#they were so misogynistic and so racist and kept calling the show homophobic | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

spookyboogie3 · 4 years ago

Text

MY FAVORITE AH MOMENTS W/O R*an H*yw**d

Also keep in mind some of these moments i picked Bitch Face r*an may have been present for but this aint about his stupid ass.

The straw bit on Off Topic

Fiona and Trevor’s “Look at us” “Look at us” “Look at us” in TTT

Drunk Jeremy inhaling helium, followed by Jack and Trevor on Off Topic

“Krusty KrAYAYAB!!!” TTT

Jeremy trying to slam his face through a table, followed by Michael doing the same thing

“my god…… the munchdew” “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!” Minecraft: Skyfactory

Actually all of Simple Farmer Geoff from Skyfactory

Whatever those sounds were that Jack was making in the beginning of GTA video

Alfredo screaming as he continues to fall down a steep tube in a GTA race

DESTROYING THEIR OFFICE DEAR LORD

“How did he drown though?” “UNDERWATER, MATT!”

Anytime Fiona starts to RAGE in TTT (bonus if others join in)

The time Gav was the phantom in TTT and he kept dying and being brought back and Jack spitting water and then trying to catch it

Alfredo’s Magoo moments in Minecraft

Geoff laughing in the background of a video hes not in

Lindsay fucking around with Chef Mike on Harecore Minigolf

Lindsay fucking around in general

Gavin and Fiona playing Animal Crossing and laughing at the stupidest shit

The Fish Tempura incident on Wheel of Fortune

Lindsay’s reasoning for why her and Michael should have 4 kids

Geoff’s fucking ad reads (my favorite is 23&Me)

The whole thing during Push the Button where everyone especially Michael gets mad at Fiona because she said the best candy to get while trick or treating was lollipops

Matt’s fucking desk in the corner of the room

Anytime Millie is in a video

Everyone falling off the pink ladder during TTT and dying repeatedly because of it

Alfredo “the two-time champ” Diaz dying very early in YDYD 3

Gavin and Michael fucking up almost every game they play on Play Pals

RAY OR NO and then RAY OR NAY on Off Topic

Reddit Roasts Geoff

Gavin asking if someone could kill 20 cows with their bare hands and the proceeding so say he could rip out a cow’s veins by reaching into its neck

Ify’s narration during Let’s Roll Ave Caesar

The internet losing its shit when Jeremy shaved his head years ago

“We need a knife” Gavin comes back with a hammer

Griffin chain sawing the Off Topic table up

“How do I put the boat in the water??” “Right click you animal”

As of 2020, 8 years of playing Minecraft, certain people still do not know how to play the basics of this fucking game.

Honestly it took over 200 episodes for some of them to figure out how the compass worked. You know after they decided that the sun was setting in the wrong direction. (this was in 2016??)

Flynt coal still is a joke they make

So is Day 2

Whatever happened in that GTA lets play where someone called a mugger or a hit on someone and the game glitched and 50 guys showed up and lined up on the street below from where they were playing

Anytime Gavin gets mugged, it’s an old running gag but it’s a classic

The time a mugger fucking started driving the fire truck away after mugging Gavin with Michael and Jeremy still in the truck thinking the other is driving and it takes them like 2 minutes to realize what happened while Gavin’s yelling “come back”

They got a water jug and immediately started water boarding each other

“It pinged and went dingle”

“Hey Trey-Boi” “Hey Gay-Boi” Immediately realizes what he has said

Jeremy’s website puns

(OLD) Ray jerking off in the corner during a let’s play

(OLD) the world in Minecraft never loading and everyone screaming about as Geoff says its fine for him

Jeremy’s “I AM MONSTER TRUCK”

Jack taking AH to Disney……in Minecraft

On Twitter, Gavin asked about recommendations for a computer mouse and Fiona starts sending him pictures of actual mice.

“Its not ghey, if its on the moon”

Literally anything Fiona does as Po

Jeremy saying the heterosexual flag is boring

UNO THE MOVIE!

Geoff fucking cackling the whole time.

“here’s looking at you kid”

the video was almost 3 hours long

“you know what my favorite color is? blue” “oh really? You know what my favorite hand is? Yours

They all want it to end but no one wants to lose and so they fuck each other and that prolongs the game. Also they put on more rules, so they just keep getting more cards if they don’t have a card to match the previous

Alfredo saying he won’t participate in ghost hunter because he knows what happens to people of color in horror movies

Fiona walking in on Off Topic with a protein shake and Gavin asks if shes drinking milk and she says without missing a beat “ah no that’s cum” and everyone laughed not expecting the answer

(OLD) “SURPRISE MOTHERFUCKER” *falls in hole*

(OLD) Ray and Gav running in a panel dressed as X-Ray and Vav and Ray running the whole way around the room before he got to the stage

Duck taping Jeremy to the wall

(OLD) All of Minecraft Episode 3 Plan G (This was the very first AH video I watch and why I know who they are)

Geoff and Gav creating Achievement City and giving everyone houses just to prank Jack into burning house down with lava.

Ray’s house is a dirt block with no furniture and single torch

Geoff’s giant ass house next to Ray’s tiny house

Jack tries to destroy everything with lava throughout the episode

“lets be honest, I realistically didn’t lose anything”

Michael stealing art from Gav’s house “NOO! I want nice things”

The sign to Michael’s says “Awaiting Approval, Awaiting Approval, Awaiting Approval” he runs into house and say “I’m home”

Ray also steals this sign at some point

Plan G – The failsafe.

“Oh whats this? Is this a button? Whats this? (pushes button) Yeah it was a button”

“Did you push the button?”

“Yeah”

“okay”

“wh-what does it do?”

“uh…”

Cue Achievement City beginning to explode as Michael starts screaming

Rays reaction “NO, MY SHITTY HOUSE JUST GOT EVEN SHITTIER!”

Not something funny but something VERY IMPORTANT. AH admitting that they all fucked up and how shitty their behavior was when dealing with harassment in the fanbase. People were racist, sexist, homophobic, misogynistic, and just downright horrible to a lot of the employees at RT and AH. This came up after Mica Burton left the company and talked about it publicly and how nothing was done about it. Fiona who also experiences these same things, along with Lindsay and other employees, but Fiona took the charge on the Off Topic talking about people can’t continue to get away with that behavior. She got to sound off her feelings to a group of white men who all respected her and LISTENED to what was saying and how she felt. She cried; Geoff cried. They all want to do more, so this doesn’t happen in the future and they’re not tolerating the racist and horrible comments. AH taking a mature moment to talk about how they failed to stop these comments and Geoff was right when he said the company has a long way to go.

Outside of AH each member has more to them than just all of the comedy and laughs and dumb shit they do

Geoff helped found Roosterteeth and Achievement Hunter. He has a beautiful daughter in Millie who is awesome in her own right. He’s a recovering alcoholic. Currently doing F**k Face podcasts. Was in the fucking army. Takes accountability for every mistake he makes.

Jack also helped start Achievement Hunter. He does so much work for charity. His twitter is full of things to help people go vote. He’s like the dad to AH, especially Fiona. He’s happily married to his wife Caiti.

Michael was an electrician and has a lot of handy man experience. He made a few videos online about him raging at games and that got the attention of RT. He’s currently married to Lindsay who he met because of RT. They have two kids together.

Gavin is an expert at high speed filmmaking and know how use and edit footage from a slow-motion camera. He has worked on actual films. One of the creators of the Slow Mo Guys. Worked his ass off to get to work for RT. Currently dating model and cosplayer Meg Turney

Lindsay flips between being the mom of the group and a complete chaos queen and we all love her for it. She started as an editor for the RT podcast and then AH stuff. She is an incredible voice actor, most known for Ruby Rose (RWBY), Space Kid (Camp Camp), Hilda (Xray & Vav) just to name a few. She also has a degree in finance

Jeremy started as a fan who made videos on the community page. He took over Ray’s place after Ray left to do Twitch full time. He is a self-published author and a skilled rapper and singer. He’s currently married to his wife, Kat.

Matt also started as a fan making videos on the community page. He actually interacted and made stuff for the guys in really early Minecraft episodes. Seriously this guy is like king of Minecraft. He has a degree in electrical engineering. He also has pretty decent singing voice.

Trevor is THE BOSS. Has a degree in aero-space engineering and is getting paid to babysit AH. Currently dating Barbara Dunkelman, RTs queen of puns.

Alfredo worked at IGN before RT and is a well-known streamer. He is the best when it comes to first person shooter games. He and Trevor look so similar.

Fiona. Po. Her majesty. Host of This Just Internet. A Twitch streamer. Baby of the bunch. Grew up in Europe. Her and Gav act like a pair of siblings. She has stated and showed time and time again she will fight for people to have safe spaces for anyone who needs them.

Ify, our new guy. He is wonderful and I want to stay forever. He’s a comedian, a writer, and an actor. Co hosts F-ing Around with Fiona. Has his own film podcast, Who Shot Ya? I look forward to more content with him in it, cause everything he’s been in so far has been great.

Were all hurting but well make it through this

We have all these wonderful moments and a lot more that I didn’t list and this incredible team of personalities with their own accomplishments and achievements. Not to mention old team members who were also great additions and the entire crew behind the scenes editing and making videos look the best that they can.

Here’s to Achievement Hunter and to this community. We need to be here for each other in times like these.

@theonyxranger gave me the idea for this based on their own post they made about the fans giving their favorite moments without bitch face and there were just too many. Oop.

#Achievement Hunter #Jack Pattillo #Gavin Free #geoff ramsey #michael jones #lindsay jones #alfredo diaz #trevor collins #fiona nova #jeremy dooley #matt bragg #ify nwadiwe #roosterteeth #yes im calling him bitch face now

10 notes · View notes

ultralullstuff · 5 years ago

Text

Is Paris Burning?

There was a time in my life when I liked to dress up as a male and go out into the world. It was a form of ritual, of play. It was also about power. To cross-dress as a woman in patriarchy -then, more so than now - was also to symbolically cross from the world of powerlessness into a world of privilege. It was the ultimate, intimate, voyeuristic gesture. Searching old journals for passages documenting that time, I found this paragraph:

She pleaded with him, “Just once, well every now and then, I just want to be boys together. I want to dress like you and go out and make the world look at us differently, make them wonder about us, make them stare and ask those silly questions like is he a woman dressed up like a man, is he an older black gay man with his effeminate boy/girl lover flaunting same-sex love out in the open. Don’t worry I’ll take it very seriously, I want to let them laugh at you. I’ll make it real, keep them guessing, do it in such a way that they will never know for sure. Don’t worry when we come home I will be a girl for you again but for now I want us to be boys together.”

Cross-dressing, appearing in drag, transvestism, and transsexualism emerge in a contex where the notion of subjectivity is challenged, where identity is always perceived as capable of construction, invention, change. Long before there was ever a contemporary feminist movement, the sites of these experiences were subverisve places where gender norms were questioned and challenged.

Within the white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy the experience of men dressing as women, appearing in drag, has always been regarded by the dominant heterosexist cultural gaze as a sign that one is symbolically crossing over from a realm of power into a realm of powerlessness. Just to look at the many negative ways the word “drag” is defined reconnects this label to an experience that is seen as burdensome, as retrograe and retrogressive. To choose to appear as “female” when one is “male” is always constructed in the patriarchal mindset as a loss, as a choice worthy only of ridicule. Given this cultural backdrop, it is not surprising that many black comediants appearing on television screens for the first time included as part of their acts impersonations of black women. The black woman depicted was usually held up as an object of ridicules, scorn, hatred (representing the “female” image everyone was allowed to laugh at and show contempt for). Often the moment when a black male comedian appeared in drag was the most succesful segment of a given comedian’s act (for example, Flip Wilson, Redd Foxx, or Eddie Murphy).

I used to wonder if the sexual stereotype of black men as overly sexual, manly, as “rapists”, allowed black males to cross this gendered boundary more easily than white men without having to fear that they would be seen as possibly gay or transvestites. As a young black female, I found these images to be disempowering. Thay seemed to bothallow black males to give public expression to a general misogyny, as well as to a more specific hatred and contempt toward black woman. Growing up in a world where black women wer, and still are, the objects of extreme abuse, scorn, and ridicule, I felt these impersonations were aimed at reinforcing everyone’s power over us. In retrospect, I can see that the black male in drag was also a disempowering image of black masculinity. Appearing as a “woman” within sexist, racist media was a way to become in “play” that “castrated” silly childlike black male that racist white patriarchy was comfortable having as an image in their homes. These televised images of black men in drag were never subversive; thay helped sustain sexism and racism.

It came as no surprise to me that Catherine Clement in her book, Opera, or the Undoing of Women would include a section about black men and the way their representation in opera did not allow her to neatly separate the world into gendered polarities where men and women occupied distintcly different social spaces and were “two antagonistic halves, one persecuting the other since before the dawn of time.” Looking critically at images of black men in operas she found that they were most often portrayed as victims:

Eve is undone as a woman, endlesslyy bruised, endelessly dying and coming back to life to die even better. But now I begin to remember hearing figures of betrayed, wounded men; men who ham; men who have women’s troubles happen to them; men who have the status of Eve, as if they had lost their innate Adam. These men die like heroines; down on the ground they cry and moan, they lament. And like heroines they are surrounded by real men, veritable Adams who have cast them down. Thay partake of feminity: excluded, marked by some initial strangeness. Thay are doomed to their undoing.

Many heterosexual black men in white supremacist patriarchal culture have acted as though the primary “evil” of racism has been the refusal of the dominant culture to allow them full access to patriarchal power, so that in sexist terms thay are compelled to inhabit a sphere of powerlessness, deemed “feminine”, hence thay have perceived themselves as emasculated. To the extent that black men accept a white supremacist sexist representation of themselves as castrated, without phallic power, and therfore pseudo-females, thay will need to overly assert a phallic misogynist masculinity, one rooted in contempt for the female. Much black male homophobia is rooted in the desire to eschew connection with all things deemed “feminine” and that would, of course, include black gay men. A contemporary black comedian like Eddie Murphy “proves” his phallic power by daring to publicly ridicule women and gays. His days of appearing in drag are over. Indeed it is the drag queen of his misogynist imagination that is most often the image of black gay culture he evokes and subjects to comic homophobic assault -one that audiences collude in perpetuating.

For black males to take appearing in drag seriously, be they gay or straight, is to oppose a heterosexist representation of black manhood. Gender bending and blending on the part of black males has always been a critique of phalocentric masculinity in traditional black experience. Yet the subversive power of those images is radically altered when informed by a racialized fictional construction of the “feminine” that suddenly makes the representation of whiteness as crucial to the experience of female impersonation as gender, that is to idealization of white womanhood. This is brutally evident in Jennie Livingston’s new film Paris is burning. Within the world of the black drag ball culture she deicts, the idea of womanness as feminity is totally personified by whiteness. What viewers witness is not black men longing to impersonate or even to become like “real” black women but their obsession with an idealized fetishized vision of feminity that is white. Called out in the film by Dorian Carey, who names it by saying no black drag queen of his day wanted to be Lena Horne, he makes it clear that the feminity most sought after, most adored, was that perceived to be the exclusive property of whte womanhood. When we see visual representations of womanhood in the film (images torn from magazines and posted on walls in living space) they are, with rare exceptions, of white women. Significantly, the fixation on becoming as much like a white female as possible implicitly evokes a connection to a figure never visible in this film: that of the white male patriarch. And yet if the class, race, and gender aspirations expressed by the drag queens who share their deepest dreams is always longing to be in the position of the ruling-class woman then that means there is also thedesire to act in partnership with the ruling-class white male.

This combination of class and race longing that privileges the “feminity” of the ruling-class white woman, adored and kept, shrouded in luxury, does not imply a critique of patriarchy. Often it is assumed that the gay male, and most specifically the “queen”, is both anti-phallocentric and anti-patriarchal. Marilyn Frye’s essay, “Lesbian feminism and Gay Rights”, remains one of the most useful critical debunkings of this myth. Writing in The Politics of Reality, Frye comments:

One of thing which persuades the straight world that gay men are not really men is the effeminacy of style of some gay men and the gay institution of the impersonation of women, both of which are associated in the popular mind with male homosexuality. But as I read it, gay men’s effeminacy and donning of feminine apparel displays no love of or identification with women or the womanly. For the most part, this femininity is affected and is characterized by thatrical exaggeration. It is a casual and cynical mockery of women, for whom feminity is the trapping of oppresion, but it is also a kind of play, a toying with that which is taboo.. What gay male affectation of femininity seems to be is a serious sport in which men may exercise their power and control over the feminine, much as in other sports... But the mastery of the feminine is not feminine. It is masculine..

Any viewer of Paris is Burning can neither deny the way in which its contemporary drag balls have the aura of sports events, aggressive competitions, one team (in this case “house”) competing another etc., nor ignore the way in which the male “gaze” in the audience is directed at participants in a manner akin to the objectifying phallic stare straight men direct at “feminine” women daily in public spaces. Paris is Burning is a film that many audiences assume is inherently oppositional because of its subject matter and the identity of the filmmaker. Yet the film’s politics of race, gender, and class are played out in ways that are both progressive and reactionary.

When I first heard that there was this new documentary film about black gay men, drag queens, and drag balls I was fascinated by the title. It evoked images of the real Paris on fire, of the death and destruction of a dominating white western civilization and culture, an end to oppressive Eurocentrism and white supremacy. This fantasy not only gave me a sustained sense of plearure, it stood between me and the unlikely reality that a young white filmmaker, offering a progresssive vision of “blackness” from the standpoint of “whiteness”, would receive the positive press accorded Livingston and her film. Watching Paris is Burning, I began to think that the many yuppie-looking, straight-acting, pushy, predominantly white folks in the audience were there because the film in no way interrogates “whiteness”. These folks left the film saying it was “amazing”, “marvelous”, “incredibly funny”, worthy of statements like, “Didn’t you just love it?” And no, I didn’t just love it. For in many ways the film was a graphic documentary portrait of the way in which colonized black people (in this case black gay brothers, some of whom were drag queens) worship at the throne of whiteness, even when such worship demands that we live in perpetual self-hate, steal, lie, go hungry, and even die in its pursuit. The “we” evoked here is all of us, black people/people of color, who are daily bombarded by a powerful colonizing whiteness that seduces us away from ourselves, that negates that ther is beauty to be found in any form of blackness that is not imitation whiteness.

The whiteness celebrated in Paris is Burning is not just any old brand of whiteness but rather that brutal imperial ruling-class capitalist patriarchal whiteness that presents itself -its way of life- as the only meaningful life there is. What would be more reassuring to a white public fearful that marginalized disenfracnhised black folks might rise any day now and make revolutionary black liberation struggle a reality than a doumentary affirming that colonized, victimized, exploited, black folks are all too willing to be complicit in perpetuating the fantasy that ruling-class white culture is the quintessential site of unrestricted joy, freedom, power, and pleasure. Indeed it is the very “pleasure” that so many white viewers with class privilege experience when watching this film that has acted to censor dissenting voices who find the film and its reception critically problematic.

In Vincent Canby’s review of the film in the New York Times he begins by quoting the words of a black father to his homosexual son. The father shares that it is difficult for black men to survive in a racist society and that “if you’re black and male and gay, you have to be stronger that you can imagine”. Beginning his overwhelmingly positive review with the words of a straight black father, Canby implies that the film in some way documents such strenght, is a portrait of black gay pride. Yet he in no way indicates ways this pride and power are evident in the work. Like most reviewers of the film, what he finds most compelling is the pageantry of the drag balls. He uses no language identifying race and class perspectives when suggesting at the end of his piece that behind the role-playing “there is also a terrible sadness in the testimony”. This makes it appear that the politics of ruling-class white culture are solely social and not political, solely “aesthetic” questions of choice and desire rather that expressions of power and privilege. Canby does not tell readers that much of the tragedy and sadness of this film is evoked by the willingness of black gay men to knock themselves out imitating a ruling-class culture and power elite that is one of the primary agents of their oppression and exploitation. Ironically, the very “fantasies” evoked emerge from the colonizing context, and while marginalized people often appropriate and subvert aspects of the dominant culture, Paris is Burning does not forcefully suggest that such a process is taking place.

Livingston’s film is presented as though it is a politically neutral documentary providing a candid, even celebratory, look at black drag balls. And it is precisely the mood of celebration that masks the extent to which the balls are not necessarily radical expresssions of subverive imagination at work undemining and challenging the status quo. Much of the film’s focus on pageantry takes the ritual of the black drag ball and makes it spectacle. Ritual is that ceremonial act that carries with it meaning and significance beyond what appears, while spectacle functions primarily as entertaining dramatic display. Those of us who have grown up in a segregated black setting where we participated in diverse pageants and rituals know that those elements of a given ritual that are empowering and subversive may not be readily visible to an outsider looking in. Hence it is easy for white obsevers to depict black rituals as spectacle.

Jennie Livingston approaches her subject matter as an outsider looking in. Since her presence as white woman/lesbian filmmaker is “absent” from Paris is Burning it is easy for viewers to imagine that they are watching an ethnographic film doumenting the life of black gay “natives” and not recognize that they are watching a work shaped and formed bya a perspective and standpoint specific to Livingston. By cinematically masking this reality (we hear her ask questions but never see her), Livingston does not oppose the way hegemonic whiteness “represents” blackness, but rather assumes an imperial overseeing position that is in no way progressive or counter-hegemonic. By shooting the film using a conventional approach to documentary and not making clear how her standpoint breaks with this tradition, Livingston assumes a privileged location of “innocence”. She is represented both in interviews and reviews tender-hearte, mild-mannered, virtuous white woman daring to venture into a contemporaty “heart of darkness” to bring back knowledge of the natives.

A review in the New Yorker declares (with no argument to substatiate the assertion) that “the movie is a sympathetic observation of a specialized, private world”. An interview with Livingston in Outweek is titled “Pose, She Said” and we are told in the preface that she “discovered the Ball world by chance”. Livingston does not discuss her interest and fascination with black gay subculture. She is not asked to speak about what knowledge, information, or lived understanding of black culture and history she possessed that provided a background for her work or to explain what vision of black life she hoped to convey and to whom. Can anyone imagine that a black woman lesbian would make a film about whete gay subculture and not be asked these questions? Livingston is asked in the Outweek interview, “How did you build up the kind of trust where people are so open to talking about their personal experiences?” She never answers this question. Instead she suggests that she gains her “credibility” by the intensity of her spectatoship, adding, “I also targeted people who wer articulate, who had stuff they wanted to say and were very happy that anyone wanted to listen”. Avoiding the difficult questions undelying what it means to be a white person in a white supremacist society creating a film about any aspect of black life. Livingston responds to the question, “Didn’t the fact that you’re a white lesbian going into a world of Black queens and street kids make that [the interview process] difficult?” by implicitly evoking a shallow sense of universal connection. She responds, “If you know someone over a period of two years, and thay still retain their sex and their race, you’ve got to be a pretty sexist, racist person”. Yet it is precisely the race, sex, and sexual practices of black men who are filmed that is the exploited subject matter.

So far I have read no interviews where Livingston discusses the issue of appropriation. And even though she is openly critical of Madonna, she does not convey how her work differs from Madonna’s apropriation of black experience. To some extent it is precisely the recognition by mass culture that aspects of black life, like “voguing”, fscinate white audiences that creates a market for both Madonna’s product and Livingston’s. Unfortunately, Livingston’s comments about Paris is Burning do not convey serious thought about either the political and aesthetic implications of her choice as a white woman focusing on an aspect of black life and culture or the way racism might shape and inform how she would interpret black experience on the screen. Reviewers like Georgia Brown in the Village Voice who suggest that Livingston’s whiteness is “a fact of nature that didn’t hinder her research” collude in the denial of the way whiteness informs her perspective and standpoint. To say, as Livingston does, “I certainly don’t have the final word on the gay black experience. I’d love for a black director to have made this film” is to oversimplify the issue and to absolve her of responsibility and accountability for progressive critical reflection and it implicitly suggests that there would be no difference between her work and that of a black director. Undrlying this apparently self-effacing comment is cultural arrogance, for she implies not only that she has cornered the market on the subject matter but that being able to make films is a question of personal choice, like she just “discovered” the “raw material” before a black director did. Her comments are disturbing because thay reveal so little awareness of the politics that undergird any commodification of “blackness” in this society.

Had Livingston approached her subject with greater awareness of the way white supremacy shapes cultural production -determining not only what representations of blackness are deemed acceptable, marketable, as well worthy of seeing- perhaps the film would not so easily have turned the black drag ball into a spectacle for the entertainment of those presumed to be on the outside of this experience looking in. So much of what is expressed in the film has to do with questions of power and privilege and the way racism impedes black progresss (and certainly the class aspirations of the black gay subculture depicted do not differ from those of other poor and underclass black communities). Here, the supposedly “outsider” position is primarily located in the experience of whiteness. Livingston appears unwilling to interrogate the way assuming the position of outsider looking in, as well as interpreter, can, and often does, pervert and distort one’s pespective. Her ability to assume such a position without rigorous interrogation of intent is rooted in the politics of race and racism. Patricia Williams critiques the white assumption of a”neutral” gaze in her essay “Teleology on the Rocks” included in her new book The Alchemy of Race and Rights. Describing taking a walking tour of Harlem with a group of white folks, she recalls the guide telling them they might “get to see some services” since “Easter Sunday in Harlem is quite a show”. William’s critical observations are relevant to any discussion of Paris is Burning:

What astonished me was that no one had asked the churches if they wanted to be sared at like living museums. I wondered what would happen if a group of blue-jeaned blacks were to walk uninvited into a synagogue on Passover or St. Anthony’s of Padua during high mass -just to peer, not pray. My feeling is that such activity would be seen as disresectful, at the very least. Yet the aspect of disrespect, intrusion, seemed irrelevant to this well-educated, affable group of people. They deflected my observation with comments like “We just want to look”, “No one will mind”, and “There’s no harm intended”. As well-intentioned as they were, I was left with the impression that no one existed for them who could not be governed by their intentions. While acknowledging the lack of apparent malice in this behavior, I can’t help thinking that it is a liability as much as a luxury to live without interaction. To live so completely impervious to one’s own impact on others is a fragile privilege, which over time relies not simply on the willingness but on the inability of others -in this case blacks- to make their displeasure heard.

This insightful critique came to mind as I reflected on why whites could so outspokenly make their pleasure in this film heard and the many black viewers express discontent, raising critical questions about how the film was made, is seen, and is talked about, who have not named their displearure publicly. Too many reviewers and interviewers assume not only that there is no need to raise pressing critical questions about Livingston’s film, but act as though she somehow did this marginalized black gay subculture a favor by bringing their experience to a wider public. Such a stance obscures the substantial rewards she has received for this work. Since so many of the black gay men in the film express the desire to be big stars, it is easy to place Livingston in the role of benefactor, offering these “poor black souls! a way to realize their dreams. But it is this current trend in producing colorful ethnicity for the white consumer appetite that makes it possible for blackness to be commodified in unprecedented ways, and for whites to appropriate black culture without interrogating whiteness or showing concern for the displeasure of blacks. Just as white cultural imperialism informed and affirmed the adventurous journeys of colonizing whites into the countries and cultures of “dark others”, it allows white audiences to applaud representations of black culture, if they are satisfied with the images and habits of being represented.

Watching the film with a black woman friend, we were disturbed by the extent to which white folks around us were “entertained” and “pleasured” by scenes we viewed as sad and at times tragic. Often individuals laughed at personal testimony about hardship, pain, loneliness. Several times I yelled out in the dark: “What is so funny about this scene? Why are you laughing?” The laughter was never innocent. Instead it undermined the seriousness of the film, keeping it always on the level of spectacle. And much of the film helped make this possible. Moments of pain and sadness were quickly covered up by dramatic scenes from drag balls, as though there were two competing cinematic narratives, one displaying the pageantry of the drag ball and the other reflecting on the lives of participants and value of the fantasy. This second narrative was literally hard to hear because the laughter often drowned it out, just as the sustained focus on elaborate displays at balls diffused the power of the more serious narrative. Any audience hoping to be entertained would not be as interested in the true life stories and testimonies narrated. Much of that individual testimony makes it appear that the characters are estranged from any community beyond themselves. Families, friends, etc. are not shown, which adds to the representation of these black gay men as cut off, living on the edge.

It is useful to compare the portraits of their lives in Paris is Burning with those depicted in Marlon Riggs’ compelling film Tongues Untied. At no point in Livingston’s film are the men asked to speak about their connections to a world of family and community beyond the drag ball. The cinematic narrative makes the ball center of their lives. And yet who determines this? Is this the way the black men view their reality or is this the reality Livingston constructs? Certainly the degree to which black men in this gay subculture are portrayed as cut off from a “real” world heightens the emphasis on fantasy, and indeed gives Paris is burning its tragic edge. That tragedy is made explicit when we are told that the fair-skinned Venus has been murdered, and yet there is no mourning of him/her in the film, no intense focus on the sadness of this murder. Having served the purpose of “spectacle” the film abandons him/her. The audience does not see Venus after the murder. There are no scenes of grief. To put it crassly, her dying is upstaged by spectacle. Death is not entertaining.

For those of us who did not come to this film as voyeurs of black gay subculture, it is Dorian Carey’s moving testimony throughout the film that makes Paris is Burning a memorable experience. Cary is both historian and cultural critic in the film. He explains how the balls enabled marginalized black gay queens to empower both participants and audience. It is Carey who talks about the significance of the “star” in the life of gay black men who are queens. In a manner similar to critic Richar Dyer in his work Heavenly Bodies, Carey tells viewers that the desire for stardom is an expression of the longing to realize the dream of autonomous stellar individualism. Reminding readers that the idea of the individual continues to be a major image of what it means to live in a democratic world, Dyer writes:

Capitalism justifies itself on the basis of freedom (separateness) of anyone to make money, sell their labour how they will, to be able to express opinions and get them heard (regardless of wealth and social position). The openness of society is assumed by the way that we are addressed as individuals -as consumers (each freely choosing to buy, or watch, what we want), as legal subjects (equally responsible before the law), as political subjects (able to make up our minds who is to run society). Thus even while the notion of the individual is assailed on all sides, it is a necessary fiction for the reproduction of the kind of society we live in... Stars articulate these ideas of personhood.

This is precisely the notion of stardom Carey articulates. He emphasizes the way consumer capitalism undermines the subversive power of the drag balls, subordinating ritual to spectacle, removing the will to display unique imaginative costumes an the purchased image. Carey speaks profoundly about the redemptive power of the imagination in black life, that drag balls were traditionally a place wher the aesthetics of the image in relation to black gay life could be explored with complexity and grace.

Carey extols the significance of fantasy even as he critiques the use of fantasy to escape reality. Analyzing the place of fantasy in black gay subculture, he links that experience to the longing for stardom that is so pervasive in this society. Refusing to allow the “queen” to be Othered, he conveys the message that in all of us resides that longing to transcend the boundaries of self, to be glorified. Speaking about the importance of drag queens in a recent interview in Afterimage, Marlon Riggs suggests that the queen personifies the longing everyone has for love and recognition. Seeing in drag queens “a desire, a very visceral need to be loved, as well as a sense of the abject loneliness of life where nobody loves you”, Riggs contends “this image is real for anybody who has been in the bottom spot where they’ve been rejected by everybody and loved by nobody”. Echoing Carey, Riggs declares: “What’s real for them is the realization that you have to learn to love yourself”. Carey stresses that one can only learn to love the self when one breaks through illusion and faces reality, not by escaping into fantasy. Emphasizing that the point is not to give us fantasy but to recognize its limitations, he acknowledges that one must distinguish the place of fantasy in ritualized play from the use of fantasy as a means of escape. Unlike Pepper Labeija who constructs a mythic world to inhabit, making this his private reality, Carey encourages using the imagination creatively to enhance one’s capacity to live more fully in a world beyond fantasy.

Despite the profound impact he makes, what Riggs would call “a visual icon of the drag queen with a very dignified humanity”, Carey’s message, if often muted, is overshadowed by spectacle. It is hard for viewers to really hear this message. By critiquing absorption in fantasy and naming the myriad ways pain and suffering inform any process of self-actualization, Carey’s message mediates between the viewer who longs to voyeruristicly escape into the film, to vicariously inhabit that lived space on the edge, by exposing the sham, by challenging all of us to confront reality. James Baldwin makes the point in The Fire Next Time that “people who cannot suffer can never grow up, can never discover who they are”. Without being sentimental about suffering, Dorian Carey urges all of us to break through denial, through the longing for an illusory star identity, so that we can confront and accept ourselves as we really are -only then can fantasy, ritual, be a site of seduction, passion, and play where the self is truly recognized, loved, and never abandoned or betrayed.

Bell Hooks

youtube

#bell hooks #paris is burning

4 notes · View notes

grace52373 · 7 years ago

Text

Rumple/Bobby!

What the hell is this? Hate on Bobby and Rumple night! I am sorry that most of us don’t forgive the unrepentant rapist and killer of our beloved Neal just because she is a woman! If she showed some damn remorse for her crimes maybe I would consider forgiving her but I will never want to be in the same room with her or wish her anything but contentment as far away from me as possible! Rumple at least is remorseful for what he did as is Regina. I know she changed but my God will it kill the writers to have her apologize to Rumple and Regina and Robin for what she did? If she was a man all of you would be calling for her head on a stick and would never forgive her!

She controlled Rumple, kept him in a cage and abused him for a year! She killed his son and laughed over his grief. She didn’t allow him to attend his son’s funeral and she continued to cause trouble for everyone up until her powers were stripped! What’s worse is she got to raise poor Robyn whose father she raped out right. Robin never got to raise his child and Rumple and Belle never got to work through their trauma along with Emma and Henry and every other character because the true misogynists of this show are Adam and Eddie! They just want everyone to forget their trauma and kiss and make up so they bend and twist the plot and force it and call it hope and people wonder why they are being cancelled???

Forgiveness comes with time and with actual atonement and remorse. You can’t force it! But yeah, the ones who are standing up for the abused man and the raped man are misogynists! Also, most of us never blamed Belle for leaving Rumple. We were upset about her exiling him using his dagger which controlled him. Saying that especially when Belle herself was remorseful for it is not hating on the character. Saying they both screwed up is not hate! Calling any character out on bad behavior is not hate! Saying that Rumple or Belle or Regina or Zelena or Snow or Charming or Hook or Emma or Henry deserve to be hurt , controlled, turned into a dark one against their will, raped, etc because they made mistakes is wrong. Does Zelena deserve a happy ending? Does anyone on this show? I don’t know if Zelena deserves a happy ending because I haven’t seen any remorse for her crimes. I know she loves her daughter and is trying to raise her right but it bothers me that she got this child through rape and never showed any remorse for it and in the end, she selfishly got what she wanted while Robin is somewhere floating around the universe and that is what bothers me most of all...the unfairness of it all!

As to what Bobby said at the con last year? Who cares? He is allowed an opinion on a story that was unnecessary and pointless! Bex Mader said it was gross, Lana even hinted at displeasure over it. All of them said problematic things at cons. All of them said tongue in cheeks or off the cuff remarks! Didn’t Lana say Regina/Graham was romantic at some point and Adam and Eddie called Graham Regina’s sex toy and who wouldn’t want that. The actors are human and say problematic stuff all the time. I also hear people saying Bobby is shirking his duties and does a bad job so they don’t ask him to do anything anymore? Where the hell is the proof and if that is the case, why does the cast have nothing but nice things to say about each other? I know they can’t say bad things about their co-workers because they are being professional but they gush about each other and how much fun it is to work together! I think this is more drama for the sake of drama! If you want to hate on Bobby or anyone else, fine just tag it so those who don’t won’t have to see it! Also, don’t be hateful to the actors! They have feelings too. If you take exception to what they say, please be polite about it and don’t harass them. They may not realize they said something wrong. Give them a chance to apologize.

I am literally crying as I type this because I am soo upset! I was looking forward to tonight’s episode but all I have seen all day is rehasment of an old argument and cowardly anons going into people’s boxes and harassing them into cutting off ties with others. All I have seen is negativity and fans lashing out at each other for no good reason! I know fandom can be bad. I know people can screw up.

I decided to apologize for my past behavior because some posts made me think about some things and I may have apologized in the past but I wanted to say it again because I was wrong. I know I can be a hot head and do things without thinking. I am working on that but its a work in progress. I also am aware that I am overly sensitive at times. I let what someone said hurt me today and I let a male colleague basically punish me, because he thinks I voted for Trump even though I never revealed who I voted for, and it doesn’t matter because I don’t have to listen to him constantly telling me how awful the president is every single day just because he wants me to say something bad about Trump and I refuse to give him the satisfaction. In fact I won’t until he says something bad about Cosby or any of the people who gave rise to the #me too movement due to their assaulting and sexually harassing people! The point is, I don’t have to let these people hurt me even if I generally respect and like them for other reasons.

My mom was right when she said that if they don’t pay your bills, you don’t owe them anything. In other words, live your life the best way you can and be the best person you can and don’t let others bring you down. I have seen some reasonable and kind things said on line. I have seen some fun debates and talks but I have also seen people get up on their damn social justice soap box and rip people apart for thinking differently than they do. I have seen people be silenced because they don’t want to deal with hate. I have seen people judge others for their politics, religion, opinions, heck even fictional characters and ships! I am sick of it! I considered getting off social media permanently because of it. What happened to free speech? What happened to respecting other’s beliefs even if they differ? I am not talking about sexist, racist, homophobic, etc views.

I am sorry about the rant but I needed to get this off my chest because it dawned on me tonight that I have been letting people here, on facebook and in real life upset me and silence me and I won’t do it anymore. I am done apologizing for my opinions and letting other people shit on me! I was bullied in school and called names and I refuse to let it happen here. Although, I rarely discuss politics because there is always someone who talks a good game about tolerance but doesn’t practice what they preach. If you don’t like my opinions, thoughts on Belle, Rumbelle, or other shows I watch than you know what to do.

I was just told people don’t use hyphens in anti tags anymore so now I got to revamp my blacklist.

#pro-robert carlyle #pro rumple #anti zelena

13 notes · View notes

castielmoriarty · 7 years ago

Text

so I just, for real, had a discussion with my secretly racist (he’s fooled just about everyone but me and my bestie who’s met him a lot) step-dad about how I can claim that the n-word is racist and derogatory if I can’t explain how it got that way. I know it sounds like I’m making this up because it’s the “logic” used so often by privileged fuckheads to argue against the negativity of the n-word that it’s turned into a joke among decent people, but he really did say “it comes from the word black in Spanish, negro. so how is it negative?” and I went “I don’t know how it got negative, but fact is, it is. and one shouldn’t use it to describe a black person, ever.” he kept on asking HOW I could claim that though when I don’t have a “source.” I told him that pretty much every goddamn modern person knows it’s derogatory, and if he needs a source, he can easily google it by himself. but of course he thinks it’s the responsibility of the people, even black people, claiming it’s derogatory, to provide the sources. this turned into a discussion where he, and I would be fucking rich if I had even a penny for every time this has happened to me, made fun of me for getting angry and revved up. “we’re just talking, why are you so emotional?” because ofc it’s amusing and ridiculous that I would get angry at him thinking it makes sense to *argue* about whether the n-word is negative. or rather that if one is going to claim it is and that it shouldn’t be used, one should provide fucking sources with the claim. me: “literally all of goddamn society knows it’s a derogatory term. and you think anyone claiming it is should provide *you* with a source?” “yeah, if they’re going to claim it’s so derogatory and shouldn’t be used, it makes sense to ask for a source.” I then went on to ask him if he thinks every single derogatory word should be allowed to be used unless people claiming it’s derogatory can provide historical sources. I used the word retard as an example. it used to, as far as I know, just mean “someone with a mental disability.” yet today only an asshole would call a mentally disabled person a retard. a sane person wouldn’t ask a parent of a mentally disabled child “oh so your child is a retard?” because we KNOW. as a society. that it’s derogatory. (asshole is another example. it’s just a body part, so... one probably shouldn’t see it as rude if someone calls one that, right?) yet using this word (and a couple of others like it - ones that used to have a neutral meaning but got derogatory) as an example, saying most people don’t know WHY they got derogatory but they did, and only assholes would use them against the people in question (fag when talking about a gay man as another example) he genuinely told me I was being ridiculous and that my arguments were not relevant and that it wasn’t THE SAME THING AT ALL. me “how the fuck is that not the same thing? would you call someone’s disabled child a retard? no? because you know the word is negative. yet you probably can’t say why it got negative from being neutral.” “it’s not the same thing, stop being ridiculous my god.”

HOW IS IT NOT THE SAME THING? how can he be so fucking dumb that he didn’t see how that is the exact same thing as he was saying. so fucking ignorant that he doesn’t fucking hear himself, sitting there as a white person, arguing that despite the fact that pretty much every black person ever agrees the n-word is derogatory and shouldn’t be used, can they *really* claim so if they can’t explain why? or rather, can I really claim so, what do I know about it, it’s just ME saying so, maybe black people don’t actually think it’s derogatory at all, or hey, maybe it is but he wouldn’t actually mind if someone called him something that’s derogatory as a white person, which is the same thing, so then should black people really mind being called the n-word? aren’t people to be fair just a bit too sensitive these days? I honestly don’t fucking know how I will ever be capable of having a relationship with him when bullshit like this keeps surfacing. staying away when he drinks helps, because he knows not to let his disgustingness show most of the time when he’s sober, but it’s not an absolute insurance that it won’t come out that deep down he’s ignorant and privileged as fuck and just a bit racist, a bit homophobic and quite a lot misogynistic.

#text post #rant #n-word #white privilege #ignorance #racism #misc

1 note · View note

its-a-queer-thing · 7 years ago

Note

Nothing to do with your blog so ignore this. You know what would make me feel better at the end of a conversation with my family, whether it s about being gay and homophobia or sexism, or racisim? If for once I could see we made some progress with eachother and not just making me feel like I wasted 5 hours trying to be fair and be good at listening and representing logical thought out arguments. I feel like I'm wasting my life for important things to be ignored.

It can take a lot of time to poke holes in someone’s thinking, especially when it’s something that has been directly taught to them and culturally engrained in them (depending on where they are in the world and what type of community they lived in), and especially now that the entire country (I’m assuming you’re in the US?) is being told by our “leader” that what they believe is acceptable. Racism, to some people, is looking normal or acceptable and… I’m going to stop before I get too political, I’ll go on for days.

I lowkey understand what you’re going through, though I will admit I’ve never had to convince anyone in my family to see sexism or racism for what it is or persuade them to not be racist or sexist. Homophobia, however, I have experienced in a small amount. My father was NOT accepting when I first came out. It wasn’t bad like I was threatened or kicked out, but he did yell. The next day at school, I was so stressed from that and other things going on in my life at the time that I passed out. Hard. Dad, of course, was called by the school and instructed to take me to the hospital. The ride there was silent but when we got there, we decided not to go because we both knew what happened. So on the way home, he was in tears letting me know that he loved me regardless and though he doesn’t understand why I need labels (I’m bi), or exactly why I feel the way I do, nothing is ever going to change. Fast forward about six years and now marriage equality is looking threatened. I talked to him about it and he kept reassuring me he didn’t think anything was going to happen, and also said something along the lines of “I don’t really see why it matters that much. Why do you NEED to be able to get married?” So I basically put him on my level and went through why he wanted to get married, why he and my stepmother decided to take that step if it “didn’t matter much,” (so talked about legal and financial benefits of marriage) and finally, I reminded him that if marriage equality were overturned I’d have to move at least three states away to find one that will still have marriage equality on the books (I live in the South). He finally got it. He got why I was so obsessed with marriage equality not being messed with, and why it was important that I be able to marry my girl when we’re ready. It took putting him in my shoes and me in his, and bringing him to my level of thinking, and it took me telling him I’d have to move away until my state allows same-sex marriage because until it did my marriage would be like it never happened. Some may argue that was a little too easy, and they are probably right. Not everyone is going to accept this approach, I’m just lucky my dad did. But it was also 6 years of calling him out for making homophobic jokes that hurt and showing him where he wasn’t quite as accepting as he used to think (he used to cringe specifically at gay PDA on TV but if it was hetero PDA he didn’t bat an eye so I called him on it).

I’m still working on him with being more understanding of the Trans community. He’s never ugly about it, though he does make faces when it’s brought up so I have small conversations at a time and when he starts to get REALLY uncomfortable, I stop. In those conversations I share experiences I’ve encountered with people in the community, I explain their side, I try to bring him to their level and ask them how he would feel if he felt any of what they endure. And it seems as though he empathizes, but still can’t wrap his head around it.

I guess that was my long preachy way of letting you know that it’s okay for progress not to be made right away. It takes a lot of time and patience to get someone to understand prejudice and see why it’s wrong (especially with what the political climate is right now). Keep being patient, keep allowing their views to be heard. As an example, I find that many misogynists, are afraid of women’s voices being heard over men’s and that feminism is trying to say that women matter more than men when of course that’s untrue. So allow that man to have his voice be heard and then tell him the woman’s side and remind him that he got his chance to speak, so now in the interest of being fair he should hear the women’s concerns and REALLY hear them. Provide respectful counterarguments where you can while having these discussions and always keep it respectful. The second we get defensive or combative that whole conversation is lost because they are going to be defensive and combative right back.

I know you weren’t asking for tips, so I hope I didn’t just step over some line, but I’m really proud of you for talking to your family and trying to help them come to the right side of history. The human brain is an incredible thing and even when the conscious mind is rejecting new ideas because they are stubbornly set in the ones they already have, the subconscious mind is still listening and still storing that information that may some day come back up and give them something to think about. If there is a positive experience (or at least not a screaming match) attached to it, they will be more likely to think it through when that information comes back.

And also keep in mind, Anon, that some people just don’t change until it’s too late. My great-grandmother was a racist her whole life. It was definitely a generational thing, of course, but it was still unfortunate because my mother worked to show her the flaw in her ideologies her whole life to that point. My great-grandmother didn’t see the error of her thinking until she was lying on her deathbed. Some people are just not able to see the light and it’s a really sad thing. Stay strong and if you ever need someone to talk to so you feel heard, I volunteer. :)

Much love and thank you for sharing!

#answered

3 notes · View notes

nebris · 7 years ago

Text

Her Prophet Speaks: Europe Is Finished And Why That Matters To The Sisterhood

~Europe is finished. That's a pretty harsh statement. And, in this context [eg Her Prophet Speaks] it generates two questions. First, how do I justify that statement? And second, what does it have to do with The Sisterhood? Germano-Roman civilization has stood for over twenty five centuries. It has dominated the European continent even in its 'dark ages' and has gone on to conquer and reshape the rest of the world in its own image. In fact, the entire modern world is really an Anglo-European invention, the British Empire having had the most significant influence. Some will read that and start bleating that this is an apologia of European Colonial brutality and racism, to which I reply 'twaddle'. European Colonialism was indeed quite brutal and racist. That's how Empire rolls. If instead the Chinese had kept going in the late Fifteenth Century, their empire would have been at least as brutal and racist. European success as merely generated the popular illusion that they have a corner on that market, which is, ironically, just another example of the Mythos of White Superiority, except inverted. No, the peoples of Europe are not 'racial superior'. ['Race' is just a social construct used to justify bad behavior.] But the European 'cultural mindset' was superior that is what allowed them to conquer most of the world. It was the social, economic and political environment of Europe that created the aggressive and relentless nature that gained Europeans the world, not any inherent racial traits. So, back to Europe being finished. It is that very aggressive and relentless nature that led Europe into a pair of global wars that wrecked them and their empires. And Nazi Germany's 'crimes' were merely the application of European Imperial methodologies to Europeans, their own 'racial mythology' having labeled their victims as 'non-White'. Now Europe is being submerged in refugees from The West's Neo-Colonial Resource Wars. Soon more shall follow as the effects of Catastrophic Climate Change really kick in. And there is really no way to stop that. Well, there are ways, but Europe no longer has the social or political will to engage in them. It would require an 'ethnic cleansing' that even Nazi Germany would find hard to implement. Tens of millions would need to be expelled and by now the 'target populations' have second, third, fourth generation citizens of Europe, quite a few in government, business, the military and security services, and many of them would be radicalized in the face of such an undertaking. Millions among the 'target populations' would die in the process as would a few hundred thousand Europeans. So, what does this have to do with The Sisterhood? The answer is very simple; Modern Feminism is very much an Anglo-European concept and, yes, America is very much an Anglo-European nation. [more on that soon] Therefore the philosophical and Spiritual foundations of The Sisterhood are very much grounded in Anglo-European culture. The Sisterhood [SH], as a Goddess driven Transhumanist Female Supremacy movement, is also a dedicated enemy of all the Father/God Cults; Judaism, Christianity and Islam, which are Masculinist and Primitivist. Judaism is not much of a threat beyond being the 'foundation faith' of the Father/God Cults. Christian is an active threat, especially Dominionist Christianity in the US and Orthodox Christianity in Russian. They are both misogynist and homophobic. But they are both 'last gasps' of White Male Supremacy, though such makes them desperate. However, the brand of Islam flowing into Europe is vibrant and growing, the Salafist Wahhabism funded by the Saudis and it is Tribal, Rigid, and deeply misogynist. And many those refugees are young men with no real future, what SH calls Useless Beta Males. They are not really ‘Islamists’, though they use Islam as an excuse. This is a type of street gang, made up of young males from a highly misogynist tribal culture for whom Western society has zero social or economic use. They have been driven from their own countries by the West’s Neo-Colonial Resource Wars. They’d still be of near zero social or economic use in those places, but now they are in The West. They take their revenge for that by brutalizing and violating young Western women because they know that will create the most outrage, because that gives them a sense of power and because they hate women anyway. Have no doubt that they do the same to the immigrant women and girls in the camps wherever they can get away with it. The Imams and Mullahs take advantage of this, urging them on with rhetoric about 'conquering Europe for the Caliphate', thereby giving them a 'purpose' they have lacked in their lives and in effect making them an army, one that feeds and motivates itself. As pointed out above, there is no workable solution for this because of 'politics’ and 'social morality’. What SH is going to do is get as many of our European Sisters out as possible. We will focus on recruiting Sisters who are Right Wing etc. They tend to have a more harsh and ruthless mindset, which is what SH needs. Our challenge is to shift them from Nationalism to Gynofascism. Most Left Wing Sisters are simply too soft hearted and wracked with White Guilt to do what is necessary at this point, though as the rape victims keep adding up, I suspect many of them will come around to our view. There will also be some Sisters who will come out of the refugee population itself. They are not immune to the brutality of this vicious form of Islam. In many cases, they are its first victims. We of course will be accused of racism and xenophobia. But 'race' is a social construct with no real foundation in science and SH rejects it. That SH will also welcome Sisters from the refugee population as well shows the latter canard to be false as well. This struggle is not about Race. It is about Gender. SH maintains that “Men will never willingly give their power to women, so Sisters must take it, by whatever means necessary,” and that “Patriarchy is destroying the world and therefore must itself be destroyed.” This struggle is also about Culture. As stated above, “ Modern Feminism is very much an Anglo-European concept”. And America is an Anglo-European nation, though one of a unique character. America has always absorbed other cultures, digested them and shit out what didn't fit, all while maintaining its basic cultural nature. American popular music is the perfect example. Created by the exchange of folk music between West African slaves and their Anglo-Irish masters, it has gone back and forth between those groups and all the others that have immigrated to America over the centuries and now in many ways dominates the world's music. [note that it has always been some Father/God Cultist that has condemned this music in all its forms] SH will do the same, absorbing other cultures, digested them and excreting was does not fit, while maintaining our basic cultural nature. That is how a culture and its social order remains dynamic. This is also consistent with The Third Valance of The Pentavalent; "Women Must Reclaim All That Is Theirs". As women give birth to The World, everything is theirs. But this is not 'multiculturalism'. That is a Neo-Stalinist methodology meant to destroy European culture as part of the old Soviet plan to undermine The West, which now that USSR is gone makes it something of a 'zombie ideology'. While all cultures have value, those values are not all equal. Some cultures are superior. If you doubt that, remember what language you have been reading the last ten minutes and what civilization created the platform upon which you have been reading it. To recap, Europe is being drown in highly misogynist radical Islam with little hope of surviving. The Sisterhood believes that European culture is worth saving and that America is the best refuge for that. And obviously the best place for The Sisterhood to thrive and grow. As ever, more shall be revealed in the Goddess' good time. Blessed Be

#The Sisterhood

4 notes · View notes

pratattheback · 7 years ago

Text

Being a Female Gamer – A Response

This is a response essay to Samantha Stockin’s blog post “Being a Female Gamer” [1] , a blog post about being a woman with an interest in geek culture (video, board and war-gaming specifically). I will not be posting it directly back on her blog post as a comment, I will not be sending it to her as an email or tweeting it at her. This is not for her benefit. It is mostly written for the benefit of a friend, and partly to make a point.

I am not responding to the whole article, indeed the majority of it is mainly based on subjective experiences which as I have never met Samantha I can neither confirm nor debunk, I will simply take her word on these. Listen and Believe, if you will. I am also not responding to her analysis of geek culture – there are others who play far more video games than I who can discuss the over-sexualisation of female video game characters for example. All I’ll ask is when was the last time a fat bloke was a Triple A video game protagonist?

What I will respond to is her characterisation of GamerGate and the rhetoric mainly evident in paragraphs 4 and 11 regarding inclusivity.

Let’s begin (finally) with Samantha’s description of GamerGate as “a movement of people who seem to harass women for no other reason than to discredit and demoralise them” (paragraph 9). This seems to be one of those zombie lies that just will not die.

A brief history of GamerGate then (although, given how convoluted the timeline is this could very well take a while). We begin on the 16th August 2014 with a blog post by Aaron, the ex-boyfriend of Zoe Quinn, known as the ZoePost [2]. He accused Quinn of cheating on him with 5 guys while she was with him, all of whom turned out to be reporters for prominent online video gaming news and review sites. These 5 guy, in particular a reporter for kotaku called Nathan Grayson, had helped her in her career by giving her “game”, Depression Quest, very good reviews and helping to force it through Steam Green-Light.

This got a few people annoyed. The audiences of sites such as Kotaku, Rock Paper Shotgun and The Escapist had seen for a few years previously the rising frequency of articles that had nothing to do with video gaming and had more to do with Social Justice, Feminism and generally calling their audiences racist, sexist and homophobic, and they were not happy with this theme. The Zoe Quinn incident served to highlight that indie developers, gaming journalists and other industry figures were all working together and colluding in a way that all but shouted “corruption”, and people were getting angry about this. Hashtag Gamergate was trending.

Then, on the 28th and the 29th August 2014, articles appeared on Kotaku, Ars Technica, Buzzfeed, Polygon, Rock Paper Shotgun and pretty much every other online news outlet with the same message and tagline – Gamers are Dead [3]. The articles basically made the argument that all gamers, no matter who they were, are all sexist, racist and bigoted, that they harass women and that gaming culture is basically evil. All the gaming websites. In 2 days. Something was up. One month after the original ZoePost was uploaded, Gamergate would still be going strong. On the internet, any news story is lucky to hold people’s attention for more than a day. And this had been going on for several weeks.

On 17th September 2014, Milo Yiannopoulos, then reporter for Breitbart London, posted “Exposed: The Secret Mailing List of the Gaming Journalism Elite” [4]. In his article, he detailed a private Google Groups mailing list called “GameJournoPros”. This was a list to which the head writers and editors of the top online video gaming media outlets were subscribed, and the archives of which showed conclusive proof that the Gamers are Dead articles had been planned beforehand, industry wide, and proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the gaming media was rotten to its core.

Gamergate exploded. Everybody was talking about it. The media kept up the narrative of gamers being sexist but the entire show had moved on. Nobody cared about Zoe Quinn any more. They all wanted to hold the gaming press accountable for their actions, and the gaming press were not going to go quietly. The elite in the circle of feminists and internet celebrities tried to collude to shut the whole thing down – twitter shadow-banned the use of the hashtag, reddit mods were deleting gamergate threads left right and centre and even 4chan was perma-banning anybody who used it, but to no avail, this was the anti-corruption movement that rivals Watergate in its size.

Indeed it was so big that 3 years later it is still not gone. Gamergate is still a force on the internet, trying to expose the corruption in journalism wherever it finds it, but it is still referred to by those who do not understand it as “trying to drive women out of video games”. Personally, I find it a little bit strange that such a movement would use Vyvian James as its mascot, but I’m just a random tumblr account who was 2 years late to the party.

If you want to know more, the Youtuber Internet Aristocrat published a video series called “Quinnspiracy Theory” which was started 3 days after the ZoePost first dropped and provides a snapshot of how the movement became what it is today. Due to the Internet Aristocrat having deleted his account after getting it got too big for him and moving on to Mister Metokur, the best place to find it is the compilation video “Internet Aristocrat - Quinnspiracy Theory [Mirror]” [5] by GamerGaters on Steam.

The language used in this article, particularly in paragraphs 4 and 11, points it squarely at the “white, heterosexual, male” demographic. It makes the argument that the attitudes of said demographic need to change to be more accepting of the LGBT, non-white, disabled or people of faith, and seems to suggest that anybody who is not a white straight male is going to made to feel unwelcome.

Now, nobody can speak for an entire demographic. Indeed, assuming somebody thinks the same way you do or holds the same political beliefs just because you identify the same way sounds like a bad idea, despite what today’s identity politics driven discourse seems to say.

However, I feel that I can speak on behalf of, if not all then certainly a large majority of the white, cis, heterosexual male demographic when I say this:

I am sorry for being born wrong.

I apologise that I was born the wrong skin colour. I beg your forgiveness for having a penis, liking having that penis and being sexually attracted to those who have a vagina and breasts. I didn’t ask to be born like this.

I don’t look at a black guy and think “should be picking cotton in a field”, and I don’t look at women and think “make me a sandwich” (unless of course they work at Subway), but apparently I’m a horrific racist, misogynistic, homophobic and transphobic bigot purely due to my skin colour, genitals and sexual orientation.

(You may take this apology with as much sarcasm as you feel is necessary.)

Please don’t try to blame an entire demographic for your subjective experiences. We don’t like being told we’re second class citizens by everybody in positions of power over us. We weren’t alive during the slave trade, we never told women that they weren’t allowed to vote, the vast majority couldn’t give less of a toss what you stick in whom so long as you both enjoy it. All we ask is that you afford us the same courtesy.

Bibleography

[1] Being A Female Gamer - Samantha Stockin - Wordpress 16/07/2017 - https://thisisaboutblog.wordpress.com/2017/07/16/being-a-female-gamer/

[2] thezoepost - Wordpress 16/08/2014 - https://thezoepost.wordpress.com/

[3] We Might Be Witnessing The 'Death of An Identity' - Luke Plunkett - Kotaku 28/08/2017 - http://kotaku.com/we-might-be-witnessing-the-death-of-an-identity-1628203079

[4] Exposed: The Secret Mailing List of the Gaming Journalism Elite - Milo Yiannopoulos - Breitbart 17/09/2014 - http://www.breitbart.com/london/2014/09/17/exposed-the-secret-mailing-list-of-the-gaming-journalism-elite/

[5] Internet Aristocrat - Quinnspiracy Theory [Mirror] - GamerGaters on Steam - Youtube 06/12/2014 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zz--i3M4PVk

#Long Form Essay #Gamergate #vyvian james

2 notes · View notes

dawn-connorsversion · 7 years ago

Photo

i'm going to tell you why we NEED body positivity and self-love spreading like fire everywhere, and why it isn't just "a silly tumblr trend that at the moment of true has no impact in our daily lifes". this is going to be really long so prepare yourselves. yesterday i had a date and my mom let me borrow her dress (she's the same height as me and the dress is elastic, so size wasn't a problem) before she left for work, leaving me alone with my grandma. she's old and lived in different times so i can't blame her, but sometimes she's very racist, homophobic, misogynistic and she thinks fat people are inherently gross (which sucks because I'm gay and fat, lmao). when my mom left, my grandma started attacking me saying if i was really going out like that; "do i want people to laugh at me? i looked horrible in that dress! that's only for skinny girls to wear, i shouldn't be so ridiculous!". SHE EVEN CALLED MY FUCKING MOM AND INTERRUMPTED HER WORK TO TRY TO GET HER TO FORBIDE ME FROM WEARING IT BECAUSE MY ROLLS WERE SHOWING. obviously, neither my mom or i buyed her bullshit (i've spend too much time trying to unlearn all kind of toxic thoughts about my body to let someone, even if she's on my own family, ruin it) and i said "why can't i wear it if it fits me and comes on my size? what's wrong with my body? so what if i'm fat?" and she went "because that's for skinny girls to wear. and there's nothig wrong with you being fat, but at least try to hide it! you're not making any effort to look good". AT LEAST TRY TO HIDE IT, SMH. so yeah at the end she gave up and went "ok go out like that, if people stare at you just know it's because you look ridiculous". so when i went out OF COURSE i was feeling fucking nervous and self-conscious all over again (even if i didn't let the words sink, what you say to someone always has an effect on them). i felt a lot of eyes on me, and i was about to panick, go home and change. but then a man stopped and smiled at me. i immediately thought "oh fucktastic here comes the catcalling", but he handed me a fake rose, one of those that glows when you press it, but it looked almost real and really pretty. he was handing it really nicely and with a huge smile so i thought why the fuck not and said "how much is it?" and the man told me he was going to give it to his daughter but he could always buy another one, he just felt an urge to give it to me because i reminded him of her and i looked "candid, sweet and beautiful". i gave him my biggest and sincerest smile and thanked him. in that moment it was just a little thing, but as i kept walking it grew bigger in my chest. i was so happy, so confident. and it wouldn't have happened if i listened to those degrading comments and changed my dress. if i didn't have the courage to stood up myself and say "no, i'm fucking beautiful" someone else would've never confirmed that. before others see you as beautiful as you are, first you have to believe it yourself. so yeah, we NEED positivity posts and self-love, it isn't just to "seem nice on tumblr and do aesthetics". it's for people to interiorize those things, to get them in their minds. it's so people think "no, i'm fucking beautiful" and actually believe it.

#self love #body positive #bodypositivity #you're beautiful #loveyourself

3 notes · View notes

victimsofyaoipoll · 1 year ago

Text

Round 1

Propaganda Under Cut

Allura

Lots of people (myself included tbh) ship klance (Keith and Lance). In s8 the creators made Allura/Lance canon (but then they killed her off and left the ending ambiguous it was weird). Anyway the fandom treats her like she's the most terrible bitchy woman ever but all she wants to do is end the war and avenge her destroyed home planet. Yeah she wasn't always the nicest or always the best, but you could argue some other characters in the show aren't either and they aren't treated near as bad as allura. people really just hate her bc Lance liked her. I don't think allura/lance are good together, but I still liked her as a character and thought she was interesting and had a lot of growth during the show. she DEF is not evil like some people portray her as in fic or talk about her in captions on posts. I've seen people say that they HATE her and that she's the worst and I'm like ??? let her live (well sort of ig she is dead now). lots of fic writers use her as the villain which is so interesting to me bc the show literally has villains like use them. anyway allura so perfectly fits the bracket description she deserves better.

I hate to acknowledge my time in this fandom but I hate the way the fandom treated her more. Allura was treated like shit no matter what side of the Great Ship War you were on because she was always a threat to the biggest ships (klance and sheith). At best she got put into Background Lesbian or Consolation Prize Shallura (Space Mom-zoned) (She was not a motherly figure btw. She was just Black). At worst she was violently demonized for being ~racist~ (kinda not cool with the alien race that blew up her planet for a few episodes), complete with misogynistic language hurled at her (she got called a bitch sooo much). Allura was a good and cool character and the show did her dirty but the fandom was somehow worse.

i apologise for speaking the dark magicks, but amidst the voltron fandoms many, many transgressions, there were a particular subset of people who just hated this girl. the infamous klance wars of the 2010s kept this perfectly fine childrens cartoon character in the sights of shippers everywhere, and she (and her voice actress im sure) were subjected to years of petty squabble blown up to global perportions. ive seen hate, ive seen rants, ive seen fanfics that made her homophobic. girls been through the ringer, and even though voltron was never the show its fandom wanted it to be, i believe allura deserved better

Kayano Kaede

shes genuinely a really tragic character who had potential for a really compelling, effective arc concerning grief, identity, healing, and finding trust again all while going through the inherent ordeal of being 15 years old….if she werent a female character in a shonen anime 😭😭 instead she gets sidelined during the show up until her big plot twist reveal after which shes immediately sidelined again. whatever i still love her and know her to be a character of all time who has suffered more than jesus. in my experience shes perhaps the female character who like. ive seen most *obsessively* hated due to her “getting in the way” of the ship b/w the male protagonist + deuteragonist (bc of her proximity to the both of them) u woild think shes the devil incarnate and not just. 15 and traumatised

She had a crush on Nagisa and they kissed and a lot of fans ship him with Karma so theyre mad that Kaede is there. She is super silly and nice but the fandom hates her for standing in the way of karmagisa.

she's a sweet person that was an actor and loves her sister. she is the main love interest of the main character but doesn't interact with him more than most of the other characters for a majority of the story. Often I have seen them removed from the story only to become some homophobic jerk that's desperate for the main characters love instead of letting her keep the good friendship that her and the main character had before the romance.

#poll #round 1 #allura #princess allura #voltron #voltron legendary defender #kaede kayano #kayano kaede #assassination classroom

180 notes · View notes

newseveryhourly · 4 years ago

Link

Fox News host Tucker Carlson addressed Monday night the resignation of his former top writer Blake Neff, who resigned last week after CNN reported on his long history of pseudonymously posting racist and bigoted remarks on an online forum that openly trafficked in racist content. Carlson then announced he was taking a “long-planned vacation.”It came across as a both-sides argument, in which he said that while what an “ashamed” Neff wrote was wrong, those in the media should be careful with their “self-righteousness.”“First, what Blake wrote anonymously was wrong,” Carlson said. “We don’t endorse those words. They have no connection to the show. It is wrong to attack people for qualities they cannot control. In this country, we judge people for what they do, not for how they were born.”“We often say that because we mean it,” he continued. “We will continue to defend that principle, often alone among national news programs because it is essential, nothing is more important.”He then took aim at the media for having the audacity to report on Neff’s racist posts—posts which Carlson himself wouldn't specifically detail to his audience. “Blake fell short of that standard and he has paid a very high price for it but we should also point out to the ghouls now beating their chests in triumph of the destruction of a young man, that self-righteousness also has its costs,” the right-wing host concluded. “We are all human. When we pretend we are holy, we are lying. When we pose as blameless in order to hurt other people, we are committing the gravest sin of all, and we will be punished for it. There’s no question.”He then announced at the end of the broadcast that he would be taking a pre-planned vacation, seemingly taking great pains to make clear it had nothing to do with this current controversy. “Going to spend the next four days trout fishing,” he said. “Long planned, this is one of those years where if you don’t get it in now, you’re probably not going to do if something dramatic happens, of course. We’ll be back.”This isn't the first time, meanwhile, that Carlson has taken a “pre-planned vacation” amid a controversy. Last August, after he faced a firestorm of controversy for calling white supremacy a “hoax,” Carlson announced on air that he was “taking several days off” to go fishing.There has been a pattern of Fox News hosts taking what has been described by the network as previously planned vacations after they've found themselves embroiled in controversy. Laura Ingraham went on a break after mocking Parkland survivor David Hogg. Sean Hannity took a vacation as advertisers began to bolt following his on-air embrace of the Seth Rich conspiracy. Jesse Watters took some days off after his Ivanka Trump remarks. Then there was Carlson's predecessor in the 8 p.m. time slot: Bill O’Reilly. Dealing with an exodus of sponsors over sexual harassment allegations, O’Reilly announced in April 2017 that he was taking a break “because it’s spring and Easter time.” O’Reilly, of course, would never return.According to CNN’s reporting, Neff kept making aggressively racist posts on message board AutoAdmit through this past week, responding to a thread that asked whether you’d let a “JET BLACK congo n****er do lasik eye surgery on u for 50% off” by replying, “I wouldn’t get LASIK from an Asian for free, so no.”In an interview with Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, Neff once boasted that anything Carlson “reading off the teleprompter, the first draft was written by me.” He added that the show is “very aware that we do have that power to sway the conversation, so we try to use it responsibly.”Neff spent nearly four years as the chief writer on Carlson’s top-rated primetime Fox News show. Prior to arriving at Fox News, Neff served as a reporter for The Daily Caller, the conservative news site that Carlson co-founded. The Daily Caller, meanwhile, has a long track record of attracting white nationalists and other bigoted writers, especially during Carlson’s tenure as top editor.In the past, Carlson has pushed back against accusations that he’s peddling racist and white supremacist talking points, saying in December 2019 that those allegations were “so far from the truth” and “dishonest” while adding he has nothing but “contempt for the people saying it.” He has also repeatedly denied knowing about other Daily Caller writers’ past racist comments and online posts.Following Neff’s resignation, Fox News executives sent an internal memo to Fox staffers condemning the former writer’s “horrific racist, misogynistic and homophobic behavior.” Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott and President Jay Wallace also attempted to portray Neff’s behavior as an aberration at Fox.“Neff's abhorrent conduct on this forum was never divulged to the show or the network until Friday, at which point we swiftly accepted his resignation,” they wrote. “Make no mistake, actions such as his cannot and will not be tolerated at any time in any part of our work force.”Carlson’s program, while setting cable news ratings records, has come under intense fire over the host’s inflammatory rhetoric, especially over issues of race and immigration. In recent weeks, the conservative firebrand has aggressively taken aim at social justice movement Black Lives Matter, branding them a “terror organization” and a “mob” that wants to destroy America.“This may be a lot of things, this moment we’re living through, but it is definitely not about Black lives,” Carlson said in an infamous June 8 monologue. “And remember that when they come for you and at this rate, they will. Anyone who has ever been subjected to the rage of the mob knows the feeling. It’s like being swarmed by hornets.”A Fox News spokesperson later insisted to The Daily Beast that “Tucker’s warning about ‘when they come for you’ was clearly referring to Democratic leaders and inner city politicians,” and not about BLM.Carlson has seen his advertisers dwindle away, with pro-Trump business MyPillow accounting for a disproportionate amount of his commercial time. Sponsors began fleeing in earnest in Dec. 2018, after he said that immigration makes America “poorer and dirtier.” The following year, additional advertisers bailed when he claimed white supremacy was a “hoax” and “conspiracy theory.”Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/3euIvSy

#Blogger

0 notes

bigbirdgladiator · 4 years ago

Link

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/3euIvSy

#Blogger

0 notes

morningusa · 4 years ago

Link

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines

#News #Blogger

0 notes

beautytipsfor · 4 years ago

Text

Tucker Carlson Announces ‘Long-Planned Vacation’ After Racist Writer’s Resignation

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/3euIvSy via Beauty Tips

from Blogger https://ift.tt/2C7CQoJ

#Blogger

0 notes