#thats been said to me by both other jews and non jews btw which is crazy to me

[strwbrryvagabond]

wanted to get on here and yap about American Girl for some reason today

I'm far from a brand loyalist, and honestly, I was shocked I didn't grow up with the off-brand dolls you could get at Walmart or Target since I grew up poor until recently when my mom informed me that I would save money up for months and months at a time so that I could buy the dolls, and my parents only even actually purchased one for my birthday once we started to do a bit better financially, and after they saw how much I loved and took care of the dolls

I bought accessories for them myself as well, both from the actual company and from other brands like Target and Walmart ones, and even paid my mom to order me a bunk bed for them off of Etsy or something because I was so distraught that they didn't all have their own beds.

Anyways, I know brands are bad and stuff, and American Girl is not without faults and controversies, but tbh those dolls really shaped me as a kid, like I intentionally bought Rebecca Rubin as my first doll when I was a kid after seeing her in a catalog that we got sent by mistake because she was Jewish and looked like me. I had never seen a doll or character, or pretty much anything at that age who was Jewish like me and looked like me, and she wanted to be an actress, and at the time, I also wanted to act

I took that doll very literally everywhere, half the pictures of me from that age, she's tucked under my arm in a different outfit, her hair as well taken care of as I could manage for being so little. I accidentally messed up one of her curls while trying to fix her hair, and I cried for like a solid half an hour until my mom helped me fix it. even after I got other dolls, all of which I still loved and took care of religiously, Rebecca was the one who came everywhere with me

I'd already been a big reader before that, which is a whole other post, but I devoured those books, and I totally blame them for my current love of learning history and historical fiction. and the different dolls were all depicted as activists and feminists, and do not get me wrong here (I say on the 'taking things out of context' website) they were far from perfect with their diversity and activism, like oh jeez they did some very questionable things sometimes, but for the early 2000s and 2010s? revolutionary

the store closest to me closed a little before my birthday last year. I didn't know that it was even happening, and honestly probably still wouldn't have known if I hadn't been shopping with my friends at that mall like two weeks before my birthday since that was the only day we could all make work. Despite not having touched my dolls in a while, everything was super on sale, and I had been planning on taking Rebecca to college with me, so I figured I might buy her an outfit or something.

while the store was pretty ransacked, I was shocked and, no joke, teary-eyed over how many things they had for different cultures, different religions, and how many little girls I saw in there with big starry eyes looking at a doll that looked like them

I ended up buying a Channukkah outfit, and one of the friends I was with convinced me to, against my nature, let them buy a Lunar New Year outfit for me as well, which almost made me cry again. What really did it was seeing one of the previous Girls of the Year, Corrine Tan. Oh my gosh if they had had her when I was a little girl, she would've gone right beside Rebecca with how obsessed I was with her. I don't think I've mentioned it here before, but as a kid, I LOVED Mulan, and when I went to Disney World and the dress up boutique they had, I was DEVASTATED that they didn't have a Mulan costume. I latched onto her so hard for a very similar reason that I latched onto Rebecca so hard; because even though she wasn't the same ethnicity as me, Mulan was Asian, and so am I. I wore out I think three burned copies of that movie I watched it so often

I'm just weirdly sadder than I expected that American Girl is closing so many stores and not making as many sales I guess. I'm really fighting being a brand loyalist right now, because there are about a million other brands that make super similar dolls that I'm sure little kids all over loved, it's just always stuck with me that they at least seem to care about representation in the stories they make for these dolls

I mean, it clearly impacted me growing up, and I think it was for the better. I remember reading Addy's book being one of the first times I was exposed to the idea of children being slaves because they obviously didn't talk about that in an elementary school in the 2010s. I really just wanted to get all of my thoughts out, I've been thinking about it a lot recently since I took Rebecca to college, and I've now been hearing stories from girls who see her in my room about what doll or what toy shaped them as a child. Very excited to dress her up for Channukkah when it comes around, and tbh I've been looking for more outfits for her online. I just want her to be something I take with me throughout my life I guess. I mean, I took her everywhere when I was little, so it kinda feels wrong not to take her with me on this super big part of my life.

yeah anyways uh, if you had one of these dolls go... idk kiss em on the forehead or something. remind the toys that shaped you that you love them for what they did for you and all that. yap session over

[mithliya]

ive been saying that i’ll be posting receipts on the hetfem server, which was also heavily requested by plenty of people on here. this post is going to be pretty long, so i’m putting it under a read more. keep in mind, this isn’t every single wrong thing that has been said on the server, some may disagree with some parts even being wrong to begin with, and this post may have more added to it afterwards in the reblogs. the individuals who have provided me with receipts were all feeling threatened due to knowing how vicious and prone to harassing others the women in this server often are. so ive been sent countless receipts with context, which i have tried to summarise as well. please remember that the point of this post isn’t to call out specific individuals, but rather it is to showcase that the concerns and ‘rumours’ going around about this server were reasonable and true, and to show how lesbophobic and racist this server is (which many have publicly stated before being dogpiled by members of the server). 

first is the zionism and racism in that specific regard. “theHettyishere” is black-diaspora, “Autumn” is probablyaterf. both are partaking in the erasure & justification of how israel is treating palestinians, erasing palestinians proven ties to their country, erasing the war crimes israel partook in, and also erasing the racism within israel which prioritises ashkenazim over mizrahim and black jews.

then they got more blatant and started saying that if you’re anti-zionism then you’re .. anti-semitic ?? keep in mind these people aren’t even jewish 

then they go onto defending christianity

and falsely claim hitler ‘deeply respected’ islam. interesting considering hitler called muslims ‘half-apes’ and all but oh well!  

second set of receipts is the defending of blackface and justification of it. in both these ‘debates’, they literally only present one side and then act like they had a great discussion at the end of it when they’re all just confirming their pre-existing beliefs and using one another to support that. anyways, girlsfrommars had previously come under fire for publicly defending the blackface tradition existing in her country, the netherlands. this is her doing it again after backpedaling on tumblr on this topic, and people in the server standing by her. battleking is bookrebelwordwarrior on tumblr. 

the conversation kinda goes on for a bit and girlfrommars does the same thing she did on tumblr not long before this convo, which was give a “oh ok i’ll reconsider!” which may not be her truth anyways.

next is people on the server saying straight women don’t have enough good representation and even talking about being upset over bi women and even lesbians being represented?? again, autumn is probablyaterf. laughing bird will appear in the screenshots a lot, although i’m not sure what her url is.

idk how to tell these het and bi women.... that lesbians have practically no good representation. especially not as much as het women. there’s a lot of parts of this conversation that are highly questionable. tldr its bad if lesbians or bi women headcannon gnc women as bi or lesbians. also its bad if gnc characters aren’t straight.

this next screen is coming from a het woman so keep that in mind. i don’t know how to put into words why i find this iffy so yall can see it and decide for urselves

she justifies it w this when a couple of members make it clear they find her message questionable:

on a different occasion, girlsfrommars, a white woman, decides to randomly ask other white women in the server what they think about reparations. a bunch of racist white women show themselves during this conversation. please keep in mind i was not the one censoring their usernames so i myself have no idea who these women are, but the person censored in white is emanon, who has a tumblr. i dont know what her tumblr is, but she will appear in multiple other receipts after this. keep in mind this entire channel ends up being deleted by probablyaterf to cover up the racism and prevent the collection of receipts, which you’ll see evidence of later on in this post.

then one of the white women dismisses the impact of racism, basically,

then woc start to chime in (white is the white woman, ‘emanon’)

then, after this conversation went on for a while, a mod decides to tone-police and shame the woc for taking issue with what the white woman was saying. this mod is also white.

“my race doesn’t matter, but i’m jewish” sounds convenient. especially since this person admitted to being white and stated thats why she should stay in her lane the previous day:

back to the dispute between LB and the woc:

remember LB’s tone and behaviour in  the above screenshots as you’ll see how different it is from how she acted when a white woman was being lesbophobic on the server. 

probablyaterf eventually comes in with “both sides were bad :)” basically

girlfrommars makes a non-apology apology about bringing up reparations the way she did

the next set of screenshots is just.. i dont even know what to say about it? yall can see it for yourselves because i think its self-explanatory. battle king = bookrebelwordwarrior, thehettyishere = black-diaspora, autumn = probablyaterf.

then the subtle lesbophobia comes in

this convo was then moved to a channel that was eventually deleted (receipt of that will be shown on this post).

probablyaterf then comes in and says lesbians are All saying the things mentioned above 

then radfemkitten talks about how upset she was and probablyaterf goes on about how this conversation should stop or something 

PAT then lowkey admits that part of the point of her server is to be able to talk shit about lesbians without being criticised for lesbophobia: 

radfemkitten more or less confirms this

PAT basically says “if you think women here are lesbophobic then leave but if you keep criticising what is said then i’ll mute and maybe even kick you!” ok

after this PAT muted that woman for saying that some of the women were being lesbophobic. 

someone showed exactly where lesbophobia was present 

 “straight women should have a space where they can shit talk lesbians without criticism” basically ^. this is the 3rd screenshot where members of the chat, specifically the creator PAT, states that the server exists partially so that non-lesbians can say shit without being criticised for being lesbophobic. 

this was then said by emanon (racist reparations lady): 

then probablyaterf coddles the women who were upset for being held accountable and kicks out the women who called out lesbophobia

probablyaterf deleted entire channels which involved members being lesbophobic and racist for the bullshit reason she provided here, basically admitting she would remove things to prevent the collection of receipts:

this is why she is so confident on her blog about how people can’t possibly have receipts on her server. because she makes sure to delete the evidence. issue is, she did it too late. she then started twisting the story and lying to save face. she removed the conversations regarding reparations, separatism, the accusations of racism & lesbophobia, them complaining about there not being enough good representation of straight women, etc were all removed. evidence:

then it gets even more blatantly sketchy, where PAT basically tells the members of the group to not repeat the drama or dish the details of it, as any honest and open person not hiding questionable shit would do, apparently. 

the details and specifics of this drama were all kept quiet by those involved as well, and those involved agreed to not talk about what has happened in detail.

the bit “one of the members was crying SO MUCH because you called her lesophobic that she almost LEFT HER JOB :(” is funny as y’all can see the situation for yourself up there, she said something and people questioned her on it. this wasn’t a case of a poor defenseless victim being cruelly attacked or whatever.

“a lot of them do tho clearly” keep in mind that there were like what .. 4 lesbians that took issue with the server? and initially there was even less than that.

radfemkitten then goes onto a lesbophobic rant.  

then they changed the story within the server and claimed that the accusations of racism were directed at woc... when it was directed at white women exclusively, as shown above. keep in mind the person claiming this and putting racism in quotations is a white woman herself so. hmm.

next incident is some white woman being very blatantly lesbophobic on the server. several people took issue with it, and she received multiple warnings but was not kicked. keep in mind that earlier, someone was kicked simply for questioning a member on the server and saying they were being lesbophobic. yet when someone is blatantly lesbophobic, they receive multiple warnings and then get away with it. “pinkie the feral one” goes by roxxy, i don’t know if she has a tumblr. notice how laughing bird is comparatively very civil and patient with this roxxy person. 

bi & het women determining that lesbians talking about thinking of pussy somehow implies ‘homosexuals are sex crazed deviants’, is what’s homophobic, btw.

next are when the hetfem server came under fire after TD spoke against it and drama ensued. i was initially 100% for the hetfem server and said those opposing it were being illogical. however, after a while of that drama, some lesbophobia was starting to come out from the hetfems which is when i said i think both sides are wrong. the hetfems took this very personally and proceeded to make lesbophobic comments about how im just bitter bc i dont have a gf or something (altho i was in a relationship back then so lol) and then they blatantly said they dont think het women have power over lesbians. the convo resulted in them full on arguing that lesbians have it easier than het women.

next coming is the hetfem server arguing that abrahamic religions actually *helped* women and how radfems should be talking about that. keep in mind some of these are the same people that mock people who say islam is a ‘feminist religion’. 

next is them arguing on the hetfem server that Nasime Aghdam, the youtube shooter, is male and referencing a meme as a source. they completely ignored the fact that Nasime’s childhood photos make it pretty obvious that that meme was inaccurate anyways. also probablyaterf argued that it’s somehow racist to note that nasime aghdam resembles many other people in the middle east (somewhere im from & where ive lived my entire life). its interesting considering how many things she argued weren’t racist or homophobic, yet noting that someone isn’t a Weird Unusual Looking Alien like she wants to claim is ..racist

the probablyaterf goes on to strawman that i claimed all iranians are clones of each other or smth simply bc i said nasime aghdam’s face is not unusual in countries like iran. also keep in mind the person censored in red is a white woman lol.

henryhetta = foxfur-nadine.

listen.. ive seen women wearing borderline clown makeup in my country. it doesnt make them male. anyways then PAT says ‘maybe im wrong but ill insist im not anyways’, basically.

next is the time black-diaspora posted a pic of my mom taken from my country’s gov facebook page, which provides people with her first & last name. this was brought up on the server. they said i was lying (i was not) and went on about how im crazy and need to get laid. also calling me a ‘nigel’ in one of those screens.

then they just keep justifying it and insulting me. instead of taking issue with what a member of their server did.

so basically “calling out lesbophobia is bad, but posting information that leads to someone’s mom’s full name and facebook is ok, and somehow posting something from a ‘public news article’”

then they said “homosexuality is legal in bahrain” to somehow justify any of this??? as if Bahrain doesn’t have a history of killing, imprisoning, torturing, and exiling Bahrainis that they see criticising the government (which i frequently do) or anything. not like around 200 people have lost their lives for critiquing Bahrain’s government or anything. moreover, plenty of things are ‘legal’ in Bahrain but still lead to punishment. sex outside of marriage is illegal and gay people can’t legally get married, for one. and people have been imprisoned in Bahrain for kissing members of the same sex. but whatever i guess. anyways then radfemkitten argues that i sent a picture doxxing my own fucking mother to black-diaspora. so i endangered my own mother and then begged these people to delete the information they posted, apparently? 

sadly, that is the end of the receipts i have on the topic of BD endangering my mom and the hetfem server justifying it and finding ways to blame me for BD’s actions. so i don’t have the bit that confirms how she explained herself to others and justified it, however she did justify and defend it publicly when i called her out on it. BD was not kicked or muted or anything of the sort for what she has done, and as you can see, everyone justified it and took it as an opportunity to insult me. this wouldn’t have been as much of an issue if i wasn’t from a dictatorship and if my blog wasn’t so political. what BD posted is STILL present on another blog and i could not get staff to delete it, so if the information falls into the wrong hands i don’t know what’ll happen to my mother, or even to me.

next is them justifying allying with the right despite their homophobia, racism, etc. keep in mind some of these women reblogged white supremacist propaganda in agreement with it so this isn’t particularly shocking. christmas begins in november = autumn = probablyaterf.

the issue with this, by the way, is associating with a group that is often misogynistic, homophobic, and racist solely to have a slightly larger platform of people who are more or less heavily for gender, gender roles, and more, sends the message that somehow these are ok things to side with as feminists. yall notice how many ‘radfems’ are literally just conservatives who are against some aspects of misogyny or trans people? these are the people you’re roping in a lot of the time. and this makes the voices of radfems easier to dismiss by the left as well. instead of establishing a space in the left, you end up placing yourself closer to the right and effectively putting the success of your movement to a halt.

these coming screenshots are the hetfems arguing het women have it The Hardest in radfem spaces 

separate event is just some lesbophobia, again.

“imagine a straight/bihet woman wondering what the purpose of a lesbian is” go outside. there’s plenty of that. one idiotic woman saying that about bisexuality doesn’t somehow override that.

more blatant lesbophobia in a separate event. note the reactions underneath the text (all in agreement)

how often have gay people talked about how the stupid “you have equal rights now uwu” bullshit is simply bullshit? this is exactly what men use to dismiss feminists, why do it to dismiss talk of homophobia?

a bunch of white & het/het-passing women joking about making a straight pride or kkk march

remember the white woman, emanon, who argues against reparations because “what about poor white people? :(” she comes in with more racism, and some intersexism too! this is her calling caster semenya, an intersex black woman, a man and using ‘he’ pronouns for her. girlfrommars, the white woman keen on defending blackface, comes in to express her agreement.

then they argue that semenya was raised as a male.. because she refused to wear feminine clothing including in school & because some people thought she was, and thus treated her as such until they realised shes not, a man??

this is more recent than a lot of the previous receipts. i reblogged one post by radfemkitten a while back, and she was so flattered she felt the need to complain about it on the hetfem server, to which someone replied by likening me to a male hippo from madagascar.