#this was long. sorry. i like ethnography | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

awgarwe · 6 days ago

Text

a prose poem

we stepotrect gallant in stony sea gelar gebeen gelanternseen die rapannie lepera soot gentennie laparie unfool and so retakes the wunkeff soul and so be happanie foroll.

ein ga el nit en parte du vill sie el maidchen en der mar un darli sweety sin regre - remember ich und day in apperie die madchen leyer in mi lap in kissen wie er her. wie leh. wie leh. die maid sind gone.

zu redden her su redden eye sulif eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-

the witxh sea luck upon it dingdf deindg-

a complex language i don’t speak... let’s translate it. i already have a few words down- maybe some gravel. gravel. what? it was something else. grammer.grammar.geeeeeeee

right, so grammar. i have a little down.

geh means “go”. this is the most common/accepted spelling by the unification league. they specialize in fascistic “forced” integration. I’m just a linguist, but I have to say... they make things less complicated, in a way. less complicated but more obscure. i don’t know, you give some you lose some. take some you lose some. i don’t know.

geh can also be spelled as ga, gei, and so on. i have heard of it being spelled ger, gehh, gea, geah, and, here’s the kicker - the pronunciation changes too. it could be “gay” or “geh” or “gaya” or “guh”- it all depends. pretty much everyone has their own way of saying things.

but there are groupings, i’ve noticed. latin, germanic, modern english, even russian. chinese, portuguese - the list goes on. this is the scariest language I have ever encountered. it’s also... wriggly. all so. sorry. i’m still the grasp of english. still getting. fuck.

should I just give up? i’m thinking of leaving the whole thing behind, to be honest. I don’t know why the people in my head speak this fuckin made up language i don’t know why I have to deal with this mess

where was i. ge- is a prefix that means “in the past”, but it’s only seen in the german provinces.

fuck why does my native language have to be a language literally no one speaks . what the fuck. literally what the fuck. jesus

i’m tired of writing this why am i writing this can someone help me stop i’m tired

fuck it i’m just gonna put the laptop down. i don’t care. i’m gonna put it down. gonna save the file.

------- this doc sits on my desktop and i don’t know what it is. a memoir? an ethnography? i don’t know. i don’t know anything. all i did know i have forgotten. all i do know i will forget. probably. what do i know?

--what am i writing about and more importantly why am i writing?

-----------

who is this knight they speak of? i have gathered that steptocret is a knight. we are told he has a lance and a horse - a helmet and a breastplate - he is grim but unstoppable - he strikes down and yet he cherishes. we don’t know. we have not seen him very long. if we were to speak of his deeds, the heroic ones, it would be the saving of the damsel. she that wears white hair and white robes and smiles sweetly like a plum she dances with the stars and he protected her with his spirit before either was even born . steptocret is a knight with large palms and he carries in them apples and pears- much stolen harvest. he feeds her and she proclaims that these are the sweetest fruits round. juice falls down her chin and down her dress, watermelon juice red and sticky. as she kisses him she passes a black seed with her tongue and plants it in his stomach. this is the seed that goes by many names: pride affection and greed. she will capture all of them. stepotrect will be weak because of her. “i live to swallow, my lady” he says, and that is that.

let us pass now to the village and the children that lived there. mac and mactress they were called. with curly brown hair and rudden faces, they approached the knight when he passed by their dwelling place and glances up at the shining armor, bright as a star. “why dost thou pass throu here oh night” they askt. and smack them with an armor claden palm he did. “ask me not where i go” he said. “ask me not where i stay. for the demons that follow are not much kinder than you, and eat my soul they will with no hesitation. i hold onto it barely with scraping fingers.” he was cruel. he released his soul, white tattered tapestry flowing through his fingers and he knew that he deserved it not. he did not know how he would seek the lady now, and he did not care to know.

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

deep in the moat lives a creature, full of hate and guragoi is his name. he glugs and chortles, throat full of water. slurped he did the soul from the ground, taking it into his belly. it was then that stepotrect new true fear for the first time.

-----

let me wind back and try to decipher. i still don’t understand the significance of the knight or all these other characters. i mean, the knight, he’s there, i got that. he’s chasing his soul, or maybe he’s given up at this point. the soul is connected to the lady, to help him save her, or something. i don’t know much about this lady- hold on- i’m getting a call.

------

she sits under the deck at her childhood home. there’s a small picnic bench, made out of blue plastic and just for her. she’s eating watermelon. she’s kissing god. god the father. stepotrect watches. he always watches. he vows to kill the father. the princess, irene, watches her father’s lips, soft and round and red, covered with bristles like a shoe shining brush. stepotrect vows to kill. he holds the pommel of his sword, cold steel against his sweaty hand smelling like copper. he holds the ball of fire in his hand smith n wesson he’s going to going to

you don’t want to do that put it down. katen’ka. nu shto ty. davai, davai pogovorim snachala. let us talk. let us first talk.

the knight hangs his head. the tree calls him. the princess will not be his.

try again.

#poem #original poem #poems on tumblr

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discworldwitches · 4 months ago

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neil gaiman publicly defended WHAT. jesus christ.

sorry it took me so long to reply--im the worst at keeping on top of my inbox rn bc i hate answering on mobile. this is also a bit of a lengthy answer because i want to delve into this a tad.

tw for discussion of CSA & CSEM

but YES. he did all while referring to it as "icky speech".

what he specifically defended was pornographic drawings of preteens and teens which he argued are not legitimate ''child sex exploitation media" since no actual children are featured in the media. this is a bullshit argument imo because it 1) relies on the fact that one cannot legally police such media due to the legal impossibility of defining "erotica", "pornography", "obscenity", and "non-erotic" depictions or telling of child sexuality/abuse; 2) and then takes that legal ambiguity and trouble prosecuting such cases to logically justify the ethics of creating or owning such material all whilst ignoring the fact that predators use this very material for sexual gratification in lieu of, and sometimes in addition to, accessing genuine CSEM.

a high profile and disturbing case that rests on the same logic gaiman employs is that of the anthro researcher who did a whole "ethnography" of himself and his feelings masturbating off to shota. he was previously the editor of a "publication with the stated purpose of bringing back "the adolescent boy as one of the ideals of gay culture" and featured boys as young as 13. According to an interview with Andersson in Out in 2012, it wasn’t always clear whether these children were aware they were being photographed for a magazine"; and after this publication (named "Destroyer"), "Andersson ran a website called breakingboys.com, which consisted of “violent, sexual headlines about young boys, illustrated with pictures of pre-pubescent boys in sexualised poses, half-naked and occasionally not wearing any pants,” according to VICE’s description of the site (which is now excluded from the Internet Archive). In that interview, he declined to straightforwardly answer whether he’d ever acted on fantasies about young boys in real life. “What is it anyways, to ‘sexualise children’ and what’s bad about it? It's not a real argument,” he said in that interview.

In July, Andersson’s film “Unreal Boys” (about “three young men in Tokyo explore the limits of fantasy through the comic genre shota” according to his website) premiered at the European Association of Social Anthropologists in Belfast."

and though neil gaiman was arguing that this all was not CP because it did not involves the direct exploitation of children, we can see in a case like andersson's that is still functions as CP.

andersson frequently used comics and illustration for both sexual gratification and to promote the abuse and exploitation of minors (publications and films like andersson's can function as a watering hole for predators, gathering them around something legally grey while creating an opportunity to establish a nexus for them to the exchange material and encourage eachother's predation & abuse; we've seen this also in the sort of forums "MAPs" (minor-attracted people, a term created by and for pedophiles to connect while avoiding the use of the latter term) started externally establishing that permitted the sharing of pornographic illustrations of children whilst using tumblr or twitter to meet other; this also enables the grooming and abuse of actual children).

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kimyoonmiauthor · 2 months ago

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Don't use Chat GPT—I've purposefully tested it and it fails miserably on anything related to stories. I publicly made fun of it for not being able to read Poetics, and only Chat GPT 5 have they finally managed to input Poetics. But then the analysis skills are still off in the model since it's only regurgitating what's given to it. What you want is to stick a flag into a new territory and for that, you need a fair amount of work and connection.

If you give Chat GPT a new puzzle it makes the wildest assumptions. Because it's a recyling machine.

cultural appropriation, religious iconography, and the ignorance of blatant orientalism in modern media

This is Said's territory—already very much given in Colleges, so it's likely you've already read him. He's a chore and a half to read since he subscribes very much to the idea fancy words makes one sound smarter. I wholly side with people like bell hooks. (the lower caps are not a mistake) where smarter people use more common words well.

bell hooks is also good. But I'm not telling you which books because she's the type of writer I want to inject into my veins. (Yes, I know about her problematic bits too, but as she's now dead, there is no guilt associated in dissecting the discourse rather than trying to not support a living author)

the rise and risks of shock advertising/content in modern media

This I would look at JSTOR for. I can remember a lot of papers on this already. It's well-tread area.

the demonization of queer artists and religious iconography

No lie, I did several papers on queerness being queer myself and it was like pulling teeth. !@#$ I was naively skipping to the library going this will be easy. We've had the 1960's movement, there's books about queer history, we've moved forward as a society. LALA... and then get to the library and I was crying in my optimism.

In order to write a paper, I had to triangulate a few papers to make it work together and I was in a cold sweat a few times trying to work it out. And believe me, I combed through several university libraries, I was willing to get papers in other languages, I tried to find books from the Library of Congress. It was like I was dying. Because while stories about queerness definitely exist, and lit papers about queerness exists, how to tie that to social phenomena... !@#$ that, that did not exist. And the more you want to cover intersectional, the more difficult it gets. And then professors are on you for not tying your ethnography to existing research materials that DO NOT EXIST.

I could rant about it for hours and how much people kept telling me sorry, sorry, that's strange... but yeah. I had to swallow a lower grade on one of my papers because I could not find the materials though I freaking tried in several languages. I even went inter disciplinary, which oddly got me a lower grade. What am I supposed to do?

I had to buy two of the books too. I was so frustrated, I donated both of them to the uni library so another student wouldn't get stuck in the same position I was.

If you want a less well-tread area you can look at something like Media Imperialism. There are a few core academic books about it, but might be a good relevant topic to look at especially considering today's landscape.

If you're writing a long paper for college, uni or whatever, choose a topic you like and narrow that sucker ahead of time. Use research to find a new angle, not chat bots. Teachers are impressed more when you come out with an interesting thesis they've never seen before because they've taught this course for years and this is a new angle for them. So remember to engage in their humanity too.

But the best thing to do is write, research, narrow, write, research, narrow, until your thesis sounds solid and then you'll find something you can live with for the next few months of reading and editing it. Start early, though I know you won't, 'cause the intersectional interdisciplinary papers like you're suggesting takes more work, but also impresses more. Most of all, find something that excites your emotions and own brain.

Psychologically it's not the thing that you know, or the thing that don't know that catches you, it's the thing that feels oddly familiar, but can't quite place it until it becomes a realization that's most memorable.

does anyone have any writing techniques to help with writing about media or history??? I'm struggling with writing a couple of documents about different ideas trying to write about something unique in media.

here's a couple I thought about:

cultural appropriation, religious iconography, and the ignorance of blatant orientalism in modern media

the rise and risks of shock advertising/content in modern media

the demonization of queer artists and religious iconography

I'm just struggling how to extend on them, and observing on Chat GPT with the writing prompts given don't fit my style, and I'm just starting out. What do I do???

#don't use AI for research papers #AI cannot innovate #research can help you see gaps #intersectional research needs to be done but is so hard to find #JSTOR #research creates plotbunnies

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mueritos · 2 years ago

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I browse of the bigger top surgery subreddits because people ask for advice and I like to be helpful and offer any advice I can give. One thing that always sours me is the fat phobia/antiblackness etc. Even if it's only subtle sometimes. I remember looking for post op photos for fat non white trans men was impossible and I constantly see white and thin bodies that get the most positive comments and usually rocket to the top of the subreddit. I I wish I could say something without causing an uproar. It just pisses me off seeing people (even sub consciously) imply anyone not white who doesn't have perfect thin scars as undesirable or ugly. Or anyone who has dogs ears or needs revisions should be ashamed. Most of the subreddit is really great but I can't escape how whiteness is always upheld as the most desirable. - a black trans man

Very true! This reminds me about a great article that I find sums up this culture, but not in a way I hoped. I still think this article is a great read, but it definitely does not touch upon the ways online spaces still mimic real life white supremacy. The article is called Doing Gender Beyond the Binary: A Virtual Ethnography by Helana Darwin. Reading it, you can fill in the spots on where exactly you know the issues exist, from asking strangers whether you "pass" or not, from only having white people within those reddit forums.

I'm sorry you havent be able to find spaces and information that are trans BIPOC centered. Fuck, even I haven't, and I have tried for a very long time to find one online. Reddit forums are very realistic in the way people share and express information, especially because character limits dont exist on there, but also because Reddit is a genuinely good resource for trans people....but not without its limitations and issues. While the online space has provided easy access to information and community, it is still nothing like IRL spaces of true community and true liberation. Whiteness is always upheld in whatever space you are in, but at the very least, we can cultivate spaces where we are working AGAINST that. A lot of IRL and forum spaces just don't do that, even if they are open to BIPOC experiences being expressed. It's still very much superficial, and they only want us if we don't talk too much about culture/race/ethnic identities.

I will offer you, however, Kayden Coleman on instagram. He's been a wonderful resource and educator, on top of being a gay, fat, Black trans man who is also disabled. He has been so unapologetic about everything and anything, and it is a literal breath of fresh air from the overall dominant culture regarding queerness.

If i ever find spaces that are for us, I will be more than happy to share them, and I hope anyone in the notes can sound off on other resources/people who are safe and inclusive to BIPOC queer experiences!

#muertoresponds #its a shame but we will always be fighting anti blackness and white ideals of beauty in every queer space #any space really but jesus christ it is bad in queer spaces

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ubemango · 5 years ago

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6. otiyr!jk and pregnancy kink

Jeongguk only sort of knows what you do. He’ll feign the obligated interest that a boyfriend’s subject to, but nothing really goes past the initial question of what book about babies are you reading now?

“Population booms in the Global South.”

“Sounds boring,” Jeongguk says.

It is. But references are annoyingly useful and you’re trying not to be hounded down by online bullies who dissect each and every one of the articles you submit. “As it always does. And what are you doing here? Office hours are for students only.”

“I am a student.”

“Since when did you like learning about ethnographies?”

“Since I found out that the TA on Fridays was really pretty,” Jeongguk offers slyly. You only give him a half-laugh because this office is shared and you’re liable to start spontaneous makeouts if he’s keen enough on testing you. Jeongguk looks way too good in sweats. “Plus. No one comes to office hours, who wants to talk to your boring ass?”

You launch an eraser at him, one he doesn’t dodge. He just cackles. “Well if you’re gonna stay here then be useful.”

“So should I ask you about babies?”

“If you want.”

Jeongguk hums. Waits. Then he talks again, but there’s a different kind of purpose in his eyes. “Hypothetical question.”

“Sure.”

“Do you like babies?”

“Is—what?” You snort. “Not like I’m dedicating the next decade of my life to babies, ooh.”

“No. Ugh. No, I worded it wrong. I just—I don’t know.” Jeongguk’s thigh bounces a nervous rhythm. “So I was on Twitter.”

“Watching porn.”

He nods matter-of-factly. “You know I never did thank you for introducing me to it, it’s so convenient. Thanks for that. Anyway. I just—was… you know. There was a video.”

You’re starting to think you won’t get past the second chapter of the text like you were hoping to. The flop of the cover does nothing to slice through Jeongguk’s nerves. “What was it?”

“Creampie.”

Your eyes narrow. “Soft.”

“Okay but you never let me cum inside you.”

“So that’s why you asked me if I liked babies?”

Jeongguk’s eyebrows furrow in sheepishness. “…Maybe?”

“You wanna cum inside me?” There’s an afterthought you don’t mention but you know he knows because he hesitates to continue. The other night, when you’d ran out of condoms and he’d asked to stick his dick in, naked and all. You weren’t angry but the talk you gave him was pretty adamant. “Babe…”

“I know, you don’t need to tell me. But it’s just—yeah. I. God.”

“Hm.”

He squirms. “Is it… weird? Like—would you… not want to have babies with me?”

Oh no.

“Jeongguk—“

“Like I know that’s—not a conversation we should be having—not for a long time anyway but—like I don’t wanna have babies with you—“ his eyes widen— “no. I mean I do wanna have babies with you but not right now you know. I’m saying this wrong. Wait.”

You wait for him to take a breath in. “Yeah?”

“Just—I don’t know. When I was jacking it? Not gonna lie. Came pretty quick.”

“Like it takes you long enough.”

“Shut up.” If it weren’t for the desk separating you two your arm would be pinched. You snort. “It wasn’t—the creampie that… got that going though.”

“What was it?”

Jeongguk contemplates. He decides on: “You have nice boobs.”

You beam. “Thanks.”

“But if you were pregnant you’d have mega-nice boobs.”

“Huh.” Then it clicks. “So you just—wanna see me pregnant.”

He flinches into embarrassment, legs tightening at the knees. “Is that a thing? Like is that something people are into? Because saying that just—I don’t know.” He shivers under your attention. “Felt weird. Sorry if that was weird.”

“It’s okay.” But you can’t deny that flash of possibility. You appreciate his honest ramblings. “And pregnancy kinks are pretty… normal? I mean it’s definitely a thing for men to find pregnant women really sexy.”

Jeongguk nods along. “That—yeah. It’s just. Not even that, but. You know. That whole—thing of me doing something I’m not… supposed to.”

“Like you impregnating someone who’s pretty keen on safe sex,” you finish off for him.

“Yeah.”

You let it stew for a moment. It’s a thing in academia, where scholars are known for never shutting up. But now you’ve been rendered to startled silence and Jeongguk shifts in his chair timidly while you ruminate. “I’m not mad at you,” you begin. He sighs with gratitude. “But I just—hm.”

“You don’t need to do anything,” he reassures quickly. “Like granted I told you because—well it’d be pretty sick, if you. Let me do that. Not the pregnancy thing but the whole—cum shebang.”

It’s your turn to confess. “It’s pretty hot.”

Jeongguk blushes his own heat. “Y-Yeah.”

“You really thought this out, huh.”

“Not really because it’s just me being horny for you but yeah. I guess.”

“Well I need to kick you out now because you exceeded the twenty minute limit.” Jeongguk’s about to scoff an excuse but you continue. “You busy after 4?”

“Nope.”

You nod. “You wanna come over to stuff me with dick?”

He shoots up out of his seat with a disgruntled expression. “Ew. But yes.”

“You’re ew. Come here.” Jeongguk rounds the desk, bending over for your waiting mouth for a short kiss. “Love you. Even if you’re weird about it sometimes.”

“You’re literally a baby expert, what the fuck did you think was gonna happen?”

You shoo him off. “Ugh. Leave me and my ovaries alone.”

“Don’t wanna.” But he walks off to the open doorway, pace light. “Love you too, queen of my loins.”

#bts scenarios #jungkook scenarios #bts #jungkook #ubemango fic #f: one time in your room #d: one time in your room

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gangsofolympia · 5 years ago

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The Proposal*

Excerpt from After the Great Storm

"Who are you?" The Bleádh in front of Leilae raised his nose and sniffed, stepping in front of the open doorway.

"I am Leilae, daughter of King Órothan of Caelenya. I wish to speak with Andóloreth Ingíl iedh Unaedhra Caëth."

"Oh, my lady," the elf said, bowing slightly and raising an eyebrow. He gave her a mocking smirk, clearly not convinced. He scanned her up and down, noting her worn shoes and dusty clothes. Her hair had taken on some frizz due to the humidity. "You don't look like any princess I've ever seen."

Leilae tightened her lips, holding her shoulders back in an authoritative stance.

"Perhaps you were expecting a petite, fragile thing in a long, flowing dress, adorned with jewelry of silver and gold and precious stones? Do you have any idea of the world outside this place? It is no place for dainty princesses, and it is especially unwise to travel wearing priceless Aelven jewelry, as doing so would only get me killed." She spat each word clearly with perfect diction, paying attention to the Bleádh's eyes as the words hit his face.

"I simply," she continued. "Have a few questions for Andóloreth Ingíl, and I would appreciate it if you, as his servant - "

The elf scoffed.

"I - I am no servant. Do I look like some dirty hu -- "

"I would appreciate it if you, Aelfe Bleádh, will please inform Andóloreth Ingíl of my presence and of my desire to speak with him." Leilae took a deep breath, satisfied. "If you value your job, that is," she added with a smirk.

"Let her in, Lenwyld," a voice said from inside.

Lenwyld the Aelven servant stepped aside, gesturing toward the doorway.

"You may enter," he said, avoiding her gaze.

Leilae strode inside, not bothering to thank the aelfe.

Andóloreth Ingíl of the Aelven city of Unaedhra Cäéth greeted Leilae with a low bow as she entered a small lounge. A fireplace crackled behind Ingil, making the light flicker in his silver hair.

"What a privilege that a princess of the Aelfe Milern would travel all this way to visit me. Please sit, Ii-Leilae Órothan-ethróu iedh Caelenya." He beckoned her toward a plush chair lined with burgundy velvet.

Leilae settled into the seat, sighing. She hadn't realized how tired she was from her journey and was tempted to kick off her shoes and massage her feet. Of course, that would not be proper, and she, being the representative of Caelenya for the first time in many years, ignored her urge, crossing her legs instead.

The deathlands have turned me into nothing but another dirty ruffian, she thought.

Ingil took the seat across from her, resting his ankle on his knee. His robes draped over the side of the armchair, swathing him in sophistication and elegance. Leilae straightened her back, trying to look as dignified as she could in the dusty rags, lined with sweat and dust, that clung to her skin. She smiled.

"I apologize for my attire, gwa-Ingil," she said. "I had to leave some of my items behind after being attacked by bandits."

"Yes, I have heard it is quite dangerous on the outside. I am amazed that you have come all this way just to speak to an old Dolisië." He smirked.

Leilae found herself wondering if the aelfe before her knew why she had come. Ingil answered her question.

"You've traveled across the deathlands to see a spectacle. To gaze in awe at one of the first ones. Possibly the only one left in the world." He shifted his weight onto his right arm, resting his chin on the back of his hand. "But your objective has changed. I am no longer the spectacle, for you listened instead of simply looking. I applaud you for your wisdom, and I hope you listened well."

"Indeed, I did," Leilae replied. "I listened to you promise the Aelfe Bleádh that they would rise once again, becoming dominant over this world, but I could not help but notice that you did not mention the Milern and the Craoe. What of them? What of my people who hide in the mountains with the dwarves? We have never been at the top as have the Bleádh, and I find myself worrying that we will once again serve them.

"We have restored what glory we had before. We have a king, a beloved one at that, and we have taken back our culture that was so diluted by that of the Bleádh that we had to turn to history texts and ethnographies written by our oppressors to know how we once lived. I am here speaking to you to make sure that does not happen again. If the Bleádh succeed and once again rule over the world, I humbly request that you leave us be. Let the Milern live in their caves and mountain valleys in peace. That is all I ask."

Leilae bowed her head, swallowing involuntarily. Ingil considered her for a moment before speaking.

"I have always believed that the other Aelven races--the Milern, the Craoe and the Elia--are just as good as the Bleádh and should be considered equal. If it is your desire, I will make sure that you and your people are left alone, but I would also like to offer you the opportunity to live in equality with the Bleádh. They are your former oppressors, but no longer will I allow this disgraceful disharmony among the Aelfe. It is shameful how divided our people are. It makes us no better than the humans, from whom we strive to distance ourselves. Suddenly, we find ourselves laboring to highlight the differences between the Aelfe and the Dae Heinya." He took a deep breath, leaning forward. "Ii-Leilae, I would like to help you and your people." His golden eyes locked onto hers, and she nearly gasped. Ingil's irises glowed and swam as though they contained whole worlds--whole universes teeming with life.

"A new age is coming," he said. "Let us start anew. Let us not make the mistakes of the past. This time, the Aelfe will be unified, and we will give the Deinya no mercy. We will sweep over the world and take what is ours."

"What will happen to the Deinya?" Leilae looked searchingly into Ingil's face.

"They will be put in their place. Below the Aelfe. They will serve us, and all will be as it should be."

"They won't go quietly," Lou replied. "Their lives are short, and therefore, they are much more willing to sacrifice their lives."

"This is true," Ingil said with a slight nod. For a moment, Leilae caught Ingil's eyes lingering above her own. He quickly corrected himself, lowering his gaze.

"I am no king," he said. "But I believe I can lead the Aelfe to a better future. A future in which humans will be treated as intelligent beasts. That is all they are. Talking animals."

Leilae shifted in her chair.

"I wouldn't go so far as to-- "

" --Are you not angry?" Ingil interrupted, turning his head upward. He meant to cut in, and he was not sorry. "You have been betrayed by someone you thought was your friend. Many Aelfe have gone through the same situation. There is no need for us to answer to, or even respect, these Deinya. They are fragile, sickly, and ugly." He scoffed. "Who would create such pitiful creatures if not for them to serve the Aelfe? If not to be beaten down and disciplined until they become mindless slaves? You see, when we let them climb onto our shoulders, once they had their grip on the top level, they beat us down, leaving us trapped below them. Then they destroyed all that had been given to us. The very world outside these walls is evidence of their inferiority--their tendency toward destruction. Their inability to become responsible for themselves and the world around them. They kill each other off, and then they kill everything else. We have every reason to take this world back. To heal it and to set things right. Or would you simply have us all die because of the humans' recklessness? Or to their envy combined with their murderous nature, as did the Dolisie?"

Ingil leaned forward, taking Leilae's hands. She felt a jolt travel throughout her body and a wave of pleasure, as though electricity flowed from his skin. She looked down at her hands and watched as Ingil's glow touched them, the light seemingly soaking into her skin. Ingil gave her a smile that caused her heart to flutter.

"Let us end this reign of terror. Let us rise up to bring light to the darkness. Let us heal the earth and restore the pride of our people. Let us--you, Ii-Leilae Órothan-ethróu iedh Caelenya, and I, and the Bleádh, the Milern, the Craoe, and the Elia, all the Aelfe--band together, hand in hand, for a better future."

He let go of Leilae's hands, and she stared at her fingers, mesmerized, as the glow lingered on her skin, emitting a tingly warmth. Soon, the glow faded, and she was back to normal. Ingil watched her in silence, his eyes smiling at Leilae's moment of childish awe.

"I want to share my light with you," Ingil said softly. "I want to share it with you completely. Let us form an alliance, Leilae. Let us wed, ensuring the future for both our clans."

*(This will not be in Gangs of Olympia, but it will happen at some point in the AtGS series)

#gangs of olympia #gangsofolympia #after the great storm #atgs #leilae #ingil #excerpt #writing

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fantasiavii · 5 years ago

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Can you tell me a little something about being a religion major? About what all you have studied? Because it sounds very interesting!

Yeah!!! Sorry it took me so long to reply to this (holidays lol) but I just want to let you know when I saw this come in, it made my week! I LOVE talking about religion/what I study (so maybe this is a little more than what you asked for lol).

The first thing I want to say is kind of a disclaimer; I studied religion, not theology, so this wasn’t like training to be a priest or an imam or anything (though some students do go on to do that!). It’s all from an outsider (etic), academic perspective. Of course, I have studied theological works but I’ve also done history and theory and ethnography, etc., etc. (Sometimes it helps people understand if I say I did religious studies? Not that I don’t think you understand, just for other readers who might not know.)

So I majored in religion with a focus on Islamic studies (basically meaning I just took mostly Islam classes and wrote my thesis on Islam and Islamophobia in France) but I’ve also studied Hinduism, theory of religion, Christianity (specifically: Eastern Orthodoxy), and Buddhism (listed in order of what I’ve studied most to least).

Major highlights were my Sufism class (so much fun but also very difficult and esoteric (as it’s meant to be lol), also gave me a healthy distrust of most translations of Rumi), my Islamic Thought in the 19th and 20th Centuries class (fascinating bc a lot of it was about nationalism and responses to colonization and imperialism, etc.) and my junior seminar (I got to do ethnographic work and interviews at an Orthodox church and the community and services were just so lovely; sometimes I miss it even though I have no desire to convert) (still kicking myself over missing the Eastern Orthodoxy class and instead taking Religion and Media, which was not what it sounds like, and I am just as disappointed as you are it was actually the worst class I took in college oops).

More about my thesis, my department, and studying religion below the cut!

My thesis was another ordeal unto itself (I have a tag, “The Reign of Thesis” which might be interesting to look at provided tumblr’s search function works, thought tbh I don’t remember most of what I posted there). It was like taking my two loves (Islam and France/French republicanism) and making them fight (or, more like, tearing my heart in two). I say this because half of my thesis was tracing the historical origins of modern day Islamophobia, most of which boils down to the fact that the creation of the modern French republic happened at the same time as the colonization of a lot of Muslim majority countries (I focused on Algeria) and Muslims/Islam became the Other against which French (republican) identity was defined (essentially making the modern state/French identity inherently Islamophobic and making it very difficult to exist as Muslim and French). I love studying the French Revolution (and took a wonderful class on it in college) and the following revolutions (hello Les Mis fandom) and I find French republicanism/republican universalism quite inspiring but I also had to come to terms with the fact that it was used and still is used in actively Islamophobic ways. This is getting long (I did write like 80 pages about this so please forgive me for broad statements with no evidence; I did do my research) but yeah, it was a difficult thesis to write, I’m glad I did it, but it made me very burnt out and depressed. Still love studying religion and the French Revolution though lol. Just sometimes it makes me very angry. (I can recommend books, though, to any Frev or Les Mis friends who might be reading this and want to know more.)

AN IMPORTANT FINAL NOTE: I had such a fun time being a religion major, half because I really love the subject but also because I really love my department and my professors and my classmates. The religion department at my school felt a bit like a family and everyone was friendly with each other and there was very little drama. (That’s one of the main things holding me back from grad school--the fear that I won’t find the same kind of community. Because there are ways to teach religion really badly and major scholarly disputes and I don’t want to have to fight people lol.) So if you’re interested in studying religion, I would definitely say go for it! But also know that the environment you’re in and the people you’re with really matter.

(Also I distrust survey classes, the “Introduction to World Religions” kind, but I recognize that they’re sometimes they only intro-level options. They just don’t have enough depth imo and that can make the study quite boring or they might generalize to the point of incorrectness. As my advisor likes to say, “there are as many Islams as there are Muslims,” and we can’t even hope to account for all the beautiful diversity and complexity there is in religious practice and belief if we only have one semester and two weeks per religion.)

#asks #answered #adventures of a religion major #l'histoire de ma vie #deep breath out #that was a lot #hopefully that wasn't too much #(feel free to ask follow up questions lol)#sometimes I still have anxiety about my thesis and keep having to remind myself that I passed #and did well lol #Anonymous

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oscopelabs · 6 years ago

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Paris sans Agnès by Andrew Lapin

It was morning in Paris when news of Agnès Varda’s death reached the world. On a hunch, I left the apartment I shared with my girlfriend in the city’s 5th arrondissement and walked the 30 minutes, past the hordes of tourists cramming into the skull-stacked Paris Catacombs, to reach Rue Daguerre in the Montparnasse neighborhood, where Varda had lived since 1951.

This is where Varda and her husband, fellow French New Wave filmmaker Jacques Demy, had purchased a derelict pink storefront and turned it into the production house Tamaris Films, later renamed Ciné-Tamaris, so they could produce Varda’s first film La Pointe Courte in 1954. The pair moved into the tucked-away apartment/studio complex and quickly became fixtures of the neighborhood, spreading art, whimsy, and cats around their tiny world (although the building’s exterior remained in poor shape, with paint perpetually peeling and the roof leaking). For the next nearly seven decades, Varda sightings on Rue Daguerre were an everyday occurrence: “the funny little woman in the red-and-white hair,” as one Parisian described her to me. It was fitting that Varda had inherited the spirit of this street from its original namesake Louis Daguerre: inventor of the daguerreotype, the first commercially available form of photographic imagery and the predecessor to the medium that Varda changed forever.

So Ciné-Tamaris seemed like the natural spot for a spontaneous Varda memorial. I arrived around 2:30 and a small crowd was beginning to gather, much of them reporters like myself, prowling the block for grieving soundbites. Flowers and handwritten notes already lined the sidewalk. Occasionally someone, usually a woman, would gingerly approach the display bearing flowers of their own; the person would pace along the length of the building for a few minutes, searching for the ideal spot, and then kneel down to place their offering among the others, so that it was visible but not too ostentatious.

Sometimes a person would reach the entrance of Varda’s sacred place and, instead of leaving flowers, ring the doorbell; immediately a young man or woman would answer the door, size up the greeter to determine if they were a close relation, and then beckon them inside, and you could make out just a glimpse of the entryway, the same one that all the lucky folks who interviewed Varda here over the years love to describe, with the prowling cats and the assorted found objects and the maze of different rooms connected by that entryway.

Others were drawn to the crowd but didn’t know what had brought us all here. “What’s going on?” one man asked me, and I answered that Agnès Varda had died. He gave a blank look; no idea who that was. I tried to explain, with my horrible French, that she was a famous Nouvelle Vague filmmaker, one of the last of her generation, but this too prompted no reaction. So I named the first title that came to my mind, which also seemed the most likely one for a Frenchman unfamiliar with the Nouvelle Vague to have seen – “Visages Villages” (Faces Places), the quirky 2017 documentary she had made with the muralist JR, in which the two had toured the countryside making art installations out of the folks they met in small French towns. It was a surprise worldwide hit, although it divided hardcore cinephiles I knew, some of whom thought the film was too cutesy and JR too posturing. At any rate, the man didn’t recognize the name. But he solemnly nodded all the same, to show he recognized someone monumental had passed, and that seemed enough, and he went on.

JR, as it happened, was presenting a massive new art installation at the Louvre that weekend. He’d covered the entire expanse of the museum’s outdoor Pyramide structure with his trademark screen-printed tarp to create an optical illusion of it rising out of a deep ravine. The effect was short-lived. Within 24 hours the tarp was being ripped up, both intentionally and not, by tourists, reminiscent of the scene in Faces Places where JR pastes a photo of Varda’s friend Guy Bourdin onto the side of a beach bunker and the tide washes it away.

Unlike her very young cohort, who often creates tactile public displays he knows will fade from view in short time, Varda herself was committed to something like the opposite: using her camera to make impermanent things permanent, to capture unusual people and their dissonant dreams on film before they faded away for good.

***

Another passerby, an older woman, was a longtime neighbor of Varda, having lived on Rue Daguerre for decades. She would see the filmmaker around all the time, she said. She most fondly recalled Varda’s 1975 documentary Daguerréotypes, in which she wandered her own street interviewing various shopkeepers and artisans, with a camera and microphone tethered back to her own house. Varda was interested in not only what these folks did for a living, but also what brought them to Paris and what they dreamt about at night. It was the ultimate “good neighbor” act, and also a convenient way for Varda to try to keep up her filmmaking output while raising young children at home.

The artisans of the type Varda profiled 44 years ago—the perfume maker, the magician, the accordion seller—have all but vanished from Rue Daguerre. And though Daguerréotypes never deviates from its pleasantly curious tone to reflect on their vanishing ranks, Varda seemed to be aware even when she was making the film that they were not long for this world. The artisan was a dying, hopelessly outclassed breed in Paris, a city that’s embraced mass-market goods and priced-out real estate like any other. Perhaps, as many critics smarter than I have noted, Varda saw a kinship in her neighbors because she, too, had devoted her life to a craft with no obvious commercial future, one that struck many outside observers as fundamentally useless.

Of all the commerce on the street today, including a comics vendor and a vegan bakery, I honed in on the most Daguerréotypes-like operation: a tiny frame shop with chipped, weathered exteriors, run by an older woman who kept the front door locked even during business hours. She opened the door for me, but when I asked her if she’d ever heard of Agnès Varda, she gave me the same blank look the man on the street had. “No, sorry,” she said, and shut it again.

Yet there was hope that Varda’s impact will be felt on generations of creative people to come. A young Parisian film student named Valentine brought a carton of seven potatoes to her house. Bending down, Valentine took out a Sharpie and scrawled one letter on each vegetable: “A-G-N-È-S.” She drew a heart on a sixth potato and laid it on top of the others, carefully propping up this tableau in the carton against the wall. The seventh potato was already shaped like a heart, and this one she let stand on its own.

Valentine had been sobbing as she did her work, but she soon grew excited to explain what she’d done. The potatoes, she said, were a tribute to Varda’s 2000 documentary The Gleaners and I, which was the first of her films that Valentine had seen and the one that made her want to make her own. In the movie, Varda had befriended various gleaners across the French countryside, communities of people who scoop up the leftover yield of a crop once it’s been abandoned by the commercial harvesters. More gleaners prowl urban centers looking for discarded food, clothes, and other scraps of life.

A rubber boots-clad dumpster diver proclaims people are “stupid” for throwing so much food away, but Varda’s never been the type to shame an audience. She’s content to open herself up to her subjects’ experiences, to glean what she can from their lives as well as her own (when she trains the camera on her own wrinkled hands and ponders the strangeness of having lived in her skin for so long). There’s a scene where Varda, delighted, gleans her own heart-shaped potatoes and holds them up for the camera: objects which no one else wanted, but which she has endowed with new purpose and clarity. After that film, “my little potato” became a common expression among the Varda family.

All three ethnographies came at very different stages of Varda’s life. She made Daguerréotypes at age 46, Gleaners at 71, Faces Places at 88. But they all concerned Varda’s efforts to ingratiate herself among the people of France, to learn more about life in her country outside of film circles. She was certainly an accomplished crafter of narrative films, as well, but it was with this unplanned trilogy that she enriched her deep bond with fans and ensured her own immortality in the French popular imagination. Besides the obvious fact of Varda’s gender, the strength she derived from simply being around other people might be what most distinguished her from Nouvelle Vague contemporaries like Godard and Truffaut, who only care(d) about the outside world inasmuch as it could be related back to their own vision of cinema. (And in Godard’s case, if that final passage of Faces Places is to be believed, the last one of the originals left standing has become impenetrable to even his oldest friends.)

Varda was 90 when she died, and much of her output at least since Gleaners centered in one way or another on her own impending death. Hell, as far back as 1962’s Cléo From 5 to 7, which centers on a pop star who awaits a possible terminal diagnosis, death and its effect on the everyday has been a major theme of her work. Thus, most of the gleaners now gathering at her residence were in agreement that today’s news, though heartbreaking, did not come as a surprise. But it did surprise Valentine. “I just saw her last week,” she said. Varda had attended the Paris premiere of her last feature, the career retrospective Varda par Agnès, and Valentine’s film class had been there to see her. The film had held its world premiere at this year’s Berlinale in February, perhaps because Varda knew even then she wouldn’t have made it all the way to Cannes in May.

How did she seem, I asked. “She looked very… tired,” one of Valentine’s friends volunteered. And now, a week later, she was gone. “I thought she was eternal,” Valentine said, shaking her head as though she knew how ridiculous that sounded. “I just wanted to thank her, I guess.”

***

Montparnasse Cemetery is situated just a few blocks north of Rue Daguerre, the final gathering spot of the French intellectual elite. Charles Baudelaire, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir are all buried here. Varda is now here, too, buried alongside Demy, as per her wishes. Their headstone now reads “Famille Demy-Varda.” It’s topped with a collection of sunflowers, another crop of significance to Varda: her 1964 drama Le Bonheur had a sunflower motif, and one of her final art projects was “The Greenhouse of Happiness,” in which she constructed a shack out of 35mm prints of the film and placed fake sunflowers within it.

The gravesite is absolutely choking on flowers, notes, and trinkets. Bouquets hail from the French elite film school La Fémis, cinema giant MK2, various museums, the Paris mayor’s office. Another from the modern tradespeople of Rue Daguerre – today’s daguerreotypes, inspired by her portraits of yesterday’s. The love is so massive it has overflown the cemetery. On a stretch of road just over the wall, the Varda grandchildren had painted every sidewalk post on the block – more than 100 – with her trademark red-and-white bob.

And along the headstone, a ring of potatoes. Varda’s harvest is over. Now it’s time to glean.

#Agnes Varda #paris #filmmaker #film director #french new wave #nouvelle vague #jacques demy #faces places #jr #cleo from 5 to 7 #Daguerréotypes #oscilloscope #oscilloscope laboratories #o-scope labs #film writing #musings #film essay

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lettucetacoboatsix · 5 years ago

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Loving "Othered" Bodies: A Look at Sexual Body Diversity, Objectification, and Fetishization

Recommended Reading:

If you're looking for anything substantial, sorry, you're not going to find it here. What literature that does exist on this topic are sole-perspective ethnographies, and all of the ones worth reading that I was able to find were from the vantage point of a marginalized individual who has become fed up with body fetishization in their sexual interludes and relationships. That being said, here are the links to a few of those articles:

“What Everyone Should Understand about Dating a Trans Woman” by Tallulah Eve

“5 Signs You’re About to Be Racially Fetishized” by Maiysha Kai

“They Aren't Just Preferences: Questions Around Attraction, Objectification, and Fetishizing” by Tyler Austin

“Trans Women and Femmes Speak Out About Being Fetishized” by Eva Reign

“Feminism 101: What is Festishization?” By Laura Jue

“Disabled Sexuality and Disempowerment Through Fetishization” by s.e. Smith

“The Fetishization an Infantilization of Trans Men” by Seth Katz

Recommended Viewing:

Pose

Bubblegum

After talking at length about consensual non-monogamy, we will be changing directions this week and next and looking at some broader topics: body diversity and sexual safety. Both of these topics present a challenge in balancing general information with best practices because there is just so much to talk about, but I hope to present the information within these posts as a starting point, a gentle shove in the right direction, for you and your lover(s) to engage in your sexual relationship together from a foundation of mutual respect and understanding. So… away we go!

Before We Begin:

First off, can I just say that I hate lumping everything that we're going to talk about into one category? Great. I hate that I am lumping everything that we're going to talk about into one category. It's problematic. It relies on the notion of the fabled norm. And it puts a whole bunch of people who are already being marginalized in some way into one group, and in doing that, it minimizes what people deal with day in and day out.

So why are we doing it this way? Well, for one, it makes the topic manageable, and this topic is definitely worth talking about, even if we're just giving a very general overview. It also serves to highlight just how widespread this issue is and hopefully shines a little light on how making assumptions or having certain expectations can really hurt someone.

Another reason is that it hopefully drives home the point that there is no one way to effectively engage sexually with another person, with any body, our own included. Bodies are diverse and beautiful. They are the physical form of a complex and wonderful person, and each body needs to be treated with the respect and dignity it deserves. We need to understand that no two bodies are identical, and, even if they were, the body is only part of the sexual being. It is our mental and emotional connection to our body, partnered with the physicality and sensuality of the sexual act that really makes up our respective sexualities. If you're looking for a play-by-play guide on how to not fetishize someone, there are only a few things that we can share as blanket statements: treat everyone with dignity and respect; understand that people are people and not a means to achieve your sexual fantasies; listen to your lover (keeping that most communication is delivered non-verbally); always get consent and know that your partner can revoke their consent at any time; be patient and willing to adapt from your expectations (because it's nearly impossible, and would probably be a little dangerous, to enter into any given situation without any expectations).

Anything more specific than those general rules would necessarily be based on assumptions about the body and expectations based on your ideas and fantasies. So if you are looking for something along those lines, I would ask you to consider why you feel you need specific details. Are you looking for a shortcut to being a better lover? I appreciate your desire, but there really isn't one. If it's to trick someone into sleeping with you by avoiding key phrases, then I would argue that tricking someone in any way, shape, or form, in order to have sex with them negates their ability to be a willing participant (that is it prevents them from bring able to provide their informed consent, and is therefore assault). If that's really all you're looking for, be up front about it. There are individuals who are okay with that arrangement.

An Introduction to Fetishization:

Several paragraphs later, it's probably important to actually clarify what exactly we're talking about. In the most general terms, fetishization is the sexualization of an object (especially an object that is not normally sexual) in order to achieve sexual fulfillment. When kept strictly in the realm of objects, it's relatively innocuous and to each, their own. If you want to watch your partner pop balloons between their thighs and your partner is on board, then, by all means, you do you. Fetishes are neither inherently good or bad, and this post is not meant to be in any way, shape, or form about kink-shaming. As long as your sexual preferences do not rely on the removal of another’s sexual agency, you’re free to explore and embrace whatever you can with your sexuality. But I hope that you can see how that becomes problematic when the object is replaced with an individual whose sole purpose you've determined is to help you fulfill a sexual fantasy. It is objectification of the individual and the body taken to the extreme. It removes that person's ability to take an active part in the sexual action and removes their agency in the fantasy.

Fetishization of individuals can occur along the lines of any category of identity. Fortunately, there's been a lot of visibility given to racial fetishization and the fetishization of trans bodies recently, but there are definitely others that we tend to gloss over or even normalize, like objectification along the lines of age (almost every porn site has a category for barely legal teens, and most also have a mature, MILF, or step-mom category). We also tend to be okay with things that we can write off as parody (like fetishization of political leanings like the whole Nailin' Palin thing and the current alt-Right obsession with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez), which should be examined further. But, again, these can happen within any category of identity that is a perceived deviation from the "norm" (in Patrick Warburton's Lemony Snickett voice: a word, which, here, means white, cisgender, able-bodied bodies), including, but not limited to: age, disability, economic status, ethnicity, gender identity, political beliefs, race, religion, sexual orientation, and size (height, weight, body proportions, and, yes, even relative genital size for all you size queens out there). So realistically, more than half the planet. Now, this is not to say you cannot be attracted to someone for the way they align, or do not align, with your preferences among these identity categories; rather, it is to say that reducing any person to a check mark, or a few check marks, on that small list of boxes is, generally, not okay.

This isn't an admonishment against loving someone who is beyond your scope of whatever "normative" means to you. Nor is this going to be a discussion about the morality of the consumption of pornography (as long as it’s made ethically and is not at all exploitative, you’re welcome to watch whatever you want, including videos in thos aforementioned categories, just don’t force people to live up to that fantasy, especially if you’re not giving them a choice in the matter). We are all complex and wonderful beings, trying to lead the best lives we can, and it would certainly be lonely and naive, if not a little foolish, to think that the only person you could ever love is someone who aligns perfectly with that mythical norm. Taking a line from the post on polyamory, I want you to be open to love in all its forms and that means being open to allowing others to take part in that love the way they want to.

Is Fetishization ever Okay?

Generally speaking, in vanilla, day-to-day sexual encounters: emphatically no. Fetishization and objectification are not okay. But there is one instance in which that answer might change, and that is in the case of negotiated scene play, in which all participants discuss and agree to highlight that fetishization as part of a sexual encounter in order to role play or call attention to some form of power dynamic, so it's a kind of consensual fetishization, but it's still important, especially if those differences are real and not just fantasy, that safe words and gestures are utilized if any lines are crossed. This includes more kink-related things like age play, race play, feminization, master/slave relationships etc. But the key elements here are that there is an acknowledged end to the scene and that those terms have been negotiated.

And this type of fetishization can be super beneficial for all participants. I've mentioned my research about using BDSM and power play to help recover from sexual trauma, so imagine the emotional release involved in acting out a race play revenge fantasy for someone who has lived through racial injustice, or a reversal of the power dynamic for a transwoman to be able to safely take on the role of dominating and feminizing a cishetero, alpha-male type. Again, these scenarios are not for everyone, or even for most, but they can be powerful and even transformative experiences. They can bring about a sense of renewal and rebirth, and if there was a traumatic sexual experience in the past, re-enacting a similar scene or the reversal of a scene with clearly negotiated power dynamics and rules can bring closure, understanding, and healing. But they need to be talked about before you take it upon yourself to immediately go into your own power play at the expense of your sexual partner’s agency.

But now that all of that is out of the way, let's take a look at fetishization within the confines of some of those identity categories, how to reasonably recognize and address ways of thinking that might lead to fetishization, and provide some guidelines for engaging in a sexual relationship for people who happen to be "othered" in regards to their bodies and experiences.

Racial Fetishization

Fetishization disproportionately affects people of color, which, unfortunately, isn’t all that surprising. Fetishization is the objectification of the body as a means to fulfill a sexual fantasy, and white people have been objectifying people of color for a long time; whether for a sexual purpose or as slave labor is somewhat immaterial. The focus has always been on bodies of color and how those bodies can, in some way, shape, or form benefit white society. We see it in historical examples like in the case of Sara Baartmen, one of at least two women of African-descent who were paraded around Europe as sideshow/freak show attractions in the 19th century, under the name “The Hottentot Venus,” because of her bodily proportions. We see it in the world of professional sports, and how the minute that women and men of color use that platform to make some form of political stance, they are reprimanded and taken out of the spotlight by powerful, old, white men. And we’re all aware of this phenomenon to some extent because it’s the basis of Jordan Peele’s Get Out, and that awareness is why the film was successful. Those who fetishize people of color don’t see them as romantic partners, or even whole people, but simply as sexual objects. They strip them of all the characteristics that make them complete and unique, reducing them to the colour of their skin.

This racial fetishization commonly manifests by solely focusing on certain stereotypes associated with a race. This can run the gamut from ‘big butts’ of black women to the ‘submissiveness’ of Asian women to the hypersexualization of Latinx men and women. While many who express interest in these qualities expect it to be taken as a compliment, it isn’t. It’s not okay to tell a woman of color that you love her “light-skinned pussy” while going down on her, or calling your Latinx lover a Mayan god (if you do this, I firmly believe they are allowed to throw you head first into a cenote. See you in Xibalba!) Those were real examples provided in some of the articles I read, and I hope you can see how those might be offensive. Declaring that you are attracted to someone because of the color of one’s skin or a racial stereotype is not flattering; it’s just another form of objectification and sexual colonialism/imperialism.

It’s dehumanizing and objectifying. It’s systemic oppression in full force to maintain power over marginalized individuals by denying them their humanity and demanding that their sexuality is solely for the pleasure of others. And although this perceived power differential mostly benefits white men, there are plenty of white women who also fetishize their lovers along the lines of race, and this isn’t exclusive to heterosexual relationships. If her dating profile says she only fucks Black men, then she’s actually saying she only fucks Black men.

It’s sexualized racism. If you believe you are entitled to a particular vision of a person of color in order to fulfill your sexual fantasy, you are stating that no matter how the relationship is formed or where the relationship goes, they are not an equal. They are not a partner. They are a stand-in for your own beliefs. This fetishization is not a healthy attraction and it cannot lead to a healthy relationship; giving the benefit of the doubt to someone you believe means well is not always warranted.

Detecting Racial Fetishization

Fortunately, there are some ways to detect the potential for racial fetishization, but the number one way is to ask race-related questions, like “Have you ever been with a black girl before?” If their answer is something along the lines of “Yes. In fact, I only date black girls,” or “No, but I’ve always wanted to,” you know that they’ve already brought a certain set of expectations to being with you. Likewise, if they show an over-enthusiastic, unsolicited appreciation for “urban culture,” they’re not trying to impress you; they’re trying to tell you that you should like them because they get it, right? This includes disguising themselves as allies to the cause, in order for you to let your guard down. It might sound like that level of manipulation would be ridiculous, but it does happen. If that’s all they want to talk about and they expect you to be right there with them at every single protest all the time, chances are they are using you as a pawn in some sort of game to prove that they’re not racist. Anything that shows they are coming to the table with assumptions about who you are as an individual simply based on their observation of your skin color, which is in itself an objectification through the gaze, is a good indication about whether or not they might objectify you in this manner.

But how do I not fetishize people of color?

If you’re worried that you have fetishized people of color or might accidentally fetishize people of color at some point in the future, remember that as long as you’re actively attempting to recognize that all people possess an innate dignity and that all people are people, and are therefore worthy of love and respect, you’re on the right track. Decolonizing our minds is a life-long effort. No matter how hard we work to check our privilege, inevitably racial conditioning rears its ugly head, and we are faced with problems, perceptions and biases we thought we had tackled a long time ago, and that’s to be expected. Society fucks everyone up, but you can still train yourself to recognize those thoughts or biases and to not immediately act on them. That’s not to say that being “woke” some of the time is a carte blanche to have racist thoughts all the time; it is something you have actively work to correct.

Fetishization of People with Physical Disabilities

Yes, people with disabilities are still sexual beings. No, you aren’t doing them any favors by seeking them out because you heard that sex with a one-legged woman was absolutely mind-blowing (Seinfeld…). Like with racial fetishization, the fetishization of people with disabilities is rooted historically, and, specifically, has often been aligned with the entertainment industry. In the Middle Ages, people with physical and/or intellectual impairments played an important role in the royal courts as fools or jesters, where they were “allowed” a sense of satirical freedom, and at least during the 13th century, would often perform naked for royalty. This objectification of bodies with disability was once again brought to the forefront with the vaudevillian sideshow acts of the late 19th and early 20th centuries (this is an over-simplification, and those entertainment circuits did allow people with disabilities to support themselves in ways that usually were not afforded to them, but they did also depend on the exploitative nature of crowds and the gawking gaze), most obviously with Chang and Eng Bunker and the Hilton Sisters. And the fetishization of bodies with disabilities does very much still occur. This type of objectification, however, is typically easily identifiable, because people who have inclinations towards this type of fetishization, called “devotees,” tend to be focused on one particular impairment (e.g. people who are only sexually interested in people in wheelchairs), and their history of sexual partners generally points to a pattern, and, again, any act of fetishization that reduces a person to one aspect of their physical body is not okay.

The bodies of people with disabilities are already dehumanized and marginalized in our society; this fetishizing only furthers this dehumanization. It’s not even about the attraction to the disability, it’s about the perception of weakness and helplessness and the assumption that the person with the disability somehow needs you. The problem is the sexualization of disability itself and the treatment of people with disabilities as sex objects. Again, this isn’t to say that it’s impossible for someone who is able-bodied to love a person with a disability. Because of this aspect of their identity, people with disabilities know how to overcome challenges that many of us don’t ever have to think about, and perseverance and resourcefulness are both really attractive qualities, but if that attraction is based on the perceived neediness of an individual with a disability it is a confirmation that that relationship will never be between equals.

Fetishization of Transgender Identities

While racial fetishization tends to rely on histories of colonial and imperial oppression and stereotypes, the fetishization of transgender identities is focused more on the individual commiting that act of objectification rather than the person being fetishized. It’s an obsession with anatomy and questions of one’s own sexuality. It’s objectification to the point where the body of desire isn’t even considered as anything beyond a means to satisfy a curiosity. And this isn’t exclusive to binary trans identities, though objectification of transwomen and transmen may be more recognizable; it also affects people who are non-binary, androgynous, and gender non-conforming, as well.

If racial fetishization is sexual racism, then it follows that the fetishization of trans* bodies is sexual transphobia. And while there are certainly people who will announce that they are transamorous or interested in sexually pursuing individuals who are trans, transphobia can also come under the guise of faux positivity. It’s insidious and manipulative, but a lot of people who express this desire to sexually engage with transbodies learn how to masquerade as allies. What’s worse is that these individuals also often try to make it seem like they are doing you a favor by being attracted to you and throwing themselves at you. But even the term “transamorous” removes the agency from the person being “desired.” It equates transwomen as feminine bodies with a penis and transmen as masculine bodies with a vulva, and, even though this might not even be the case, it reduces both to sexual objects. And the transgender aspect of a person’s identity is only part of a whole. It may very well be a key part of that identity, but people are not two dimensional characters in your fantasies. Again, this is not to say that you cannot love or be attracted to someone who is trans, but if your attraction is solely based on the objectification of a trans body, then we have a problem.

Detecting Fetishization of Transgender Bodies

Like with racial fetishization, the best indicator that someone is fetishizing your body’s status as being transgender is their fixation on that part of your identity. Are they asking questions about your progress in your transition? Are they demanding that you tell them what your dead name was? And again, are they “supportive” beyond what you’re comfortable with, inserting themselves into your legal or medical history? Unfortunately, these point to a set of very strict expectations, and if you fail to live up to those expectations, it can be dangerous. Not only is it possible for an errant touch or a hurtful phrase to trigger feelings of dysphoria, but often times, this failure to live up to an expectation can end in very real physical violence.

I’m Dating Someone who is Trans and Don’t Want to Do Something Wrong:

Again, as long as you’re acknowledging that the person you are with is a fully-recognized human being beyond just their anatomy and this aspect of their identity, you’re on the right track, but the reality is that, because “transgender” is an umbrella term, there is a great deal of variety within the trans experience, and therefore a lot of variety when it comes to transbodies. There isn’t any one way to correctly love a person who is trans. Try to limit your expectations for any physical intimacy and let things happen naturally if it gets to that point. Be open and honest about your relationship, don’t hide it away from the world. This is, after all, a person and not some dirty little secret. And don’t treat the experience like a science experiment or a litmus test for your sexuality. Being with someone who is trans has no impact on your sexuality and is really not anything to be ashamed of. If you identify as a cishet guy and you are attracted to a woman only to later find out the she happens to be trans, guess what? She's still a woman, and you are still a cishet guy. It's weird that people focus on what is, or is not, in between someone's legs. We all have parts that interlock with others' parts, and we're all pink on the inside. Why is genitalia a deal-breaker for you, when everything else about the person is wonderful and beautiful and moments before you were attracted to her? We, as a society, need to start raising the bar above just treating folk who are trans with a base-level of respect as a sign that we’re good people because it's really not that difficult and not that complicated.

In the event that your relationship does become physically intimate and you’re nervous about what to expect, ask your partner to take the lead. This doesn’t mean they have to take on a dominant role, but allow them to set the pace, if you’re unsure. Let them guide your hand, your mouth, whatever. Again, being with any person for the first time is a moment of sexual exploration, and a great means for the exploration is mutual masturbation, if you’re both up for that. Watching your partner explore their own body, or holding them as they touch themselves and learning how their body reacts can be a very erotic experience. And if neither of you is really into voyeurism or exhbitionism whatsoever, you can engage in sexually explicit conversation. Pay attention to what words your partner uses and which ones they avoid. Learn how to communicate effectively with your partner to avoid phrases that might trigger a negative reaction, and remember that a large portion of communication is non-verbal. There are very clear differences between an aroused, quick inhale and a frustrated sigh or ceasure of breath. Likewise, there is a difference between an excited shiver or an arching of the back to meet your touch and a wince from a hand passing over a part of the body that might cause a feeling of dysphoria, but remember, even if you’ve been with someone who is trans in the past, there is no universal transgender experience of sensuality. As with any lover and any body, it takes getting to know your partner.

Another thing you can do is to expand your understanding of the things that you find sexy. No lover is ever going to be a perfect fit for any given sexual fantasy. By learning what turns you on, you not only learn to communicate your desires effectively to your partner, but you also give your partner a chance to show their affection for you effectively. If your partner is presenting as masculine and is wearing a binder, but you have a thing for lingerie and undressing your partner, don’t force them or even ask them to remove their binder if it’s not something they’re offering. Instead, you could give them your dress shirt and help them to button it up. The clothing is still a part of the scene for you, and you get to go through the sensuality of dressing your partner, which might very well be a new experience for you. And at the end of it all, it shows your partner that you understand something that might cause them discomfort and are actively trying to meet them on their level, and you get to see that person wearing your clothes, which can be its own erotic little experience. Again, that’s not to say that all transmen or people who are non-binary and are at that moment presenting as masculine are going to find that endearing or sexy, but it’s about compromise and sexual negotiation and it shows you’re paying attention to your lover’s needs, and there isn’t much in this world that is sexier than that.

Is that everything?

Certainly not, and, again, I hate to present the material in this way, but it is too broad of a topic to try and cover all at once and it’s too important a topic to not cover at all. This is the starting point of the conversation. Like we said at the beginning, fetishization of an object is really neither good or bad; it is simply the manifestation of sexual attraction, but there is certainly a problem if you apply that mindset to individuals and reduce them to sexual objects to fulfill your own sexual desires without their informed consent. This type of fetishization can really occur along the lines of any identity category and is certainly not limited to the three we went into above. If you’re interested in this topic, please read the articles that I included under recommended reading. If you ever need someone to talk to, I am here for you. If you would like me to go into more detail or think I got something wrong, tell me or send me an anonymous ask!

With love, friends.

#fetishization #sexuality #objectification #transgender #racial fetishization #disability

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makistar2018 · 6 years ago

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10 Years Later, Taylor Swift’s ‘Fearless’ Still Slaps

When it was released in 2008, Swift’s sophomore album launched a thousand takes. Today, it’s best remembered as a simple time capsule

By LAUREN M. JACKSON November 12, 2018

Taylor Swift during the "Fearless" tour at Madison Square Garden on August 27, 2009 in New York City.

Theo Wargo/WireImage for New York Post

Like Propel water, The Scarlet Letter and mechanical pencils, Taylor Swift’s Fearless pairs well with the sporadic squeak of team-issued sneakers, overpriced hot lunches and the kind of angst that defines comfortably suburb-bound teenage years. Sliding open the album on Spotify with my iPhone 8, I can still feel my limbs stretched in all directions, hear the snap-crackle-pop of a dozen adolescent girls’ joints going through the motions of yet another warm-up to what would become the soundtrack of my high school varsity dance team’s inner and outer lives, as well as leave poptimism forever changed.

I am 27 now, still anxious but inflexible, no longer clinging (as) tightly to singular albums to tell the emotional landscape of my life — but back then, Fearless was god. Swift was barely into legal teenagedom when compiling her sophomore album’s original 13 tracks, but more than the happenstance near-synonymy of our ages (I’m younger by 1 year, 6 months, 27 days), the four-walled, high school claustrophobia induced by the album is a matter of skilled musical mood setting. From the first downbeat of the inaugural title track to the last flippantly rebellious “hallelujah” on “Change,” Swift traps us in the mind of an ungainly teen as she was once trapped, as I was, as so many others wading the ambiguity between comportment and desire that doesn’t quite end when gowns come on and caps fly up.

Like so many notebook pages on the golden screen, Fearless is filled with boys. Stans and haters have their theories, but I like to think of each song as an archetype, less true stories of relationships gone sour than a young woman’s true to life hetero-ethnography. There are the boys who do good — the “Fearless,” “Love Story,” “Hey Stephen,” “The Best Day” boys (the last a tribute to Dad) — the boys who nurture and love intensely. They do all the usual country boy things, all the usual cinematic things: driving slow, kissing in the rain, flouting archaic inter-familial squabbles. They honor their promises and, most of all, leave the narrator better changed for her affection.

These boys who do good are short-lived. By Track 2, “Fifteen,” we’re already checking in to Heartbreak Hotel for the upteenth time with an account of that age generic enough to warrant a fan-made montage of clips from Degrassi: The Next Generation. The song tells an allegedly universal story of freshman year woes, complete with riding in cars with senior boys who also play football (because of course). It’s saccharine, sung in the vernacular of normative coupling that would become Swift’s enemy in the gossip pages. But the limited lexicon is not necessarily untruthful. “Fifteen” has aged about as well as anyone would expect, but some of those refrains make me yearn for arms long enough to slap all the powers that be responsible for belittling the whims of young girls. And according to the greater duration of Fearless — tracks like “White Horse,” “Breathe,” “Tell Me Why,” “You’re Not Sorry,” “The Way I Loved You,” and “Forever & Always” — the greatest threat to the happiness of teen girls are boys.

November 2008 looks rosy from here. America had just elected its first black president, the man who promised too much hope and change to possibly be true, but faith felt good back then. Men had committed just five mass shootings over the past year with one more on the way in December (2018 has 307 mass shootings to its name so far). The nation boasted just under 150 recognized active white supremacist groups (that number would climb to over 1,000 during Obama’s presidency). Global finance was in crisis but cable networks were still winning Emmys. Amy Winehouse was alive. Kanye still made sense and a bright-eyed, hair-tousled new country darling was exclusively concerned with dating, rather than local politics.

Like any celebrity who is also a woman, but also in a lane quite her own, Swift’s relation to mainstream feminism wanes and waxes with the season. A female artist beloved by the girls for whom her songs are written, Swift and her music are therefore more scrutinized, more rigorously excavated for signs of harmful messaging than her male singer-songwriter peers. Fearless frayed Swift’s reputation in a way that wouldn’t let up for years, if ever, largely because of its critical success. Swift took home four Grammys at the 2010 awards, including Album of the Year, beating the Dave Matthews Band’s Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King, The Black Eyed Peas’ The E.N.D., Beyoncé’s I Am… Sasha Fierceand, most egregiously, Lady Gaga’s debut studio album, The Fame. The perceived slight invited robust inquiry into this supposed album of the year, and the aesthetic discrepancy between the two quickly turned to politics.

Autostraddle’s Riese called Swift “a feminist’s nightmare,” the enemy of “brave, creative, inventive, envelope-pushing little monsters�� everywhere. An accompanying infographic, “a symbolic analysis” of Swift’s works to date, cataloged her most damning motifs, including “virginal” imagery, “the stars,” “crying,” and the 2AM hour. At Jezebel, Dodai Stewart agreed that Gaga was the rightful winner, speculating that in a race between “Gaga the liberal versus Taylor the conservative,” the latter “makes the Academy feel more comfortable.” One joy of pop culture is the revelation of how melodramatically things can change. Last month, Swift announced her endorsement of Tennessee Democrats Phil Bredesen and Jim Cooper for the midterm elections; meanwhile, Lady Gaga hews the path of glamorous respectability on her lengthy A Star Is Born Oscar campaign.

Feminist readings of Fearless weren’t wrong, exactly. Allies on the album come in strictly male form, while other girls are competition for Swift’s persecuted first person. Even the red-headed bestie Abigail becomes a lesson in chastity, losing her virginity — “everything”! —to the boy who broke her heart (the foil to Swift’s main character, whose dreams of living in a big ole city protect her from such a fate). The charting single “You Belong With Me” is a bouncy jaunt through the valley of me versus those other girls. The video that won Best Female Video at the MTV Video Music Awards over Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies” — to seismic effect — stars Swift as both the frizzy blonde, bespectacled weirdo in band and the sleek brunette cheerleader with the man (Lucas Till who now plays MacGyver on CBS). In true romantic comedy fashion, Good Swift, clothed in white, ends up with the guy in the end, defeating Bad Swift, whose only crimes it seems are great taste in footwear and not appreciating her high school boyfriend’s likely moronic sense of humor. Both the song and video became emblematic of a kind of Swiftian all-for-one girl power. Her 2017 video for “Look What You Made Me Do” resurrects and buries all sorts of Swiftisms, including the iconography of the uncool girl who features so heavily in the Fearless-era of her oeuvre.

Pop music exists not to elevate our souls or our politics, but to safely wade in the muck of our pettiest appetites, whether they come with trap drums or in serenades. Pop music deserves interrogation, but it will never exceed us. Fearless was a diary, sounding like the selfishness that bubbles up regardless of one’s intellectual or political guards against it. The debate it ignited wouldn’t happen were it released today, amidst all this. It’s a relic of a time when determining exactly what an album meant, culturally and aesthetically, was a crucial discussion to have in public, when nuance had stakes. Compared to the basic moral tenets we now expend so much of our energy defending, such communal acts of criticism feel small and regretfully scarce. Fearless was a moment, now relegated to a time capsule, no longer a prompt.

Rolling Stone

#taylor swift #fearless #rolling stone #2018.11.12

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anthropolos · 7 years ago

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Hi anon. Hope you don’t mind me doing it like this:

“ I can't access the Abu-loghod piece from my institution so I'm basing this reply pretty much entirely off of the Stacey article, and parts of Lewin’s edited reader. Also, I'm an archaeology student so some of this is outside of what I'm used to (which I also get is LOADED with its own history). (1/8)

I am completely on-board with the notion that ethnography is inherently exploitative of the disenfranchised, and that, especially without its applied component(and when considering the history of neglect and abuse), is useless. At it’s core, you’re right. Kinda fucked. I’d be curious to see what you end up proposing by the end of this project, and how you feel about the field (whether you continue with it in some form or abandon it entirely). (2/8)

I don’t like Stacey’s final “suggestion”, if you can call it that. My least favorite thing about theory is the post-modern cop-out, and how the response to any ethical dilemma is to plow forwards with more awareness. This is exactly what Stacey invokes… But she argues that it’s eventually “worth” the attempt (although at best it can only get halfway). I want to agree that it’s worth the effort. (3/8)

Social science occupies a unique space in its ability to hopefully inform social policies (although that’s unlikely under the current administration). It would be an enormous shame for the field to completely abandon any attempt at a feminist approach. Fortunately, some like Zavella (1993, in Lewin’s volume) seems even more optimistic. Again, it might be fair to assume that these positive views are motivated by a self-preservation, (4/8)

... just a desire to keep their job and not to invalidate all the work they’ve done. I don’t know what’s driving this intense fatalism about disentanglement. Maybe the Abu-Loghod piece deals with that, but she still continued work and publication in social science after this. Behar, though, interprets her message as being more positive than Stacey’s, so I don’t know where to go with that. (5/8)

I also agree that just because the ethnographer may be a woman, and as such better in a place to understand disenfranchisement, it doesn’t change the reality of a power imbalance, (hell, even attempting a true emic perspective, when done by a fully educated and informed “insider other”, is questionable at best). Authorship gives considerable privilege, no matter the researcher or ‘informant’. Does remaining within the field, even, undermine their arguments about these complications? (6/8)

A critical perspective on methodology is a must, but, your position seems extreme and “unsettling” (just to use the language I’ve been reading). Maybe I’m just resorting to the same postmodern fallback here, but isn’t this description of power relations a core tenant of domains of (Marxian) anthropology? (7/8)

This stuff’s important to think about, but I don’t think it dooms any feminist ethnographer from being trapped solely within “White Feminism ^(tm)” so long as other elements of their practice, such as the eventual application of their work can, in essence, supersede any negative impacts of their research. Sorry if any of this is a lot I'm just curious what you have to say about any of it. Tonight's been an interesting couple of hours of reading on the topic. (8/8)

Ok actually one last thing. Stacey’s entire postmodern prosaic style overlooks intersectionality with class and the accessibility of research (though it is clearly for an academic audience), which as a point I think works well for her critique, yet undermines the declaration of it as “inevitable”. (9/8)”

My response:

Thank you for writing this, it’s so great to actually communicate with someone who has done the reading, is well informed on the topic, and has taken the time to start a dialog. I will say that I really recommend you read the Abu-Lughod piece. She is more positive than Stacey who writes that she is not convinced, actually, by postmodernists’ attempts. While you seem to have gotten a more positive impression of Stacey, I actually incorporate her reading into my syllabus as an example of how ethnography will never be feminist. But I’m sure I’ll re-read her again, since my final paper is on her and Abu-Lughod’s similarities and differences.

Abu-Lughod does address how women in anthropology have been less inclined to push a feminist agenda for the sake of their jobs. It’s no secret in anthropology that, while it’s mostly women, men receive more notoriety and tenure as professors than women do. She believes that, as you say, self-preservation is a strong motivator for a lack of feminism in anthropology.

While I understand that you think anthropology is worth saving because of how it can impact policy, I’m afraid I haven’t seen that impact since Mead. Anthropologists are typically co-opted by the CIA if they are recruited for govt. purposes, which isn’t a good thing by any means. Anthropologists being used for policy is even further an exploitative step for the studied, who go from being published about to having in-depth cultural knowledge being used for state-sanctioned violence and control.

Besides all that jazz, I’m afraid that none of what was said in these asks addresses the root problem, which Abu-Lughod emphasizes: A Western, colonizer, researcher self; and a non-Western, colonized, researched Other. This is similar to what Stacey is saying, with maybe less focus on race and colonization than Abu-Lughod. I will tell you, Abu-Lughod does say that anthropology can work to disrupt this self/Other binary by seeing the Other in the self, and the self in the Other. By that, she advocates for indigenous, native, or halfie anthropology. However, in her own words, the power imbalance between women, especially Western female anthropologists studying women from other cultures, is the “unequal structure of the world and the structure of anthropology” (25). Abu-Lughod is admitting that anthropology is designed to perpetuate, instill, and recreate the power imbalance between the Western self and studied non-Western Other.

Maybe what was ignored in this discussion are things like Lewin’s lesbian ethnography. What if I only study myself? What’s the role of autoethnography? I personally relate to this since I am a bisexual woman and I’ve spent the last two years studying other bisexual women. What I can say with that is I am brought back to Stacey’s arguments. I still have authority over my ethnography. I am still imposing myself onto a complex web of relationships and social systems, which I am more free to remove myself from than the researched. I am still using their data, while most of them are my friends, for my own academic gain. I’m afraid the ethnographic process ensures this. We need to develop another method which allows us to communicate with each other and produce knowledge without exploited third parties. I recommend Collins’ reading for that. Black feminist epistemology has struggled with this question, and she actually has an answer for it. It’s just that the answer is not ethnography, and definitely not anthropology.

#ask #anon #anonymous #feminist anthropology #anthropology #ethnography

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notesfromthefielddesk · 3 years ago

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Episode 4 - Clifford Geertz

Episode link; https://open.spotify.com/episode/7MwsvHP2VFdpU8uDIRXBYh?si=d980149c963e44f7

(Ambient sound of birds chirping)

John

How do I start?

I’ve been rushing around it feels like, it’s been frantic. I took couple weeks off. Switched off my phone. I’d been flying here and there, Papua New Guinea, South Sudan, North Sudan. So today i’m slowing down, the desk isn’t in the sea or surrounded by cows, I’m just in the room I rented in Bali. I’ve been just travelling around Indonesia for a while. I saw the guy in amongst the crowd but he seems to be keeping his distance now.

Really, I was just trying to get here. I’ve always wanted to come to Indonesia. All through my undergrad I imagined myself here. I thought of myself as Geertz 2.0. When I needed to write an essay I reached for Geertz. Essay about methodology, I’d open up “toward an interpretive theory of culture.” writing about Islam - then Islam Observed was right there. When I imagined myself in the field it was at the side of cockfight in Bali.

I always thought of myself as like him, I don’t know why. It’s funny the way memory works isn’t it? I’ve been sort of just mooching around Indonesia. I’ve been reading Geertz, and listening back to the other episodes and I haven’t really liked what i’m seeing. In myself I mean. It made me look again at what Geertz, the way my students would. It made me realise I wasn’t a good student, I don’t mean grades, my grades were fine - good even. But i had no relationships to these texts, I was just looting them for arguments which I could line up, one after another, and win the argument - get the grade. The colonial equivalent of learning. I didn’t take what was in them into the world, and into my life.

I guess what I mean, is not memory generally, I mean it’s funny how my memory works. Because when I think about Geertz, I picture this story where a Cock fight gets broken up by the police. Everyones there in a circle cheering screaming, the crowd a single organism, moving in unison when a truck full of policeman roars up to the fight. Amid the cries of police, police, from the crowd they jump from the truck into the centre of the ring, waving their machine guns around. In an instant the crowd has scattered, and Geertz is running too. That frenetic energy was what I wanted. Geertz is a few strides behind a man he’s never met but when a gate into a courtyard opens and the man leaps through, Geertz follows. Seeing them sprawl onto the floor the mans wife whips out a table chairs and tea. Moments later the police enter the courtyard, to find two men in deep conversation about culture over a cup of tea.

I remember that story from “Deep play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight” ,Which sounds like the title of some high brow porn by the way, so clearly. That was kind of the genius of Geertz to me. The way he conjured these scenes that were so visceral. I wanted a slice of that life. But when I turned up in Bali, no-one would talk to me. I didn’t know when the cock fights were even taking place. When I found one, I sat outside the circle behind my desk ignored. I went back to the room I was renting, and I read notes on the Balinese Cockfight again. And i’d ignored some parts. Before the Cock fight story, Geertz talks about spending months being ignored, by everyone. Not just talking to people and they give short answers but people were actively turning their backs to him.

Guess what? I don’t remember the Cock fight story that well either, I missed out a key piece of information. Greeted never travelled alone, in his part memoir, part ethnographic overview “after the fact” he says “I have never worked in the field alone for more than a month or so, and I doubt very much that I could have managed it.”

At the table in the courtyard, there were three chairs, three cups of tea and three people pretending to talk about culture. The person absent in my memory is Hildred Geertz. Clifford’s then wife. But she wasn’t just his wife, she’s an acclaimed anthropologist in her own right. What does it say about me that when I imagine Geertz he’s swashbuckling in the field alone, that I remember the excitement, forget the struggle and forget his wife. But it isn’t just me forgetting Hildred, the subtitle of Geertz’s memoir is; “Two Countries, Four Decades, One Anthropologists.” Laura Nader said in her review that Geertz comes across frustrated by his inability to understand his four decades of work; her conclusion, is that maybe we need two ethnographers to look back. I re-read that scene of the police chase again. Hildred is there, just. But only as “my wife” not as an active participant, she goes completely un-described, which is weird for a guy who believed that description took priority over explanation. Does that absolve me?

(Break for silence, bleed into some lo-fi curious music)

Geertz is famous for two things. The first is his description of culture. He said “Man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun. I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore, not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning.” Which is kind of a bummer. When I read Malinowski it really seemed like culture could be a key to getting answers about the world. And EP made me believe that too. Malinowski made me think you could understand the link between what someone does and why, and EP made me think I could do that at scale, why is this society like this? Because of cows, oh okay. Looking back it seems a bit…silly. But I wanted it to be true so badly. I wanted certainty but reading Geertz…it’s like being drawn in to a vortex of uncertainty and doubt. Which is exactly what I wanted to escape.

So what are we doing? In the field I mean, if were not revealing the structure of societies then what are we doing? Yeah we’re interviewing people, keeping a diary participant observing but those are just practices, what’s the essence? What’s the aim? Before 1967 and the release of Malinowski’s diary it seemed like the answer was going native but as we discussed… probably not a great approach. We can’t be detached either though, because as I’ve been reminded over and over that’s not great either.

And this is the second thing Geertz is famous for; Thick Description. I always took that to mean just lots of description. The kind of description that when you read it gives you the thrill of running from the police through a Balinese village. And Geertz definitely does a bunch of that but thick description means something…more than that.

Okay to explain i’m going to have to spend quite a while talking about winking. Sorry.

Geertz says imagine three boys. One has a twitch, one is winking and the third is an asshole. From an objective “I am a camera” perspective meaning you just describe what happens, the first two boys are doing the same thing, they are closing one eye. But, because we all know what winking is we can tell the difference between the boy who is winking and the one with a twitch. Now think about the asshole kid, he’s closing his eye as a way to mock the boy with a twitch. So we’ve got one act but three meanings, twitching, winking and mocking. Geertz adds a fourth. If the mocking kids fake twitch isn’t convincing enough or is too convincing the joke doesn’t work. So maybe earlier in the day at home when he was planning his joke, he stood in the bathroom, looking at himself in the mirror and practices his mocking twitch, adding a grimace here, an exaggerated head turn there. In this case he’s rehearsing. Four meanings.

I’ll add another wrinkle. Is the winking boy winking at the mocker or the twitcher? If it’s the first then maybe there is a conspiracy between the boys. When I wink you make fun of him! Or he doesn’t want to laugh in front of the boy with the twitch but still wants to give his approval of the performance. So maybe two of the boys are assholes. But if it’s the latter and he’s winking at the boy with the twitch maybe it’s an ill conceived attempt to console the boy with the twitch. So now we’re also getting into the relationships between the boys. But wait! What if they boy who is winking isn’t winking, he’s trying to mock the boy but he hasn’t rehearsed!

Side note; this isn’t Geertz’s idea he just popularised it, this theory comes from Ryle. So i’m summarising Geertz’s summary of Ryle… welcome to academia.

Anyway, the point of this long ass analogy is that the essence of ethnography isn’t going to far flung places, explaining society or going native. It’s the process of description which takes the three boys from three people closing one eye, to a boy with a twitch facing a preplanned conspiracy to mock him. That is what Geertz, via Ryle, calls thick description.

Geertz said description over everything! And that requires radical empathy and self reflection because to understand the three boys we have to be the opposite of an impartial observer we have to engage in the game, get the joke and be able to tell a wink from a wince. As researchers we aren’t a camera, we are one of the boys.

I can tell what you’re thinking. “Great, whatever, three imaginary people stood in a circle winking at each other. What’s this got to do with Indonesia.” Which is fair so let’s apply it to a cockfight.

Cockfighting is a big deal in Bali. Maybe less so than when Geertz did his research here in the 70s but still. Even the grumpiest Balinese man will transform when the topic comes up, and will launch into excited description of his… Rooster. And look I know what you’re thinking, and no the falic implications are not lost on people in Bali. If you can think of a penis joke on this topic, I assure you a Balinese man has 10 more in the same vein. Bateson and Mead two other anthropologists who wrote about this said and I quote “Cocks are viewed as detachable self operating penises, ambulant genitals with a life of their own.” An image that will now haunt my dreams.

Okay, but heres another comparison, Balinese men deeply personally identify with their…fighting chicken, when they talk about the fights they will say “I won” or “I fought so and so.” It’s like guys who are really into football and say “We got a good win today.” Except for instead of 22 men kick a ball around you’re strapping knives to the feet of chicken. Also like in football gambling is a major central part of cockfighting but it’s not exactly the point.

The point is, according to Geertz, to play out social tensions. So for example, in Bali you never bet against a cock from your social group and fighting always between rival groups. Therefore, what’s really at stake is each groups status in Bali, the cockfight then is a symbolic representation of social tensions. The fight is really a way of addressing fights between groups without bloodshed…well except chicken blood. Or to put it the way Geertz does the fights are a way to play with fire without getting burned.

It reminds me of clowning in Native American communities. In pueblo villages a secret society of clowns spend all year examining the social weak points of the community. Then for a day they are unleashed to overturn social convention. They steal babies, they dress the most beautiful girl in the village in ugly clothes, whilst the woo old women, if they see white people they are forced into mock gun fights re-enacting the genocide of native Americans. And at the end of the day all the things that have been bothering people are dealt with. Which might decontextualise the mocking boy right? Maybe not so much of an asshole.

Now that’s an example from half way around the world, in a totally different social context. But I don’t think Geertz would have minded the comparison. I know we’re jumping around but bear with me. In Geertz’s book “Islam observed” he compares Moroccan and Indonesian Islam. He says that different social conditions led to the religion being expressed in different ways. We won’t get into the details but by arguing this we’d assume that Geertz agrees with Asad - that Islam, and in fact all religion, is about personal embodiment or in other words, an individuals relationship with God or whatever. Remember what he said about culture “Man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun.” But no that’s not what he concludes. He says that there is one Islam which is a symbol all Muslims have in common which helps to “render the strange familiar, the paradoxical logical, the anomalous, given recognised, if eccentric, ways of Allah, natural.” On the sliding scale of Gellner to Asad Geertz falls somewhere in the middle.

That’s how Geertz wanted us to read culture, symbolically, like it is literature. Memories are fallible, facts are elusive, generalisations have limited value. Meaning is central, description takes priority over explanation and metaphors of culture over reliable data.

(fade in on some sad music)

So what does the absence of Hildred symbolise. Maybe the erasure of women from my memory, and Geertz’s descriptions is symbolic of the erasure women in American and British Society? And what about the other absences in Geertz’s work? Laura Nader points out “Geertz went to Indonesia as part of a modernisation project to fight communism.” That’s absent from all the texts I mentioned.

Nader again “In his summary statement about the 1966 massacres in Pare (A town in Java Indonesia) he says that by 1986 the massacres were “hardly a memory at all.” Geertz may advocate a humanistic, reflexive, situated knowledge, but does he possess it himself?”

I see flashes of myself there. My students, Susan telling me that I shouldn’t be doing what I am doing but me ignoring it because it interfered with what I wanted to do. Which of the winking boys does that make me?

(Pause)

I think it makes me the one who knows the joke about the boy with a twitch is mean, so doesn’t laugh but winks at the mocker, to let him know he still thinks it’s funny. By failing to confront the parts of Malinowski and EP and Gellner that I didn’t like or made me uncomfortable, I was giving them my tacit approval to imperialist ways of thinking. The absence of female ethnographers and my constant ignoring of Susan betrayed my patriarchal biases. I guess it just seemed right to slow down and think about that today. Here’s the extract.

(Fade into theme music)

Monologues are of little value here because there are no conclusions to be reported. There is merely a discussion to be sustained. In so far as the essays here collected have any importance. It is less in what they say than what they are witness too. An enormous increase in interest not only in anthropology but social studies in general and the role of symbols in cultural analysis. The danger that cultural analysis in search of all to deep lying turtles will lose touch with hard surfaces of life, the political economic realities in which men are elsewhere contained and with the biological and physical necessities those surfaces rest is an ever present one. In defence against it is to train such analysis on such realities and necessities in the first place. It is thus that I have written about nationalism, violence, identity, human nature, legitimacy, revolution, ethnicity, urbanisation, status. About death, about time and most of all particular attempts by particular people to place these things in some kind of comprehensible meaningful frame. To look at the symbolic aspects of life, art, religion, science law, morality, common sense. Is not to turn away from the existential it is to plunge into the midst of them. The essential vocation of interpretive anthropology is not to answer our deepest questions but to make available to us the answers of others guarding other sheep in other valleys and thus to include them in the consultable record of what man has said.

Thank you for listening to notes from the field desk. Follow us on twitter and Instagram @notesfromtfd This episode references;

Geertz, Clifford - notes from a balinese cockfight

Geertz, Clifford - The interpretation of Cultures

Geertz, Clifford - Islam observed

Nader, Laura - review of after the fact by clifford geertz

And comedian Stewart Lee in conversation at oxford Brookes University

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-2rVyizLt8&t=2705s

The sounds were;

Madam Wahala Beat by Nana Kwabena

Something is Going On by Godmode

Decision by the tower of light

and June songbirds You can find these sounds on youtube creator sounds.

As always our theme music was dark side of my students. freesound.org/people/miastodzwiekow/sounds/341770/

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