own son), and questions ‘is black so base a hue?’ (4.2.73)

This is all to say that there’s no single approach to studying race and otherness in Shakespeare and other early modern writers. The treatment of the other will differ depending on the writer, the play, and even between characters in the plays, because it wasn’t a straightforward topic then any more than it is now. So the best thing you could do would be to familiarise yourself with the discourse that surrounds the subject without committing yourself too much to one view as being more correct than another (it’s a good scholarly approach to avoid bias as much as possible). Unfortunately, the books on the subject tend to be quite hardcore academic. But here’s a short list if you want to get started on something. 

Miranda Kaufmann,  Black Tudors: The Untold Story 

This is great for a more general readership and helps to break preconceptions about what the early modern period in England was like, but it’s not strictly about Shakespeare or drama

Catherine Alexander and Stanley Wells, Shakespeare and Race 

An essay collection, which is academic, but gives a broader scope than a monograph

Jonathan Gill Harris, Foreign Bodies

Quite hard, but very good for a wider approach to ‘otherness’ rather than being limited to skin colour. Does focus on drama alongside history. 

Ania Loomba,  Shakespeare, Race, and Colonialism

A classic. Again quite hard, and somewhat inflected by modern notions, but very useful. 

Miranda Virginia Mason Vaughan, Performing Blackness on English Stages, 1500-1800

Good if you’re interested in performance history and the actual presentation of blackness on stage, including blacking up. 

Kim Hall, Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England

Hardcore academic stuff, and more history-based about the beginnings of the colonial project and slavery. 

Patricia Akhimie, Shakespeare and the Cultivation of Difference: Race Conduct and the Early Modern World  

Covers that question of building national identity and deliberate emphasis of race or difference.

Mary Floyd-Wilson, English Ethnicity and Race in Early Modern Drama

Like the one above, this is broadly about the way English ethnicity is created by othering. 

Sujata Iyengar, Shades of Difference: Mythologies of Skin Color in Early Modern England

Deals with the ways early modern people understood colour in comparison to our own notions. 

Nabil Matar,  Turks, Moors, and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery

Looking eastward and southward at the relationship between Europe and the Ottoman empire as well as Africa

Daniel Vitkus,  Turning Turk: English Theater and the Multicultural Mediterranean

Another work on the relation between England and Islam, and deals very well with the British sense of inadequacy in comparison to the Ottoman Empire, as well as their fears about others who don’t have distinctly racial characteristics.

Jerry Brotton,  This Orient Isle: Elizabethan England and the Islamic World

A history book that charts the incredible trade and political relationship the court of Elizabeth had with the Ottoman Empire. 

Ayanna Thompson,  Passing Strange: Shakespeare, Race, and Contemporary America

Jumping to the present, this is more about how Shakespeare is used in America now, especially focusing on pop culture and the representation of racial issues.

For a more casual approach, and one that’s about as up-to-date as can be, you could check out the #ShakesRace hashtag on Twitter. All the scholars and theatres are using it for discussion, or for advertising new books, new conferences, talks and podcasts on this subject, though the focus is, as you may imagine, more on colour than otherness more generally. 

[lightoftruth]

The Walt Disney Corporation has been allegedly holding extensive critical race theory training for employees.

Internal documents obtained by Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at Manhattan Institute, show Disney launching a “diversity and inclusion” program called “Reimagine Tomorrow.” The trainings discuss the leftist ideas of “systemic racism,” “white privilege,” “white fragility,” “white saviors,” “microaggressions,” and “antiracism.” The subtitle of the booklet guide reads: “Allyship for Race Consciousness.”

Disney, which owns ABC, ESPN, Touchstone Pictures, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and other major media companies, instructed employees to “take ownership of educating yourself about structural anti-Black racism” as well as “not rely on your Black colleagues to educate you,” which would be “emotionally taxing.”

“When America’s storied places of joy and refuge from the cares of the world turn themselves into partisan actors and political indoctrination factories, the harm to our social fabric is immeasurable,” Stanley Kurtz, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, told The Federalist. “Disney is dividing the country it once helped to inspire, inviting entirely justified blowback from the vast number of Americans it now derogates, disregards, and caricatures. I thought politicized baseball was the unkindest cut of all, but now this. As Disney and other woke corporations plunge America into the bitterest cultural conflict in memory, they deserve to feel shame, not pride.”

The  training modules centralize the notion of “anti-racism” — the idea that Americans must acknowledge their country is systemically racist and eradicate any semblance of a colorblind society. The company told employees they must also “work through feelings of guilt, shame, and defensiveness to understand what is beneath them and what needs to be healed,” harping on the notion of implicit bias. The phrase “All Lives Matter” was communicated as derogatory, and so was the phrase “I don’t see color.”

One module in the training titled “What Can I Do About Racism?” instructed staff to denounce the idea of “equality” and instead favor “equity.” The corporation crafted a “21-Day Racial Equity and Social Justice Challenge” that was followed by a “white privilege checklist.” The checklist claims a variety of statements, if affirmed, indicate a person’s “privilege.” This includes some of the following statements:

I am white.

I have never tried to hide my sexuality.

I am a man.

I have never felt poor.

I went to summer camp.

I have never had an addiction.

Below is the full document Rufo obtained from a Disney whistleblower:

In addition to other modules, employees were provided several outside resources. This included a guide titled “75 Things White People Can Do For Racial Justice” that claims readers should support “defund[ing] the police” and “decolonize your bookshelf.”

The guide also claims employees should read The New York Times’s inaccurate and divisive “1619 Project” by Nikole Hannah-Jones. Streaming service Hulu, owned by Disney, is streaming a docuseries on Hannah-Jones’s work. The company described the “1619 Project” as “a landmark undertaking …of the brutal racism that endures in so many aspects of American life today.”

Dr. James A. Lindsay, the founder of New Discourses and the author of “Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody,” told The Federalist that Americans “have to stop being shocked” about critical race theory trainings.

“This is happening pretty much everywhere,” Lindsay said. “What’s happening at Disney, while it looks very extreme, is actually quite typical. We see almost exactly the same kinds of things playing out in terms of what these trainings are made up of and what they include. The picture that has to come across somehow is these aren’t isolated incidents. This is government agencies. This is churches. This is virtually every university. This is many if not most school districts.”

Further dividing its employees by race and sex, Disney crafted “affinity groups” for minority employees to join. The groups are titled “Hola” for latino individuals, “Compass” for asians, and “Wakanda” for blacks. The objective of the groups is to provide “culturally-authentic insights” for employees and encourage “diversity,” “inclusion,” “belonging,” “identity,” and “allyship.” There is no group provided for all individuals to join.

Employees told Rufo the corporation sends “almost daily memos” on such issues and that Disney is “completely ideologically one-sided.” Numerous employees concurred and one claimed the corporate environment is “very stifled.”

“It’s been very stifling to feel like everyone keeps talking about having open dialogue and compassionate conversations, but when it comes down to it, I know if I said one thing that was truthful, based on data, or even just based on my own personal experience, it would actually be rather unwelcomed,” a Christian and conservative employee said.

In a video obtained by Rufo, Executive Chairman Bob Iger allegedly said Disney will not “shy away from politics” and “should be taking a stand” on identity politics issues. Iger also allegedly said the films “Dumbo,” “Aladdin,” and “Fantasia” are “racist content.” The company fired “The Mandalorian” actress Gina Carano in February for not displaying allegiance to identity politics while continuing to do business with a genocidal Communist China.

HD Editor’s Note: Why Is This News Biblically Relevant?

When Jesus’ disciples came to Him and asked, “What shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?” Jesus explained to them that one of the signs that would precede His coming would be “nations” rising against “nations.”

The word “nations” found in this verse (Matthew 24:7) is from the Greek word “ethnos,” where we get our English word for “ethnicity.” Therefore, this verse can also be read that “ethnicity shall rise against ethnicity” in the last days.

Racism is not new. However, what is new to our generation is the fabricated racism taught in schools, espoused by the media, and canceled by ‘culture.’ This stoking of division will, in the not too distant future, lead to genuine widespread racism. Racism is a sin. Creating division and hatred is a sin (Prov. 6:16-19, Luke 11:17, 1 John 2:9). All of these things are deeply rooted in a rebellion against God, His Word, and His design.

[arcticdementor]

On June 2, 2020, a crowd of mostly white people arrived at a library parking lot in Bethesda, Maryland, to show solidarity with a Black Lives Matter rally. During the rally, one of the organizers had the crowd raise their hands and take a pledge to oppose racism. The attendees obeyed and repeated the pledge, many kneeling as though in prayer. A video of the event made its way around the internet, providing yet more evidence that America is experiencing a religious revival on the political left — and that the heart of this revival is the deification of group identity.

Until the last few years, identity politics — now commonly referred to as "wokeness" — has avoided serious scrutiny as a religious movement. Yet even before the Bethesda episode, political observers had an inkling of its religious character. Professor Elizabeth Corey's recollection of her experience at a 2017 conference addressing identity and the law offers one illuminating example. One of the presentations she described featured a call-and-response session that ended with an exhortation for political revolution. "I began to feel that I was not at an academic lecture at all," she wrote, "but at an Evangelical church with a charismatic pastor."

…

Scholars of religion tell us that the human person encounters the divine in two distinct ways: subjectively, as with matters of faith, and objectively, by performing rites in accordance with their faith.

The objective components of religious experience are those that onlookers can easily observe. They consist of what Wilfred Cantwell Smith calls "cumulative tradition" — the liturgies, processions, pilgrimages, public acts of penance, and other rites that faith communities celebrate. The behavior of the attendees during the Bethesda rally offers a useful illustration of such phenomena, as does the call-and-response session Corey described.

Within these cumulative traditions, people have personal encounters with religion. These encounters are subjective, in the sense that each person experiences the divine in a way that no outside observer can measure. Social scientists can record such encounters through interviews, but they can never experience them or reproduce them in their scholarship. Subjective religious experiences are very real, however, meaning that they cannot be dismissed simply because social-science methods cannot comprehend them. Gaining a full understanding of wokeness, therefore, requires an account of both its public rites and the subjective religious experiences of woke adherents.

We can begin our analysis of the emerging woke faith by probing its concept of the divine. Wokeness has an unconventional understanding of divinity that tends to disguise its religiosity from those accustomed to monotheism; in fact, the notion may not be fully recognized among its practitioners themselves. For the woke, identity is the source of divinity. Yet individuals are not divine on their own; they only participate in the divinity found in shared group identities.

Certain segments of wokeness also exhibit pantheistic traits in that they view the natural world as divine. For these adherents — particularly those who identify as vegan, green, and in some cases, indigenous — nature unmolested offers harmony within the individual and among the growing multiplicity of identities that make up humanity. For other segments of the woke community, human beings must adjust nature to render internal identities external. Gender re-assignment surgeries and hormone replacement or suppression regimens for transgender persons are among the most conspicuous examples.

…

What Wade describes is a central rite of passage into the woke framework. The transition typically begins with a person living an ordinary existence of production and consumption. Over time, the individual notices how this way of life is lonely and unfulfilling. Traditional authorities are hypocritical or incompetent. Nothing is as it appears. There is a sense of living in a "Cartesian nightmare" in which the world exists not because God created it, but because the devil — or what in traditional Gnostic texts is called the "demiurge" — did. It is only when the individual discovers a small collection of like-minded believers who have pierced the veil to see past the illusions of the world that he "awakens." Together, woke believers become a people apart from and above those who still labor in the corrupted world of appearances.

These like-minded groups of believers replace the un-woke families, neighborhoods, and religious communities in which the woke individual was raised. Scholars and activists call these voluntary communities "families of choice" — safe harbors for woke individuals who feel unsafe in a traditional family or community, often because of bullying or violence they experienced. Woke families of choice are grounded in the identities that woke individuals adopt. To share an identity with others after becoming woke is to subject one's personal identity to the rules governing that group, and in turn, to police those rules.

According to the woke creed of intersectionality, human beings are composed of not just one, but a multiplicity of identities, among which are race, ethnicity, religion, sex, gender, and sexual preference. In his book American Awakening, Joshua Mitchell classifies these various identities using the terms "innocent" and "guilty" in an effort to compare wokeness to a kind of decomposed version of Protestant Christianity. According to Mitchell's account, the guilty identity, or scapegoat — namely the white, heterosexual male — must be purged in order to restore and confirm the cleanliness of all other identity groups. He is the "transgressor," Mitchell explains. "All others — women, blacks, Hispanics, LGBTQ persons — have their sins of omission and commission covered over by scapegoating" this transgressor, just as the scapegoated Christ covered over the sins of all the descendants of Adam.

Yet wokeness involves a complicated system of ranks that do not break down easily into two, mutually exclusive categories. It's more useful to think of woke identities in caste terms, wherein the highest-caste identities are "clean" and lower-caste identities are increasingly "unclean." Unclean identities are those born into "privilege," while clean identities are those that suffer under oppressive cultural forces like whiteness, masculinity, heteronormativity, cisgenderism, Christianity, capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, and even humanity (as in the presumption of human beings' superiority to the rest of the natural world). A person bearing all of these identities is maximally unclean, since he is thought to have experienced no suffering and only privilege. Those individuals bearing oppressed identities — including racial minorities, women, gays and lesbians, transgender persons, religious minorities, and indigenous people — are considered clean.

…

The key animating principle of wokeness is the collective struggle against the evil geist that inhabits the privileged, with the ultimate goal being the reversal of the advantages inherited by the privileged in favor of those who have suffered. The cleaner identities, by virtue of their cleanliness, have the standing to determine how the struggle is to proceed. The privileged, meanwhile, must atone for their unclean status by struggling alongside the clean. All must struggle, but the privileged must struggle most of all.

The primary means by which the privileged may join the struggle is through "allyship" — the subordination of their privileged identities to those who have historically endured the greatest suffering. For this reason, Mitchell is not quite right when he says there is no possibility of forgiveness in wokeness; it's just not the kind of Christian forgiveness that he and others recognize. Forgiveness for the woke comes from becoming a good ally. There is no absolution, however, as privilege is permanent. The privileged, therefore, are required to engage in constant, public acts of atonement.

The willfully privileged — those who refuse to struggle alongside the clean — remain unclean. The firmer their attachment to their privilege, the less clean they are. Whites who refuse to reckon with their privilege make up the majority of this lower caste, with the least clean among them being white supremacists — among which include neo-Nazis, neo-Confederates, Proud Boys, and even devotees to right-wing conspiracies like QAnon — who revel in their privilege. These are the untouchables of the woke hierarchy. Due to their willful privilege, they are thought to deserve any hardships they suffer.

…

The afterlife for the woke is not one where the soul awaits the judgment of creation. Rather, like the pagan Romans, the woke find life after death through fama, or the renown due to a person who lived a glorious life. Similarly, fate for the woke seems to lie in the continued caste struggle. Yet whatever successes the woke might achieve, they are never complete, and are always subject to reaction. This makes the outlook of the woke a rather bleak one.

…

As theologian William Cavanaugh observes, the claim that there exist boundaries between religion and non-religion, and that these boundaries are "natural, eternal, fixed, and immutable," is a relatively new phenomenon that came about "with the rise of the modern state." "The new state's claim to a monopoly on violence, lawmaking, and public allegiance within a given territory," he continues, "depends upon either the absorption of the church into the state or the relegation of the church to an essentially private realm."

In the latter scenario, state actors profess indifference on matters of faith, provided the faithful make no effort to interfere with the use of state power. This is the stance the woke ostensibly push for in the public sphere, especially with regard to traditional religious faiths (more on that later). Yet as philosophy professor Francis Beckwith has argued, such an arrangement is arguably incoherent, as matters of faith place the faithful under obligations to act on their faith in the public realm. To demand privatization of faith, therefore, is to ban it outside of the human heart.

The second possibility Cavanaugh raises is equally dangerous. In this scenario, the state absorbs the church and uses its monopoly on violence to impose at least outward compliance with the religious tenets of that church. In America today, these tenets are increasingly the tenets of wokeness.

If wokeness is a religion, it is a civil religion, in the sense that it merges one's duty to the divine to that of the state. For proof, one need only examine how in recent years, in cities across the nation, woke protesters have torn down statues of the old American civil religion of the founders, Catholic saints, and soldiers, and demanded new ones be built in their place to honor the gods of the woke pantheon.

For the woke, the state is the central entity through which clean identities struggle not only for justice, but to secure patronage. Eric Voegelin's Political Religions offers a useful example of how a religious patronage system works. Here again, we depart from Western — and indeed, modern — monotheistic faiths to draw comparisons between wokeness and a much older, polytheistic tradition.

In ancient Egypt, according to Voegelin, temples of the lower gods were linked in a patronage network that held the different regions together. The pharaoh patronized the gods of these temples by offering local priests and aristocrats prestige, money, and power. In exchange, the priests and aristocrats pledged their loyalty to the pharaoh. While rival cults disliked having to compete for state patronage, they all agreed that the worst outcome would be for the pharaoh to reserve the patronage for his own god and put the local cults out of business. And so they agreed to the arrangement.

The woke patronage network functions in much the same way. Patronage in wokeness takes several forms, the cheapest of which is recognition, or the state's acknowledgment that certain identities are deserving of respect and deference. Bearers of clean identities look to the state for such recognition, typically in the form of a holiday, a public display, or a committee or hearing on matters of importance to woke identities. From there, they seek out more significant forms of patronage, including financial and political investments. Examples may include academic chairs or departments at colleges and universities, along with monetary compensation covering expenses like medical procedures and the restoration of property.

…

This arrangement is merely an updated version of the Egyptian patronage system Voegelin described: The different identities that populate the city receive state patronage as they supervise the diversity, equity, and inclusion of clean identities in the public sphere. Thus when Ibram Kendi — a historian and founding director of the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research — suggests establishing a department of anti-racism at the federal level, he is merely applying the logic of municipal governments on a larger scale.

To gain further leverage over the state, the woke frequently court influence in the corporate world. Such efforts date at least back to 2017, when Pepsi hoped to capitalize on Black Lives Matter protests by launching an advertisement featuring a short narrative of a self-satisfied consumer, played by supermodel Kendall Jenner, emerging from her private world to join a broader movement of individuals living out their own authentic identities. The participants depicted in the ad are unified in this endeavor through their attachment to global corporate brands — in this case, Pepsi — that support them in their efforts to win over the state's coercive power to work the will of the diverse identities united under wokeness.

…

Consultants like DiAngelo provide prestige for elite organizations seeking to adorn themselves with examples of their continued commitment to the moral issues of the day — in exchange for a fee, of course. Yet questions remain as to the efficacy of these arrangements. As Bonny Brooks argues in Arc Digital, "activism is now firmly near the top of many big-brand marketing agendas" because it "is a lot simpler to appropriate images of protest to sell soda than to ensure there are no exploitative practices in your supply chain." Helen Lewis of the Atlantic concurs, defining the "iron law of woke capitalism" to be that "[b]rands will gravitate toward low-cost, high-noise signals as a substitute for genuine reform, to ensure their survival."

…

Some universities are looking to ground higher education entirely in the tenets of wokeness. The University of Tulsa, for example, has recently sought to re-orient the university around the twin pillars of business and social justice while cutting the traditional core curriculum to the bone. Among those angry at the decision are many of the students. Meanwhile, Ivy League institutions have owned up to their history of systemic racism by making the appropriate hiring and funding decisions — all while vigorously defending themselves from lawsuits made on behalf of Asian Americans claiming systemic exclusion in their present-day admissions processes.

Wokeness is the opiate of the elites. None of the patronage directly benefits struggling communities; it simply moves funds from state institutions, global corporations, and universities to diversity, equity, and inclusion consultants. These consultants, in turn, serve as moral and spiritual alibis, helping to rehabilitate institutions' public image whenever issues of prejudice emerge. Paradigmatic cases can be found, as Matthew Continetti of the American Enterprise Institute has argued, at global corporations like Alphabet, which generously donates to social-justice organizations while opening an artificial-intelligence research center in China — despite the latter's horrifying record of human-rights abuses (often in service to these very corporations). Like the pharaohs of ancient Egypt, state entities, corporations, and academic institutions offer patronage to the woke gods in exchange for their loyalty. And like the priests in those old Egyptian temples, the consultants grant prestige and temporary absolution while keeping the money.

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If states and public entities are increasingly patronizing woke identities and causes, are they also establishing wokeness as a government-sanctioned religion? In some respects, they surely are.

The Supreme Court case Lemon v. Kurtzman has set the standard for what qualifies as an unconstitutional establishment of religion in America since 1971. The Lemon test consists of three dictates: Laws must have a secular purpose, they must not have the primary effect of advancing or inhibiting religion, and they must not promote excessive government entanglement in religious matters.

If wokeness is indeed a religion, then efforts to establish its tenets through legal and regulatory frameworks clearly violate the Lemon test. State-sanctioned endorsements of woke identities advance the woke faith, as do municipal commissions tasked with promoting identity-based equity initiatives. Distribution of state money to woke identity groups and causes fosters government entanglement in religion. The hiring of diversity, equity, and inclusion administrators at public universities to oversee the representation of clean identities is akin to those universities hiring priests or rabbis to oversee their adherence to Catholicism or Judaism. In short, if the Supreme Court were to recognize wokeness as a religion, these state-sponsored patronage efforts would have to end.

This conclusion, of course, hinges on whether wokeness constitutes a religion for First Amendment purposes. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has never quite articulated a concrete definition of the term as used in the Constitution. Its earliest attempts included an 1890 description of religion as "one's views of his relations to his Creator, and to the obligations they impose of reverence for his being and character, and of obedience to his will" — a standard that confined religion to traditional monotheistic beliefs. The Court eventually abandoned the use of a belief in a creator as the hallmark of religion, declaring in the 1961 case of Torcaso v. Watkins that the government may not "aid those religions based on a belief in the existence of God as against those religions founded on different beliefs." While this clarifies that a religion need not involve a creator, it offers little in the way of a distinction between religion and non-religious belief systems.

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Such vague descriptions may not offer much to guide us, but given what the Court has deemed a religion in past cases, the legal classification of wokeness as a religion likely rests on firm ground. In the Torcaso case, for instance, the Court explicitly recognized both ethical culture and secular humanism — philosophies premised on non-spiritual moral traditions and the rejection of religious dogma — as being "[a]mong religions in this country." Even atheism qualifies for constitutional protection — at least under the amendment's Free Exercise Clause, which draws from the same mention of the term "religion" as the Establishment Clause. The bar for what legally qualifies as a religion is thus quite low. Given the deeply held and undoubtedly sincere nature of woke adherents' beliefs, along with the tenets of wokeness described above (the belief in the divinity of identity, the concept of the woke faith community, the Gnostic understanding of the world, notions of fate and the afterlife, and the moral code grounded in the struggle against oppression), one would be hard pressed to explain how wokeness is less deserving of the status than belief systems explicitly grounded in secularism.

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If wokeness becomes a legally recognized religion in the United States, efforts by adherents to secure state patronage and enlist public entities in their struggle would violate constitutionally protected natural rights. Historically, such measures have provoked an organized political and legal response among disadvantaged faiths. And that is precisely where we may be headed.

Adherents to wokeness might object by noting that they oppose laws viewed as the product of church-state collusion — including laws that coerce prayer and scripture reading in schools, those that ban the teaching of evolution in schools, and those that mandate days of rest on the Sabbath — as well as displays of religious symbols on state property. This objection is not so much wrong as it is decades out of date.

…

With the decline of the old Judeo-Christian consensus, the woke have sought to establish themselves in the spaces left open by the success of secularization. But as their faith coalesces and their successes build, they are beginning to grow out of those spaces. It seems that at the very moment of its overcoming, the struggle is struggling with itself.