#mexico isn't any different just because it has brown people in it!

[icannotgetoverbirds]

vent

yet again out here wishing i'd grown up with some semblance of hispanic culture in my family instead of a monolith of mormonism

[inazuma-fulgur]

Read the damn article before you pretend this is me just auding Trump in getting reelected

Democrats are stopping their own candidate from getting elected ny refusing to put up someone other than Biden/someone equally unfit and racist

The thing is, the difference between Trump and Biden is their fanbase, their image. Apart from a few Bandaids and otherwise empty promises Biden does indeed continue the same politics as Trump or let's things running undisturbed.

So whether you vote blue no matter who or whatever I don't give a fuck.

But what I do give a fuck about it liberals pretending voting Biden is the end all be all of progressive politics and mandatory to prevent 'the Bad™' from happening going forward. Because it isn't stopping anything as far as we can tell from media coverage

In fact, voting third party is an option, nit voting is an option, doing anything is an option. It's probably worth more to give a random houseless person five bucks than vote Biden.

This annoys me greatly because I don't just see USians say this, I see activists and casuals from other countries with similarly corrupt issues spread the same misinformation about the US. And also about their own countries, act the same way.

Having spend a lot of time within my own countries, Germany, activist spaces and being involved I can tell you with certainty that many people have similar attitudes towards our own government. Campaigning and running ads for political parties involved in funding wars, defending police and police murders, etc.

You might have heard about 'der hohe Repräsentant' (lit. the high Representative' but likely not. Because topics like that largely go ignored by not just the media and our fucked up politicians but our fucked up activists and progressives as well.

Leftists here largely hate Palestine, deem any critique of Israel antisemitic.

Heck even small things, like our progressive parties even try to make healthcare and education worse, push for more cars over public transit. Shit like that

And then hearing people pretend they're a solution on their own, that just voting for them is sufficient. I can't. And they'll attack you for criticizing these parties, which even a supporter who believes in a lesser evil should do, has to do.

Because if you don't critique them and discourage critique (often disingenuously framed as helping the opposing parties, the myth of leftists infighting aiding the right more than the left. A liberal lie I might say), you expose yourself for how you don't send letters, don't go to protests, are in no way involved in anything. You just want their hateful and dangerous politics to continue because they protect your cozy life in a rich white 'western' country.

I think that sucks and I want you to rethink your positions. Because I believe with some tiny bit of introspection you'll realize that this is a messed up thing for you to advocate for.

Again, for the people in the back, if you genuinely believe in the lesser evil that's fine idc even if I don't, but you can't assure yourself you've done enough and you should at the very least stop people from leveraging necessary criticism against politicians.

If you keep defending Biden I'll keep thinking you consider murdering brown* people abroad and invading and destroying their countries a necessary evil to stop... *checks notes* stop Trump from starting wars and enacting racist policies?

[the-eldritch-it-gay]

It’s very interesting as a white person to think about that post you just made. I know that if Disney doesn’t put people from the cultures in charge of the project that at best it’s a voyeuristic appreciation of someone else’s culture but it also makes me wonder how people from Celtic or Scandinavian areas feel about movies like brave or frozen. Obviously it’s not the same it just makes me think about it.

Personally, I find it interesting how people view like, race with white people vs with brown people.

Forgive this weirdly long technical tangent, but my academic interest is sociolinguistics and race & language and I was reminded. In linguistics, we have this concept of markedness. Its a bit of a hassle to explain, but something marked basically means it deviates from the default. In linguistics, when we talk about something being racially marked generally means the thing we're talking about being a feature of an ethnic dialect (for example, AAVE or Chicano English). And one thing we looked at with a paper was the concept that racial markedness is always about non-white ways of speaking, however, there is racial markedness to be found in certain Very White ways of speaking. Basically, challenging the idea that racial markedness = brown, by introducing that there are ways of speaking that deviate from the standard that are distinctly white. This however is a challenging concept for many people because there is this internal view that race is exclusively nonwhite, that something that is white is seen as aracial, lacking a race, whereas PoC are seen as having a race therefore marked because lacking race (being white) is the default.

I was reminded of that because in general, I don't know many people who think of Frozen (the first movie, idk anything about the sequel) as being Scandinavian, right. Like, it can be picked up right, obviously, it takes place in some Scandinavian kingdom or fantasy equivalent thereof. But people in my experience don't generally think about that a lot because it's not seen as important. I could even imagine people saying that whether the characters are Scandinavian or not doesn't matter too much to the story.

On the contrary, a movie like Coco or Encanto is explicitly tied to a real place, Mexico in Coco, Columbia in Encanto. The place and culture they are attached to is central to the story. So is this not the case for Frozen? Well, I might argue it is, it's just not seen so by the viewers or even the writers. Europe is just seen as the default, especially in magical or fantasy settings. Frozen certainly has Scandinavial details and European influence, so lets take a look at a different movie. Tangled. One might argue there's literally no sort of cultural influence in Tangled right its based on a fairy tale and takes place in a fantasy magic world. Except no, it is distinctly European. Look at the clothing, the buildings, the setting. It is European, it's just seen as being the default so it's not noticed.

I know plenty of (white) people who write magic or fantasy stories that they see as aracial, but they aren't, they're white, they're European. They just don't notice that because white and European is the default, it's unmarked in their eyes. But in the eyes of say, someone who isn't white, it is clearly racially marked as white and European.

This isn't to say that a movie like Encanto or Coco or whatever didn't have any intended emphasis on culture and location (moreso than Frozen), but that they are more easily noticed because they are racially marked whereas a generic European setting or culture is seen as racially unmarked (despite being racially marked as white).

[capricornsicle]

@ White People: Shut Up About Native Americans

This is a more serious one. Recently, while talking to some friends in the "Scott McCall Defense Squad", as we are affectionately named, @princeescaluswords noted that he'd received an anonymous ask with the usual Scott slander and racist hate, "Scott is written as white" (wtf do u even mean. cracker ass nonsense), etc., but it also included some troubling lines -- namely, that the anon sincerely believed since Colton Haynes and Tyler Hoechlin have "Native ancestry", that they are more so people of color than Tyler Posey, and the same is true of their respective characters, ideas I will thoroughly disprove.

So, setting aside the blatant racism against Scott, because this post will focus specifically on Native representation and Native identity (and because all of the Scott fans have already made numerous, numerous posts about why Posey shouldn't have to defend being a poc when he is. just a poc. are you blind), let's address the incredibly wrong, racist, and did I mention wrong idea that "Colton Haynes and Tyler Hoechlin are Native American".

A quick google search revealed that Haynes had a great-great-great grandmother that was part of the Cherokee nation, and ancestors up to his great-grandmother on his paternal grandfather's side. The ancestry for his other three grandparents says that they all identified as white.

Now, this is where I say my usual bit: if you're white, and you're reading this post, follow along and keep your opinions to yourself. I am Native (Cree/Narragansett). Not only do I claim heritage to my tribe (I am a member of the Cree nation, as dual Native citizenship isn't typically a thing, despite what Becky from fifth grade who's 1/64th everything might tell you), I am claimed in return. That's how "being Native American" works. You have membership to a tribe. That tribe acknowledges your membership. Ancestry means very little, it is in fact one's connection to their tribe that makes them Native or not.

So, back to the topic at hand. Haynes has Cherokee ancestry. He is not Native American. He is white.

Here's an example. I have Mexican ancestry, but I'm sure as hell not Mexican! I don't speak Spanish or live in Mexico or practice Mexican traditions, none of my immediate family or first generation removed spoke Spanish or lived in Mexico or practiced Mexican traditions, it's through a couple of various great-grandparents that I never met. If I were to claim I was Latino, that would be disingenuous, because I am, in no way other than speaking choppy high school Spanish, connected to my Latino roots. Haynes is, similarly, not connected to his distant Cherokee ancestry, and would have no business calling himself Cherokee. It's a good thing he, unlike the anon, doesn't do that.

Another example. I am brown. That's the color of my skin. Maybelline says I'm somewhere between "warm sand" and "honey". I know fellow Natives in my own tribe who are white as they come, blonde, red-haired, light-eyed, you name it. Some of my close friends joke that I am the Wheat Thin among the crackers. It's funny, because we're all grown enough to make jokes about our own race in good taste, and it's true. I also know Natives that are Black, or actually Indian. I know Natives who have to say "I'm Native" because when they say "I'm Indian" people assume they mean from India. Natives come in all different colors, and "Native" is an ethnicity, not a race. You're a person of color for being Native and visibly native, but there are people who are Native and not people of color. It depends on the person. Haynes is white. I know this through the power of looking at him with my eyeballs.

Okay, so Haynes isn't Native, and he's not a person of color. Quick google search for Hoechlin --

Well, that's interesting. Hoechlin in 2012 on Twitter claimed he had Native ancestry. However, he also said he was "still researching" this claim, and since we know he's not part of any Native tribe and none of his known ancestors are, let's assume that's one of those "your xyz relative was abc kind of Native" stories he was told by a relative, and he genuinely did not know it was untrue, or that his research led him down a wrong path and he didn't know he may have found another person by the same name or some such. The other possible explanation is that, like many white celebrities, he's claiming Native ancestry to be cool, but let's assume that he meant that tweet in good faith.

Either way, he's not Native, and he's sure as hell not a person of color. Great cheekbones, but God-given, not Native-given.

So neither Colton Haynes nor Tyler Hoechlin are Native American or people of color. What now?

Well, now we talk about why I care enough to make a post about it. First of all, because I have other things that I don't want to do, and I'm pissed about the ask Escalus mentioned specifically, but also because there is such a long, tiresome, agonizingly brushed-under-the-rug history of cruelty, violence, and genocide against Native Americans.

Did you know that Native women are the most likely ethnicity of woman to be r*ped, by a significant statistic? Did you know that Native women make the least on a white man's dollar compared to every other ethnicity, male and female? Did you know that the US government and its subsidiary state and county and lower governments are actively encroaching on established Native territory to push us out, again and again? Did you learn about the Trail of Tears in school? That was just for the Cherokee tribe. Most of the rest of us didn't get a chapter in the history textbook, we were just slaughtered, our women stolen as property (see: sex slaves) for white men, our children and elders viciously murdered, our men tortured and killed. Our crops were burned, our lands were destroyed, and we were either kidnapped and enslaved (not, of course, that more than two academic books have been published on Native slavery, and I'd know because I read them both), killed off, or forced to relocate, again and again, to lands we did not know.

Being Native is nothing like Pocahontas. In fact, Pocahontas was nothing like Pocahontas. She was twelve or thirteen when her tribe was attacked by white colonizers, and not that many years older when a different colonizer kidnapped her to England. She was forcefully converted to Christianity, her name was changed to Rebecca, and she died having borne children by a man who kidnapped her from her homeland, a place she never returned to. She was not buried with her people. That's generally a big one for us.

Being Native is a blessing. I am thankful for my heritage, even though I am anything but thankful for my biological parents who gave it to me. Through researching my own bloodline, I found family I did not know I had. I found tribe elders, a community, friends I can make jokes about being Native with.

But being Native also means I have been told to "go back to my country" by white people in the United States. I have had people spit at me, call me a "filthy Mexican immigrant", I have been stopped countless times by police for doing absolutely nothing wrong, and not all of them were friendly. I was reprimanded by my principal in high school for a genealogy project where I had included the fact that my paternal great-grandmother was kidnapped by a white man, because my teacher thought it would have been "nicer" to say that she married him. I have been repeatedly accused of drinking alcohol (I do not drink for personal reasons and cannot drink for medical reasons) with no basis. I have been accused of stealing. I have been accused of every kind of troublemaking under the sun.

Claiming to be Native when you have never experienced being Native is something any reasonable person can agree is morally wrong. People have won scholarships they don't deserve for falsely claiming to be Native, they have won awards, they have gotten more attention, they have been hailed as a spokesperson on race issues they are not actually eligible to speak on. The list goes on. False claims of Native heritage run rampant among white celebrities, I guess because they want to be more popular. I like being Native, but I don't think white people actually want to be non-white. It's not as fun and cool as you think it is. People are racist as hell.

And when white people make up Native heritage, they discredit actual Natives who want to speak about their own experiences. You would oppose a white person claiming to be the authority on being Black -- why would you not do the same for a white person falsely claiming to be Native?

I have been told, by white people, that I'm "not Native enough". Why? Because I don't wear the "right kind of Indian clothes", nevermind the fact that I work in a profession that requires business wear and I am not, in fact, allowed to wear a warbonnet, the image that typically comes to mind when people think of Natives. White people don't get to tell Natives how Native they are, and Native enough is not a judgement call. It is a simple evaluation of fact: are you or are you not a member or have pending membership in a tribe?

And this isn't just for Natives. White people simply do not have an important opinion on races that are not their own. You can have however many opinions you want on race, especially when they relate to you, but you don't have the right to tell someone else about their race. You don't get to say that Posey's character is "written as white". Boyd isn't "written as Black", but no one's arguing that Sinqua Walls is therefore white, because that would be marginally too stupid for the usual anons to consider (though, really, anything can happen when you're that racist). You don't get to say if someone is Native or not, and you especially don't get to say that white people are people of color based on sketchy Native ancestry.

We get it, white Americans want to be important so bad it hurts. You can be important, you just don't get to be important for being Native if you're not. Sorry. Find a new hobby. Learn a foreign language. I know that my friends of color and I find it greatly amusing when white English-speakers try to speak a foreign language, because even if they're really bad at it, it's the thought that counts.

If you want to hear about Native things, ask a Native. I'm right here, and my ask box is open for anonymous and non-anon questions about anything and everything, as long as they are genuine and sent in good faith.

Bonus points: some actual Native actors (and, therefore, characters) in Teen Wolf!

1. Cody Christian (Theo Raeken). Christian is Penobscot Native on his mother's side.

2. Froylan Gutierrez (Nolan Holloway). Gutierrez is Mexican/Caxcan Indigenous on his father's side.

3. Keahu Kahuanui (Danny Mahealani). Kahuanui is a native Hawaiian.

Extra bonus: other actors (and, therefore characters) of color on Teen Wolf you might not have recognized!

1. Andrew Matarazzo (Gabe Valet). Matarazzo is Latino (Brazilian).

2. Henry Zaga (Josh Diaz). Zaga is Latino (Brazilian).

3. Kelsey Chow (Tracy Stewart). Chow is half Chinese on her father's side.

[marissabrameyer]

5/17 Masculinities

I love this topic and it was something that I knew very little about going into today's readings. I had broadly understood it as toxic masculinity but I had not ever really thought about the ways that people are trying to deconstruct it. I appreciated that the reading clearly laid out the different aspects of machismo as I was not super familiar with it. I'm not sure that I myself have ever held stereotypes of a macho man in my mind... thinking back, I have only really ever had positive male hispanic role models in my life and I never really saw the toxic masculinity that I saw in my white friend's dads. I saw more of what the men in the survey described as defining masculinity which manifest in a deep love for friends and more specifically family, as well as a general adherence to trying to dismantle institutional toxic masculinity. I'm aware that this reads as if I'm elevating latine people but this truly has been my experience. The only relationship I have with stereotyping machismo is a general air of disdain of brown masculinity that shows up in right-wing media. Because I was raised in a conservative family, I was often exposed to the sorts of tired conversations that were like "oh look how poor Mexico treats their women, look how poor Middle Eastern countries treat their women, etc." Conversations that, of course, absolve white men of any culpability in the way they treat the women in their lives and how they negatively contribute to upholding hegemonic masculinity based on domination.

I think my best example to give is one of my best friends, Mario. We met at Blue Fish Pediatrics back when I was working in the medical field when I thought I was going to be a medical doctor. I met Mario pre-transition but I had only known him for a little while by the time I came out publicly but he didn't skip a beat. He invited me to church in case I needed community as I navigated coming out and I was wary because I was raised in the southern baptist church who are famously intolerant of anyone that isn't a devout old white man. But I ended up going to church with him, and going to small group with him, and his church congregation was genuinely one of the most welcoming places I've ever been and I take that to be a representation of his character. Of course being around queer people is nice, but that church was the first time I had been around non-queers who were just cool with however I showed up. Mario never skipped a beat when I came out to him, he helped me navigate the first awkward years of transition and even hooked me up with one of his friends who is a hair stylist to get my first women's haircut ever. Mario has all the good aspects of masculinity. He cares deeply about his friends and family and works to build safe and welcoming community. He provides for those around him without the expectation that he must be the sole provider. And as I have become more comfortable with my own masculinity, I have modeled my masculinity after his.

Closing shout out to Pedro Pascal and Oscar Isaac who are two of probably the most prominent latinos right now, who are both comfortable and aware of their gender and how their masculinity shows up.

[gnconservative]

Alright fine. I'm easily tempted

Homophobia is not an intrinsic part of homosexuality because homophobia has not been present in all societies and cultures. In some places, homosexuality was celebrated as superior because it was seen as pleasure without the struggles of childbirth, child rearing, and population rises. In pagan cultures, gods were often seen as bisexual, taking male and female lovers, snd there wasn't any stigma. In fact, Sappho, famed sapphic poet, was celebrated across Greece until christians discovered and destroyed her history, claiming she fell in love with a man and wasn't attracted to women. In liberal societies today, an individual can live and die gay without receiving any hatred, and with the understanding that homosexuality is intrinsic, we can understand a child to be gay without experiencing homophobia, or someone who hasn't realized it yet. To put it simply: homosexuality exists without homophobia, so it can't be reliant on homophobia to exist.

I'm having trouble deciphering the entirety of your text (blame it on my exhaustion, perhaps, or your incompetence), but I do realize you're comparing biological traits males and females have that overlap. Of course I mentioned the most obvious changes of SRS, but HRT does a lot more, particularly to trans men. There's a difference between androgynous features and an individual you would clearly peg as male. Let me offer you this photo, for example;

If this man (person, if you must) was on a lovely outing with another man, and was called a fag after they kissed in public, would you call it heterophobia?

Unconvinced? Let me give you another example. I have a white friend. She is rather tan, with dark hair and brown eyes. She often gets mistake for Latino, despite having a completely European background. Sometimes, she gets called ethnic slurs and is told to go back to Mexico.

Her race is irrelevent in this situation. The people telling her those things are acting on a basis of racial prejudice, just as how trans men attracted to trans men are being called homophobic slurs because of homophobia. You can protest that it isn't aimed at her or at them all you like, but they are forced to bear the brunt of it nonetheless. That is homophobia.

is it normal to feel angry browsing a "gay" trans man's blog? it all gets under my skin. like a post about how they can't leave their "gay things" around because their mom will find them, or them reblogging men with tags like "i'm so gay omg." it's just so sickeningly appropriative. it's bonkers to me that a female person thinks simply identifying as a gay male makes them one. even the ones who keep to themselves annoy me. it's like male homosexuality is a cutesy aesthetic for them.

It’s beyond normal, honestly the people I worry about are the gay men who look at this appropriating, fetishizing, homophobic mess

And then just tell me I’m being transphobic and closed minded

There’s nothing okay or acceptable about straight or bisexual trans men pretending they have the same lives and experiences as gay men

I could have solidarity with trans men attracted to the opposite sex in a future where all this homophobic garbage has been dealt with

But until then, I am immediately on guard and frankly sick of being proven right, again and again, that non-homosexuals don’t care about LG people as much as they like to drone on about