#please note when I say discourse I don’t mean racism

[elfroot-and-laurels]

there’s so many things I would like to say about my mental health and how I’ll be engaging with tumblr, fandom, and etc as a result, but I also don’t know how important any of that is, or how much I owe to anyone—especially myself—when saying “I’m changing and I’m changing in multiple ways.” I don’t know if I need to explain it, at the end of the day.

all I’ll say is that when life feels pointless, I don’t think I can find meaning by turning to crit and discourse, just as much as mindless positivity does nothing for me. I want to continue engaging with art and writing and creative pursuits. I will. but I am burnt out on arguments and defending what one likes, I’m burnt out on meta and other things and that should be fine. it’s my blog and my life and I will cope with my depression as I can. and yes this is partially me writing this post like a diary in order to work through my thoughts, but I also think it’s important for me to communicate the boundaries I want to have in place on my blog going forward.

much love to everyone I’ve known through the years. as hard as things may be right now, I wouldn’t trade the friends, acquaintances, mutuals, family I’ve made along the way.

[pumpkinpaix]

It was only when starting MDZS that I came across the terms “seme” and “uke.” To me these categories seemed too rigid and simplistic compared to actual gay dynamics I have observed. I wanted to ask whether such categorisation is truly reflected in the way gay Chinese people behave or is it just a stereotype?

okay so -- there’s a lot to unpack here. I’ve been sitting on this ask for months at this point but let’s give it a shot. to forewarn you, I found this ask really upsetting for a number of reasons, and I am. really kind of at the end of my patience with this fandom, so this is going to be harsh. please bear with me if you are in a space to do so.

so. seme and uke are japanese terms that come with their own genre conventions and such, even though they roughly mean top and bottom. you can read a little bit about it here under the “seme and uke” section on the yaoi wikipedia page.

the equivalent chinese terms are 攻 (gong1) and 受 (shou4). you might notice that the hanzi/kanji used are the same as seme and uke because i’m fairly sure the chinese terms were derived from the japanese ones. there’s a lot of cultural crossover in ACGN (anime, comics, games, novels) fandoms.

the use of seme/uke vs gong/shou does matter when it comes to anglophone spaces. because one of the facets of anti-asian racism in anglophone spaces is the way that people treat all (east) asians as interchangeable, the choice of which language to use for which media is important, even if the terms are linguistically equivalent.

it's a small thing, but even just saying gong/shou instead of seme/uke in this ask would have softened the blow a little. all of this information is easily obtained with a quick google search of "seme and uke" and "chinese version of seme and uke" and a little bit of analytical thinking. before you ask a random stranger on the internet to dispense cultural information, please do the minimum of research on your own.

with regards to the actual question:

I know this ask is old so maybe a lot has changed for you anon, but regarding this ask specifically, I’m going to ask you to think very hard about what you’re asking, who you're asking, and why you're asking it next time. for a start, I am not a gay chinese man. i have been very clear that I am abc, and i live and grew up in the states. That's not equivalent to "a chinese person who happens to be fluent in english". we are very culturally distinct, and there is absolutely no way that my background gives me any inherently privileged insight into the lives and culture of gay chinese men in china. why are you asking me to speak for them? why are you asking me to tell you about them? gay chinese men behave like individual humans. i am not your convenient tour guide into all things chinese just because I speak english. moreover, please remember that your experience, like mine, is limited. whatever observed "actual gay dynamics" you're talking about are a product of your specific position, location, age, culture etc. and it would be absurd to extrapolate your observations to generalize how all gay people interact with one another even in your specific culture.

I will be very honest: the tone of this ask evokes purity wank bait because of the wider context of the question. there has been a Lot of discourse surrounding the “roles” in danmei in anglophone fandom that essentially boils down to fujoshi discourse redux, which often has a lot of racist underpinnings and comes from an extremely white, western, misogynist, and identity politics-heavy perspective. i put links and such about fujoshi discourse in this ask if you aren't familiar, but I want you to understand that, regardless of your intent, my initial impression of this question (because of the context of these discussions) was uncomfortably close to "I'm better than those oppressive, uneducated straight chinese women who unrealistically fetishize gay men, right?" I am choosing to believe that this wasn't what you meant, but. to draw an analogy: would you ask me this question about twinks and bears in US gay culture? would you ask me if those labels/roles/categories were representative of the way US gay men behaved? what about top/bottom? if not, then why are you asking me about chinese gay men as if they're a different species?

if you can understand that top/bottom or bear/twink are not representative categorizations (though there are, of course, people who happily fall into them, self-identify as them, label themselves as such etc), why are you holding gong/shou to a higher standard?

I get that we're all in different places re: our cultural knowledge, but just. look, if you're coming to me with a question like this, the least you could do me is the courtesy of ten minutes of googling before you hit me with a racist microaggression right out the gate on a sensitive topic. As I said, I don't think you meant harm, but please try to be more aware in the future, okay?

(please do not dogpile anon in the notes, it's not constructive, thanks)

if you are curious about the lives of queer folk in china, there is plenty of interesting information out there in english as well. here's an article to get you started.

[aruthlessblackthorn]

Something to Address

Disclaimer: I have nothing to be jealous of when I deleted my instagram account months ago, but I am genuinely upset at the situation. The fandom (and Cassie) deserves to know the truth.

If you’ve read Cassie’s newsletter this morning (or yesterday, depending on time), then you know she’s started her promotional project for Chain of Iron, called The Letter Game. I won’t go into too much detail because the premise of the idea isn’t what’s important-- it’s about who is involved. 

I’m nervous to talk about this but this has to be talked about. For Thursday, tsc.updates on instagram is doing one of the promotional pieces. But if you know who runs the account, then you might know they’re also the person who ran shadowsconfess. And if you were around when that account existed, then you know there was a lot (and I mean A LOT) of controversy that steamed from almost every confession post made. 

When shadowsconfess was a thing, there was a lot of discourse surrounding the controversial things that were shared. One of the biggest things was their hate for Jem, and from that came a lot of people who sought out shadowsconfess as their gateway to be hateful and bigoted towards Jem (and many other characters, specifically POC). Now, I am not saying someone isn’t allowed to dislike a character, everyone is entitled to their opinions, but what I am saying is that shadowsconfess didn’t check those hateful confessions, like the racist ones, or the sexist ones, and it honestly played such a huge role in ruining the fandom and community. Arguments were happening left and right, and it was hard to remain neutral especially when it came to differing opinions (especially about Will, it was considered awful if you disliked him). 

Here is an example of what I mean by allowing bigoted confessions (coloring out usernames for obvious reasons):

Overtime, shadowsconfess would post other opinions of theirs, specifically about their heavy dislike of Cassandra Clare. One of their biggest things was how they hated her, how they were a firm believer of separating the art from the artist. Which is fine, but given the fact that they’re currently working with CC... make it make sense. Shit doesn’t add up.  

They were also known for having the scoop on what CC feels towards her characters, such as her disliking Will (prob because of the CP2 epilogue and jessa being canon in the future books). Going back to the hate on Jem, they has a history of disliking POC characters. Like Maia and Alastair, the former reminding her of someone (same argument made against Jem) and the latter being because he’s a bully and not wanting redemption for him. Like I said, it’s okay to dislike a character but this is a pattern. A racist/prejudiced one. 

There’s also this on their tumblr where they try and compare Alastair’s suffering from racism (he is half-Persian) to his bullying of James Herondale having demon blood in his veins as to being the same thing. Idk what to make of it, but it’s fucking weird. I’m sorry, but that’s not the same thing. Not at all.

When they deleted shadowsconfess and made tsc.updates, they kept their tellonym. And here they went along with others making fun of Cassandra Clare’s appearance, where they berated Alastair’s character, etc. 

There have been other instances where they have been awful, such as comparing Cassie to h*tler and jumping on the bandwagon of hating her because of the incest plotline in TMI. Many people I know have gotten into an argument with her and/or their friends over these issues, and for the most part we’ve asked that a lot of this hate and negativity to stop. But there has been a bruise left on the TSC fandom because of things like this, and now CC has her promoting Chain of Iron, which leads into this point:

I am not making this post to be spiteful, or to “re-hash old feuds,” but instead I am pointing out how unfair it is that someone who claims to hate Cassandra Clare and has caused a lot of damage to this fanbase gets to work with her. There are plenty of fans who would die to have been part of this project, and unfortunately this has turned into one of those things that happens when someone doesn’t research a person they collaborate with. There are a bunch of other things that have been said and done but I know I can’t bring them up without proper proof, but I hope what I have shown here is enough. 

I have been wanting to talk about this since I read CC’s newsletter this morning, but I am nervous to post this due to the way I’ve been treated when calling tsc.updates/shadowsconfess out on their bs in the past. I don’t care that they don’t post confessions anymore, but point still stands that there has been harm done. And on an obvious note, don’t send hate to them. Instead hold them accountable for their actions. Because that’s what this post is for. 

So @cassandraclare , if you read this, please reconsider working with them in the future. 

[mostly-mundane-atla]

Got it. What about Inuit, Yup’ik and Inupiaq stereotypes? Are there a lot of harmful ones to avoid? I do know you shouldn’t make eating meat their entire personality, but what else?

Okay, this is going to get dark, so if you need to blacklist any content warnings (mine are tagged as "[insert content here] mention", do that before reading and if you need me to tag anything specific, please tell me and avoid this post until I get to it.

And again: Disclaimer that simply having an eskimo coded character fall into these stereotypes is not inherently racist or wrong. Keep this in mind as writers of color, and thereby Native writers, often get a lot of shit for writing our experiences as we feel them. Not to mention, yelling at someone trying to do justice to a dark topic, even if they don't succeed, is a shitty thing to do. Some of these have subtextual backing in canon. Remember that although we are looked down on for crimes, wrongs, or unpleasantness we're assumed to have commited, it's the members of our community who suffer most for it. There is value in understanding the pain that comes from the community that's supposed to protect you, and I don't believe the writers of the series had any malicious intentions toward us for writing characters that fall into any of these stereotypes. Recognize the nuance or get off my blog and find someone else to back up your discourse.

I'm going to use the term Native in this context. Natives come from many different cultures and cannot be assumed to be the same, but many of these stereotypes are used against more than just Inuit, Inupiat, and Yup'ik peoples. This is why I find it to be the most appropriate term in this context. I will add my understanding of where these stereotypes came from and why they're harmful, but I am only one person and a full understanding of the topic requires more than one point of view.

"Natives are drunks." The United States used alcohol on Natives the same way Britain used opium on China. They introduced it to us and blamed addiction on our own "weakness of character." This assumption of alcoholism carries with it assumptions of untrustworthiness. For a real life example: I was on a grand jury (a jury that decides whether a case is worth taking to court) years ago and one case was an older Native man accusing his brother of physically assaulting him. For some reason, a nearly all-white jury was deemed to be a jury of this man's peers, and two or three white men violently insisted that it shouldn't be brought to court because it happened at a party and therefore it was just some alcoholics from the village wasting a judge's time. Eventually, after some discussion about how no alcohol was mentioned, it was decided the case should be presented to a judge. I would also like to point out that the Native man in question was entirely sober, well put-together, spoke more cohesively than other cases that day, and had a bad limp.

"Natives are child abusers/molesters." This one actually links to the first stereotype mentioned, and a lot of what I've said on this blog about how abuse perpetuates. There was a lot of physical, mental, and, yes, sexual abuse in the US run schools, especially the Christian ones and boarding schools. (I've heard people mentioning that the priests would more often target the boys because they couldn't get pregnant.) When one gets regularly exposed to this sort of thing, they come to accept it as normal. This normalizing of abuse is bad enough for the one person, but it also affects the way they interact with others when put in similar situations as the abuser. They're hurt and traumatized and weren't effectively told that it was wrong and they shouldn't have been put through that, so they perpetuate it on people as vulnerable as they were when it happened. Movements have started in hopes of bringing awareness and getting help for these people before they can carry out the cycle further. Abuse between adults is also a tricky issue because the ways people are taught to give or not give consent are counterintuitive to cultural norms around verbal and nonverbal communication. See: the "they didn't say no" argument.

"The Stoic Native." There are a number of reasons one culture might emote less than another, especially around people they don't know. This doesn't mean that we don't feel or are too strong or brave to feel. Our emotions are our business and we don't owe anyone an explanation.

"Natives are part of the land." For some reason, a lot of non-Natives have trouble grasping that Indigenous Peoples are human beings in our own right. A lot of media portrays us not as people in the same sense that the outsiders are, but as extensions of the land or the spirits of the land. It's true that generations upon generations of living somewhere means the land will change to reflect the people, but that is due to the influence of people living there and how their culture says to interact with it. This trope reduces us to symbols of "a simpler time" or just as often white people's ideas of nature conservation. It's dehumanizing and infantalizing, ignoring our cultures and civilizations, treating us as either innocent martyrs for someone else's cause, or pests that are done away with once the land is developed.

"The Native Princess." Sometimes the only way non-Natives can see us as people is by pushing cultural norms and forms of government they're more familiar with onto us. Naturally, this means assuming that our civilizations were as successful as they were because they were like the non-Native author's. This is especially gratuitous in the case of Inuit, Inupiat, and Yup'ik peoples because we don't have anything resembling a monarchy. Yeah, this one is explicitly in the text so I can't expect much to be done with it

"Native women are always available to men." I don't know what it is about cultures that consider themselves more "advanced" seeing ones they consider "primative" where women have more autonomy in the relationships they have with men and fewer restritions on their bodies. I don't know how they misinterpret "she can do that here" as "she's there for the taking" but it's so gross and I would like it to stop. Sexuality being more open and not inherently sinful doesn't mean the women don't have standards or won't turn anyone down.

"Natives are broke and/or homeless." This is just the typical racism mixing with classism to make something even uglier situatation. The result is a lot of treatment you see non-Native POC get, such as being followed at the store because they expect you to steal something.

There are more, I'm sure, but these are the ones I get the most. Note that again, it's not inherently bad to write a Native or Native-coded character who drinks or has a lot of partners or is particularly connected to their homeland or poor, but take care to handle it with some sensitivity. Understand that there are implications to these things and real harm can be done by legitimizing racist stereotypes.

[pyaasa]

lesbiansandgayssupporttheminers is racist; she thinks she understands racism better than poc, stands by racists, and attacks poc for trying to speak to her about racism

Tw: racism, rape mention, incest mention. also possible transphobia 

For the full story, you first need a bit of background: if you’ve been following me for a while then you will be aware I have called out @ayeforscotland’s racism several times. I would recommend reading this post for a full explanation.

In addition to the incidences mentioned in the post I have just linked, ayeforscotland has also had interactions with neo @androidgynes who is Romani and another person who is black (but didn’t want to be named) and they’ve both also called him out for his racism.

Anyway so. @androidgynes​ saw that lesbiansandgayssupporttheminers was reblogging from ayeforscotland, and that the op of the post was @/getpoliticaluk (who defends incest). Androidgynes messaged lesbiansandgayssupporttheminers (who I will from now refer to as lagstm) and informed her that ayeforscotland is racist and getpoliticaluk defends incest - the conversation that followed went like this. (the below screenshots are posted with permission from @androidgynes​)

The post that neo (@androidgynes) linked of mine was this. And I mean... clearly that particular post by ayeforscotland was very racist, he literally just sat there laughing about anti-black racism as if it was a joke. When @mangopickled​ tried to speak to him about how offensive this post was, he removed her comments from the notes of the post (like. to be clear: ayeforscotland, a WHITE MAN, made a post about racism, and then removed a WOMAN OF COLOUR’S commentary from that post when she told him that his comments were inappropriate). When I saw that, I called that out, and he blocked me. There’s many levels to his racism here that I don’t have the energy to explain, and if you don’t understand why it’s so problematic then you should probably stop reading here cos you clearly know nothing and probably care even less about anti-racism.

So on that particular post that neo linked to lagstm, there is ayeforscotland being racist, and 2 woc calling out his racism. And yet on having this post shown to her, this is how she chose to respond

lagstm literally says that she thinks my views on racism lack nuance. I am a woman of colour, I am visibly muslim, and I’ve experienced racism pretty much all my life. And here is a white woman saying that she thinks my views on racism “lack nuance”. I,, I genuinely don’t have words to convey how angry this makes me. Literally who does she even think she is. Not even is it racist to dismiss my literal LIVED experience of being a woman of colour in this country, but she is literally saying “look at these stupid brown folk, they don’t know what they’re talking about cos they’re so stupid :)”

neo points out firstly that as a white person lagstm doesn’t have the right to make that call, and also that there is ofc another woc on that post saying that exact same thing, and androidgynes themselves are roma. lagstm is not just dismissing me as a stupid savage who is too stupid to form complex thoughts, but she is also indirectly saying the same thing about 2 other poc, and saying that her judgement, as a white person, is more sound than all of ours.

It’s also worth mentioning that neo, who is Romani, was polite to lagstm during this exchange, and lagstm was rude and dismissive. I find this deeply hypocritical. Lagstm has been talking a lot about the policing bill and how it will affect GRT communities, but when she’s talking to someone who is actually *from* the Roma community, she is dismissive and condescending. All this shows is that she’s fake AF. She pretends to care about the Roma community on her blog and then speaks down to them in private.

And again this is worth repeating: AYEFORSCOTLAND WAS BEING RACIST ON THAT POST. IT WAS RACIST. WHAT HE SAID WAS RACIST. So lagstm isn’t just ignoring 3 poc, she is also ignoring,,,, you know,,, the actual racism,,,

And she also says ayeforscotland is borderline racist? Like she acknowledges ayeforscotland is borderline racist but she’s still happy to follow him? Like that alone would be enough for me actually

neo then blocked lagstm and messaged me and told me what happened, and showed me the above screenshots - btw prior to this neo and I had never interacted. Anyway I was obviously a bit disgusted but instead of going straight to blocking lagstm or making a callout post straight away, I messaged her to explain herself and take back what she said. That is now two poc who tried to resolve the matter privately - clearly a lot more than lagstm ever deserved. Androidgynes messaged me last Friday, and I messaged lagstm the next day on Saturday

My convo with lagstm went as follows:

So you can see that initially she was apologetic and said she “didn’t mean to imply that that my judgement on racism was flawed” (even tho that’s literally what she said) and defended herself by saying “I react poorly in interactions like this” - genuinely not a defence but whatever. She then proceeded to say that what she doesn’t trust my opinion on is Scotland and Ireland - which completely irrelevant. Firstly I am ambivalent to Scottish nationalism and have always said I don’t know much about it, and I support the reunification of Ireland. And secondly, my issue with aye has got literally nothing to do with Scotland or Scottish nationalism; he is racist all on his own. And the post neo linked was barely even about scottish nationalism, it was just him being anti-black. So lagstm saying “I don’t trust your judgement on Scotland and Ireland” is ridiculous considering that Scottish/Irish nationalism have nothing to do with this.

Like akjfbkjdfbs this is actually so ridiculous. It doens’t make any sense. Lagstm clearly says “I don’t trust pakisstani’s judgement on THIS issue [the issue being racism] and her views on THIS issue [the issue being racism] lack nuance” but now turns around and says “I wasn’t talking about racism, I was talking about Scotland/Ireland” like she must really think I’m dumb

And you can see Lagstm bringing up unrelated hypothetical scenarios, and saying “in this situation, you can’t tell me to defer to poc” which i found ??? Like why are you bringing up scenarios in which you think you are allowed to educate us poor and stupid black and brown folk?? I then told her she was straw-manning and that her points about Ireland/Scotland were ridiculous, but then she claimed it was me that was engaging her in bad faith. Like SHE, the white woman who practically said that I am too stupid to understand racism, and when confronted on it started straw-manning and bringing up unrelated scenarios, said I am not engaging her in good faith. AFTER both neo and I tried to speak to her privately about this. Like I tried to speak to her privately AFTER I FOUND OUT SHE HAD SAID RACIST THINGS ABOUT ME. BUT I’M NOT ENGAGING HER IN GOOD FAITH? LMAOOO

And then the accusation about rape threats which is actually the most disgusting part of this entire thing. I shouldn’t have to explain that accusing 2 poc of conspiring to send her rape threats (without any evidence whatsoever. Frankly I think she’s lying about the rape threats 🤷🏽‍♀️ it’s quite a transparent attempt to distract from her own nasty behaviour and deflect onto us) is actually extremely racist. She is invoking her white fragility and painting me and androidgynes as aggressors who are threatening her safety and inflicting/threatening to inflict sexual violence on her. It is beyond disgusting 🤮

What’s more, neo is trans, so when lagstm is baselessly accusing them of issues related to rape, she is also playing up to transphobic tropes.

One more thing worth mentioning is that there are several lies peppered throughout lagstm’s comments. Firstly when she claimed to have briefly unfollowed me - she didn’t actually. I was checking regularly, and she never unfollowed me. This was a small lie that I picked up on striaght away but because it wasn’t relevant I didn’t say anything about it. But I just think it’s interesting that she would lie for no reason. And another lie - feigning ignorance about ayeforscotland’s racism, and actually even asking for receipts is incredibly disingenuous when on this particular post, if you scroll through the notes, you can see she has literally liked it. Like she had already seen the posts where me and mangopickled called out his racism and literally LIKED it, and when neo says to lagstm that aye is racist, lagstm says “receipts please :)” YOU’VE ALREADY SEEN THEM! AND LIKED THEM! screenshot in case she unlikes it (sorry for including dumb comments by dumb scots but i need to prove it’s the same post so):

LASTLY. Last point I swear. When lagstm said “it was also coloured by the statements they’d made about another tumblr user, which didn’t relate to racism, which I didn’t address with them because I didn’t want to upset them” <- she must mean getpoliticaluk defending incest? So like what is lagstm saying here, she didn’t want to bring up that she also herself defends incest?? Like is she tryna say she’s a pro-shipping freak?????????????????????? What other way is there to read that statment

Okay that’s everything.

I’m not interested in discourse on this post - if you are white and think lagstm isn’t racist or you’re inclined to defend her then save your breath, I don’t need white people telling me what is or isn’t racist. I gave her the chance to defend herself, which is way more than she deserves, and this is how she responds. Her actions and indefensible and she can choke ☺️❤️  I will be unfollowing/blocking anyone I see reblogging from her because I deserve better than to follow people who are ok with racists ❤️ 

[genderfluidlucifer]

Markiplier IS a fascist

Friendly reminder that the reason people are calling Markiplier a fascist as well is because when Pewdiepie got called out for fascism? marki8plier openly defended him and acted like the claim was bullying, He got mad at the people who were offended by Pewdiepie’s racist joke in one of his videos. (Pewdiepie tricked two brown boys into saying “death to jews” by paying them to.) That’s on top of Markiplier defending Pewdiepie during the christchurch shooting. AFTER a nazi who committed the shooting said he did it in Pewdiepie’s name.. And refusing to take the complaints about Pewdiepie spreading fascist rhetoric in his videos EVEN THEN, Also Markiplier is still pretty good friends with Jontron. Who revealed himself to be a Trump supporter on twitter. Markiplier is absolutely knowingly ok with being buddies with fascists. Yes Mark is half korean half white. Which is important to remember so as to note whitewash him by calling him white. But him being half POC does not mean he is instantly immune to sympathizing with and defending fascists. Please keep that in mind. Not all POC are automatically against fascists. Fascists of color have existed for ages, still exist and will keep existing. Markiplier’s one of them. My mom is black and indigenous like me but she’s a fascist as well due to worshipping the JW org. Does she suddenly not count as a fascist because she’s a WOC? Also some more proof that Markiplier is still close friends with and is a supporter of Pewdiepie. He made this video to create the sub to Pewdiepie movement in response to youtube demonetizing Pewdiepie. A movement which quickly became VERY popular with anti SJW blogs. YES all POC are affected by fascism. But fascists of color still exist because they agree with the message that fascists are trying to normalize and glorify. OR they’re fine with ignoring when their white friends are fascists because they don’t think people should unfriend someone over “discourse.” That is another common belief that can lead to this situation. And I think that is the kind of situation that Markiplier is in. But that doesn’t mean that other POC, jewish people and jewish people of color have to turn a blind eye to this. Just cuz Markiplier’s only enabling it and not getting directly involved with spreading fascist hate speech, When we say “don’t platform fascists” we also mean “don’t platform people who keep ignoring when their friends display fascist behavior.” Cuz that situation is another way in which fascists can mass indoctrinate the person’s followers. Simply through the person refusing to get rid of fascist friends. Stop dismissing this just because Markiplier’s a MOC Also tbh it’s extremely neoliberal to act like POC can’t be racist to POC. POC on POC racism and colorism are extremely real things in our communities. Do not pretend that that doesn’t happen, please.

[gallickingun]

ding, dong, the witch is dead!

honestly, who didn’t see this coming? lol. but, anyway. i guess this is goodbye! i’ll ramble more below the cut, but just know that over the next couple of days, i’ll be exporting my blog so i can keep what i want, and then this will be the only post left here.

thank you to everyone who i’ve had the privilege of meeting, and those of you who have been so kind as to leave lovely notes on my works, and interact with me over our silly anime crushes. i really appreciate all the kindness i’ve been shown in the anime fandom. some of my best friends i’ve met through this stupid app, but overall, it’s just not a healthy space for me. i’m not blaming anyone else for what this has become, at the end of the day, i created a hell for myself. i’m just tired of trying to rebuild, rebrand, whatever. i’m just tired.

that being said, obviously not everything can always be so lovely. i don’t care about the discourse or the drama or the whatever, but i’m just hoping this post will bring me some closure, and maybe some for those i’ve hurt, whether accidentally or intentionally. if you click read more and you’re upset with what you see, well, idk what to tell you, friend.

i hate that tumblr can be so insignificant, and yet so all encompassing all at once. yes, it’s “just tumblr” and “it’s not that deep” because at the end of the day, it’s just an app. but, unfortunately, behind this app and these blogs are human beings. which means you create real bonds and real friendships, and real feelings get hurt.

i came back to tumblr during a really sad, dark time in my life. and that was honestly my first mistake. i latched on to whoever would pay attention to me, craving some sort of friendship that i never needed before because i always had someone in real life. but i had just moved away from my family, and was starting the process of what would end up being a notsogreat divorce. i felt alone, and was struggling a lot with my self worth, so instead of choosing to be kind, i chose to lash out. regardless of whether or not that was in private dm’s of those whom, at the time, i’d considered friends, it was still inconsiderate and childish of me. i thought i had to be some hateful version of myself in order to prove to other people that i wasn’t as sad about myself as i truly was. the words i said in private were rude, nasty, and just... not who i want to be? and, without going into immense detail, some of those things i wanted to move on from and no longer felt, were then used as weapons and spread around to others who i never intended to see what i’d said.

please, please, PLEASE — be careful what you say. you really never know who is watching, who is going to manipulate you, etc. what you say holds weight, and even if you don’t intend for it to hurt anyone, even if it’s just venting.. i dunno. just, be careful, okay? check yourself from time to time, friend. make sure that you’re not allowing the overall negativity of the world, of your own mind, of others, to affect you to the point that you don’t recognize yourself.

if you don’t know about my lovely little exposed blog, well, you’d probably be the last to know. at least, it feels that way. although in the beginning maybe it was justified? in some right? i’m not sure anymore, really, but regardless—it turned into some sort of stalking experience. at one point in time, i received 35+ messages telling me how horrible i was, telling me to off myself, telling me that my ex did the right thing by leaving me “on the curb”, etc. my full legal name was being released, with the intent to doxx me i’m assuming? i was being told i was “being watched”, which i fully believe was happening, with the consistency of the updates. people who claim to hate me, still followed me with the intent of watching my every move to “see if i’d changed”. i only have received updates through friends, because to be perfectly honest with you, seeing your worst mistakes splayed on the internet and turning you into some shounen villain is NOT the best thing for your mental health. that, and some of the “truths” were half-honesties twisted because i’d be a hypocrite to post private dm’s debunking these things when i was upset with the very same people for posting such things. i’ve addressed some things, such as the racism, so i won’t go into that again, but some of these other instances are stretches, to say the least.

the irony of the whole thing is not lost on me. the very same people who say i only do things for notes/recognition, are doing those very things. those who say i only care about tumblr, are proving that by running a blog dedicated to exposing some twenty three year old idiot on the internet. those who say i use my friends are the same ones who literally lied to my face so they could collect receipts behind my back and then leave me when it got convenient. those who say i talk to “insignificant” blogs to appear invested are the ones calling those blogs insignificant, i never once believed anyone i’ve interacted with was insignificant, contrary to popular belief. everything they focus on ends up being nothing but hypocrisy in the end.

that being said, obviously i truly hurt whoever all is behind this blog. intentionally, or otherwise. and i know that sometimes what you do/say isn’t meant to hurt anyone, however, you don’t get to control how what you’ve done effects others. all you can do is apologize. but, i know a few of them, because based on the “receipts” they’ve pulled together, the stories are too specific to be anything but those people i’m thinking of. i don’t enjoy blanket apologies, but i’m leaving this hellsite, so it’s all i’ve got left.

i’m sorry for giving you the fuel to your fire for this petty agenda, i’m sorry for creating the monster of myself that allowed you to string along this storyline for what seems to be the better part of a year. i’m sorry that i gave you material to fixate upon, rather than providing you with friendship and something better to focus on. i truly hope you can move on now that i’m gone from tumblr, and honestly i don’t plan on coming back, lol. i genuinely, truly, deeply feel sorry for you, and pray that you can turn this obsessive focus from me to something more productive, something healthier.

the angry part of me wants everyone to realize that the start of this, the matchups/refunds situation, was born from this stalkerish behavior. it has taken me months to put the pieces together, because i truly didn’t think someone who i’d called my friend once would ever string together such a lie, or rather an exaggerated, adulterated truth, but i guess it’s what happened, in the end.

there are a lot of, uh, conveniently timed “releases” of receipts even though they were months after the initial occurrence of the offense. i can’t go into each one, because, frankly, there are too many. i just hope that in the wake of all of these horrible exposes of things i’ve done, others are able to reflect on their actions. telling me one thing while currently speaking to another individual and telling them another, blatantly LYING, etc. are all things that i’ve been accused of, and yet they’ve also been done to me. doesn’t justify what i’ve done, nor am i seeking some sort of absolution, however i just hope that these individuals can see their hypocrisy and move forward.

which leads me to my final point — regardless of how shitty someone is, disallowing them the room to grow, stunting their moral/mental growth, is truly the issue. i am not going to sit here and play holier than thou. i know i fucked up. i was a nasty bitch because i was angry at the world, and then that anger was fueled further by consistent situations where i made the wrong friends at the wrong times in my life. but the fact that this exposed nonsense has been dragging on since... july? august? i’m not really sure, but whatever. since it’s been going on, i have been battling with myself and my ability to do the things i love, talk to those i care about, etc. all because i’m afraid of saying the wrong thing, hurting the wrong person, etc. and in trying to avoid it, i’ve been doing the very same thing i hoped to keep from doing.

i never felt like i could apologize to those i wanted to apologize to because it might be received as disingenuous due to the nature of the exposed blog’s very existence “forcing” me to apologize. don’t get me wrong, some of those who the blog tried to coerce me into apologizing to can suck a dick, because there are people that i truly do not feel deserve my apologies, and therefore, will never get them. but, i do feel bad for those i didn’t get the chance to apologize to that i really wanted to. the last thing i’d want is for my apology to be turned into something it’s not, but hopefully everyone who has been affected by my actions can move on with my absence.

and to those of you who feel the need to make public denounces of my name, i hope it provides you the closure you’ve been seeking. truly, i do. but know that i never did anything i’ve ever done with the intent to get ahead or buy someone’s friendship or take advantage of anyone else. if i truly only cared about the things people say i cared about, i would have never made this blog in the first place. i would have leeched off the popularity of my main blog if popularity was all i cared about. i was searching for a home, which, in the end, i burned down myself. me, joking around about follower count and notes, was literally nothing but sarcastic banter that’s been taken out of context. but, i digress.

i am very thankful for those who i can still call my friends, who are willing and ready to have honest discussions with me about the things i’ve said/done and analyze them and help me move forward. therapy, medication, life choices, etc. all have been rolled into me deciding that i’m done letting a silly little app stunt my growth. if the internet was unplugged tomorrow, i know who i’d have and what would matter. i have REAL LIFE to focus on. i am in love and i have beautiful friendships that i want to foster with honesty and kindness. i can only hope that you all have the opportunity to have those very same things.

will i stop writing? nah, dude. no way. i’m just getting started. in my absence, in choosing to stay away from a place that makes me sick to my stomach with anxiety, i’ve delved into my original characters and i’ve written thousands of words that i haven’t felt the pressure to post about. i’ve learned that just because i’m doing something i love, i don’t have to do it for anyone else.

the internet is a funky place, folks. just be careful who your friends are, okay?

anyway. peace out, girl scouts. i wish you all the best 💖

[dramarising-replacement]

About the Crow drama...

...I am really getting annoyed by the people clamoring that it's racist and so on. I am throwing my hat in the ring and trying to see it from both sides but I truly find the whole thing one big problem of co-opting r*cism to harass people. But that is my opinion, everyone is allowed their own but I find it highly problematic that this whole thing has led to people actually faking screenshots to claim they are at fault. This is not ok. Neither is harassing. Please stop. 

Either way, onwards. Keep in mind, this is my view on the whole thing and I just want to give a perspective of someone who is fairly removed from the whole thing and decided to use critical thinking. I will state that I have had not much interaction with any person involved, I shared spaces in discord in the past and of course also on FR but not to say that any side is my friend. 

Do you know what my biggest problem with the aforementioned statement is? That it's mostly made by the non-Asian people that are stuck on Orientalism. You are projecting your racist stereotypes on a subspecies that was created by actual Asian people. What is the problem with people having fun with their own cultures? I can understand if some Asian people (and I am using Asian because I do not know enough about the subspecies to say which ethnic/culture it is mostly based on) do not like it. That is normal, everyone has different likes and dislikes. Using slurs is not ok but honestly, I haven't seen any proof of these alleged slurs so I can't say anything about it. Show me actual slurs thrown around and it would be different but for now the only thing I could find was the rat thing and honestly? Looking at those screenshots given showed rat used in the context of a beloved character. Who here has never talked about their bastard character being some kind of trashy raccoon or rat before? 

Back to the fact that some people of the same nationality say they don't like it. Like I said, that happens, god, there are many times I don't like what people are doing with my culture. But guess what? I don't say that they are forbidden from playing with it. What gives one person of a culture the right to demand from others to stop how they interact with it? If you start doing that, we have to apply that to everything and imagine how uniform everything would be. For example Christianity: there are so many different branches and they have often problems with their different interpretations of the bible and their practices. Would you say we have to stop all Christian beliefs now? Sounds kind off dumb, right? 

If you do not like how these people interact with their culture then stop interacting with them and the subspecies. It is that easy. FR is not here to take you by the hand and make everything go away that you don't like. It doesn't work like that, we are a pluralistic world with many many different views on things. And that is great. But it also means in spaces like FR we have to moderate ourselves. See something that doesn't confirm your view? Block it or, in case of truly problematic things like outright r*cism/r*pe/m*rder/p*dophilia or whatever else, report. Saying that you don't like how some people interact with your culture while they are of the same culture does not give you the right to call these people racist. Turn it around and these people could call you also racist because you interact differently with your culture. This does not help anyone. 

Now, to my biggest problem with this mud throwing (I would love to call it a discourse but let's be honest here: the people starting to falsify information made this into some kind of contest to harass some people): 

the fact that most people involved are espousing their own racist views under the veneer of "calling out" racism. 

Like I said, I have not specially much knowledge about the subspecies but I did take a look at it, so here we go. But what I read is quite away from that "fetishing" you guys are accusing the people playing around with the dragons. For me it seems like they mixed bird facts, plague aesthetics and cultural aspects together. If you start interpreting r*cism into everything you read, congrats, then you should really think about what that says about yourself. 

For me this seems much more a problem of co-opting anti-racist movements to harass specific people. You use the "right" language to make the "right" accusations and take advantage of white/western ignorance. I am specifically harsh here because this is all that I am currently seeing from all these people: they call members of the subspecies out, in the recent cases C specifically, C actually answered and showed proof that there were actual lies used and so someone decided they needed to remove authenticy from C so they created fake screenshots that say they are from Korea. This whole interaction screams of someone calling r*cism only to realize that, oh no, C actually is Chinese, so they did their best to make it seem like C lied. This is insidious and bullying. I do not know the people involved, I have only written a few times with C and shared discord spaces so I found the Korea screenshot very weird, it's just not how C normally writes. 

I think this isn't about r*cism anymore, this is all about power. This is manipulation at its finest. Really, take the claims of r*cism away and then look at the subspecies again. What is your first thought? Man, that subspecies screams of Plague. 

Here is a thought for all of you: there is unfortunately much r*cism to be found since we are living in a world that is flooded with r*cistic undertones. This means we have to educate ourselves on these issues and to think critically about them. This does not mean "to criticize" but to actually analyze, evaluate and examine so we can reconstruct our perspectives on these issues. And I beg of the people just going after these "call-out" posts, think about this again. Did the subspecies really scream r*cism to you or did you maybe rather think Plague aesthetic before you read these posts? If so, you really have to examine why your view changed. 

One more thing, we have here two groups in the recent posts, one side is "calling" out C and C answers, making sure to openly discuss their culture and background as much as they did. So we have one side seemingly manipulating "evidence" to further their story and one side giving as much information as they can about their background without revealing their whole identity. Yeah, sorry, but I think I know who is more genuine here. Instead of making FR a more informed space it seems it was easier to use progressive language to further their own ideas of what r*cism is. (I am still more sure that this is all about power than anything else.)

This whole thing makes me very salty because it seems like everyone in the notes threw out their critical thinking just so they would not appear as r*cist. 

As an older person that had to take more than one class on colonization and Orientalism this whole thing just makes me wish more people would use critical thinking. Please stop blindly following pretty "progressive" words without seeing the actual problem here. This is actually my biggest problem here, I do not claim to be knowledgable enough to know where the subspecies furthers stereotypical views but for me all the posts I was shown and then read myself speak of different problem.

If you read until now, congratulations, feel free to discuss my points but I am honestly so tired about seeing people just ignoring the bigger issues. I won't answer to anything because I do not want to spend my time here arguing about these things but seeing that my major during my studies involved big chunks of literature and cultural sciences this whole thing just rubbed me wrong when someone told me about it. 

[queerhannibal]

That person you're stubbornly supporting made the panphobe list not because the original offender horrorlesbians was being panphobic b they had some sort of falling out (he was only a follower) so he made it his personal vendetta and targeted a lot of other lesbians and brown people. The brown people were put in a worse category and he called them monkeys. This has snowballed and a lot of people have gotten caught in the crossfire. Most of the people this individual managed to convince are minors or very naive people, other people have seen other 'panphobes' reacting to this in solidarity and have gotten the wrong impression if anything many bloggers are against the pansexual label for its origins based on biphobia and transphobia as you yourself said. People calling themselves panphobes is a reaction to this individual's lesbophobia and racism, if anything is an act of solidarity, yet they keep receiving anons, vagues and call outs. Please don't fall for it and don't give this person a platform. Everything was in the blog he deleted (most likely because it made him look bad). The person keeps reblogging you and acting offended and other lgbt people have fallen for it.

Horrorlesbians and their “beloved mutuals” started calling themselves panphobes publicly before the panphobe block list came out, in support of blogger fieropasta who is an avid and vociferous panphobe. I haven’t seen the block list and I don’t know anything about the person who made it (I don’t even know who they are) and quite frankly I don’t care about it at all, as it had nothing to do with the statements I made on my blog

Many people have erroneously called me a biphobe in the last few weeks, but because I love and support bi people I would never even jokingly say that I was one, and even if that were the only reason these people claimed to be panphobes (which I have evidence to suggest it is not) I would still be appalled by that behavior

There is not and never has been anything inherently biphobic or transphobic about identifying as pansexual. Was the term created based on certain biphobic or transphobic ideals? Maybe. Are there biphobic and transphobic pansexuals? Sure. But there are people like that within any sexuality, and most pansexuals do not identify as pansexual out of hatred or misunderstanding but bc they just prefer using a term that doesn’t (however incidentally) imply an attraction to only two genders. It’s horrifying to me that you would dismiss people claiming to hate a group of people for their sexuality just bc other people were bigoted against them and/or being mean to them??????

It’s literally morally wrong to be panphobic. If someone were mean to my friend and called them a lesbophobe and I was like “well then I’m a lesbophobe too” that would be wrong of me, wouldn’t it? And that’s literally what these people are doing. If someone calls you out for doing something wrong and they’re wrong to do that, the appropriate response is to say “I can’t believe you’d say that about me, of course I’m not a panphobe, I support people’s right to identify as different sexualities”. It’s amazing to me that you’re making an argument that anything else is appropriate lmao like????

I was not “””convinced””” by that anon, I was well aware of the problem before anyone said anything to me about it and just hadn’t said anything bc I’m old and tired and I try to stay out of discourse these days, but when directly asked to comment on my stance I sure as hell fucking have one

I’m sorry someone was being racist to these people (although all the people I personally knew on the reported blocklist were white, including horrorlesbians and fieropasta, the only two I have personally said anything against) but that has nothing to do with them being shitty to pansexual people, which is the only thing I have said anything about at all.

It disgusts me that you think it’s acceptable to come to me and try to say “don’t you know it’s racist to dislike panphobes” as if those two things have ANYTHING to do with each other. And I can assure you plenty of “”real”” panphobes are out there; just look at the notes on my posts about how it’s okay to be pan. This isn’t a made up problem someone came up with to be racist, it’s real and it hurts real people

[colorseeingchick]

The Inevitable Dystopia of My Hero Academia (WITHOUT manga spoilers)

As noted by your local political science anime lover.

(This is a summary/rambling about a political science paper I wrote on My Hero. This is only based on the anime. I’m not caught up on the manga)

Warnings: Vague reference to abuse (Endeavor), discussion of political theory, discourse.

A/N: It’s lengthy and all over the place. It also might be impossible to follow. So I’m sorry in advance lol.

THESE ARE JUST MY OPINIONS AND A FORM OF DISCOURSE. I’m open to discussing if you have thoughts! Political science is about understanding policy and structures, not taking a stance. Any comparisons to ‘modern society’ are in reference to 1st world/developed societies, as those are the governments that parallel the My Hero Academia government. 

The politics of My Hero Academia is... pretty morbid if you ask me. It’s not worse than the real world, sure, but maybe that’s why it’s all the scarier. Even with quirks and super powers, the impossible becoming possible, it isn’t enough to save them from the undesirable. Their society seems to have fallen into a cycle of suffering and oppression that has no end. 

Now, I know no one really gets excited about political theory (unless you’re like me, then please be my friend), but there are some concepts that you’ll need to understand in order to follow along with my argument. So bear with me. 

First, utopia. Utopia is probably a term you’ve heard casually, but the definition political theorists hold it to is simply- “a good place.” Often times it is depicted as a far away dreamland, only possible in the realm of fiction (and this makes sense given that My Hero is fictional). It is very important to understand that utopia is not necessarily perfect. It’s just better than average. There are a few standards that characterize utopia, one being the utopian focus on having very strict laws to repress the unstable nature of mankind [1]. I’ll come back to this. 

Next is dystopia. Dystopia as an idea was actually made in response to utopia. It’s the ‘not-utopia,’ and is lumped with ‘anti-utopia’ (this comment is in reference to the semiotic square, if you would like to develop a further look into it). The simplest way to understand dystopia is to know it’s ‘a not-good place.’ [2] But that’s surprisingly broad. Dystopias can be a failed utopia, or they could have developed on their own as a result of any number of reasons. You’ve probably seen all sorts of depictions of dystopia (climate dystopias, medical dystopias, technology-based dystopias, literally any YA novel from my childhood, you get the idea). Its key to note that unlike an apocalypse, where there is utter destruction and it ends with complete annihilation of humanity, there is hope* inherently written into it. 

*Hope here meaning there’s theoretically a way for the government to be changed/overthrown without death of the majority. 

Now that all that boring stuff is out of the way- let’s talk about My Hero Academia. 

I’d argue that, at first glance, Hero Society seems to be working towards utopia. When reading from Deku’s perspective, especially in the beginning, you would think that their society is close to becoming utopian. The impossible is possible, being a hero is a reality, and a symbol of peace tangibly and definitively exists. When you compare it to pre-quirk society, these changes would appear to be developments. As for the ‘in progress’ aspect, I think Hawks verbalizes it best when he says his goal is for heroes to have too much time on their hands. They aren’t there yet, but if that goal is achieved, it would be a mark of utopia. 

They’ve achieved some level of utopian standards by meeting the ‘strict laws to repress the unstable nature’ standard. Think about the concept of licensing quirks, quirk regulation, and the government institutions that regulate quirk society. Remember when Tomura cornered Deku at the shopping mall and mentioned something along the lines of, ‘all these people could wield their quirks at any moment they want, but choose not to? Instead they smile and laugh.’ 

He has a point. Why is that? From a political theorist point of view, it’s honestly very shocking. For centuries, theorists have argued about how to manage human nature. It’s a difficult task as is. Give everyone superpowers? That would have to be 10x as chaotic. But in the My Hero world, it’s not. It’s well organized. The government took action to regulate the physical instability of humanity which arose from quirks. What’s so impressive to me is that they managed to mitigate (not eliminate) the instability of human nature/behavior along with it.

But if you take a step back to look at My Hero Academia, slowing down and stepping out of Deku’s shoes, I don’t think the instinct is to classify it as a utopia in progress. Of course, its superpowered with quirks- adding to the realm of possibility. But crime of all sorts is superpowered, just as the justice systems/law enforcement in the country. 

When I made this realization, I understood I had kind of been drawn into the propaganda the society puts out. It’s a sort of cloak built up by the positive media around the heroes, the narrative being focused on young heroes and their great mentors, and the universal title of ‘villain’ being put on everyone that breaks the government’s laws (this really bothers me, and maybe I’ll discuss it another time). Things aren’t better. Crime rates have gone down I believe, but the anti-hero sentiments being harbored are more intense than in certain real world societies. Hero society hasn’t necessarily resolved any of the problems that our society would have. The balance is the same, but the possible actions people can take, or the behaviors that are exhibited, are scaled up on both sides of the law.

What’s worse is that- even if its not a universal experience, this society is also a dystopia for many people. The first hint of this society being less than perfect is when we hear from Stain and his pursuit of a ‘just society’ by eliminating fraudulent heroes. His ideals are surprisingly level-headed, and very rigorous in standard, even if it is based in questionable morals. But it’s easy to brush it off. However, its less deniable as you learn more about these characters. 

Shigaraki was abandoned and waited for heroes to save him, but they didn’t. Overhaul was also an orphan living on the streets. Eri was abandoned by her mother because of her quirk. Twice was villainized, when in reality he has mental health issues (dissociative identity disorder I believe). It broke my heart when Twice said “heroes only save good people.” Who decided they were bad people? Why weren’t they saved?

Also, can we talk about the quirkism? (Which I don’t know if that’s a real term within this fandom yet, it might be, but just to be on the same page, I mean quirk-based discrimination) You have people like Shinsou, who’s treated as villain even though he wants be a hero- solely because of his quirk. I believe Toga was also treated poorly because of the nature of her quirk as well (correct me if I’m wrong). And then you have Midoriya, who was harassed and bullied for not having a quirk at all. Clearly none of them have control over the way they were born, and yet they all had to deal with how society treats them because of the uncontrollable. (At this point I’m sure its clear there are a lot of parallels with the discourse around quirkism, racism, and sexism, which is a whole nother conversation).

Having good quirks also seems to get you a pass, or puts you outside the reach of the law. The only example I need for this is Endeavor and his children. Despite all the abuse he’s done that makes him a villain in my book, he stays the number 2 hero. That’s all I need to say. 

The suffering of all these individuals is a direct result of the failure of the government. And this isn’t a ‘government should have taken extra steps to help them.’ This is a situation where the government’s structure, including the sensationalized media and monopolization of quirk use, has actively attacked and oppressed people who otherwise would have been untargeted. 

This is a world of misery for them- the people who make up the underworld. We call them villains and criminals because they are- but I don’t think its fair to call all of them bad people. They definitely didn’t start out that way. They are the results of suffering. They are created by a society that solely aims to remove them from existence. This hero society is so unjust that its faults create its own villains. The villains they aim to stop came to be because of the ‘heroes’ in the first place. The irony there is painful, and I hate that it’s a sort of self fulfilling prophecy. 

The reason why I think it’s morbid is because there is no escape. Quirk society in its current state is undeniably a dystopia for many. But the issue is (and this was the crux of my argument in my paper) dystopia and utopia inevitably and consistently coinhabit space. What is utopia to one will be a dystopia to another. There is no way to get everyone to uniformly view society. 

What that means is, somebody will always be suffering in this society. At least, that’s the cycle that’s been set up. In the episode where Tamaki got shot with a quirk erasing bullet and Kirishima fought the gangster on quirk enhancing drugs, that gangster did say that this was ‘their time’ to rise. “It’ll be the age of those who live in the shadows.” They’re not looking for resolution. They’re looking for revenge. They want to flip the script and be the ones living in utopia while everyone else is subject to suffering. The concept of everyone living happily in harmony and true peace isn’t even in consideration. 

There seems to be no middle ground, no solution to the push and pull between the ‘heroes’ and ‘villains.’ The unfairness will continue to be passed around, and unless someone can break the cycle, attack the corruption of the system at its roots,

the problem is not going to go away. 

Sources!

[1] Claeys, Gregory, and Fatima Vieira. “The Concept of Utopia.” In The         Cambridge Companion to Utopian Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

[2] Robinson , Kim Stanley. “Dystopias Now.” Commune, November 17, 2018.            https://communemag.com/dystopias-now/.

Copyright © 2020 Colorseeingchick. All rights reserved. 

[akari-hope]

not to burst anyone’s bubble but you ARE racist if you continue to support shera because white saviorism and a piss-poor colonialism metaphor are literally baked into and inextricable from the narrative. adora is the poster child for a white savior and she’s even born of colonizers. That isn’t mentioning the white-washing and Glimmer’s skin turning YELLOW on Dril. you people use your autism as an excuse & will do anything to ignore racism if it comes from your faves. It’s literally so gross.

2/2 And if you’re a poc fan of it you absolutely DO have internalized racism you need to unpack. I don’t give a shit if my wording makes ppl with ocd uncomfortable, because that gets used as a flimsy excuse, too. It’s the truth. Y’all have to stop hiding behind your neurodivergencies and mental illnesses, because they don’t matter when you’re willfully ignoring or outright excusing blatant racism. Continuing to support spop means you’re racist, end of. I’m really not trying to be mean, but damn.

i agree with the points you're making. these are all parts of the racism present in the series. along with mara's whitewashing, and several other elements. you're correct. these are all problems. whether they're meant to be malignant or not is up for interpretation, but their existence is certainly not.

however, once again, everyone is going to have a different comfort level. and not throwing away the show does not make them racist by default. just as it does not make them transphobic, ableist, etc. this is coming from someone who has decreasing love for the series, closer to indifference than anything else at this point, so please note i'm not saying this to defend myself. this is just something i believe - my answer remains the same for harry potter, twilight, steven universe, whatever. enjoying a fictional work on its own is not a moral statement, regardless of the content of that fictional work (if it were then horror as a genre could not exist).

do i personally approve of every element in all of the works i listed? absolutely the fuck not. hp is full of racist, homophobic, transphobic, antisemitic bullshit. twilight is racist in more ways than i can count and justifies grooming. steven universe, while i have less knowledge of it, is not without its problems as well, many similar to she-ra's if the discourse i've encountered around it is to be believed. but i do not think that enjoyment of these works means someone inherently supports or excuses any of these things.

someone can engage critically with problematic media while still enjoying it, and that does not make them a bad person. if they are acknowledging the problems, seriously taking them into account in their interpretation and judgment of a work, and not just wiping them away, they are not inherently immoral and bad people for liking a work with any number of racist elements. (please note i am NOT speaking of those who willfully ignore or excuse. that is a problem and something they need to address. however i do not find them to be the majority of people i speak to.)

i'm going to be honest, we could do this song and dance with any piece of media. we can look for problematic elements all we want. and we would find them in anything. and you're allowed to. rip things to shreds if you want, kick them to the curb, hate them all you want. but ultimately you cannot dictate how others engage with fiction, and you will drive yourself crazy trying to. i really recommend just not engaging with the media or communities around it if it's so upsetting to you. i did the same largely, so it's very possible. saves me a lot of strife.

side note, i do not know why this is directed toward me. i do not use my autism as an excuse for anything to my knowledge, but you're free to correct me if i'm off base. if this is directed at an anon, don't send it to me bc i do not speak for my anons.

also, while i respect the attempt to backtrack, this all does come across as rude considering you're directing it at someone who really doesn't even support the series anymore. i'm giving the benefit of the doubt that you did not know this and are tired/upset, which i understand and do not blame you in the slightest for. but please do not make assumptions like this about me in the future. it is rude regardless of intention.

tldr: you make solid points, but people are also allowed to make their own decisions regarding how they engage with fiction. all that being said, i hope you have a nice evening anon (or whatever time of day it is for you)

[thewitchofthenorsetrilogy]

Hey guys! It’s @thewitchofthenorseispissed @thewitchofthenorse - I ended up getting terminated again. Round three sure sounds fun, right? Haha. Let me start of by saying in the few hours I’ve been deleted I’ve been swarmed with emails, messages on Instagram, that ended up crying on @whichwitchami‘s kitchen floor for a good minute. I am overwhelmed by the constant amount of support and love you guys have offered me. It swells my heart with joy to know that all of the effort and time I put into helping make a safe learning community has left an impact on so many of you that you would reach out to me in this time. You guys are the reason I keep doing my best to provide accurate information and a space for personal growth without restriction. As grateful as I am to so many of you, there is an undeniable issue that needs to be addressed. This may sound tireless and lengthy but please bare with me.

I was originally deleted February 8 between 8/9pm while out to dinner. The belief at the time was that my blog was under fire from the altright after making a post about Nazi’s not being welcome into any of the Norse Halls because less than 30k notes and 12 hours later I was deleted. It’s pretty easy to blame everything on them and I am sorry for my arrogance and not having looked into the matter more. The day before I made that post, I got into large ask discourse on the topic of Wicca. I know, it’s tiring to hear me bring this up again but before getting deleted this morning I received this ask:

The rest of the ask(I believe can be found on @systlin) I couldn’t fit in the screenshot but I just briefly mention that I didn’t address any specific cultures and I was working on a large piece for tumblr about the ties Wicca has to ableism, racism, appropriation, and lack of respect for non-binary genders all with links. As many of you know, I had a large post already written on my old blog(thewitchofthenorse) that was deleted two months ago.

I also received notification of an ask threatening to report my blog but I wasn’t able to screenshot them because the ask page wouldn’t physically load last night around midnight and wasn’t able to open it any times I tried after. If any of you remember the “.” post I made last night with tags that talked about my messages stopped working(as well as other small tumblr functions). 

Not only that but I made a post on @whichwitchami‘s blog saying what blog name I would use “thevvitchofthenorse” and someone took it within two hours, making it unusable. I honestly feel targeted, I’m not going to lie.

I have always be upfront with my discomfort for Wicca. I don’t see a reason I shouldn’t be. People are uncomfortable with the Norse pagan community because all of the active Nazi’s in the community, imagery ties to the altright, rape culture, etc. - that’s valid. Everyone should be critical of their religions. The only reason I offer so much caution against Wicca is because it is founded on the appropriation, desecration, humiliation of closed cultures and misuse information from ancient open cultures. We, as a community, should be able to voice our concerns, educate each other, learn, and grow without fear of being shut down or deleted because a selective group of people don’t like what you have to say. 

To the people who reported my blog and ultimately got me deleted: Despite what your tumblr about me’s may say, the lies you’ve told to yourself and others; this shows an obvious lack of empathy for others and a seriously lack of self-introspection. It has only been two months since my blog was lasted deleted. Anyone who read the first line of my bio would’ve been fully aware. Especially when you reported my blog - you were fully aware you were affecting my income(100% through tumblr), my ability to support my partner, my ability to support my pets, my ability to pay my recent medical bills(which I openly talked about multiple times the few weeks leading up to deletion)... but what tears me up most, is this constant effort of trying to tear me from the community I have put so much love into. Regardless of your original objective, my strength is unwavering and my desire to bring a real, safe learning environment to the witch community will not be halted my any means. You are only proving my point that you desire subjugation; to control what people know of religions, to prevent others from speaking out, to prevent others from learning.

Please forgive me for tagging you but I’d think this is something we need to talk about @heatherwitch @orriculum @madamehearthwitch @witches-ofcolor @mrs-k-cottage-witch @stonesandsigils @urbanspellcraft @childofvanaheim @witchy-woman

[diversetolkien]

Hey yal! Below is a submissions I received regarding my Eol and Maeglin post. My responses are indented with the grey line! OPs are not!

——————————————————————————————————

First of all, it is absolutely necessary to draw attention to the things you’re drawing attention to. Whether you are “right” or “wrong,” or whether anyone is “right” or “wrong” is beside the point of the argument in my opinion: these issues simply need to be addressed! We need discussion and different points of view and they all need to be considered and we need them now more than ever. There are clear examples that are sketchy to say the very least: good guys are fair-skinned but the evil men ((, Haradrim) are not; orcs, clearly bad guys, are “swarthy” and “slant-eyed”. However, I do believe your point about Eöl and Maeglin on June 10 are off the mark. I believe you get too carried away by the title “dark” and hang your entire argument up on that. As far as I know, there is no textual evidence that Eöl was a dark-skinned elf at all.

Hello there! Thank you for the message. I do want to emphasize that I’ve been incredibly reluctant to answer this. As of resharing my meta I received a terribly racist message from a user on the website, and will tread cautiously with addressing any messages regarding Eol and Maeglin due to that. I completely agree that we do need discussion, and I’m open for it. This is the only way we can progress. But I won’t tolerate blatant racism.

I’m not accusing you of doing such, but for future references I want to make this clear.

While you believe I may get carried away on the aspect of dark or ‘swarth’, I think it may be important to explain what racial coding is, and also to remind you of Tolkien’s history with coding and with people of color. I talked about coding on my twitter, but in short coding is ascribing real world traits to fictional characters.

This includes attributing the historical and social context to the text to prove a point.

We’ve discussed how Tolkien has borrowed from cultures aside from his own, and with The Silmarillion published in the late 70’s, it’s not impossible to see how influence from America and racial influence there have played a role in his writings.

I also wouldn’t call it being ‘carried away’, when, as we both agree, Tolkien has a history of racism directed at people of color.

And at the same time, I think it’s important to note that while you dismiss the possibility of Tolkien considering Eol dark despite the use of swarth, you ascribe swarth to the orcs and their skin tone in the same breath. I don’t see why it’s impossible for the two to mean the same thing. Not when we do have a racist author who grew up in a very racist society already using dark skin to describe evil characers. Not when Eol’s narrative of the brute mirrors that of the orcs (ie: Celebrian and the Orcs).

And regardless if it is explicit or not, Eol is still coded. Again, we know this because we have canon stories that mirror his completely. This being, again, Celebrian and the Orcs.

We can also accept that Tolkien’s constant use of “dark” to describe evil things, and “light” to describe good things comes from a place of racism. So why is there such push back when we analyze that further?

Tolkien was known to ponder about problems, such as missing words in the Germanic languages. The term asterisk-word is coined by August Schleicher for exactly this purpose: words that should have existed in a (dead) language but aren’t recorded and needed therefore to be reconstructed. For example, Tolkien doesn’t have a recollection of how he came upon the word “hobbit” but to make it fit his Legendarium he made the asterisk-word *holbytlan, supposedly an old English word meaning “hole-builders” because hobbit language was akin to Old English. This word doesn’t exist in old English but could (and maybe should) have. Tolkien also wrote a long argument about a particular difficult passage in the Beowulf-poem which you can read in “Finn and Hengest.” Now normally I would never try to talk straight what’s curved, but Tolkien is a bit of a different case as I hope the above examples show.

The case of Eöl is a trick(s)y problem that stems from the “Prose Edda” written by Snorri Sturluson, an Icelandic poet who lived in the 12th century. This is thoroughly explained by Tom Shippey in his essay “Light-elves, Dark-elves, and Others: Tolkien Elvish Problem”. A quick summary is (but one really ought to read Shippey’s essay to understand it) that there are light-elves, dark-elves, dwarves and black-elves in the “Prose Edda.” Germanic scholars such as Nikolas Grundtvig and Jacob Grimm bent themselves in all kinds of shapes to explain the “error” that Snorri made. Are the black-elves the same as the dark-elves? Are both black-elves and dark-elves dwarves? What about twilight-elves? Tolkien pulls all the different strands of this one problem together and called it Eöl the Dark Elf. He could never have done this in an academic work if he wanted to be taken seriously, so his fiction seemed a great outlet to deal with this. Maybe it was all a private amusement because Tolkien never mentioned it as far as I know.

I personally can’t recall Eöl ever being called dark-skinned. He is considered “black” due to the armour he’s wearing made out of the metal galvorn that he made himself after coming into contact with dwarves (which also ties in masterfully with the whole elf-problem, again, see Shippey’s essay), but it’s not skin colour. Eöl was called the Dark Elf because he lived in a place where the sun never came. It was called Nan Almoth, the valley of the star pool, and he loved the stars, and loved to live in the twilight. The twilight-part is important in the above discussion as well.

I understand you are trying to be informative but please don’t be patronizing. Please do not explain to me what I already know. In the future, I will not be answering messages like this again. This is incredibly rude. You are assuming I don’t know about what I made a meta about, and that’s an insult to what I’ve written.

Please read my blog fully before you attempt to whitesplain something I already know. I understand debate, but there is a clear different between wanting to have a healthy discourse, and flat out patronizing me and treating me like a child.

Back the the point; The same, again, can be applied to the orcs. The orcs wear dark armor, were tortured by a creature who is often described as dark, reside in dark areas—but we know clearly that they are coded off of people given the description of them being swarthy.

The same attribute that’s given to Eol. And again, we have a clear historical context and in-canon context. And we know that Tolkien borrows from American history, and that England itself had a huge role to play in that history.

Finally, the citation from the Book of Lost Tales (BLT) where Maeglin is called swart is problematic to me. I think it’s as much proof against your point as it is in favour of it. Many, many things have changed since the BLT was written and turned into The Silmarillion (I mean Sauron was a giant cat at first!). The BLT version of Maeglin being “swart” is a discarded  version and in The Silmarillion, a way later revision, “his skin was white”. I think it would be wrong to conclude Tolkien discarded the swart skin of Maeglin as he realised it was racist. I think he simply hadn’t figured out the elf problem of the Edda when he wrote the BLT.

I think this is all negated by the fact that Tolkien has canonical characters of color, and that they have been coded. I’m having an incredibly hard time wrapping my head around why that’s accepted, yet when it comes to Eol and Maeglin it isn’t. We can accept that Tolkien has a history of racism with people of color, based on evidence far less than what I’ve provided. Maeglin’s light skin can be attributed to the fact that his mother was light. It’s possible to have a dark parent and be born light.  

And regardless if it was changed or not, it’s incredibly important to discuss it due to the fact that it was racist, and deserves to be brought to light.

I want to stress, again, that I think your work and thoughts are important, no matter if I or anyone else agrees or disagrees. It is of the utmost importance to address issues of racism, genderism and any other kinds of ism that is out there. Discussion is what matters!

[segenassefa]

9: Why Gatekeeping is Ok (#FufuChallenge Discourse)

African restaurants in the U.S., while not as popular as their foreign counterparts, are not far and few between in states such as a D.C., New York, and Georgia having large African communities. In recent weeks, videos of people trying variations of fufu and stew have popped up seemingly out of nowhere, unknowingly creating a “trend” called the #FufuChallenge. While some of the reactions were positive, many of these videos were quite the opposite, in which individuals with little to no home training had the absolute gall to record themselves treating the food as if it were 50 Shades of Grey – including but not limited to spitting, slapping, tossing, and other things that are considered incredibly disrespectful.

Now, fufu is native to West Africa and made from boiled and pounded cassava. Different countries have their versions of the same food, give or take a few ingredients - banku, eba, ga’at, ugali, mofongo, and cornmeal coucou (fungi, for my VI people). As disclaimer – I am an adventurous eater, and the first time I tried fufu, I was a fan. I don’t think it’s a food that’s hard to enjoy flavour-wise, but I can see how the texture may not be agreeable for everyone. Additionally, being from a culture that eats with their hands, there’s a lot of etiquette that’s instilled in at a young age– the most important being that food is not a toy. However, the recent videos have sparked a debate about Black acceptance between different members of the diaspora.

It is interesting how, during a time of inclusivity and unification within the Black community, it is taking no more than pounded root vegetable for most of you to show your ass. I don’t feel like now is the time to remind Black Americans that some of “common” foods would be considered abhorrent to others – chitlins and pickled pig feet, we’re looking at you. Everyone is losing their mind over pounded cassava, but the idea of eating soggy cornmeal – also known as grits – is a normal phenomenon. We can also bring snack foods into this - hot pickles in a bag, Vienna sausages - but the point of this conversation is not to sit here and bash culinary history, but to make the argument clear that every culture has foods that others would find less than palatable.

In the same breath that we want to come together, fight systemic oppression, and be on some fake Marcus Garvey shit, people are referring to African food as disgusting, garbage, and even “dog food”. But you want to go back to Africa, right? Find your roots?

Have you all lost your damn minds?

Black people exist everywhere, and that inherently means that the techniques and methods of cooking we use are prevalent in a lot of other cultures. If you don’t believe me, take the time to Google Korean fried chicken and the fact that the idea of frying chicken in batter was introduced by Black soldiers stationed abroad in the 1940s and 1950s, or how gumbo and jambalaya are variants of traditional African foods, created using recipes that date back to slavery. So, there’s a chance that there are other foods across various cultures – including Black American meals - that resemble traditional African cuisine. Why don’t you drag those on social media as well?

More likely than not, before the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, this is probably the food that peoples’ ancestors were eating, and by reasonable conclusion, it’d be the food that OUR ancestors were eating. Additionally, there are so many other cultures with foods that can be turned into trend, so why was the Internet’s thought process to bully African people for no reason other than for laughs on social media? No, just traditional African food? Ok, noted.

Like ENNY said, please free my people from clout. PLEASE. I’m begging at this point.

And non-Black people have not escaped scrutiny either – so if you found yourself at a protest this year or have a cheeky little “BLM” in your bio, but you still found the time to degrade African culture on your timeline, I’m going to need you to go ahead and click backspace on your bio for me really quick, because the math is not math-ing. When it comes to other ethnic groups asking for parts of their culture to be respected and kept sacred, everyone wants to be quiet and listen, but when Black – specifically African people - ask for the same respect, people struggle to do so and are left with two options, or what they think are their only options – to, A, dismantle parts of Black culture to be co-opted and renamed to be acceptable to the white gaze or, B, label these things as disgusting and left at the mercy of Twitter think piece writers and Clubhouse podcasters who have nothing better to do than talk about things that they absolutely have no knowledge on.

Lastly, a LOT of foods from other cultures that are popular in the United States are not even authentic to that culture. To stand in front of a Taco Bell, or Panda Express, or Olive Garden and tell anyone that is your idea of eating “ethnic” food is not only a lie, but the curse of nationalism and Western closed-mindedness.

If you think our friends in Mexico are sitting down at their tables each night with a Crunch Wrap Supreme and Nacho Fries, you are highly mistaken, beloved.

But, with no empathy, authentic African culture has been co-opted as a sort of internet trend in which it’s acceptable to bash damn near an entire continent for food that takes immense labour and cultural knowledge to create successfully. And then, the people who posted their negative reviews actually had to sit, order the food, set it up, film themselves eating it, decide they didn’t like it, go back and edit the video – with their disrespect front and centre – and thought they could post it on the internet free of scrutiny. Like, we (as Americans) aren’t even eating traditional foods from other cultures to BEGIN with, so why was now the time to start, and why did you all start with African food?

Answer, and quickly.

There has always been tension within the Black community between Black Americans and the African diaspora, over feelings of perceived superiority and inferiority on both sides, and in all honesty, this is an argument I don’t subscribe to - at the end of the day, systemic racism does not care what flag you have in your bio, or how long you’ve lived in America – you’re Black, plain and simple.

But West Africans were not the first people who hopped on the internet and begged people to try their food, so the unwarranted opinions are more proof that maybe sometimes, it’s ok to gatekeep. And no one is begging for these reactions either or saying that you have to like it – if you’re not a fan, just nize it and maybe just…delete the video? Outside of the topic of respect also, the Internet is forever. So those of who you unabashedly are posting disrespect on the internet, think where this video will be circulating in a year or so.

Lastly, if you think Africans are blowing the response to the “fufu challenge” out of proportion, keep that same energy next time you see white women in box braids, rocking evil eye pendants, doing intricate henna on your timeline, or trying to lecture you about aligning your chakras, since it has now been established that disrespecting peoples’ culture is no more than acceptable social media discourse.

Be blessed!

[themyscira-server]

Announcing the Rad Lesbian Separatist Discord!

if you’re a lesbian who’s a radical feminist (or at least leans that way) who’s looking for a lesbian-only space, this just might be the place for you!

Themyscira, named after the infamous women-only island, is a discord server created after the latest separatism-is-evil discourse in radfemblr a little while back, when the homophobia really jumped out. I made it for those of us who wanted a space where we could discuss both political and not topics without having to deal with homophobia, or general hetero bullshittery.

this blog is new and specifically made to advertise, as my personal blogs are all “stealth” and would be impossible to advertise on, but I’ve been a part of radfemblr for a good 10 years now. users such as:

@appropriately-inappropriate

@hidetothink

@lilith-apologist

@joanofrad

@nervousfeminist

can all vouch for me if needed.

we have all kinds of channels all nicely organized for your convenience!

we have:

recommendation channels: for all your fave movies/books/anime/TV shows/ext

nerdy channels: D&D, gayming, sci-fi, even a bot for catching Pokémon!

labor of love channels: crafting, art, writing, language learning, even cooking!

after dark channels: adult(18+ only), spooky, and plenty of spilled Tea~

(note: you do not have to be 18+ to join, all 18+ channels are locked for those under 18)

we do have some ground rules.

first, when you join you’ll automatically be placed in arrival, where you will wait for ether myself or one of my mods to approve you. simply let us know who you are and who gave you the invite link so we can ether approve you there or confirm you’ve already been approved.

once you’ve been given the member role you’ll be able to see the rest of the server and officially join us!

the rules themselves are pretty straightforward.

*rad-leaning actual homosexual women only. you don’t have to actually consider yourself a radical feminist. many of us don’t after dealing with a large amount of homophobia from radical feminists, with things like “political lesbianism” being seen/treated as a core belief, separatism treated as an evil ploy by vindictive lesbians out to make hetero women miserable, ext. I stopped identifying as a radical feminist a while ago, but this channel is for actual homosexual women who recognize biological sex, oppression based on sex, ext, and you don’t have to actively consider yourself a radfem to know these things.

*no abuse. all debates, should you have them, need to be kept civil and friendly. we are free to agree to disagree, but if you feel a belief or opinion of another member is beyond that, inform a mod or myself. personal insults, harassment, and Mean Girls-esque cliques are prohibited. we’re all friends here.

*no slurs. it's one thing to refer to yourself with a slur you've reclaimed, but do not do so for someone else without their permission. this also includes the use of words such as tr*nny and f*ggot. these words have a history of bloodshed and oppression and regardless of modern politics should be avoided. modern words such as “troon” have no such history and pretty well only refer to modern bullshittery and therefor, for now, are acceptable. if you feel a word may be questionable, ask ahead of time.

rule of thumb: if you replace the comment with the slur with another minority group, if it sounds like something someone on fox news or the 700 club would say (ex: “the tr*nnies are targeting our children!” -> “the f*ggots/q*eers are targeting our children!”) you need to rephrase it. your point may be valid and entirely factual, but if your wording is hateful it will get you nowhere. if it is truly valid and factual and without hate, it can be reworded to reflect that. if it can’t, it may not be as factual and accurate as you think it is.

*no bigotry. things like racism, ableism, ext are not acceptable. and yes, that does include actual transphobia. many may think that's obvious, but as we tend to see in radfemblr, it isn’t always so obvious, so I gotta say it anyway. treat your sisters the way you'd like to be treated; do no harm but taking no shit. and if you see some shit, flag down a mod or myself. flame wars help no one. don’t waste your time once you realize what you’re dealing with.

*for these reasons, users such as toppdyke and those who associate with her or act in a similar manor will not be accepted. ya’ll are absolute drama lamas at best and I’m not having that shit in my server. sorry not sorry.

if you’d like to join us just like/reblog this post (if only advertising/signal boosting please say so in your tags) or send me a message, along with any questions you might have!

I hope to see you there!

[star-anise]

do you have any sources on the claims you made? im always willing to change my stance if you have legitimate backing for it haha

So first, I’m sorry for blowing up at you the way that I did. I’m not proud that I reacted in such a kneejerk, aggressive fashion. Thank you for being open to hearing what I have to say. I’m sorry for mistaking you for a TERF, and I’m sorry my response has caused other people to direct their own hostility towards you.

So, here’s the thing. “You can’t call bi women femmes” is pretty intrinsically a radfem thing to say, and I am deeply opposed to letting radfems tell me what to do. I’m trying to write this during a weekend packed with childcare and work. I’ll try to hit all the high notes.

The one thing I am having trouble finding is the longass post I talked about in my reply, that was a history of butch/femme relationships in lesbian bars, which had frequent biphobic asides and talked about “the lesbophobic myth of the bi-rejecting lesbian”; the friend who reblogged it without reading it thoroughly has deleted it, and I can’t find it on any of the tags she remembers looking at around that time. If anyone can find it, I’ll put up a link.

As far as possible, I’m linking to really widely accessible sources, because you shouldn’t intrinsically trust a random post on Tumblr as secret privileged knowledge. People have talked about this at length in reputable publications that your local library either has, or can get through interlibrary loan; you can look up any of the people here, read their work, and decide for yourself. This is a narrative of perspectives, and while I obviously have a perspective, many people disagree with me. At the end of the day, the only reason I need for calling bi women femmes is that You Are Not The Boss Of Me. There is no centralized authority on LGBT+ word usage, nor do I think there should be. Hopefully this post will give you a better sense of what the arguments are, and how to evaluate peoples’ claims in the future.

I looked up “butch” and “femme” with my library’s subscription to the Oxford English Dictionary because that’s where you find the most evidence of etymology and early use, and found:

“Femme” is the French word for “woman”.  It’s been a loanword in English for about 200 years, and in the late 19th century in America it was just a slangy word for “women”, as in, “There were lots of femmes there for the boys to dance with”

“Butch” has been used in American English to mean a tough, masculine man since the late 19th century; in the 1930s and 1940s it came to apply to a short masculine haircut, and shortly thereafter, a woman who wore such a haircut. It’s still used as a nickname for masculine cis guys–my godfather’s name is Martin, but his family calls him Butch. By the 1960s in Britain, “butch” was slang for the penetrating partner of a pair of gay men.

Butch/femme as a dichotomy for women arose specifically in the American lesbian bar scene around, enh, about the 1940s, to enh, about the 1960s. Closet-keys has a pretty extensive butch/femme history reader. This scene was predominantly working-class women, and many spaces in it were predominantly for women of colour. This was a time when “lesbian” literally meant anyone who identified as a woman, and who was sexually or romantically interested in other women. A lot of the women in these spaces were closeted in the rest of their lives, and outside of their safe spaces, they had to dress normatively, were financially dependent on husbands, etc. Both modern lesbians, and modern bisexual women, can see themselves represented in this historical period.

These spaces cross-pollinated heavily with ball culture and drag culture, and were largely about working-class POC creating spaces where they could explore different gender expressions, gender as a construct and a performance, and engage in a variety of relationships. Butch/femme was a binary, but it worked as well as most binaries to do with sex and gender do, which is to say, it broke down a lot, despite the best efforts of people to enforce it. It became used by people of many different genders and orientations whose common denominator was the need for safety and discretion. “Butch” and “femme” were words with meanings, not owners.

Lesbianism as distinct from bisexuality comes from the second wave of feminism, which began in, enh, the 1960s, until about, enh, maybe the 1980s, maybe never by the way Tumblr is going. “Radical” feminism means not just that this is a new and more exciting form of feminism compared to the early 20th century suffrage movement; as one self-identified radfem professor of mine liked to tell us every single lecture, it shares an etymology with the word “root”, meaning that sex discrimination is at the root of all oppression.

Radical feminism blossomed among college-educated women, which also meant, predominantly white, middle- or upper-class women whose first sexual encounters with women happened at elite all-girls schools or universities. Most of these women broke open the field of “women’s studies” and the leading lights of radical feminism often achieved careers as prominent scholars and tenured professors.

Radical feminism established itself as counter to “The Patriarchy”, and one of the things many early radfems believed was, all men were the enemy. All men perpetuated patriarchy and were damaging to women. So the logical decision was for women to withdraw from men in all manner and circumstances–financially, legally, politically, socially, and sexually. “Political lesbianism” wasn’t united by its sexual desire for women; many of its members were asexual, or heterosexual women who decided to live celibate lives. This was because associating with men in any form was essentially aiding and abetting the enemy.

Look, I’ll just literally quote Wikipedia quoting an influential early lesbian separatist/radical feminist commune: “The Furies recommended that Lesbian Separatists relate “only (with) women who cut their ties to male privilege” and suggest that “as long as women still benefit from heterosexuality, receive its privileges and security, they will at some point have to betray their sisters, especially Lesbian sisters who do not receive those benefits”“

This cross-pollinated with the average experience of WLW undergraduates, who were attending school at a time when women weren’t expected to have academic careers; college for women was primarily seen as a place to meet eligible men to eventually marry. So there were definitely women who had relationships with other women, but then, partly due to the pressure of economic reality and heteronormativity, married men. This led to the phrase LUG, or “lesbian until graduation”, which is the kind of thing that still got flung at me in the 00s as an openly bisexual undergrad. Calling someone a LUG was basically an invitation to fight.

The assumption was that women who marry men when they’re 22, or women who don’t stay in the feminist academic sphere, end up betraying their ideals and failing to have solidarity with their sisters. Which seriously erases the many contributions of bi, het, and ace women to feminism and queer liberation. For one, I want to point to Brenda Howard, the bisexual woman who worked to turn Pride from the spontaneous riots in 1969 to the nationwide organized protests and parades that began in 1970 and continue to this day. She spent the majority of her life to a male partner, but that didn’t diminish her contribution to the LGBT+ community.

Lesbian separatists, and radical feminists, hated Butch/Femme terminology. They felt it was a replication of unnecessarily heteronormative ideals. Butch/femme existed in an LGBT+ context, where gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender people understood themselves to have more in common with each other than with, say, cis feminists who just hated men more than they loved women. 

The other main stream of feminist thought at the time was Liberal Feminism, which was like, “What if we can change society without totally rejecting men?” and had prominent figures like Gloria Steinem, who ran Ms magazine. Even today, you’ll hear radfems railing against “libfems” and I’m like, my good women, liberal feminism got replaced thirty years ago. Please update your internal schema of “the enemy”

Lesbian separatism was… plagued by infighting. To maintain a “woman-only” space, they had to kick out trans women (thus, TERFs), women who slept with men (thus, biphobia), women who enjoyed kinky sex or pornography or engaged in sex work (thus, SWERFS) and they really struggled to raise their male children in a way that was… um… anti-oppressive. (I’m biased; I know people who were raised in lesbian separatist communes and did not have great childhoods.) At the same time, they had other members they very much wanted to keep, even though their behaviour deviated from the expected program, so you ended up with spectacles like Andrea Dworkin self-identifying as a lesbian despite being deeply in love with and married to a self-identified gay man for twenty years, despite beng famous for the theory that no woman could ever have consensual sex with a man, because all she could ever do was acquiesce to her own rape.

There’s a reason radical feminism stopped being a major part of the public discourse, and also a reason why it survives today: While its proponents became increasingly obsolete, they were respected scholars and tenured university professors. This meant people like Camille Paglia and Mary Daly, despite their transphobia and racism, were considered important people to read and guaranteed jobs educating young people who had probably just moved into a space where they could meet other LGBT people for the very first time. So a lot of modern LGBT people (including me) were educated by radical feminist professors or assigned radical feminist books to read in class.

The person I want to point to as a great exemplar is Alison Bechdel, a white woman who discovered she was a lesbian in college, was educated in the second-wave feminist tradition, but also identified as a butch and made art about the butch/femme dichotomy’s persistence and fluidity. You can see part of that tension in her comic; she knows the official lesbian establishment frowns on butch/femme divisions, but it’s relevant to her lived experience.

What actually replaced radical feminism was not liberal feminism, but intersectional feminism and the “Third Wave”. Black radical feminists, like Audre Lorde, bell hooks, and Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, pointed out that many white radical feminists were ignoring race as a possible cause of oppression, and failing to notice how their experiences differed from Black womens’. Which led to a proliferation of feminists talking about other oppressions they faced: Disabled feminists, Latina feminists, queer feminists, working-class feminists. It became clear that even if you eliminated the gender binary from society, there was still a lot of bad shit that you had to unlearn–and also, a lot of oppression that still happened in lesbian separatist spaces.

I’ve talked before about how working in women-only second-wave spaces really destroyed my faith in them and reinforced my belief in intersectional feminism

Meanwhile, back in the broader queer community, “queer” stuck as a label because how people identified was really fluid. Part of it is that you learn by experience, and sometimes the only way to know if something works for you is to try it out, and part of it is that, as society changed, a lot more people became able to take on new identities without as much fear. So for example, you have people like Pat Califia, who identified as a lesbian in the 70s and 80s, found far more in common with gay leather daddies than sex-negative lesbians, and these days identifies as a bisexual trans man.

Another reason radical feminists hate the word “queer”, by the way, is queer theory, which wants to go beyond the concept of men oppressing women, or straights oppressing gays, but to question this entire system we’ve built, of sex, and gender, and orientation. It talks about “queering” things to mean “to deviate from heteronormativity” more than “to be homosexual”. A man who is married to a woman, who stays at home and raises their children while she works, is viewed as “queer” inasmuch as he deviates from heteronormativity, and is discriminated against for it.

So, I love queer theory, but I will agree that it can be infuriating to hear somebody say that as a single (cis het) man he is “queer” in the same way being a trans lesbian of colour is “queer”, and get very upset and precious about being told they’re not actually the same thing. I think that actually, “queer as a slur” originated as the kind of thing you want to scream when listening to too much academic bloviating, like, “This is a slur! Don’t reclaim it if it didn’t originally apply to you! It’s like poor white people trying to call themselves the n-word!” so you should make sure you are speaking about a group actually discriminated against before calling them “queer”. On the other hand, queer theory is where the theory of “toxic masculinity” came from and we realized that we don’t have to eliminate all men from the universe to reduce gender violence; if we actually pay attention to the pressures that make men so shitty, we can reduce or reverse-engineer them and encourage them to be better, less sexist, men.

But since radfems and queer theorists are basically mortal enemies in academia, radical feminists quite welcomed the “queer as a slur” phenomenon as a way to silence and exclude people they wanted silenced and excluded, because frankly until that came along they’ve been losing the culture wars.

This is kind of bad news for lesbians who just want to float off to a happy land of only loving women and not getting sexually harrassed by men. As it turns out, you can’t just turn on your lesbianism and opt out of living in society. Society will follow you wherever you go. If you want to end men saying gross things to lesbians, you can’t just defend lesbianism as meaning “don’t hit on me”; you have to end men saying gross things to all women, including bi and other queer women.  And if you do want a lesbian-only space, you either have to accept that you will have to exclude and discriminate against some people, including members of your community whose identities or partners change in the future, or accept that the cost of not being a TERF and a biphobe is putting up with people in your space whose desires don’t always resemble yours.

Good god, this got extensive and I’ve been writing for two hours.

So here’s the other thing.

My girlfriend is a femme bi woman. She’s married to a man.

She’s also married to two women.

And dating a man.

And dating me (a woman).

When you throw monogamy out the window, it becomes EVEN MORE obvious that “being married to a man” does not exclude a woman from participation in the queer community as a queer woman, a woman whose presentation is relevant in WLW contexts. Like, this woman is in more relationships with women at the moment than some lesbians on this site have been in for their entire lives.

You can start out with really clear-cut ideas about “THIS is what my life is gonna be like” but then your best friend’s sexual orientation changes, or your lover starts to transition, and things in real life are so much messier than they look when you’re planning your future. It’s easy to be cruel, exclusionary, or dismissive to people you don’t know; it’s a lot harder when it’s people you have real relationships with.

And my married-to-a-man girlfriend? Uses “butch” and “femme” for reasons very relevant to her queerness and often fairly unique to femme bi women, like, “I was out with my husband and looking pretty femme, so I guess they didn’t clock me as a queer” or “I was the least butch person there, so they didn’t expect me to be the only one who uses power tools.” Being a femme bi woman is a lot about invisibility, which is worth talking about as a queer experience instead of being assumed to exclude us from the queer community.