#not assumptions that are based in bigoted stereotypes

[lollytea]

I am just as nitpicky as anybody else when it comes to characters I'm obsessed with. But I don't find people who mischaracterize them nearly as annoying as people who write condescending posts about others who mischaracterize them which seem more motivated by feeding their own superiority complex about Being The One Person to Understand Mr Blorbo rather than giving any constructive advice.

[ipsa-est-lux-plenae]

on racial identity politics in america.

I saw this fantastic TikTok today and it really got me thinking about the way people of color in the US are treated - by white liberals especially. How they're so unbelievably shocked that any POC would vote for trump and it honestly feels so- infantilizing? The assumption that minorities are automatically liberal? That being a POC automatically exempts you from conservatism?

And it's strange because the white western world loves to denigrate the "backwards" views of other countries- but then turn around and act surprised when POC act as anything other than a hyper liberal monolith in the United States because aren't they voting against their own self-interest? I'll come right out and say it- it's racist. it's racist to treat people of color as a monolith because guess what- we're fucking not! Not every single latino in the United States just crossed the border and is concerned about immigration. Maybe they're just fucking conservative and that's why they voted for trump.

As an Indian, I am so sick of seeing people say that every Indian who voted for trump is an idiot who voted against their own self-interest because guess what two things a good deal of Indians have in common with republicans? They're rich and conservative. Why the hell wouldn't a rich conservative who stands to gain from a trump presidency not vote for him?

Being a minority does not make you a liberal and to assume that's so is idiotic and simpleminded and- quite frankly- why democrats lost. because their views of voters are a gross oversimplification based sorely on identity politics, and if they don't address this issue, they'll keep fucking losing.

"Vote blue - because you're brown!" just isn't a good enough tagline anymore, and it's insulting to a voter's intelligence and values to believe that they'll disregard their personal beliefs and values to vote for something they disagree with just because they happen to be a person of color. Treating all POC like some sort of union or bloc is just plain disrespectful.

also while I'm on this note- just want to address that acting like every brown person in the unites states is an immigrant who stands a risk of being deported is not only stupid but also incredibly racist. believe it or not, more than one genre of brown person exists.

Not every POC who voted for trump is a self-hating idiot. they're allowed to be selfish bigots too. the stereotyping of all trump voters as stupid white hicks or rich men is only harmful in the long run, and the failure to address the real social and cultural reasons he won is why we're in this position today.

[derseprinceoftbd]

I think the most interesting thing in the whole world is application of DOTA to times where the Author's journey and nature is supposedly important. Kit Conner as Nick, whoever that is-what changed? To one who watches without knowledge, what will they assume of all that? Some say Nabokov had the right to write Lolita due to his experiences-but the reality of that theory shows little actual support! So does anything change there? Muir, who was inspired by him, her stories so personal to her-I knew she was a lesbian dealing with great trauma even before I opened Gideon, but not of her schizophrenia, and so latched onto and understood the personal elements of Nona, so close to Nabokov-but thought Harrow, at one point, was being revealed as "not actually schizophrenic" as a plot element, until I was told otherwise. Art Spiegelman had to declare the unsympathetic greed of his own Jewish father was reality. The themes of the Matrix; have they changed with the directors? Were they always there? And do those line up necessarily with the assumptions of viewers with lenses of queer theory, then versus now?

This fascinates me, it really does. Where does the right to risk offense derive? What is the line between an unusual, perhaps stereotypical, depiction, as personal versus bigoted? Is there a duty to assume? To research? To inform? Does it change if you assume the blind viewer will take offense, or will assume the offensive fine and personal?

Pierre Menard was no Spaniard; how could he say his depiction of the nation's history was accurate, and not merely based in stereotypes?

[loki-zen]

re: hair loss, at what point as a man should you just shave it? I have/had long wavy Matthew McConaugh-hair, and I’m decently emotionally invested in the compliments I used to get. Outside of wanting to look good to women I don’t super care though, that and that my dad always wanted to grow his hair long but it didn’t work out for him, so I’m kinda doing it for both of us.

anyway, I’m on the road to approaching the “woody harrelson at the beginning of Natural Born Killers” hairline, and it’s a struggle. Been on finasteride for like 8 months, and I’m pretty sure it’s making me depressed, plus it does weird stuff to your cum, which is both gross and frightening in its implications. I had good results with rogaine, should probably start that again, regardless of what I do.

At what point does a man become sexier with the buzz cut a la Jason Statham, every Russian guy, etc?

it’s also frustrating because there’s so many memes out there about “creepy balding guys”, like it’s just this shorthand for being a coomer or a serial sexual harasser or what have you. I could live with “ugly balding guys”, there have been times in my life when I was hot and times I was ugly, I’m able to cope with that. But creepy just really sucks. I had a lot of female friends in college, and some women I’m very close to were victims of sexual violence, and so I’m probably hyper-sensitive and afraid of being perceived as predatory in any way. It’s good that I’m aware of the problems, but sometimes I wish I was more ignorant, it’d make it a lot less scary to strike up conversations with new people if I wasn’t crushingly aware of how often women are uncomfortable with men they’ve never met.

(I’m not morlock-Holmes, but I think we have some of the same dating issues)

So first off, it is obviously wrong and bigoted to make assumptions about someone's behaviour or intentions based on what they look like unless we're talking about something very specific and intentional like 'they have nazi tattoos'. If it helps any (I'm not sure it does) I don't think that these people necessarily see a balding guy and think that's a sexual predator so much as they are doing that very schoolyard thing of "we don't like this kind of people (sexual predators) and so we're going to stereotype them as being something we think is unattractive" (you see similar things with fatness and 'neckbeards').

If it is the women you actually know who say these sorts of things (that wasn't clear), it literally might not occur to them that they're making you feel this way because it's just a general-purpose insult to them that's become detached from the actual notion of a person they might know and like who happens to be male and balding.

This sort of talk is actually, if anything, dangerous to potential victims of sexual violence, because the idea that you can somehow spot Creepy Guys and they definitely look different to anyone else will tend to help conventionally attractive guys get away with it!

I don't think there are any hard and fast rules about the hair thing. Lots of guys do look cute with a buzzcut, and it is common (but not universal) in the dominant Anglosphere culture for people to find this more attractive than even very nice hair when that hair has visible male-pattern balding going on. I confess I do have this reaction myself sometimes, but I also find that the more I get to know people the more I see the nicer hair and the less I see the "but it's balding" part, but there are levels that will always look a bit odd to me (eg the shakespeare cut). Which, yknow, isn't actually a reason why people should change their hair, though I imagine you're asking because being attractive to other people is important to you.

Your female irl friends are perhaps best-placed to approximate the sort of views that predominate among the sort of women you're likely to be trying to date, and there are now decent AI tools to give you an idea of what you might look with different hairstyles - maybe try one out, see what you think and ask their advice.

Oh, also, in my personal opinion if your hair is fairly voluminous and past shoulder length you can get away with a receding hairline a lot longer - same with certain careful short but long on top looks, although they can be more fiddly.

[gaykey]

Hi! I'm Kshawol. I've just recently gotten into SHINee and I have a few questions that I was hoping you could answer (I'm using a translator right now, so I can't help it if my English is awkward).1. actually... I'm pretty sure some Kshawol's besides me don't think Key is straight, seriously, not just an RPS thing. Of course, they don't say that on their public Twitter accounts, they just talk amongst themselves on their private accounts. To be honest, I think that's what the public thinks, too, just, "Everything Key does and says makes me feel like he's gay!" And we report those YouTube comments when we see them, because it's rude to make assumptions about someone's sexuality anyway. So, I'm just curious, because I've been Googling and there's a lot of stories, and you have them on your account right now, that Key used to frequent gay bars in the early days of his career (was that in the early 2010s?) and that Minho used to pick him up when he was drunk, and I'm wondering if that's true, and if he's been saying queer-coded things in interviews and Instagram posts and stuff. I got that feeling recently when he was explaining why he gave his fans the nickname Lil freak. Personally, I don't think he'll ever come out of the closet, even if he is queer, and he'll continue to live in his frosted glass closet. Coming out in Korea is very difficult and takes a lot of courage, especially for celebrities. Right now, the most famous gay celebrity in Korea, he was outed unwillingly, and he immediately had his whole career in jeopardy, and as far as I know, it took him about 10 years before he was able to go back on TV again, with all kinds of sexual harassment and bigoted comments from people. Anyway, that happened. Umm... what do you think about that?

2. talking about Taemin, his queer performance is already widely known, so I won't ask about it. Sometimes some people talk about him having ADHD or even being on the autism spectrum, though they're in the minority, and I know of a tumblr blog that talks about it, and it's a very interesting hypothesis! As an ADHD person myself, there are times when I'm pretty sure he does have ADHD, but of course, that's... Kshawol doesn't really like it and it's not even talked about... In Korea, that interpretation is considered very rude and insulting, because we don't have good awareness of neurodiversity, so it's kind of a cultural difference. I wonder how Taemin's ADHD/ASD behaviors are viewed abroad.

hello, hope you're well! oooh, well your translator must be pretty good, because your english is coming across pretty perfect.

ok, so i'll try to answer all your questions as best as i can.

i've said before, and i've heard, that a lot of kshawols & the general public, pretty much know key's gay, especially in the queer community. in regards to making assumptions being rude - it depends on if those assumptions are from people assuming based on negative stereotypes. i think queer people, like myself, assuming based on seeing parts of ourselves in him, is not rude or harmful.

the kind of comments you report, are probably intended to be hateful.

when we talk about key's sexuality here it isn't. straight isn't the default, and there shouldn't be a this weird stigma around queer people, seeing and recognising other queer people!

the stuff about gay bars are all rumours. i noted that in the posts about it, that they're really old (yeah it was the early 2010's) and have no source, and should therefore not be taken too seriously. it was just a bit of fun to talk about the kind of things that were floating around the fandom at the time.

has he been saying queer coded stuff? tbh, i think soooo much of what he does, says, likes, dislikes, sings about, is interested in, ect. is queer-coded. i genuinely couldn't pick out a singualr incident.

and like yeah! i have an entire tag about how he calls fans lil freak alone, and what that means, and why it's significant to me, and to other lgbt+ people. and why it's very telling that kibum chose to call us that.

i've gone back & forth a lot about whether i think he'll come out one day, and i agree with you. whilst he's in the industry, he'll stay in his glass closet situation.

he doesn't need to come out if he doesn't want to. the ones that get it, already get it!

and yes, i know about hong seokcheon, and what happened to him, and whilst he's doing well now, it wasn't easy, and he endured so much. he clawed his career back, and it's incredibly inspiring, but.....

nowhere near enough progress has been made since.

i would never want key to have to face that in the current industry climate.

in regards to taemin!

i don't have adhd and i'm not on the spectrum in any way, so i would not at all feel comforable with making any judment on taemin in that way - but yes, i have seen a lot of discussion from neurodivergent people in regards to it.

it's definitely not something that's taboo to talk about in some cases, but, i would still say there's still a stigma in regards to neurodivergency in the international fandom. possibly moreso than kibum's sexuality?

some fans get sooooo angry when people with autism suggest taemin might have it too. again! it's not a negative thing!

anyway, i hope i answered your questions???? i don't know how well your translator picks up my all over the place way of talking lol

hope you have a good day/night! 💕

[aphverse-confessions]

piggybacking off of the other anon as someone who has watched all of mys.

jesson actually does attempt to improve upon her treatment of the werewolves as a minority group in later seasons. it's actually a pretty major theme post-s3 (mostly bc aaron is a openly a werewolf) and you can tell that jess was actually taking it seriously. s5 aph's major arc is recognizing how her assumptions aboht their culture were harmful and actively trying to be the werewolf equivalent of anti-racist.

BUT it absolutely isn't perfect and it does that fantasy racism thing where it views a predator/prey dynamic through the lense of irl oppression.

like, every ww is a descendant of a victim of the ultima's eyes, an extremely dangerous and potentially fatal curse for those affected. literally every ultima we meet has a kill count.

the audience is repeatedly lectured about how its wrong to view ww as dangerous and its a harmful stereotype. but also ww are canonically biologically superior to humans in nearly every way and s6 goes out of its way to show how much stronger and faster aph is just from turning.

katelyn distrusts werewolves because back in high-school, the alpha ww and his ww supremacist goons pummeled her little brother into a coma and sent his ass to the hospital for several months bc kacey tried standing up for aph when he heard that the group was plotting to physically harm her. katelyn is treated like an irrational bigot for her views by everyone she knows, who also went to the same high-school and should be aware of what happened.

there's a really on the nose comparison to the civil rights movement in this one episode where aaron and his pack are denied entry into a restaurant at starlight. the reason for the ban is due to repeated incidents of rowdy wws breaking glass and getting into fights and generally posing a physical threat to customer safety. the majority of the pack have participated in the breaking of glass on screen. they are surprised and appaled by this explanation.

sylvana, certified race fetished and latina woman, directly compares aph turning into a werewolf to cultural appropriation of latin americans. while i recognize jess is, herself, latina, and is entitled to make this metaphor based on her life experiences, however considering i have been latine since i was concieved, I'm entitled to say that it is a nonsense comparison. it is made worse by the reveal that aph has secretly been half werewolf this whole time and sylvanna is the only person who knew and said nothing.

(also in retrospect having a whole episode ehete aph wears fake ww ears and tail in her underwear for fetish reasons is yikes)

at one point in fcu zane calls aph a furry and she reacts like he just called her a slur. idk if its an anti-ww slur (at this point in the story both parties think aph is human) or a slur against people who fetishize wws, but the furslur exists and you have to know about it.

.

[blackparadinq]

I think stereotyping a whole group of people is incredibly dangerous. Me thinks. I think it’s dangerous to see all bigots or people on the right as overt, loud, gun toting asshole (for the most part) Americans. Me thinky. I think it’s dangerous to treat all people on the left as safe. I thinky-winky. I think we should look at things with more nuance than “[insert group]? Oh they’re all just [insert stereotype].” Because that’s a dangerous way of thinking. I think. Me thinks. Me thinking.

Assumptions based on preconceived notions about any group isn’t good, basically.

[the-life-of-a-herm]

To explain what identity determinism is, based on knowing the coiner personally and having discussed it with them, it is the practice of treating a label as not a collection of varied experiences but instead only as one experience. An example is when people say "transfem" they often are not inclusive of transfem experiences that fall outside of a "white perisex binary trans woman assigned male at birth and is going to take estrogen and get surgeries for transitioning" narrow experience. Impunkster had experienced this constantly, being harassed for often falling outside the narrow experiences of labels that should be expansive and varied by other queer people for years. It is because people tend to work backwards from a label and their assumptions of that label, so if someone does not align with the expected experiences of that label in any capacity, they are more likely to be harassed and fakeclaimed than people are to reflect on having bigoted expectations of what a label must be used for. This practice is most visible in how some perisex AMAB transfems have expressed hostility towards intersex and perisex AFAB transfems by often assuming they have the experiences of binary cis women and have privilege over the "actually trans" transfems, the stereotypes of different labels used by both active bigots and those not trying to be actively bigoted, and in the oversimplification of the experiences of others or assumptions their experiences cannot be complex.

Beautifully said! I couldn't really find the words to explain it well and my mind was too deteriorated to try and respond, yk? At such a point you know you won't explain something right and not admitting that isn't the best faith thing to do.

I tried to look for the coiners' blog, I have a link of one of their posts somewhere (they seemed really nice and chill), but I couldn't find them anymore. As I said in the previous reply about impunkster, it's really sad what happens to people who dare to speak out about shit in ACTIVIST SPACES of all things! People are incapable of acknowledging their own biases, they will do anything to make themselves look The Most Tolerant while also doing 0 work to deconstruct their own world view or be open minded at all.. I hate people.

[skill7spark04]

On: Stereotyping.

I will see people say that stereotyping is wrong. that it's racist, bigoted or sexist. However, I believe it's not toxic to identify someone based on stereotypes or traits, negative or positive. what is toxic is refusing to accept that they are different or forcing those stereotypes onto them. negative stereotypes are offensive, and probably shouldn't be brought up because of that. but it doesn't make them any less proven. Stereotypes are cultural identifying factors that make interactions easier. if I assume a Japanese person likes anime and start making conversation around it, I've circumvented the typical, usually awkward probing questions, and just gotten right into talking about what cool stuff Luffy did this season. does it make me racist for making an assumption based on that? I don't think so. because racism is based on DISCRIMINATION. I'm not hating them for liking anime, or using my stereotypes against them. now let's take that same scenario and they don't know what I'm talking about. if they are confused or don't know, I accept they aren't part of that stereotype and move on, maybe at most ad some clarification. but let's say I didn't accept it and kept pressuring it? refusing to accept that someone is different from the stereotypes is racist and toxic.

another thing that's considered rude, but isn't necessarily racist, but easily allows you to identify someone as racist, is calling out stereotypes. if I don't say "Im talking to you about anime because Japanese people typically like anime" there's nothing particularly toxic, but people don't like being profiled because they like feeling unique and different from other people. Racist people tend to not care or see this facet of it, concious or subconcious, and so they typically will straight up say that. don't take that as a rule though. if you were given a game to sort the population by race based on traits given and nothing else, you would have to use stereotypes. and sure, you'll get some people wrong, but for the most part, you'd score pretty high. at least above 70% I think. it's part of the human brain to see patterns. we can't blame ourselves for our cultures and races being different, and seeing the patterns that come with that, and using them to make interactions easier. if someone stereotyped me, I personally, as a human being, would laugh, correct them, and move on. or laugh, admit they're correct, and move on. if you disagree, I'd love to hear your takes on it! I welcome debates or corrections to stupid things I said, as Im bad at collecting my thoughts from time to time.

[deathlygristly]

Yeah, when people start hating on my beloved South, I'm like, "Oh, okay, you're really racist and also classist. Good to know."

Like I like to say about non-Southern racist white "liberals" - they say they don't see color because they literally do not see color.

I think my county is red on that map? I know my city is only 45% white or so based on the most recent census data, and our mayor, who I think is a damn good mayor, is a black woman.

So bigots on the internet will insist that everyone here is an extremely classist stereotype of a bigoted uneducated fundamentalist hick, that there are no systemic reasons for this region to be poorer or less educated, and that it's perfectly fine for us all to die of Covid/suffer under authoritarian governments/get instantly killed by nuclear bombs while people in their region are left to deal with the fallout/etc.

I grew up in the same town that Andy Griffith grew up in and that he based Mayberry on, okay, and nothing in my experience of living here in the South, either in my hometown or in my current city, has ever reflected the nasty hateful stereotypes and assumptions I see online.

You don't become a decent person by hating other groups of people. Virtue isn't measured by who you hate. Designating an Other, projecting what you see as your negative qualities on to them, and loudly hating on them is of course a time honored human tradition, but it's not one of the best human qualities and it's something to work on if you see it in yourself.

So, hey, you know, maybe you've never been here and you've never been exposed to actual Southerners and you're just repeating what you hear in your "liberal" social groups. Okay, that's human, it's a thing humans do, it's not something to hate yourself forever about. But if you recognize that in yourself, you can make an effort to learn more about the South, to get to know people who live here, to work on exposing yourself to us so we aren't as easy to dismiss as a mass dehumanized Other.

You can stop those thoughts when they come up and go, no, okay, humans are human everywhere that humans live, all the land that humans have lived on has witnessed human atrocities, the land that someone lives on does not make them a good or bad person, and people who are currently living on a bit of land live in the systems and environments created by the actions of powerful people who used to live on that land, but they are not defined by the actions of powerful people who used to live there. They are also not defined by the actions of the most powerful people who happen to live in that same region now.

Also actually just last night my husband and I were eating at a local soul food restaurant, and on the TV in the restaurant there was a news story about new members of our local police force touring a civil rights museum, and someone who was involved in the program talking about how they hoped to send the message that okay, this is something you can change, something you can do better than your ancestors.

It's always possible to change and to work to be better than your ancestors.

U.S. Counties where the African American population is 25% or more

[maxwell-grant]

Charlie Chan. Who is fascinating, because he was created explictly to be an anti-Yellow Peril character. Unlike most Chinese characters of the time, he's both intelligent, physically capable, and unambiguously heroic. In the novels, he's simultaneously proud of being Chinese AND proud of being an American citizen. He gives orders and instructions to white people, and the narrative treats this as perfectly normal and acceptable. There's a bit in the first book, when an attempt to trap the..(1/2)

(cont'd)There's a bit in the first book where an attempt to trap the protagonist fails, because a message supposedly from Charlie clearly isn't because Charlie's English isn't broken, it's like poetry. Etc. The movies made him more stereotypical, & played by white actors in yellowface, but still, he's a heroic Chinese man, who is as capable and patriotic as any white man. Nowadays, he's thought of as racist caricature. Which he is, but still, it makes one think.

I'm not nearly as acquainted with Charlie Chan as you are (and I definitely suspected he was less racist in the original books because that's nearly always the norm when it comes to pulp characters) but yeah, that "Which he is" is forever going to be the most unfortunate and saddest part of it all when it comes to Charlie Chan. For all the virtues that can be bestowed on Charlie Chan, for everything great that the character had going for him and inspired, the fact that the least offensive image of the character I could find to put here for illustration's sake is from the Hanna-Barbera cartoon kinda exemplifies the big elephant in the room when it comes to Charlie.

Charlie Chan is a great example of two things: One is the way progress is never a fixed quantity and often what was progressive and forward-thinking in it's time can become something outdated and backwards and downright offensive given enough time, and the 2nd is my constant stressing that this is all the more incentive to reclaim the pulps and either highlight or fix aspects of them, instead of dismissing every aspect of them based on the preconception that everything about it's history is unforgivably bigoted and must be handled with the nuance of a sledgehammer.

I stress time and time again the need to highlight and understand the prejudices that went into pulps, because either ignoring them or wielding them as a weapon to attack them does no favors to anyone. The pulps weren't exceptionally bigoted - look at literally any medium in it's time period and you'll find bigotry and prejudice and hatred - and they were exceptional in the number of POC heroes and heroines. Pulps were a medium of experimentation and cheap entertainment that gave way to much, much more varied kinds of protagonists than were permitted in films, serials, novels, comics and radio serials of the day. Imagine if no one was allowed to bring up and discuss superheroes without mentioning the Superman Slap-a-Jap posters or the Captain Marvel story so horrifingly racist it was recounted by an American ambassador after it deeply offended a friend's son and a major influence on the 1950s anti-comic trials. "Pulp fiction had deeply, unforgivingly racist depictions that deserve intense scrutiny and cannot be ignored" and "Pulp fiction was significantly ahead of every other medium at the time in regards to authors and editors striving to publish stories about heroic POCs, this cannot be dismissed and is something that needs to be perpetuated" are not exclusive facts. "A product of it's time" is not an excuse and never was, but it's a fact nevertheless.

Every time someone speaks favorably of Charlie Chan in any capacity, they have to start with a long preface of everything positive that the character had going for him. Yes, he's a deliberate subversion of the Yellow Peril, he's a heroic protagonist, he's plump and good-natured and humorous but far from a joke, he's friendly and pleasant and well-educated and wise, he's a good dad and family man and a terrifically sharp detective who's so good at his job he gets called to solve crimes all over the world, and none of these traits are apparent to people who have to google the character and repeteadly see a white man in awful make-up into every single image of the character, who watch the movies and cringe at the broken English. It's hardly relevant in the face of all the Asian-American critics who acknowledge the character's virtues but rightfully point out that this fortune-cookie spouting caricature, acting subservient to whites and whose virtues are based around his proximity to a white American ideal, doesn't represent them and they shouldn't pretend it does.

Which isn't to say that to like Charlie Chan is "wrong", a lot of East Asians love Charlie and the character's obviously got fans in Asian Americans. It's a complicated subject and I obviously cannot begin to vouch in a subject so heavily based around perceptions I cannot experience. And I deeply detest the idea of speaking for others on their particular experiences on this kind of matter, which is something Americans do a lot everytime they talk about representation in media.

So instead, I'm going to tackle this on a roundabout manner by going on an unrelated tangent to bring up an example of representation that isn't quite representative of what it's supposed to be, has a lot of issues that have been dissected by critics among the people it was supposed to represent, and none of that stopped the character from being popular and beloved and from being claimed anyway. And it's a Brazilian fighting game character, which means it's completely within my ballpark.

Yeah, obviously Blanka doesn't look like anyone who lives in Brazil (whatever resemblance he bears to redheaded jungle protectors of Brazilian folklore is purely accidental). Obviously neither Jimmy nor Blanka are Brazilian names or even exist in the Portuguese lexicon. Obviously there are issues in Street Fighter's approach to representation across the board, sure, and I'd actually say Laura is much worse than Blanka in that regard (again, my opinion, obviously not universal), but the fact remains that Blanka is and has always been pretty controversial. Obviously there's Brazilians who took offense to Blanka and they weren't wrong to do so, and I obviously do not speak for everyone here, that goes without saying.

Obviously the idea that Brazil's major representative in a global cast of characters, the first big name Brazilian character in videogames, is going to be a freakish jungle monster who roars and bites faces has problems, as is the fact that all the others get to be regular people representing fighting styles from their countries while Blanka doesn't. None of the Brazilian SF characters represent Capoeira, which is kinda shitty to be honest. And there's a whole stereotype of Brazil as a backwards land of beasts and savages that Blanka's creation played into. There's no shortage of ground to criticize Blanka's representation and Ono actually apologized in an interview once, but then he learned one teensy little thing:

Street Fighter is very popular on Brazil. Would you like to leave a message to the fans from there?

"Ono: Yes, I'm aware. At the time of Street Fighter II a lot of the arcade machines produced went there, so I knew we had lots of fans there. A message to Brazilians, well, I'd like to apologize. I know Blanka's a weird character and I don't want any Brazilian to feel uncomfortable with that.

When Blanka was conceived, we knew there were forests in Brazil, and so we thought he could look like that. I was actually kinda nervous knowing I'd meet Brazilian journalists. Still, this is the first Street Fighter in ten years, so we'd like all fans to play, including Brazilians, which are many.

Thanks. Well, but you should know that Brazilians love Blanka

"Ono: Ah, good! I was scared of getting beat up if I ever went to São Paulo! (laughs)"

(That's from a 2012 tv special called The Greatest Brazilian of All Time where over a million viewers voted to elect whoever they wanted, and Blanka was going to win. He was polling ahead of Aryton Senna and PELÉ, fucking Pelé, yes this happened. He wasn't even disqualified for being a cartoon character, it was an open poll, he was disqualified due to canon stating he had been born in Thailand, which I think may have been retconned since then. Again, A MILLION BRAZILLIANS voted for this contest, and Blanka was going to win.)

Blanka is great and sweet and lovable, he made the best out of the incredible shitty hands fate dealt him and became a cool and strong green man who shoots lightning and flies, a self-taught warrior who rides whales and planes to fighting tournaments, and he loves his mom and friends and kicks ass and after he's done he dances in joy and gives the kids of his village piggyback rides, and Brazil loves him. He doesn't represent any existing person or fighting style, he's rooted in a negative stereotype and incorrect assumptions, he's not even really Brazilian, and he's our boy and nobody can take him away from us.

No criticism of Blanka, no matter how in-depth or even right it is, is ever going to affect that, because regardless of what was wrong or misguided and offensive about him, we claimed him and loved him so throughly that Capcom kept playing up Brazilian representation in every subsequent game post Alpha, and because of Blanka's impact and reception in such a big game, Brazilian characters have become a staple of fighting games, and that's how we got much more diverse representatives in those games. Fighting games have more Brazilian representation than LITERALLY ANYTHING ELSE on media not produced here. It started as BAD representation, with way less thought put into it than Charlie Chan, and it still mattered to a lot of Brazilians who reclaimed it and made it better than it was ever intended to be, and as a response to it, it gradually became better. 

Progress is not a fixed quantity, it's an uphill battle, and it's not unwinnable. Everything's gotta start somewhere.

The Good Asian is a ongoing comic that I think does the best job I've seen yet of handling an Asian American detective protagonist, which is not really a high bar in the first place, and more to the point, The Good Asian illustrates the 2nd part: the reclaiming. The Good Asian deals a lot with the realities that a 1930s Asian-American detective would run into, the strained circumstances and relationships between said character and the world around him, because it's born from an author who took a look at Charlie Chan and Mr Moto and the like and recognized the potential in those stories that could not be fulfilled in it's time period by the people writing said stories. 

The Good Asian pays little reverence to Charlie Chan, but it acknowledges that it cannot exist without Charlie Chan, and it reclaims the Charlie Chan premise at the hands of someone more adequately equipped to tell a gripping story that goes places none of Charlie's contemporaries would ever go. Regardless of how good or bad of representation Charlie Chan was, Charlie Chan mattered and was beloved and inspired a better example for others to improve on or rebel against.

I desperately wish that I could google Charlie Chan without having to look at a guy in yellowface, and the ONLY way that's going to happen is if the character ever gets meaningfully brought back and reclaimed for good by people who can meaningfully tackle the character and present him as he should have always been presented.

And then, I imagine it would be a lot easier to show people on how swell Charlie really is. A true, positive role model and hero, who no longer has to look like a gross cartoon to be able to exist at all. Who can finally be what he was always meant to be, and always was deep down.

[a-roguish-gambit]

Honestly really sick and tired of the idea that religious=bigoted and athiest=progressive

Like, yes a large portion of conservatives are religious but you know who else is? The minorities they hate.

Y'all remember that a lot of the big anti sjws during gamer gate were atheist anti religious YouTubers right? And those are the same guys complaining about wokeness now, right?

Also ...queer people can be religious. Hell, Marsha P Johnson was a Methodist Christian till her death. The whole damn point of nightcrawler being Catholic despite his demonic looks is to show you can't pigeon hole people based on stereotypes and assumptions including assuming religious individuals are inherently bigoted or that queer individuals are inherently faithless....

“Nightcrawler would homophobic-“

Excuse me, what are you even talking about?

Kurt may be a devote Catholic, but he’s also a horny little freak and he has two moms and he’s also a mutant which is part of a oppressed group so I don’t know why you would think he’d have any prejudices

[warrioreowynofrohan]

Conservatism in Brandon Sanderson’s Writings; or, Reflections on Revolution in the Cosmere

I’ve only read The Stormlight Archive and Warbreaker, so this is based on an incomplete picture, but the combination of those two have given me an impression of Sanderson’s ideas on social structures, appropriate and inappropriate responses to institutional injustice, and revolution. These ideas strike me as being essentially conservative; I’m tempted to say Burkean (hence my alternate title), but I don’t know Burke’s writings well enough to be sure if that’s correct.

To be clear: this is not a ‘call-out’ post. I personally disagree with some of Sanderson’s themes, but I’m trying to understand, engage with, and debate them, not flatly condemn them.

My interpretations here are primarily based on two storylines: Warbreaker, and Kaladin and Moash’s arcs in Words of Radiance. Both of these two storylines, and their resolutions, seem grounded in the following political ideas:

1) Injustice and cruelty are the result of bad, or flawed, people; not of bad systems. And people can change. The solution to a system that seems unjust is to improve the people within it, not to tear it down.

2) Those who seek revolution are basically self-serving and vengeful, not interested in the good of others or that of society.

3) Radicals and those who seek revolution have a blinkered political perspective, flattening societies and people into stereotypes rather than acknowledging their complexity.

1. People, not systems

For the first point: both Alethkar and the world of Warbreaker have systems that are fundamentally founded on entrenched and institutionalized inequality. In Alethkar it is the division between lighteyes and darkeyes (and the different ranks thereof). In Warbreaker it is the position of Returned, who can only exist by daily taking life-force/spirit from others - typically from the poor. Nonetheless, the narrative justifies the maintenance of both systems, primarily on the basis that the ruling classes contain good people (e.g. Dalinar, Adolin; Siri, Susebron, Lightsong); one of the major themes in TWOK and WOR revolves around forcing Kaladin to recognize that some lighteyes are good, and others, like Elhokar, have the desire and capacity to improve.

The basic political conflict is, to me, expressed by two lines following Kaladin’s (second) defeat of a Shardbearer. The first is Dalinar’s, when he states what Kaladin should do about institutionalized discrimination against darkeyes: “You want to change that?...Be the kind of man that others admire, whether they be lighteyed or dark...That will change the world.” This fundamentally rubs me the wrong way - it’s the Booker T. Washington theory of how to address racial inequality, and history has proven time and time and time again that it doesn’t work. If Kaladin did that, people would say, “Wow, that Kaladin, what an unusually exceptional darkeyes!” and continue to treat the rest of darkeyes just the same.

The second line is Kaladin’s when he refuses the shardblade that would make him lighteyed: “I don’t want my life to change because I’ve become a lighteyes. I want the lives of people like me...like I am now...to change.” This, I completely agree with - but later events would suggest the narrative may not. (And the fact that Kaladin doesn’t used his increased status in later books to push for change on this front frustrates me.)

To give another example: when Sadeas treats bridgemen as cannon fodder and their lives as utterly disposable, the problem is treated as being that Sadeas is a bad person (and facing certai. tactical constraints) - not the fact that Sadeas and the other brightlords has the power to treat darkeyes’ lives as disposable in the first place. When Kaladin is imprisoned for challenging Amaram to a duel - in effect, imprisoned for being darkeyed, since a high-nahn lighteyes would not have been punished for issuing such a challenge - this is treated as Kaladin’s fault, not the fault of a system that treats him as having fundamentally less worth than Amaram.

There’s no focus in the books on getting rid of the unjust system - by any means, violent or non-violent, bottom-up or top-down - just on having the ruling class become better people, which is expected to alleviate some problems without fundamentally altering the social structure.

2. Revolutionaries are selfish

The most open expression of this idea is in TWOK, where Moash says outright that he’d like to keep the same system but flipped, with darkeyes on the top and lighteyes on the bottom. Vivenna’s endeavours towards revolution are also portrayed as driven by bigotry against Hallandran culture. And Kalladin’s desire to remove Elhokar is shown as driven by a desire for revenge, with any larger goals or motives being mere rationalization. Likewise, the main antagonist of Warbreaker is shown as having destructive, not constructive goals.

While this is ceratinly true of some revolutionary movements, in Sanderson’s works it is shown as invariably true, with no revolutionary characters being driven by genuine justice or the desire to improve people’s lives. This provides a stark contrast with the number of virtuous characters who are shown depicting or upholding the existing social systems.

3. Radicals see society in shallow and stereotypical terms

This is a big part of the characterization of both Vivenna and Kaladin. For Vivenna, the main example is that she initially sees her people - from a largely rural nation - as fundamentally virtuous, and is horrified by the ‘criminals’ they have to live among in the slum. When she’s made to see that those ‘criminals’ are in fact members of her people, she sees them as victims tragically corrupted by the terrible (urban) culture they’ve immigrated to. She generalizes; she doesn’t want to recognize the fact that some of her people prefer life in the city - despite marginalization and poverty - to life in their country of birth, and wouldn’t want to return. She spends most of the book being gradually forced to break down her stereotypes of her culture as good and Hallandran society as corrupt.

Kaladin, for his part, continually stereotypes lighteyes. In his youth, it’s a kind of internalized caste-ism - he’s constantly disappointed and mistreated by the lighteyes around him, and he keeps on thinking that the people doing it aren’t ‘real’ lighteyes, ‘real’ lighteyes are noble and honorable and he’ll get to fight for one someday. After being betrayed one too many times, he switches to thinking that all lighteyes, invariably, are corrupt, exploitative and evil; it takes a lot to get him to trust Dalinar, and for well after that he continues stereotyping every lighteyes he meets (Adolin, Renarin, Shallan) as spoiled and uncaring even after evidence to the contrary. Even in Oathbringer stereotypes are his default reaction to lighteyes he doesn’t know. He also tends to ignore the fact of major differences in variations in status and life with the two main castes, by nahn and dahn. It’s treated as one of his more persistent character flaws, and contrasted with the more open and merit-based attitudes of the main lighteyed characters.

I’m not really comfortable with this portrayal. Kaladin’s entire life, and everything he’s suffered, have been defined and determined by being lighteyes. He doesn’t have the luxury of being ‘eye-colour-blind’ . Does he make invalid assumptions? Yes, especially about Shallan. But Kaladin thinking of Adolin as a spoiled brat and Adolin calling Kaladin ‘bridgeboy’ are not the same kind of thing; calling someone from a discriminated-against group (who is an adult of about your age) ‘boy’ has implications that both the author and reader are aware of; it is, intentionally or not, an expression of power and superiority, and it is quite justified that it would guve Kaladin a negative impression of Adolin! More broadly, mistrusting lighteyes is basically a trauma-induced defense mechanism for Kaladin, and understandable given what he’s been through. Adolin’s thinking, early in Words of Radiance, that “he was all for treating men with respect and honor regardless of eye shade, but the Almighty had put some men in command and others beneath them; it was simply the natural order of things” is to my mind far more offensive than Kaladin’s personality hostility to lighteyes, but the only main character who the narrative treats/criticizes as being bigoted on the basis of eye color is Kaladin. Adolin’s treated by the narrative as a great person who Kaladin needs to be nicer to, and the aforementioned attitude is never addressed again; it’s not part of his character arc like Kaladin’s view of lighteyes is.

In short, Sanderson’s works are strongly grounded in the idea that the quality of a society is grounded in the personal goodness of its people (including the goodness of its ruling class) more than in the creation of just and equal social structures; and that attributting a society’s problems to structures that create and perpetuate injustice rather than to the choices of individuals is basically wrongheaded. I agree with him on the importance of individual goodness and choices; I disagree with his minimization of the need to dismantle unjust social structures.

[madtomedgar]

a. i cannot begin to imagine how sick and angry i would be if someone shot my mom in a targeted hate crime and then i went online to see strangers insisting that she must have been a sex worker and/or traffiker and/or traffiking victim based on nothing but stereotypes and the deranged words of her murderer. so maybe think about who might be reading what you type before you hit post here.

b. the extremely racist and misogynistic assumption that asian women who work in massage therapy are sex workers, or that asian-owned businesses that offer massage also offer sex, is what got these women killed. repeating it as if it’s neutral is not helping. my mentor’s ex-wife almost got deported because a cop came into her salon and tried to buy sex. when she insisted they didn’t do that there and told him to leave, he called ICE. She got to stay in the country because she and my mentor got green-card married and is now a citizen and thriving, but these are the consequences for asian women of this assumption. Stop repeating it. It’s not supporting sex workers, and it sure as hell isn’t supporting Asian women or the victim’s families.

c. how do you imagine all the asian women who work in massage therapy and who have had close-calls with (white) men who assume they are sex workers and refuse to be told otherwise feel seeing self-styled “allies” regurgitate these racist lies and assumptions? how would you feel if, in response to the violent killing of people that very easily could have been you, people claiming to support you repeated the very same nasty stereotypes that had been weaponized against you and used to justify people hurting you and, in this particular case, someone killing your sisters, and insisting anyone who argued with them was the *real* bigot?? I guarantee you you would NOT feel supported!

[zorilleerrant]

the opinions “this joke is transphobic” and “this is not a transphobic joke” can and usually should coexist.

you can tell if a joke is transphobic by swapping the gender of the subject of the joke. would the joke be less funny if this were a woman? a man? probably yes. which means the joke is based in some part on gender stereotypes, making it based in transphobia. sometimes trans people are upset by jokes like this. that’s reasonable and you should stop mocking them for it. this is, to be sure, the same rule for misogyny - I hate to break it to you but transphobia and misogyny are inextricably linked and you do need to fight one to fight the other.

now, if the joke is still funny (albeit less) after swapping the person’s gender, then it’s not a transphobic joke; the joke is not predicated on supporting transphobia. this is why jokes about nonbinary people usually fall flat; if you made the joke about a man or woman, it’s suddenly clear you’re just mocking people. the joke is predicated instead on social values and expectations, which are, unfortunately, transphobic, but the joke is not itself supporting transphobia, which is an important distinction.

there is, of course, the third category, which I’ll call ownvoices for simplicity’s sake. and as a rule of thumb we should not be making any commentary on autobio humor about marginalized identity. and broader categorical humor should really be an intracommunity discussion, so y’kno. leave all of that be for the most part.

but yes. many jokes are not intended to poke fun at trans people, but still do take some of the situational humor from structural transphobia. there’s nothing you can really do about that but fight transphobia, and trying to crush those jokes is just going to make that harder overall (by cutting out liberal humorists and reducing what’s available to conservatives). but it’s still important to recognize that there are indeed some transphobic elements and not be mean to people who feel hurt by that.

~if you remove x bigoted assumption and the joke isn’t funny, then it’s a bigoted joke for bigots. if it’s still funny but less funny then the joke isn’t the bigoted part but it does reference bigoted parts of society and might make people sad. congratulations you’re both right! and both annoying

[fatphobiabusters]

In case anyone doesn't realize what this post is talking about, this is referring to how many weight science studies "just happen" to demonize fat people while "just happening" to be funded by weight loss corporations. And then when you look at the methodology, there are countless validity errors, logical fallacies, biases caked into the entire study, and purposeful misinterpretations to get the results that help weight loss corporations make their billions of dollars.

A very common example of this is how many of these studies will claim they've found a successful weight loss method, but their evidence is extremely and literally knowingly exaggerated. Stuff like ignoring that the majority of the participants dropped out of the study (a major red flag), pretending a "significant amount of weight loss" is 10 pounds or less despite these corporations preying on people who would need to lose 100+ to have the skinny bodies society demands of us, and then claiming success because participants kept the weight off for a year despite decades and decades of research showing that 95% of people who lose weight will regain all of the weight they lost within three to five years. So any weight science study that doesn't follow up with the participants longer than five years down the line doesn't prove shit.

Another very common example of bullshit in almost every weight science study is the major use of the "correlation equals causation" logical fallacy where the study will find a relationship between two variables and just assume variable A caused variable B without looking at the swath of other factors affecting that relationship or even considering if variable B is the independent variable instead of variable A.

"Fatness causes [blank] illness!" Okay, but what mediating and moderating variables did you factor into your study? Did you look at whether fatphobia affected that correlation at all? Did you consider whether it could be because fat people experience tons of deadly medical neglect and abuse? How fat people aren't given needed medical exams and are just told to lose weight? How we're encouraged to have eating disorders, to starve, to yo-yo diet for years on end? How we experience doctors who literally refuse to touch our bodies to do so much as even give us a shot? How we often wait until the very last moment to finally see a doctor about a problem because we don't want to be discriminated against and thus go to the doctor when the problem is ten times worse and harder to treat than it had been from the start? How we're denied service? How the worth of our lives is literally debated in the medical industry, including during covid? How we're pressured to have weight loss surgeries that are deadly, cause major life-long complications, and don't even work in the long term either? How infrastructure and even medical equipment are only made to accommodate thin people? How doctors aren't even trained on how to provide healthcare for fat people? How fat people aren't included in clinical trials for medicines and vaccines, making those needed drugs less effective on fat bodies without even explaining that to the consumer on the box?

Did you consider the factor of fat people being more likely to live in poverty and have lower socioeconomic status? Did you ask whether the fat participants had that illness before they were fat? How many assumptions based on bigoted stereotypes did you include in the study? Thin people literally never develop this illness too? What previous studies did you use as precedent and evidence for your own? Did those studies also have validity errors? Do you call evidence of fat people with good health a "paradox" so you don't have to worry about other studies contradicting yours? How many of your fat participants experience major stress due to fatphobia as well as other forms of oppression? What was the mental health of your fat participants who are harassed and discriminated against every day? How did mental health affect your results? How did you phrase your questions? Did you rely on self-reported data for stuff like the participant's food intake when we live in a society that punishes anyone who doesn't conform to fatphobic norms and diet culture? What was even the purpose of your study? The hypothesis? The conflicts of interest? The number of participants? Were your hypothesis and purpose based on fatphobic biases from the beginning?

Did you even create a purpose and hypothesis that allowed for the possibility of fatness not being the "cause" of what you were studying?

If you analyze the vast majority of weight science studies, they don't hold water as soon as you look even an inch closer. This often applies to nutrition science too, which is why you'll see a news headline about apples being "bad" for you and then the next week you'll see a news headline that says apples help fight cancer. The weight and nutrition science fields are full to the brim with bias, unethical practices, and horrible methodology because demonizing fat people and promoting diet culture is a business that gives a profit of hundreds of billions of dollars—a profit that is increasing every year because it's the best gig imaginable.

After all, how do you not make money on a business strategy that revolves around selling people a product that doesn't work and then blaming user error for the product's failure so you can make lifelong customers of people desperate to escape the oppression and self hatred you intentionally devised?

-Mod Worthy