#specifically marginalized history

[cleoselene]

Did you know?

Democrats have won the popular vote in seven out of the last eight presidential elections going back to 1992? The only time the GOP has won the popular vote in the last 36 years in a presidential election was in 2004, and it was a pretty narrow margin. This was a wartime election and the first election post-9/11. The Democratic candidate was the unfortunately uninspiring John Kerry, who had been lied about. You know how in politics we say someone has been "swiftboated" when a successful lie is told about them? That term originates with the 2004 election because a bunch of people concocted an elaborate lie about John Kerry's military service. He wasn't super inspiring as a candidate, but that was the worst thing he did. He wasn't a bad guy. He was just running in a very gross, jingoistic time after the worst terror attack in American history, and had a bunch of successful lies told about him to the point where a whole word about a specific kind of lie was invented about it. THIS is the only time since 1988 that the Republican party has won the popular vote. George W. Bush did not win the popular vote in 2000. The Supreme Court ordered that votes stop being counted in Florida and handed the victory to Bush.

Donald Trump has never ever won the popular vote. The electoral college handed him the victory in 2016, less than 15,000 votes across three states decided the election. Hillary Clinton in total won about 3.7 million more votes than Donald Trump. Trump HATES hearing this number. He hates even more that Joe Biden got about 7 million more votes. He hates even more that you bring up the fact that he lost his midterm elections for his party in 2018, badly. And that the "Red Wave" in 2022 did not happen because of backlash at his Supreme Court. Or that in 2023 voters continued to reject his Supreme Court at the polls.

He knows, the Republicans know, that if more people vote, they lose. They don't want small d democracy. They want authoritarianism. They want to suppress it.

So when you get cute about not wanting to vote, you're not doing activism. You're surrendering.

[kianamaiart]

how do you feel about people who aren't of the same race as that character voicing that character? Also since you work in the cartoon industry and have gone through the voice acting hiring process yourself, is there some sort of code that says its discrimination if you say "only people who fit into this group/all these groups should apply"? (asking this in good faith i hope it is clear. This is really hard to phrase. To make where I'm coming from more clear, while I doubt i would ever get the chance to do what you're doing, if this one comic I make was ever turned into a cartoon, its very important to me for example that the main character who is a non-binary Chinese-American Jew be portrayed by someone as close to that identity as possible. Because to me, there are limited chances for some people to portray themselves wholly on the screen, let alone at all, and to take that opportunity away would be wrong. And I just remember as a(n older) kid it made me even happier when i'd find out people voicing the rare characters who share parts of my identity actually WERE of that identity. But on the other hand, putting more and more restrictions means less and less people can audition and there is such a small chance the perfect person will even find the role. And also I'm not sure if this counts as discrimination in hiring legal code.

it's tricky for sure! in a perfect world, it shouldn't matter, but there's a history of marginalized people being, well, marginalized and denied work for usually white voice actors who can do an impression.

i think there should be a push to get more marginalized voice actors to voice characters like them but also characters that aren't! let actors be actors

You're right in that the more specific the identity, the smaller the pool of actors. and in that case, i think it's good to put in the effort to find people who identify with the role as closely as possible, even if it's not 100%. aika's black/japanese ethnicity, for example, is based off of my own heritage but she's played by anairis quinones, a black/puerto rican voice actor. i felt comfortable casting this way because i feel like at least on my end, i can write aika accurate to my own experience and make sure anything having to do with her identity is handled with care. and i very much trust anairis to understand! and although they're not japanese, they do have an understanding of what it means to be black and queer, which aika also is.

it's a case by case thing for sure but i'm always down to uplift marginalized actors!

[grecoromanyaoi]

pray tell how r ppl descended from arab conquerors from the 7-8th c. and ppl who adopted/were forced to convert to their culture "ethnically north african" or even "indigenous tunisians" but jews fleeing violent prosecution who found refuge in north africa arent. bc jews dont "belong" there? where do they "belong"?

it was esp funny of the older anon to try n use settler/indigenous dichotomy on pre-french-colonialism tunisia of all places considering imazighen and arabization and anti-amazigh behavior of both individuals, groups n governments. most tunisians arent "indigenous". like referring to non-livornese jews in tunisia as "indigenous" is just clearly indicating how u dont know what ur talking abt bc a. a lot of them r sephardim as well and b. even a lot of non-sephardic tunisian jews r arabized, not indigenous. but what can i expect from an anon that said 'spanish sephardim'

[makingqueerhistory]

I wish that we would collectively actually engage with the problematic aspects of queer history instead of demanding they be disposed of.

I think it's a result of a carceral system that removes criminals from our communities that people think in these black-and-white terms. Either a queer person from history was perfect and can be pinned to any argument to legitimize it, or they were evil, and we aren't allowed to talk about them or acknowledge their queerness.

In general, I believe it is so much more useful to engage with the messy and uncomfortable things people from history did. I also think this engagement shouldn't start with mentioning the harm the people caused and then end with disposing of said people.

Some alternatives I like:

Educating people about the problematic nature of the person while not distancing from them

Looking into the specifics of what harm was caused and doing opposing things (i.e. an author writing antisemitic tropes can be combatted with intentionally finding and uplifting a Jewish author taking down the tropes)

Take an inner inventory of ways you may perpetuate harm to the same community that the person in question did, and learn how to stop and repair that harm

Be an active ally to the people in your life who exist within the marginalization that the person in question contributed harm to

I suppose I am just tired of having a historical figure's problematic nature being used as a "gotcha moment" in response to even mentioning their existence (often in posts that link to articles that mention and sometimes discuss in depth the exact problematic decisions said person made).

[noperopesaredope]

I already wrote a similar posts on how fics of this nature annoy me, but I would like to push it further by saying that while I am fine reading it, I feel kind of weird about fics where the clones like Cody are constantly taking care of and basically babysitting their Jedi General or acting as a major emotional pillar for them.

I think the reason it makes me so uncomfortable is that not only are the clones already going through their own extremely horrific shit, but the Jedi are their superior officers and have a lot more systemic power over them. I will never stop saying that the clones are slaves, and while I don't see the Jedi as being their enslavers, I do think that they are essentially in a "master" position of power whether they like it or not. So it feels weird when the Jedi are more dependent on the clones and the clones need to basically take care of them and are always needing to look after them.

I'm a half-black American who is very passionate about African American history and anti-black systemic issues. And I can't help but be reminded of the tropes involving black characters whose are constantly forced into what is basically a caretaker role for white characters. Think of the Mammy, or the Black Best Friend, or the Magical Negro. The clones are already oppressed, already marginalized, and already forced to constantly back up and support the Jedi in charge of them. And then they are forced to be their Jedi's babysitter on top of all that.

Helping their Jedi out and generally caring about their wellbeing on places like the battlefield? Yes, that can be very sweet and often involves a lot of emotional care and trust.

Needing to force their Jedi to take care of themselves even off the battlefield and having a whole system/thing about how the Jedi "never take care of themselves and simply need the clones in order to do basic self care and not overwork themselves all the time while being oh so self-sacrificial"? Slightly weird and honestly seems to be the other way around based on both canon scenes and their respective circumstances.

I feel like perhaps part of this is just a general desire for angst and classic whump tropes, and sometimes it seems to be used as a way to showcase, "see! The Jedi do care about their troopers!" It seems like an example of the Jedi taking on the caretaker position and being the ones to protect the clones. But it almost always ends up resulting in the clones being forced into a support/caretaker role even when it seems like the Jedi is playing the role of caretaker.

Now, I don't think fics that follow this overall concept are super problematic or whatever. I also think some dynamics like this can work, such as with the Padawans and the clones (though that is for very specific reasons). I really don't want to spread too much negativity or say that anyone who writes this stuff is automatically racist or whatever. It's more of a personal discomfort/distaste than anything and people can write whatever they want, especially since I know the intent behind these tropes are often sweet in nature.

But I do think it's good for us to reflect on the parallels the clones have to real life issues and the way certain harmful tropes and mindsets can be perpetuated through metaphorical allegories (whether intentional or unintentional), and discuss the way we as a fandom treat the power dynamics between the clones and Jedi, especially in regards to things like shipping.

I don't know if I'm making any sense, but please tell me what you think, especially since I think it would be a good thing to talk about.

[tritoch]

I wish people were willing to have a slightly broader or more expansive understanding of FFXIV's women because I think there's so much there in terms of easily-unearthed subtext that no one really thinks about! And I don't mean this in a "people need to re-evaluate their response to the women of Stormblood" way (though I do think that's largely true), I mean I think fandom's understanding even of the women it mostly likes is pretty weak. And you can say that's because the women are underwritten, and I won't argue that they couldn't use more attention from the writing, but that doesn't prevent you from analyzing them the way you can any character in fiction.

Like everyone's always like, oh, Y'shtola and Krile are like your snarky wine aunts, haha. But...Sharlayan is a pretty ossified and patriarchal society from what we see of it in Endwalker and places like the AST quests. Can we open ourselves to the possibility that it means something that almost every young Sharlayan woman we meet, almost all young women in academia, tends to be a little sharp and quick on the retort? The arch and snarky ways in which those two carry themselves reflect in some sense the facts that Krile is almost literally a nepo baby woman in STEM who is barely older than her students, while Y'shtola learned her behaviors from her much older female mentor, a woman who hated Sharlayan academic culture so much she literally abandoned it to go live in a cave.

Or like, Alisaie! Fan jokes and meta frequently buy into her tendency to characterize the dynamic between her and Alphinaud as a jock/nerd, street savvy extrovert vs book smart introvert thing. Except, tragically, Alphinaud's highest stat is 100% Charisma and he absolutely pulled in his student days. All his greatest achievements are diplomatic, and he very easily develops strong friendships with people in every culture you learn about. Alisaie is the determined, sensitive genius who revolutionizes Eorzea by proving the tempered can be healed. She's just permanently carrying a chip on her shoulder that while she and her brother are remembered as the youngest students in Studium history, actually he got in six months before her, a fact pretty much no one else ever brings up once. She's constantly fuming over the fact that he was marginally better than her in certain specific ways in high school, and looking to differentiate them in ways that actually fail to credit her own obvious strengths and accomplishments. I think that's so fun! It's so juicy, and it's equally good for comedy or serious character studies.

Venat is a genuinely benevolent hero who has no compunction sacrificing lives for the greater good. Minfilia is kind and compassionate and clearly on some level actually buys into the narrative of her own unique moral authority. Ysayle is a revolutionary firebrand with almost no concern for the common man, whose death reflects her Javert-like inability to reconcile her own romantic belief in justice with the tragic ways her blinkered worldview (born largely of trauma) let her be easily co-opted by a violent system. But even people who like these characters rarely move past surface-level reads (people who think Venat is just an all-loving mommy figure make me want to fucking die). The fandom is allergic to drawing connections the game doesn't draw, and fails to recognize that FFXIV is a game where characters voice understandings of themselves and others that are wrong about as often as they're right.

You can already see the ways that women like Wuk Lamat and Cahciua and Sphene are getting flattened or losing their shading in fan reception and it's boring. Like I'm not even saying this because you should take female characters more seriously or something (though you should), I'm literally just bored to tears sometimes and if you guys turn Wuk Lamat into another Hot Dumb Jock Lady, I will combust.

[xclowniex]

The thing which frustrates me the most about leftist antisemitism, isn't the antisemitism part, I've kinda gotten used to that, it's the fact that a lot of the arguments they use veer into bigotry against non Jewish groups and its honestly only a matter of time before it spreads to those other groups entirely.

I have seen so much rhetoric in attempt to erase jewish history and indigenousness, that also harms indigenousness of all indigenous folk.

I've seen people saying that you cant be queer and a zionist - which is queerphobia as you are saying that a person is only queer if they fit this specific image of queerness you percieve

I've seen people be misogynistic when they deny the rape during Oct 7th.

I have seen racism, specifically anti black rhetoric when trying to "pwn the zionists" by supporting the houthi who sex traffick women from Ethiopia. By erasing the enslavement of black folk in the middle east by arabs.

And it's all just not very leftist. Like ignoring the bigotry aspect, you are not a true ally of any marginalized group unless you recognize that people you don't like can and will be part of that group. You cannot just erase it.

Marginalized groups are not meant to be palatable to everyone. The moment that you start excluding people, is the moment that you are no longer a true ally. And it also opens you up to applying the same logic you are applying to jews, to other marginalized groups.

Yesterday it was zionists, today its jews, how long till it's you?

[transmutationisms]

genq what are the actual reasons that plagiarism is bad apart from profit and prestige?

so there are two main angles i usually think of here, which ultimately converge into some related issues in public discourse and knowledge production.

firstly, plagiarism should not just be understood as a violation one individual perpetuates against another; it has a larger role in processes of epistemological violence and suppression of certain people's arguments, ideas, and labour. consider the following three examples of plagiarism that is not at all counter to current structures of knowledge production, but rather undergirds them:

in colonial expeditions and encounters from roughly the 14th century onward, a repeated and common practice among european explorer-naturalists was to rely on indigenous people's knowledge of botany, geography, natural history, and so forth, but to then go on to publish this knowledge in their own native tongues (meaning most of the indigenous people they had learned from could not access, read, or respond to such publications), with little, vague, or no attribution to their correspondents, guides, hosts, &c. (many many examples; allison bigelow's 'mining language' discusses this in 16th and 17th century american mining, with a linguistic analysis foregrounded)

throughout the renaissance and early modern period, in contexts where european women were generally not welcome to seek university education, it was nonetheless common practice for men of science to rely on their wives, sisters, and other family members not just to keep house, but also to contribute to their scientific work as research assistants, translators, fund-raisers, &c. attribution practices varied but it is very commonly the case that when (if ever) historians revisit the biographies of famous men of science, they discover women around these men who were actively contributing to their intellectual work, to an extent previously unknown or downplayed (off the top of my head, marie-anne lavoisier; emma darwin; caroline herschel; rosalie lamarck; mileva marić-einstein...)

it is standard practice today for university professors to run labs where their research assistants are grad students and postdocs; to rely on grad students, undergrads, and postdocs to contribute to book projects and papers; and so forth. again, attribution varies, but generally speaking the credit for academic work goes to the faculty member at the head of the project, maybe with a few research assistants credited secondarily, and the rest of the lab / department / project uncredited or vaguely thanked in the acknowledgments.

in all of these cases, you can see how plagiarism is perpetuated by pre-existing inequities and structures of exploitation, and in turn helps perpetuate those structures by continuing to discursively erase the existence of people made socially marginal in the process of knowledge production. so, what's at stake here is more than just the specific individuals whose work has been presented as someone else's discovery (though of course this is unjust already!); it's also the structural factors that make academic and intellectual discourse an élite, exclusive activity that most people are barred from participating in. a critique of plagiarism therefore needs to move beyond the idea that a number of wronged individuals ought to be credited for their ideas (though again, they should be) and instead turn to the structures that create positions of epistemological authority under the aegis of capitalist entities: universities, legacy as well as new media outlets, and so forth. the issue here is the positions of prestige themselves, regardless of who holds them; they are, definitionally, not instruments of justice or open discourse.

secondly, there's the effect plagiarism has on public discourse and the dissemination of knowledge. this is an issue because plagiarism by definition obscures the circulation and origin of ideas, as well as a full understanding of the labour process that produces knowledge. you can see in the above examples how the attribution of other people's ideas as your own works to turn you into a mythologised sort of lone genius figure, whose role is now to spread your brilliance unidirectionally to the masses. as a result, the vast majority of people are now doubly shut out of any public discourse or debate, except as passive recipients of articles, posts, &c. you can't trace claims easily, you don't see the vast number of people who actually contribute to any given idea, and this all works to protect the class and professional interests of the select few who do manage to attain élite intellectual status, by reinforcing and widening the created gap between expert and layperson (a distinction that, again, tracks heavily along lines of race, gender, and so forth).

so you can see how these two issues really are part of one and the same structural problem, which is knowledge production as a tool of power, and one that both follows from and reinforces existing class hierarchies. in truth, knowledge is usually a collaborative affair (who among us has ever had a truly original idea...) and attributions should be a way of both acknowledging our debts to other people, and creating transparency in our efforts to stake claims and develop ideas. but, as long as there are benefits, both economic and social, to be gained from presenting yourself as an originator of knowledge, people will continue to be incentivised to do this. plagiarism is not an exception or an aberration; it's at best a very predictable outcome of the operating logics of this 'knowledge economy', and at worst—as in the examples above—a normal part of how expert knowledge is produced, and its value protected, in a system that is by design inequitable and exclusive.

[psformybss]

could you please write something about secret fiancé! reader and Drew and how they met and their love story? I see them being high school sweethearts

Folded Notes & History

series masterlist

warnings: fluff, high school slowburn

an: i also see them as high school sweethearts! i tried my best to keep it kinda vague because if i got into details this would have been over 10k words but if anyone wants to see anything specific ab high school or college lmk and i will definitely write it

︶︶⊹︶︶୨୧︶︶⊹︶︶⊹︶︶୨୧︶︶⊹︶︶⊹︶︶

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　

Junior year U.S. History smelled like old carpet, burnt coffee, and dry-erase markers that hadn’t been replaced since the Bush administration. The windows barely opened, the chairs squeaked every time someone moved, and the only working clock on the wall ticked just a little too loud.

Y/N sat in the second-to-last row, back straight, notes neat, her pen gliding across the lined paper in even strokes. She didn’t talk much in class—kept to herself mostly—but her notebooks were always full, color-coded, and annoyingly precise.

The seat behind her was usually occupied by Drew Starkey.

Basketball team starter. The kid who always had one earbud in until the teacher told him to take it out. Somehow managed to look both effortlessly tired and infuriatingly good in a wrinkled hoodie and scuffed-up Nikes. He wasn’t loud like the others. He laughed with his head tilted back and his whole chest, but he talked in this low, lazy voice that made people lean in.

He wasn’t in class that day.

Or the next.

By Friday, he slid into the desk behind her like he hadn’t missed a thing.

“Hey,” he said, a little raspy.

Y/N glanced over her shoulder. “Hey. You okay?”

“Yeah. Strep,” he said, tugging his hoodie up over his head and ruffling his hair. “Felt like swallowing knives.”

She winced. “Sounds awful.”

When the bell rang, everyone shuffled out—some slower than others, hoping to stall their way into lunch. Y/N was stuffing her folders into her bag when Drew tapped her shoulder.

“Hey,” he said again, a little more unsure this time. “You, uh… take good notes?”

She blinked. “What kind of question is that?”

He grinned. “The kind where I’m hoping you’ll let me borrow them.”

She stared for a second, weighing her options, then flipped open her binder and gently tore out three pages.

“Here,” she said. “Don’t crumple them.”

Drew took the pages like they were made of gold leaf. “Whoa. Color-coded and everything.”

“I like things to make sense,” she said with a small smile.

He gave her a look—just a flicker of something amused and genuine, like he hadn’t expected her to be funny. “Thanks. Seriously. I owe you.”

“You can pay me back by actually listening in class,” she teased.

He laughed. “Fair enough.”

From then on, something shifted.

It started subtly. He started saying hey every morning, even when he didn’t need notes. He started tossing her pens when hers ran out mid-lecture. When they got assigned group work, he pulled his desk up to hers before the teacher even finished talking.

They weren’t friends yet. But they were circling something.

One Wednesday in early February, she caught him doodling in the margins of his quiz while they waited for the bell. He passed her the paper before handing it in—Mr. Klein drawn as a Cold War dictator, complete with sunglasses and an absurdly large cigar. She snorted, smacked him lightly with her pen, and nearly got detention for “disrupting the learning environment.”

That afternoon, Drew waited by her locker.

She blinked in surprise. “Did you get lost?”

“Nah.” He shoved his hands in his hoodie pockets. “Wanted to ask you something.”

“Okay…”

“You busy Friday?”

She tilted her head. “Why?”

“I was thinking… coffee. And maybe you could quiz me for the test. But mostly coffee.”

She raised a brow. “You’re using school as a cover to ask me out?”

“I’m multi-talented.”

She smiled. “I’m free after six.”

That Friday afternoon, the sky was overcast, and the wind had a bite to it—the kind that made you hunch your shoulders and tuck your hands deeper into your pockets. The coffee shop sat on the edge of downtown, nestled between a dusty used bookstore and a florist whose windows fogged from the heat inside. It smelled like cinnamon and espresso the second you walked through the door, the kind of scent that made you want to stay a little longer than you meant to.

Y/N slid into the corner booth first, the red vinyl cool beneath her jeans. Drew followed, his backpack thumping softly against the seat as he dropped it beside him. The table between them was scratched and slightly wobbly, and one of the overhead bulbs flickered every few seconds, casting them in and out of soft, golden light.

Drew’s hands dwarfed the paper coffee cup he held. He turned it in slow circles, fingers twitching around the lid. His foot tapped under the table in a restless rhythm—quick, uneven, like he couldn’t decide if he was cold or just anxious.

“You okay?” Y/N asked, tilting her head slightly, eyes flicking down toward the motion.

He offered a quick smile, almost sheepish. “Yeah. Just… too much energy, maybe. I had practice this morning, but I guess it didn’t wear me out enough.”

“You’re practically vibrating.”

“Could be the caffeine. Or nerves.” He met her gaze for a second and then looked away, the corner of his mouth twitching like he’d made a joke he wasn’t sure she’d laugh at.

She gave him a small smile. “Nervous about what?”

He shrugged, eyes on the lid of his cup. “I don’t know. Talking, maybe.”

“But you talk to everyone,” she said, brow raised.

“Yeah, but not like this.”

Her smile faltered slightly, not because his words were bad—but because they felt… honest. Real.

They had both said they needed to study. Finals were creeping up fast, and the stress was starting to hang over the school like storm clouds, thick and heavy. But neither of them had even unzipped their backpacks.

Instead, they talked.

About everything and nothing at all.

He told her about late nights after football practice—how the field looked different when it was empty and quiet, the stadium lights buzzing above him, casting long shadows. Sometimes he stayed behind after everyone left, just to sit in the silence. He told her how his shoulder clicked every time he threw too hard, and how he’d ice it without telling the coach because he didn’t want to be benched.

“I hate calculus more than I hate losing a game,” he confessed, resting his forehead against the heel of his hand. “And that’s saying something.”

“That bad?” Y/N asked, hiding a smile behind her cup.

Drew groaned. “It’s like a foreign language I was never supposed to learn. And the teacher… he acts like we’re just lazy, not confused.”

She nodded. “I get that. It’s the worst when they make you feel dumb for asking questions.”

“Exactly,” he said, lifting his head. “Like, I already feel stupid. No need to pile on.”

She traced the rim of her cup with one finger, letting the steam rise into her face. “That’s why I always study with music on. I can’t do silence—it makes everything feel heavier.”

Drew looked at her, curious. “Music helps?”

“It’s like… noise that doesn’t expect anything from me,” she said. “Just fills the space so my brain doesn’t spiral.”

He nodded slowly, like he was filing that away for later. “What kind of music?”

“Depends. If it’s math, it has to be instrumental. If it’s history, I can do lyrics. English? Full-on sad playlists.” She smiled at that. “Like tragic heartbreak anthems while I write essays.”

Drew laughed, the sound warm and low. “You’re way more strategic than I am.”

“I just can’t sit in a quiet room and focus. It makes me feel like I’m waiting to mess up.”

He was quiet for a second, watching her with a softness in his expression that hadn’t been there earlier. “I didn’t know that.”

She shrugged. “Not something I really talk about.”

He leaned back, stretching one arm over the booth. “Well, for the record, if you ever need study music, I make a mean playlist.”

“Oh yeah?” she teased. “Do you specialize in tragic heartbreak anthems too?”

“Only the best,” he grinned. “I’ve got taste, Y/N.”

They laughed, and the tension that had been buzzing low between them since they sat down seemed to lift, just a little.

Outside, the sky had faded into a dull blue-gray, and the streetlamps were flickering to life. Inside the café, the lights over the counter glowed golden, making everything feel softer, smaller—like they were the only ones in the world for a little while.

“I like this,” Drew said after a beat, his voice quieter now. “Just… talking.”

Y/N met his eyes. “Me too.”

His foot had finally stopped tapping. His hand rested on the table now, not far from hers.

“You make it easy,” he added.

Her heart jumped at that, but she kept her voice steady. “Easy to what?”

He shrugged, almost shy. “To be myself.”

There was a silence after that—not the kind that felt heavy or awkward, but the kind that settled between them like something gentle. Like understanding. Like maybe they were both just starting to see something they hadn’t quite realized before.

The following week, students spilled out of the building in slow waves, some lingering in clumps by the flagpole, others heading straight for their cars with earbuds in and heads down. Y/N adjusted the strap of her bag on her shoulder, juggling her water bottle and a loose folder full of notes.

“Hey,” Drew’s voice cut through the low hum of chatter as he caught up to her just outside the double doors, backpack slung lazily over one shoulder.

She turned, surprised. “Hey.”

He ran a hand through his hair, suddenly looking unsure. “You headed out?”

“Yeah. Long day.”

“Wanna walk together?” he asked, his voice almost too casual. “I mean—I’ll walk you to your car. If that’s cool.”

It was.

They fell into step beside each other, his steps a little slower than usual to match hers. The air smelled like cut grass and something sweet from the vending machines by the gym. Neither of them said much, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. There was a quiet ease in it. Just the occasional brush of his arm against hers and the low hum of his voice when he pointed out a sticker on someone’s bumper that made him laugh.

When they reached her car, she turned to unlock the door, but paused.

“Thanks,” she said softly, glancing up at him.

He rubbed the back of his neck, looking like he wanted to say something more but didn’t.

Instead, he smiled. “See you tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” she nodded. “Tomorrow.”

And he waited until she pulled out of the parking space before turning to leave.

A couple of weeks later, it was Thursday, right after seventh period. The bell had just rung, and the halls were buzzing with bodies and noise—slammed lockers, overlapping conversations, the occasional squeak of sneakers on linoleum.

Y/N was heading toward the front stairwell when she felt someone catch her hand gently from behind.

She turned, and there he was.

Drew.

Still wearing his practice jersey from PE, cheeks a little flushed, eyes scanning hers like he was trying to read something written just beneath the surface.

“Hey,” he said, a little breathless, like maybe he’d jogged to catch up.

She smiled. “Hey. What’s up?”

He didn’t answer right away.

Instead, he stepped a little closer, checking over his shoulder. The hallway was mostly clear now, just a few stragglers around the far corner. His fingers laced through hers.

“I’ve been wanting to do this all day,” he murmured.

And then he leaned in.

His lips met hers in a kiss that was quick but warm, like a spark that caught and lit something deeper. It wasn’t showy, or practiced, or perfect—but it was real. He pulled back just enough to look at her, a slow, crooked smile spreading across his face.

Her heart was racing, but she smiled back.

He tapped her knuckles gently. “See you eighth period.”

And just like that, he disappeared around the corner, leaving her standing in the middle of the hallway with a stunned grin and the taste of cinnamon gum still on her lips.

By the time spring bloomed and the world smelled like fresh grass and impending finals, they were inseparable. The kind of inseparable that made other people tease them in passing.

Afternoons were for shared iced coffees and laying in the sun behind the bleachers. Evenings were late-night phone calls that started with “I should probably study” and ended with whispered laughter and one of them falling asleep mid-sentence.

And that’s when she started writing him notes.

Little ones. Folded into triangles with sharp creases, sometimes stickers stuck to the outside—smiling suns or tiny frogs with glittery eyes. The messages varied. Sometimes it was a quote from a book she liked. Sometimes a joke from class. Sometimes just: good luck today or don’t fall asleep in history again or I’ll steal your hoodie.

She slipped them into the vents of his locker when no one was watching—between fourth and fifth period, right before his lit class. He never said much about them, but she’d catch glimpses: Drew standing at his locker, one shoulder pressed to the metal like he was shielding the moment from the world, a half-smile tugging at his lips as he read her words.

He kept them all.

She found that out months later, on a quiet Saturday afternoon in his room. The window was open, and the curtains moved with the breeze. She sat cross-legged on the floor, picking through a shoebox of old ticket stubs and tangled friendship bracelets, when she found them—flattened out notes stacked neatly under a band of ribbon.

“You kept them?” she asked, holding one up between two fingers, her voice caught somewhere between laughing and blushing.

Drew looked up from where he was sprawled on the bed, arms tucked behind his head. He didn’t even pretend to be embarrassed.

“They were the best part of my day,” he said simply.

She blinked at him, heart stuttering, and looked down at the mess of her handwriting, all those tiny things she’d never really expected him to remember—much less treasure.

“You’re such a sap,” she teased, but her voice was soft. Adoring.

He sat up then, barefoot and slightly rumpled, his t-shirt creased from the way he’d been lying. He rubbed the back of his neck like he did when he was nervous, and she tilted her head.

“What?”

“I was gonna wait,” he said, suddenly unable to meet her eyes. “Like… I had this idea to ask you at prom or something cheesy like that.”

She grinned. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” he said, still fidgeting with the hem of his shirt. “But then you found the box, and you smiled like that, and—God, I really don’t wanna wait.”

Her smile softened. “Wait for what?”

He looked up at her then, finally, and she could see it in his eyes—the mix of hope and nerves, like the way he looked right before a big game.

“To call you my girlfriend,” he said. “Like, officially. If you want.”

She didn’t answer right away.

She leaned forward, one hand on the edge of the bed, the other still holding one of her notes, and kissed him—light and warm, like the breeze drifting through the open window. His hand found hers, fingers curling around her palm.

When she pulled back, she was still smiling.

“Of course I want to.”

And for a second, neither of them said anything else. The world felt small and soft and safe, like maybe everything was exactly where it was supposed to be.

Then senior year came. So did prom, late-night drives, college decisions, and the terrifying realization that not everything lasted forever.

But somehow, they did.

Even when school ended.

Even when dorms and deadlines tried to pull them in opposite directions.

And now, years later, he still has that shoebox.

She still folds her notes into triangles.

And he still grins like a boy with a secret every time he finds one.

[neotrances-deactivated]

i do think being racist impacts ur politics and what you believe actually, i think being racist very heavily impacts the things you support or defend, i think it’s easy to understand that having lower empathy for other marginalized groups or people who have faced specific violent crimes against them for being whatever they are changes how you talk about what fascism is and isn’t, i also think not having an understanding of blackness and americas police force history shapes how you discuss what cops are and what cop behavior is, their is a reason ppl that the people** that keep getting caught being horribly antiblack have poor ideas of what acab and the “cop in ur head” is

[dykesynthezoid]

Will never not be obsessed w both Louis and Armand calling Daniel “boy” and it’s never lost on me that they both have the context to understand “boy” as a social caste in a way many people (esp white people) living today might not immediately recognize… I think the context w Louis is perhaps more readily obvious to modern people (understandably) but man the reality of the word “boy” is that its usage to indicate a power discrepancy really goes back to ancient history.

In Ancient Rome, you literally could not be referred to using the term for an adult male if you were enslaved. You would forever be called a boy; “puer;” regardless of age.

Boyhood in Ancient Rome is simultaneously a marginalized, romanticized, and even eroticized position. That romanticization of youth, of youthful masculinity in all its perceived contradiction, taken to its logical extreme in such a sternly patriarchal society. The puer delicatus archetype certainly didn’t suddenly disappear with Rome’s collapse; we can see how it endures through the Renaissance, just objectively. And I would say Marius acts almost as a physical representation for the influence certain Ancient Roman ideas continued to have on Renaissance Italy, in this context. Armand is someone who actively can never fully escape his casting into this role, (can even never physically grow beyond it in the books).

In Middle English, the word “boye/boi” is most typically used to describe a male servant. Its connotation has more to do with class than age. And I think many of us are aware how that idea was preserved in American slavery and the post-slavery treatment of Black men.

I think examples like these really help illuminate the ways in which “boyhood” has always been a distinct social class, and in some cases has even occupied what is essentially a third gender role, especially in strongly patriarchal and/or martial societies.

So when Louis and Armand call Daniel “boy,” well. They certainly mean it in one or two very specific ways. (Personally I think Louis is more likely to mean it in a disparaging way since that’s the only way he’s ever heard it used for him; meanwhile I think Armand is more likely to see it as something inherently vulnerable and even potentially worthy of veneration, even if it’s in a way that’s paternalistic).

[communistkenobi]

could you expand / share reading materials on "gender is a structure that mediates access to personhood"? i feel like that's an important point that i don't fully grasp. especially because it is my understanding that until relatively recently even white, bourgeois, cis-heterosexual, perisex etc women were also denied personhood, but were already gendered as women, right?

thanks in advance!

I’m so sorry you sent me this ask like three months ago and I’m only getting around to it now lol

This is going to be a long post. I will be talking a lot about citizenship and rights in this post. I’ll include citations, but two overarching texts I will be engaging with a lot are Unequal Freedom (2004) by Evelyn Nakano Glenn and The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (1989) by Gøsta Esping-Andersen.

This is also not meant to be a comprehensive answer to your question. I am much less familiar with migration & refugee scholarship, which is obviously deeply engaged with the concept of citizenship as an apparatus for granting rights. I’m flagging this because my answer has a particular focus that is not generalisable. Everything I say is not “the answer” to your question, but an answer informed by specific domains of scholarship.

First, I think a good place to start is that when we talk about ‘personhood’ as a status that a human being can or cannot possess, we are often talking about a status that is realisable through citizenship. ‘Personhood’ is itself a legal term, and we can see this in how stateless people (i.e. people with no citizenship) are treated - because rights are granted by and administered through states, being without state citizenship means you are unable to realise any set of rights, and therefore, you are rendered as a non-person. The UN has two separate conventions on the rights of stateless people for example, as being stateless is necessarily an international issue. I think this approach helps makes sense of why “human rights” is a popular framing in discussions of how to remediate inequality (e.g. “trans rights are human rights”). The “human” part of that equation is only realised through the attainment of “rights,” i.e., through citizenship. Citizenship = personhood can also be seen when people invoke “second class citizens” as an articulation of legal, political, and societal discrimination - i.e., groups of people who have less/no access to rights compared to other groups within a state. Systems of classed citizenship often emerge from regimes of settler colonialism, slavery, and apartheid (Glenn discusses this in her book).

The basic Marxist intervention in this discussion is that this class system still exists even in places that have abolished slavery, abolished apartheid, and/or gone through formal decolonisation, because state law under capitalism is fundamentally unjust. Marx calls law the “mystification of power” (I believe he says this in The German Ideology? I'm rusty on my Marx readings lol) - he argues that law is a bourgeois system of justice that caters to the wealthy and powerful and disenfranchises the poor and marginal, but appears as neutral and fair through a liberal “theater” (Marx’s term from The 18th Brumaire) of equality and democracy, mystifying its actual effects and purpose (The Red Demiurge (2015) by Scott Newton is a book about Soviet legal history that goes into some of this. His focus is on the evolution of the Bolshevik relationship to law as the USSR developed and encountered quite literally new legal problems that emerged as a result of the formation of a socialist state). This is also part of the Marxist critique of nationalism - if state citizenship is what grants access to rights, and citizenship is classed (through your relationship to production, through white supremacy, through patriarchy, through colonial status, through religious status, through etc), then equality does not legally exist, that all equality is bourgeois equality, i.e., not universal, not equal.

Gøsta Esping-Andersen provides a really helpful theory of thinking about citizenship rights within a capitalist state (his book only focuses on Western imperial core states, so just flagging that lol). He begins by arguing that:

all markets are regulated by the state, there is no actual “free” or anarcho-capitalist market,

because of this necessary regulatory function provided by the state, the commodity of wage-labour (i.e., the process of selling your labour-power as a “good” or commodity on a market in exchange for money in the form of wages) is likewise always regulated to some degree, and so finally,

welfare should be understood as the regulatory system of the commodity of wage-labour.

This regulatory apparatus is what grants people “social citizenship rights” - sick leave, pensions, disability and unemployment insurance, welfare payments, food stamps, tax bracket placements, childcare, healthcare, education, housing, so on and so on. Within this framework, Esping-Andersen demonstrates that various welfare regimes produce different citizenship classes - Canada, Australia and the US, for example, explicitly reproduce an impoverished “welfare class” through a marginal, means-tested welfare regime that only provides benefits to the very poorest. Various European countries by contrast tend to have what he calls a “corporatist” welfare regime that often grants different social citizenship rights based on which occupation you have, which he argues emerged from feudal and pre-capitalist religious (esp. Catholic) social forms of organisation.

ANYWAY, the purpose of doing all that set-up is to contextualise how we arrive at the question of gender. Feminists make the basic point that citizenship is also classed by gender - in Unequal Freedom, Glenn talks about this in the US, where white women were legally treated as extensions of their husbands and had no access to property rights, voting rights, and so on. Black women, in contrast, were treated sexually as women by slaveholders (i.e., raped and abused) but denied any and all personhood on the basis of their slave status. Citizenship in the US was historically based first on your ability to hold property (reserved for white bourgeois men), and then on your ability to “freely sell” your labour-power on the market - white women were denied citizenship on this basis because they were consigned to managing what was defined as the “private realm,” i.e., the realm that houses free labourers (white men). This public/private distinction emerges through capitalist markets and the commodity of wage-labour, which produces a sharp distinction where productive labour takes place “out there” (paid for in wages by the capitalist class) and reproductive labour takes place “in here” (i.e., labour that is not paid for in wages* by the capitalist class and forms the social basis of reproducing the public labour pool). 

*for white women. see below

As Glenn argues, this public/private distinction in the US is fundamentally racialised. We can see this difference in the emergence of the suffragette movement, where white women appeal to their whiteness (i.e., free labour status) as the rationale for being granted the right to vote. Black women were disqualified from this movement, and did not benefit from white women’s demands for equal citizenship on the basis of them providing all this unpaid reproductive labour to their white husbands, as Black and other racialised women often provided domestic housekeeping labour for white women (unpaid during slavery and for indentured servants, for wages after its abolition). This leaves Black women without a private realm, subjecting them to a “purely public” arena that is uniquely difficult to organise for unionisation and/or improve working conditions (Deborah King talks about this further in Multiple Jeopardy, Multiple Consciousness (1988)).

Trans-feminism explicates this further - coercive sex assignment at birth classes people on the basis of reproductive capacity. “Females” are impregnated, “males” do the impregnating. This particular system of sex assignment is deeply tied to colonial population management concerns, where measuring the labour capacity of colonised subjects was a matter of managing white wealth (as well as making sure “there weren’t too many of them” compared to white people in colonies - this was especially a major white anxiety after the Haitian Revolution at the turn of the 19th century, the largest slave revolt in history. See Settlers by J Sakai). You can read Maria Lugones’ papers The Coloniality of Gender (2016) and Heterosexualism and the Colonial/Modern Gender System (2007), Alex Adamson's (2022) paper Beyond the Coloniality of Gender, and Guirkinger & Villar's (2022) paper Pro-birth policies, missions, and fertility for some introductory reading.

(Note: patriarchal gender hierarchies predate and exist outside of European colonial domination - it is a popular white queer talking point that Europe invented gender, that indigenous peoples actually all had epic radically equal genderfuck systems that were destroyed by Europe, and this is a very patronising and racist historical generalisation that I want to avoid making. Third World/Global South feminism is a necessary corrective to this - an arena of scholarship I am sadly not well versed in. Sylvia Wynter is the only scholar I’ve engaged with on this topic, which again, is a very limited slice. I welcome reading recommendations in this area).

While sex assignment is coercive for everyone, it is a particular problem for trans people, who are accused of impersonation and ID fraud if our sex markets conflict with our gender presentation, or we don’t “look like” our sex marker to cis people. Because you need a government ID to do basically anything - getting a job, applying for an apartment, getting a driver’s license, going to school, buying a phone plan, being on unemployment, applying for disability, filing an insurance claim, doing your taxes, opening a bank account, getting married, going to the hospital, buying lottery tickets at the corner store, etc - and sex markers appear on basically all government ID in many countries, trans people are systematically denied a whole range of citizenship rights (and thus personhood) on the basis of this sex assignment. Trans people are not merely treated as the wrong gender, they are ungendered, and by this process, rendered ineligible for personhood. Like just as an example, gay marriage is a luxury to trans people, as gay marriage is based on the state recognising both you and your partner’s gender in the first place. (See Heath Fogg Davis’ paper Sex-Classification Policies as Transgender Discrimination (2014) for example. Butler also talks about this on a more fundamental level in Bodies That Matter (1993), and Stryker & Sullivan also discuss this in The Queen's Body, the King's Member (2009)).  

This is likewise the impetus behind anti-trans bathroom bills and sports bans - citizenship guarantees, among other things, a right to public space, and these bans are meant to deprive transgender people access to those spaces. These bans should be understood as a way of circumventing the much more difficult process of revoking the citizenship of trans people outright by using a component of citizenship (sex assignment at birth) to impoverish the quality of citizenship that trans people have access to. This is why bans on medical transition are not actually just about medical oppression, but the oppression of trans peoples’ abilities to live in society in general. An instructive parallel is abortion bans for pregnant people, who, in addition to facing medical oppression and violence by being denied healthcare, are likewise systemically marginalised through being forced into the role of “mother” (again we see how cissexualism reduces people to reproductive capacity), economically marginalising them by reducing their capacity to earn a wage, tying them to partners/spouses that now have greater economic and social leverage over them (and thus have greater capacity to assault, rape, and murder them), depriving them of the choice of alternative life paths, and so on.

It’s generally much more difficult to get the state to sign off on unilaterally oppressing a group of citizens by depriving them of citizenship completely, so attacking a group through more narrow and particular policies like healthcare or the use of public space (with the ultimate goal of depriving them of their rights in general) is often much easier and more productive. See Beauchamp's 2019 book Going Stealth: Transgender Politics and US Surveillance Practices, who talks about this in the context of anti-trans bathroom bills in chapter 3. This is also a common thread in disability scholarship, as disabled people are likewise denied much of the same citizenship rights through similar logics - the book Absent Citizens (2009) by Michal J Prince talks about this in the Canadian context. To give an example he uses in the book, in Canada, accessible voting stations were only federally mandated in I believe the 90s, meaning that disabled people were practically disenfranchised until about 30 years ago in Canada, even though there were no laws explicitly banning disabled people from voting.

As a result, any barriers put in place by the state to change your legal name and sex marker should be understood as a comprehensive denial of personhood, not only because we as trans people want our IDs to reflect who we are, but because those barriers make it difficult to do literally anything in civil society. This the basis behind the cry of “trans rights are human rights” - taking away our healthcare rights also fundamentally denies us equal citizenship (and thus personhood), because healthcare is where we get all those little permission slips from doctors and psychologists to change our name and gender marker in the first place. This is of course not remotely the same as being made stateless (trans refugees are placed in a particularly harrowing and violent legal black hole, for example) - I as a white trans person living in the imperial core still benefit from a massive range of material, political and social privileges not afforded to many others, but my transness positions me at a deficit relative to cis people who have the same state citizenship as I do. As I hope I've made clear, it's not a binary case of either having or not having citizenship, but that citizenship is classed, and the quality of your citizenship is heavily dependent on a whole range of social, political, legal, economic, and historical factors that are all largely out of your control.

So not only is gender a barrier to citizenship, it mediates access to realising the full range of personhood within a regime of state citizenship. Trans people are not the only group effected by this, as I described above, but trans people are a group that makes obvious the arbitrary, coercive, and unequal nature of sex assignment through its connection to state citizenship.

[sun-flower-children]

Academic Rivals! Viktor x Reader

Academy Student!Viktor x gn!Reader

Here's my take on this idea that has been rumbling around my brain especially with all the new viktor fics ( yall are doing the lords work)

not proof read + a lot longer than I thought it would be, sorry lmao

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

You were the Academy's top student known to be the top of the class with the highest scores always exceeding expectations.

Your creative thinking and problem solving is what normally got you the spotlight of attention within academia.

Naturally after spending your first two years of the Academy eating up the attention and receiving offers from multiple elite members of society, industry and government certainly made your resume/reputation an intimidating one.

Your peers knew you to be competitive and ambitious wanting to be the one to set the curve; extensive research projects, etc.

This did however make you a poor teammate with your passionate ideas that one of them could dream of keeping up with you. Plus you would steal the leadership role from them to implement the changes you'd want.

You had gotten used to pattern created for you with a bright future ahead.

Even if you were getting kind of bored of knowing that your worst idea would still allow you to keep your rank.

Then all the sudden a new student joins the Academy

It didn't bother you much until you started seeing a drop in your scores and ranking thus creating a rivalry with this mysterious student.

It was not until you and Viktor shared a class that you realized who your academic opponent was

Thus starting a new chapter of your academic career with renewed passion upon knowing there was finally someone that could equal you in skill.

Fighting for everything within the academic realm that was available

Now neither of you had ever officially been introduced or carried a proper conversation instead replacing regular communication with pointed looks of smugness or confidence.

You would have angry fits in private realizing the margin that you had lost to Viktor

Long days and nights spent gaining a potential advantage over your rival.

Your friends would point out how you would almost pop a vein just describing the way that he would "usurp the first place on an exam all because of a technicality"

Honestly when you would get really into it you were sure that you hated this guy: coming out of nowhere with no prior history and just takes over everything you have worked hard to establish.

Who does he think he is????

Now all your professors, namely Himerdinger paid close attention to this rivalry. It's entertaining watching your top 2 students hash it out and creating things they would not have without this push.

Himerdinger seeing how honed in your other skills were decided to create a project for the class specifically targeting you both.

A partnered project

One that could not change neither the topic, the partner or the day that it was to be presented; everything set in stone.

" Learning the skills needed in a lab is one thing but the most important and impactful discoveries have always been those created through teamwork." Himerdinger would share one fateful day as he put up the paper listing the groups.

It did not even cross your mind that you would have been paired with Viktor and after looking at the poster turned around a looked at him.

Viktor was still sitting in his front row seat in the lecture room patiently waiting for the crowd to dissipate before getting up to look at the paper.

He continued to wrap up whatever notes he had taken as you step up to him.

"We are assigned partners for this project." you say very matter a factly.

Viktor looks up to you with a small smile," Well then, we should set up times to work on the project together. What times work best for you?"

You were taken aback by his nonchalance.

Did he really not care that he was partnered with you? Did he not see you as significant enough to mention the obvious tension? Did he not even see you as a rival but a regular student below him???

After a short pause you share what time you are normally at the library.

As you share the details he finished packing up his stuff.

Looking back up to with another slightly bigger smile (what is his game???) " I'll see you then. Tomorrow at table four."

With that he leans on his cane and leaves you in the quiet empty classroom to deliberate your next moves.

That night you started working on the project creating multiple schemes, ideas, and conceptual ideas that could be used for the project put forth.

You went to bed hoping to finally force him to recognize you as the rival that you were as he seemed so dismissive before.

You showed up to the library at the arranged time to see Viktor sitting peacefully at a study table thumbing through multiple volumes seemingly looking for a specific piece of information.

"Good Morning." you started as you walked up to him.

Without even looking up he returns the same early day greeting and places yet another volume aside and opening a new one.

Raising an eyebrow that the attitude you place your things on the other side of the table.

"I was thinking last night about this project and had written down some ideas that I believe that we should pick from as our approach." you open the discussion with no changed behavior from your supposed teammate.

You continue, " I have already taken the liberty to research them, for your convenience, and have supplied preliminary data for each one. Honestly any of these would resolve the problem raised by our projects prompt with their main difference being how creative you wanted to get with it."

Viktor has created yet another pile of abandoned books that didn't meet his mysterious criteria all the while not regarding you properly.

Your felt your self becoming more warmer as you felt the irritation pool into the oil pit of anger you have created surrounding him.

"It's considered polite to respond or at the very least acknowledge when someone is talking to you. Or are you so focused on your book hunt you aren't ever looking at the person you are supposed to be completing this project with."

Viktor sighs putting the book currently in his possession down and looks up to you.

"It was not my intention to be rude I am just looking for a specific volume that has a unique perspective on the concept we learned a week ago but the title is slipping my mind."

Sighing you sit down and observe the collection of books created on the table.

"I'm going to go on a limb here and assume that you only really remember that the color of the book was dark blue?"

Viktor chuckled," Observant and yes I am."

"Well you aren't going to find it in the library considering there is only one copy of it. That author's take was considered almost heretic."

"Ah, so you are familiar with the book I am referencing?"

"It would be strange if I didn't considering that I brought it with me to our meeting. I checked it out a week ago because it piqued my interest and also happened to align with this assignment."

You hold it out over the table as Viktor sighs again running a hand through his hair.

The meeting ended up going on for longer than expected.

You were surprised to find that he has a similar perspective to yours and understood your vision from the multiple proposals that you had created.

Further analysis showed some minor flaws that would otherwise be overlooked by other people; but neither of you too were not going to settle for anything less than perfection.

The more that the two of you poured over ideas, equations, concepts, and plans until you came up with a path that pleased you both with only one variable that needing some testing.

Viktor offered to go his smaller private study that he had already set up a similar experiment (he was also trying ideas out the night before)

Walking side by side down the hallways was a strange feeling.

Not because you were walking slower that your default rushed walking pace but because this person that you had, honestly, really hated and rationalized that was cheating somehow....wasn't.

You hated to admit it as you continued to listen to his rambling on of the missing component that they needed to figure out.

(Shit...he is actually just naturally brilliant)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

part 1 | part 2 >

[vague-humanoid]

n childhood, I was taught the importance of seeing Black faces in government positions and political power. At school, I learned how integral specific Black political leaders were to the Black Revolution—especially during the Reconstruction era and the Civil Rights Movement. I understood from a young age that the presence of Black faces in political institutions was necessary for community advancement. 

I still remember learning about Hiram Revels, who in 1870 became the first Black elected official to serve in Congress. This was shortly after slavery was abolished, and Revels’ presence in U.S. politics was a watershed moment for Black American communities. 

Our presence in these institutions that sought to exclude us did indeed make a difference. Now, even after witnessing the election of a Black president in 2008 and seeing more and more Black people in spaces of political power and privilege, I’m not so sure.

When Barack Obama became president in 2008, I remember the joy felt across my community and this understanding that if a Black person could reach the highest level of power in the U.S., change had certainly come.   

That was the beginning of a harsh reality check for me. What good is Black political representation in a system meant to maintain the subjugation of marginalized people? What positive change does that representation bring when people with Black faces are complicit in the same oppression and violence that continue to devastate communities like ours?

Communities like Gaza, whose devastation we continue to see every day.

The death toll in Gaza is more than 37,000, and the U.S. has repeatedly vetoed a life-saving ceasefire for the Palestinian people and voted against the effort to recognize Palestinian statehood. 

The U.S. has left Palestine and its people in the path of fire and destruction. The world has watched the U.S. ambassadors for the United Nations silently raise their hands to veto ceasefire resolutions. Their silence speaks volumes.

U.N. ambassadors Linda Thomas-Greenfield and Robert A. Wood are Black Americans in high-ranking government positions, two Black Americans who ostensibly represent our ability to overcome a history of slavery, genocide, and racism, the relics of which continue to plague our communities today. They are two Black Americans choosing to subject another group of oppressed people to genocide and displacement, not so different from what our ancestors faced when they were stolen from their lands, slaughtered, and enslaved. 

Before you assume otherwise, let me say that I do understand nuance. Yes, Ambassadors Thomas-Greenfield and Wood do carry out Washington’s decisions, and they do not act on their own behalf; they are the voice of the U.S. government. But for me, the question remains: Why are you there? As Black Americans, why are you choosing to work as conduits for colonization, imperialism, and genocide? What does this do for Black people in America right now? Because existing in places of power and privilege does not inherently equate to uplifting and serving the Black community. 

Another example is White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. The daughter of Haitian immigrants, Jean-Pierre is the first Black and openly gay woman to hold her role in the White House. She is a Black woman I once looked up to—until I began to pay close attention to the way she speaks of Israel’s war on Gaza. 

In one press conference, Jean-Pierre could not even acknowledge why Palestinian, Muslim, and Arab organizations rejected meetings with President Joe Biden. I’ve watched Jean-Pierre dismiss journalists’ questions regarding the safety and protection of Palestinians in Gaza. Of course, Jean-Pierre is the White House’s mouthpiece, and we do not know her thoughts on the genocide in Palestine. But again, I ask: Why is she there? What is she willing to co-sign to have proximity to power? What personal excuses are used to justify being complicit in oppression not so different from what our own people face?

How many times will we exempt Black political figures from accountability while holding up their representation as some sort of community good? Do we not realize the harm this does when we uplift Black leaders who merely act as conduits for white supremacy? As a Black woman, I find this hard to accept. 

more at link

[txttletale]

niceys positive anon!! i don't agree with you on everything but you are so clearly like well read and well rounded that you've helped me think through a lot of my own inconsistencies and hypocrises in my own political and social thought, even if i do have slightly different conclusions at times then u (mainly because i believe there's more of a place for idealism and 'mind politics' than u do). anyway this is a preamble to ask if you have recommended reading in the past and if not if you had any recommended reading? there's some obvious like Read Marx but beyond that im always a little lost wading through theory and given you seem well read and i always admire your takes, i wondered about your recs

it's been a while since i've done a big reading list post so--bearing in mind that my specific areas of 'expertise' (i say that in huge quotation marks obvsies i'm just a girlblogger) are imperialism and media studies, here are some books and essays/pamphlets i recommend. the bolded ones are ones that i consider foundational to my politics

BASICS OF MARXISM

friedrich engels, principles of commmunism

friedrich engels, socialism: utopian & scientific

karl marx, the german ideology

karl marx, wage labour & capital

mao zedong, on contradiction

nikolai bukharin, anarchy and scientific communism

rosa luxemburg, reform or revolution?

v.i lenin, left-wing communism: an infantile disorder

v.i. lenin, the state & revolution

v.i. lenin, what is to be done?

IMPERIALISM

aijaz ahmed, iraq, afghanistan, and the imperialism of our time

albert memmi, the colonizer and the colonized

che guevara, on socialism and internationalism (ed. aijaz ahmad)

eduardo galeano, the open veins of latin america

edward said, orientalism

fernando cardoso, dependency and development in latin america

frantz fanon, black skin, white masks

frantz fanon, the wretched of the earth

greg grandin, empire's workshop

kwame nkrumah, neocolonialism, the last stage of imperialism

michael parenti, against empire

naomi klein, the shock doctrine

ruy mauro marini, the dialectics of dependency

v.i. lenin, imperialism: the highest stage of capitalism

vijay prashad, red star over the third world

vincent bevins, the jakarta method

walter rodney, how europe underdeveloped africa

william blum, killing hope

zak cope, divided world divided class

zak cope, the wealth of (some) nations

MEDIA & CULTURAL STUDIES

antonio gramsci, the prison notebooks

ed. mick gidley, representing others: white views of indigenous peoples

ed. stuart hall, representation: cultural representations and signifying pratices

gilles deleuze & felix guattari, capitalism & schizophrenia

jacques derrida, margins of philosophy

jacques derrida, speech and phenomena

michael parenti, inventing reality

michel foucault, disicipline and punish

michel foucault, the archeology of knowledge

natasha schull, addiction by design

nick snricek, platform capitalism

noam chomsky and edward herman, manufacturing consent

regis tove stella, imagining the other

richard sennett and jonathan cobb, the hidden injuries of class

safiya umoja noble, algoriths of oppression

stuart hall, cultural studies 1983: a theoretical history

theodor adorno and max horkheimer, the culture industry

walter benjamin, the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction

OTHER

angela davis, women, race, and class

anna louise strong, cash and violence in laos and vietnam

anna louise strong, the soviets expected it

anna louise strong, when serfs stood up in tibet

carrie hamilton, sexual revolutions in cuba

chris chitty, sexual hegemony

christian fuchs, theorizing and analysing digital labor

eds. jules joanne gleeson and elle o'rourke, transgender marxism

elaine scarry, the body in pain

jules joanne gleeson, this infamous proposal

michael parenti, blackshirts & reds

paulo freire, pedagogy of the oppressed

peter drucker, warped: gay normality and queer anticapitalism

rosemary hennessy, profit and pleasure

sophie lewis, abolish the family

suzy kim, everyday life in the north korean revolution

walter rodney, the russian revolution: a view from the third world