#unfortunately it’s usually just racism or some other kind of ism

[proudfreakmetarusonikku]

sometimes I think the main reason people spread historical misinformation is because they’re embarrassed that there were people in the past who were smarter than they were.

[aces-to-apples]

Your Reputation Precedes You

A response to “On Fandom Racism (and That Conlang People Are Talking About)” because lmao that cowardly bitch just hates getting feedback from people that she can’t then harass into oblivion

i.e. God I Wish I Could Use The Tag Fandom Wank Without The Titty Police Nerfing My Post

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To be frank, I'm not here because I think you or any of your little cronies are going to change your minds. If the 'name' wasn't a giveaway, your group of ~likeminded individuals~ have quite the reputation for espousing ableist, antisemitic, and, yes, racist views under wafer-thin the veneer of "calling out racism." I think we both know that what you're actually doing is using the relative anonymity of the internet and progressive language to abuse, harass, and bully fans that you personally disagree with. You and your group are toxic, hateful, and utterly pathetic, using many peoples' genuine desire to avoid accidentally causing harm and twisting it into this horrid parade of submissiveness to You, The One And Only Arbiter Of Truth And Justice In Fandom. Never mind that you have derided autistic people as lacking compassion and empathy, that you've used racist colonizer dogwhistles to describe a fictional culture based heavily on real live Maori culture, that you've mocked the idea of characters having PTSD, or that vital mental health services are anything more than "talking about your feelings with friends uwu." Let's just ignore that you have ridiculed the idea of adults in positions of power exerting that power over children in harmful and abusive ways, that creating transformative fan-content that doesn't adhere to the spirit of canon or wishes of the original author garners derision and hatefulness from you, and that you've used classic abuser tactics in order to gaslight people in your orbit into behaving more submissively towards you in order to avoid more verbal abuse.

Let's toss all of that crucial context aside in favor of only what you've written here.

What you've written here is nearly 3,000 entire words based on, at best—though, admittedly, based on your previous behavior, I am actually not willing to extend to you an iota of good faith—fallacious reasoning. You posit that a constructed language, to be used by a fictional religious group located in an entirely different galaxy than our own, is othering, racist in general, and anti-Asian specifically. This appears based in several suppositions, the first being that a language unknown by the reader will, by nature, cause the reader to feel alienated from the characters and therefore less sympathetic, empathetic, and caring towards the characters. That idea is patently ridiculous and, I believe, says far more about your ability to connect to a character speaking an unfamiliar language than any kind of overarching truth about media and the human condition. New things are interesting; new things are fun; the human brain is wired from birth to be fascinated with new things, to want to take them apart, find out how they work, and enjoy both the process and the results.

The second supposition this fallacy is based upon appears to be that to move away from the blatant Orientalism of Star Wars is inherently anti-Asian. While I find it... frankly, a little bit sad that you cling so viciously to the Orientalist, appropriative roots of Star Wars as some form of genuine representation, that's really none of my business. If you feel that a Muslim-coded character bombing a temple and becoming a terrorist and a Sith, a white woman wearing Mongolian wedding garb, a species of decadent slug-like gangsters smoking out of hookahs and keeping attractive young women chained at their feet (as it were), a species of greedy money-grubbers with exaggerated features and offensively stereotypical "Asian" accents, and an indigenous people wearing modesty garb based on the Bedu people and treated by most characters as well as the narrative as mindless animals deserving of murder and genocide are appropriate representation of the many, varied, and beautiful cultures around the world upon which they were "based," then that is very much your business. Until you pull shit like this. Until you accuse other fans, who wish to move away from such offensive coding and stereotypes, of erasing Asian culture from Star Wars. Then it becomes everyone's business, especially when you are targeting a loving and enthusiastic group of fans who are pouring their hearts and souls into creating an inventive and non-appropriative alternative to canon.

Which leads into the third supposition, that a patently racist, misogynistic white man in the 1970s, and then again in the 1990s, intended his universe to be an accurate and respectful portrayal of the various cultures he stole from. I understand that for your group of toxic bullies, the term "Death of the Author" holds no real meaning, but the simple fact of the matter is that George Lucas based his white-centered space adventure on Samurai movies while removing the cultural context that gave them any meaning, because he liked the idea of swords and noble warriors in space. He based the Force and the Jedi Order on belief systems such as Taoism and Buddhism, but only on the surface, without putting any real effort into into portraying them earnestly or accurately. He consistently disrespected both characters of color and characters coded to be a certain race, ethnicity, culture, or religion, and likewise disrespected and stole from the cultures upon which he based them. He was, and continues to be, a racist white man who wrote a racist story. His universe has Orientalism baked into its every facet, and the idea that fans who wish to move away from this and interrogate and transform the text into something better than what it is are racist is not only laughable, but incredibly disingenuous and insidious.

As I said, I am not writing this to change your mind, because I truly believe that you already know that "cOnLaNgS aRe RaCiSt" is a ridiculous statement. The way you've comported yourself in fandom spaces thus far has shown to me that you are nothing more than a bully who knows that the anti-racist movement in fandom can be co-opted for your benefit. If you tout your Asian heritage and use the right language, make the "right" accusations and take advantage of white guilt and white ignorance, you can have dozens of people falling at your feet, begging for forgiveness, for absolution. And I think that gives you a thrill. So, no, none of this will change your mind because none of this is genuinely about racism—it's about power, it's about control, it's about fandom being the only space where you have some.

So I'm writing this for the creators of this wonderful conlang, which has been crafted by multiple people including people of color, who don't deserve this nonsensical vitriol, and for the fans reading this manipulative hate-fest, wondering if they really are Evil Racists because they don't participate in fandom the way you think they should.

Here it is: fandom has a lot of racism, antisemitism, misogyny, queerphobia, ableism, etc. baked into it. Unfortunately, such is the nature of living and growing up in societies and cultures that have the same. The important thing is to independently educate yourself on those issues and think critically about them—not "think critically" as in "to criticize" them, but to analyze, evaluate, pick apart, examine, and reconstruct them again in order to come to a well thought-out conclusion. Read this well-articulated attack on a group of fans who have always welcomed feedback and participation, are open about their backgrounds, their strengths and weaknesses, and wonder who is actually being genuine.

Is it the open and enthusiastic group who ask for the participation of others in this labor of love? Or is it the ringleader of a group of well-known bullies who have manipulated, gaslit, and then subsequently love-bomb people who did not simply roll over at the slightest hint of dominance? The ones who spent hours upon hours tearing apart, mocking, deriding, and falsely accusing authors of fanworks and metatextual works of various bigotries and -isms, knowing that those evaluations were spurious and meant only to cause harm, not genuine examinations of the works themselves or even presumed authorial intent. The ones who made their own, quote-unquote, community so negative and toxic that even after the departure of a large portion of them, including this author in particular, that community still has a reputation for being hateful, toxic, and full of mean-spirited harassers who will never look critically about their own behavior but only ever point fingers at others. The ones who are so very determined to cause misery wherever they go that as soon as their usual victims are no longer immediately available, they will turn on each other at the slightest hint of weakness.

This entire piece of (fan)work is misinformed at the most generous, disingenuous at the most objective, and downright spiteful when we get right into it. The creators of Dai Bendu, along with various other works, series, and fan events that these people personally dislike, have been targeted because it is so much easier to harass, bully, and use progressive language as a weapon against them, than it is to put any effort into making fandom spaces more informed, more positive, more respectful.

As someone rather eloquently put it, community is not a fucking spectator sport. You want a better community, you gotta work at it. And conversely, what you put into your community is what you'll get out of it. This author and their friends have put a lot of hate into their communities, and now they're toxic cesspools that people stay well away from, for fear of contracting some terrible form of harassment poisoning.

Congrats, Ri, you've gotten just what you wanted: adoring crowds listening to you spout your absolutely heinous personal views purely to live out some kind of power fantasy, and the rest of us staying well away, because fuck knows nothing kind, helpful, or in good faith has ever come from Virdant or her echo-chamber of petty, spiteful assholes.

No love, bad night.

P.S. Everyone actually in the Dai Bendu server knows your ass got kicked because you didn’t say shit for a full thirty days and ignored the announcement that inactive members would be culled. You ain’t cute pretending like it’s because you were ~*~Silenced~*~ after ~*~Valiantly~*~ attempting to call out racism. We see you.

[allkindsofwitchythings]

Beginner Caution About Wicca

Hello all! I wanted to get on here today and talk a little bit about Wicca. If you are new to magick or don’t really know what it is Here is the link to the Wikipedia page that can tell you about it. Also this is going to be an opinion post so friendly reminder that I am just some stranger on the internet and you are not required to agree with me.

So. Wicca.

A very controversial topic from what I have observed in the community. I don’t want to talk about drama on here because I am here to learn so I will get straight to the point. Witchcraft does not equal Wicca. I know other beginners either have or are making the mistake (don’t feel ashamed I did too) so I would like to clear that up. I would like to heed a word of caution to people first getting into the craft or magick in general. Please do not get all of your resources from Wicca or books about it or things like that. I did and it took me a long time to unlearn a lot of the things I read about. I would even go as far as to recommend not reading books about Wicca until you can fully define the difference between it and the rest of witchcraft. I would also say to look into other paths and learn those basics, about herbs and protection and all other things before getting into Wicca. I know that it is so convenient to use Wiccan resources because they are the most commercially available, but please do more digging.

Why, you may ask?

With the more mainstream spiritualism and witchcraft has become in recent months and years, Wicca has been flooded with people from a variety of cultures and backgrounds which is great! It is introducing magick to the greater population and making it less stigmatized. The issue comes into play when we remember that Wicca was essentially established in the late 1950s at best. It is a relatively young “religion” which can attract a lot of attention, for good and bad. Unfortunately, most (not all) practitioners I have met and seen online are usually gatekeeping magick, talking behalf of all witches, claiming Wicca to be the “right” way of practicing, and other junk like that. The community is essentially becoming the new Christianity of magick (no hate to Christianity) and also has a large issue with white-supremacy and all the kinds of -isms and -phobias (ie. racism, antismetism, xenephobia, homophobia, etc). The book and founder of Wicca are also controversial in the magick community, and they themselves have a lot of things that are morally questionable at best. Please don’t ask me what these are, there are a lot of things and you would be better off asking a more experienced witch.

Now, this is not hate to ALL Wiccan practitioners I would like to make that very clear. And of course, the witchcraft community in general is not exempt from critical analysis and it’s controversies. I would just like to caution beginners (similar to myself) about the dangers of only immersing yourself in and only studying Wicca.

In summary: Please do not base all of your knowledge about magick in Wicca even though it is the most accessible. The community and founding are both questionable and have a variety of issues.

[amphtaminedreams]

J.K Rowling & The Echo Chamber of TERFs: Why Nobody Wants your Transphobic “Opinion”

TW// Discussion of Sexual Assault and Transphobia

SO...

I’ve seen the term “allyship fatigue” going round a lot lately on Twitter, since the issues of police brutality, institutional racism, and now transphobia have taken central stage.

And it’s weird. To be honest, hearing other white cis people calling themselves “allies” has always sounded kinda self-congratulatory. Taking this to the level of martyrdom that the phrase “allyship fatigue” evokes makes me want to heave. It’s shit that anyone even has to be saying Black Lives STILL Matter, but it does seem to unfortunately be the case that every time there is a highly publicised murder of a black individual by police, the explosion of us white people calling ourselves allies and retweeting and reblogging statements of solidarity only lasts so long before half revert back to being complacent with and uncritical of a world seeped with casual racism. Is that what “allyship fatigue” is? The excuse for that? Not only does the term take the focus off of the marginalised group the movement is centred around but it makes supporting equal rights sound like some kind of heroic burden we’ve chosen to take on rather than addressing a debt we owe and being not even good but just plain decent human beings. WE are not the ones shouldering the weight here, and if your mental health is suffering, that is not the fault of the people asking for their rights. Log off. We have the privilege to do that. It just doesn’t need to be a spectacle.

At the same time, this public onslaught of ignorance and hatred that the coverage of the Black Lives Matter movement has triggered (that let me again emphasise, black people have had to involuntarily be on the receiving end of their whole lives) and the frustration and anger that comes from seeing these absolute trash takes from people with no research into the subject who build their argument purely on “what about”isms is do-I-even-want-to-bring-children-into-this-fucking-world levels of miserable. In terms of earth beginning to look more and more like the prequel describing the events which lead up to a dystopian novel, the chaos of the last 4 weeks or so (2020 has not only shattered the illusion of time but also danced on the shards, I know) is the tip of the iceberg. I saw a thread about what’s going on in Yemen at the moment, which I had no idea about, and immediately felt consumed by guilt that I didn’t know. With the advent of social media, there’s been this sudden evolutionary shift where we’re almost required and expected to know about, have an opinion on, and be empathetic with every humanitarian crisis at once. I think young people feel this especially, which is why I say that sometimes it’s worth talking to an older person before you brush them off as a racist or a homophobe and see if they’re open to hearing different opinions-in general, I think we’re a generation that is used to being expected to consume a huge amount of information at once. They are not. For a lot (NOT all) of the older, middle-class, white population, ignorance isn’t a conscious choice, it is the natural way of life. The parameters of empathy until very recently have only had to extend just past your closest circle of friends to encompass people you “relate to”. That doesn’t mean they aren’t capable of caring about other things, and sometimes we owe them a chance to change their perspective first, if for no reason other than to advance the cause of, well, basic human rights for all.

So where does J.K Rowling come into all this? I hear you ask. Why doesn’t she just stop rambling? You potentially wonder. Well, I’m getting to it. 

J.K Rowling isn’t an unconsciously ignorant people. She is what I would call consciously ignorant. And of all weeks to flaunt this ignorance, she chose a time when people are already drowning in a cesspit of hatred. The woman whose whole book series supposedly revolves around the battle between good and evil didn’t even try to drain the swamp. She instead added a bucket of her transphobic vitriol into it. 

Let me preface this by saying that I wouldn’t wipe my arse with the Sun. What they did with the statement she made regarding her previous abusive relationship, seeking out said abusive partner for an interview and putting it on the front page with the headline “I slapped J.K”, whilst expected from the bunch of cretinous bottom feeders who work there, is disgusting. That being said, the pattern of behaviour J.K Rowling has exhibited since she first became an online presence is equally disgusting, and just because the Sun have been their usual shithead selves, doesn’t mean we should forget the issue at hand, that issue being her ongoing transphobia and erasure of trans women from women’s rights.

As I’m sure is the case for many people on Tumblr, J.K Rowling has always been such a huge inspiration for me, and Harry Potter was my entire childhood. My obsession with it continued until I was at least 16 and is what got me through the very shit years of being a teenager, and that will forever be the case. I’m not here to discuss the whole separation of the art from the artist thing because whilst I ordinarily don’t think that’s really possible, at this point the “Harry Potter universe” has become much bigger than J.K herself. I was so pleased to see Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint all affirm their support for trans rights-I was raised on the films up until the 4th one which I wasn’t old enough to see at the cinema, and the DVD was at the top of my Christmas list. They were always my Harry, Hermione and Ron. It was only between the fourth and fifth films that I started to read the books to fill that gaping in-between-movies hole, but as I grew up, I read them over and over and over again. Any of the subtext that people are talking about now in light of her antisemitism and transphobia went completely over my head, though who knows, whilst I can sit here and write that I’m certain I didn’t, maybe I did pick up some unconscious biases along the way? The art/artist discussion is a complex one and I don’t know if I’ll ever read the books again at this point.

There was absolutely no subtext, however, in the “think piece” on J.K’s website addressing the response to her transphobic tweets. There wasn’t all that much to unpack in the first tirade, they were quite openly dismissive-first that womanhood is defined by whether or not one experiences menstruation (I currently don’t due to health issues but I’m betting this wouldn’t make me any less woman in her eyes), and second, regurgitating an article which furthers the fallacy that trans women simply existing erases the existence of cisgender lesbian women. Rowling’s initial response to the backlash was to blame it on a glass of red wine, I think? Which is such a weird go-to excuse for celebrities because not once have I ever got drunk and completely changed my belief system. If you’re not transphobic sober, you don’t suddenly become transphobic drunk. What you are saying is that you’re not usually publicly transphobic (which isn’t even the case with Rowling because this is hardly her first flirtation with bigotry via social media) but that whoopsies! You drank some wine and suddenly thought it was acceptable!

Now what is her excuse for the formal response she wrote to the backlash, dripping with transphobic dog whistles and straight up misinformation (UPDATE: and as of yesterday, blocking Stephen King quite literally for replying to her with the tweet “trans women are women”, in case you thought that this whole thing was a case of her intentions being misconstrued)? Drunk tweets are one thing but if she managed to write a whole fucking essay whilst pissed I imagine there’s a lot of university students out there who’d pay her good money to learn that skill.

Here is the bottom line. TRANS WOMEN ARE WOMEN. There is no discussion around that. And if you don’t understand why, at the very least, you can be respectful of the way a person chooses to identify, especially when that person is an already targeted minority.

Obviously, sex and gender are complex things. Based on the fact that we don’t walk around with our nether-regions out, we generally navigate our way through the world using our gender and the way we present our gender. Gender of course means many different things to many different people; some see it as a sliding scale kind of thing whereas some people can’t see themselves on the scale at all, and choose to use terms other than man or woman to express how they identify. But, whatever gender one chooses to identify as, we live in a modern world-with all the scientific advancements we’ve made and all that we now know about the brain, using what is between people’s legs to define them is an ignorant, outdated copout. You’ll find that a lot of transphobes can live in harmony with trans women who conform, who have classically feminine features, maybe facial feminisation surgery, trans women who keep quiet about how they’re seen by cis women and don’t kick up “too much of a fuss” (which is in itself still a perfectly valid, brave and understandable way to live your life after years of feeling like you don’t fit in btw). The trans women that Joanne and her friends take the most issue with is the ones who want to expand what womanhood means and stretch the boundaries of what is and isn’t acceptable, destroying the confines of simplistic model that TERFs feel comfortable operating within. The ones who fight to be recognised as no “lesser” than cis women. Calling a person a TERF is quite literally just asserting that they are someone who wants to exclude trans women from their definition of womanhood, or in other words wants to cling to the old, obsolete model. If J.K Rowling cannot let the statement “trans women are women” go unchallenged (which we’ve seen from her response to Stephen King’s tweet she cannot), then she is by definition a TERF. It’s not a slur. It’s a descriptor indicating the movement she has chosen to associate herself with. Associating the descriptor of the position you so vehemently refuse to denounce in spite of all evidence and information offered to you with the concept of a “witch hunt” when trans women are ACTUALLY brutally murdered for an innate part of their identity is insulting, at the very least.

Let’s get this straight: despite transphobes trying to conflate sex with gender and arguing that sex is the only “real” identifier of the two, our existence on this planet and our perception of this world is a gendered experience. It is our brain, where the majority of researchers agree that gender lies, which decides and dictates not only who we are and how we feel but also how we interact with everyone around us. I don’t think it’s an outlandish statement to say that when it comes to who we are as people, that flesh machine protected by our skull is the key player.  PSA for transphobes everywhere: when people say penises have a mind of their own, they are NOT talking literally. The more you know. 

Gender is obviously a much newer concept than sex-it is both influenced by and interacts with every element of our lives. It’s also much more complex, in that there are still many gaps in our understanding. I assume these two factors combined with the familiarity of the (usually) binary model of biological sex are a part of why TERFS fundamentally reject the importance of gender in favour of the latter. Yes, most of the time, we feel our gender corresponds with our sex, but not always, and nor is there any concrete proof that this has to be the case. Most studies tend to agree that our brains start out as blank slates, that we grow into the gender we are assigned based on our bodies. In other words, our sex only defines our gender insofar as the historical assumption that they are the same thing, which in turn exposes us to certain cultural expectations. To any TERFs that have somehow ended up here-if you haven’t already, I suggest looking into the research of Gina Rippon, a neuroscientist whom has spent a large portion of her professional career analysing the data of sex differences in the brain. Whilst she originally set out to find some kind of consistent variance between the brains of the 2 prominent sexes to back up the idea that the brains of men and women are inherently different, she found nothing of significance-individual differences, yes, but no consistent similarities in the brains of one sex that were not present in the other. Once differences in brain size were accounted for, “well-known” sex differences in key structures disappeared-in terms of proportion, these structures take up the same amount of space in the brain regardless of sex. Her findings are best summed up by her response to the question: are there any significant differences in the brain based on sex alone? Her answer is no. To suggest otherwise is “neurofoolishness”. Not only does her research help put to bed the myth that our brains are sexed along with the rest of our bodies during development (this is now believed to happen separately, meaning the sex of our bodies and brains may not correspond), but also the idea propagated by the patriarchy for centuries that basically boils down to “boys will be boys”-a myth used to condone male sexual violence against women and even against each other on the basis that it is inherent and “can't be helped”. That they are just “built differently”. Maybe at one point in human evolution, men were conditioned to fight and women were conditioned to protect, but whilst the idea remains and continues to affect our societal structures (and thus said cultural expectations), we’ve moved on. I mean we evolved from fish for fuck’s sake but you don’t see us breathing underwater. 

Gender identity is based on many things and admittedly we don’t fully have the complete picture yet. The effects that socialisation and gender norms in particular, as much as we don’t want them to exist, have on our brain are huge; there’s evidence that they can leave epigenetic marks, or in other words cause structural changes in the brain which drive biological functions and features as diverse as memory, development and disease susceptibility. Socialisation alters the way our individual brains develop as we grow up, and as much as I’d love to see gender norms disappear, they’ll probably be around for a long time to come, as will their ramifications. The gap between explaining how socialisation affects the brain of cisgender individuals compared to the brains of transgender or non-binary individuals is not yet totally clear, but as with every supposed cause and effect psychology tries to uncover, there are outliers and individual differences. No, brains are not inherently male or female at birth but they are all different, and can be affected by socialisation differently. In one particularly groundbreaking study conducted by Dick Swaab of the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, postmortems of the brains of transgender women revealed that the structure of one of the areas in the brain most important to sexual behaviour more closely resembled the postmortem brains of cisgender women than those of cisgender men-it’s also important that these differences did not appear to be attributable to the influence of endogenous sex hormone fluctuations or hormone treatment in adulthood.

Maybe dysphoria is something that evolves organically and environmental factors don’t even come into it. Like I said, we don’t have the whole picture. What we DO know is that for some people, as soon as they become self-aware, that dysphoria is there, and the evidence for THAT, for there being common variations between the brains of cisgender individuals and transgender individuals, is overwhelming. You can be trapped in a body that does not correspond with how your brain functions, or how you wish to see yourself. Do individuals like J.K Rowling really believe it is ethical to reinforce the idea that we are defined by our sex and that our sex should decide the course of our lives, should decide how we are treated? That we should reduce people to genitals and chromosomes when our gender, the lens through which we see and interact with the world, could be completely different? Do they not see anything wrong with perpetuating the feelings of “otherness” and dysphoria in trans individuals that results from society’s refusal to see them as anything more than what body parts they have? In a collaboration between UCLA MA neuroscience student Jonathan Vanhoecke and Ivanka Savic at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, the statistics collected pointed to what trans activists have always been trying to get at-the areas of the brain responsible for our sense of our identity showed far more neural activity in the brains of trans individuals when they were looking at depictions of their body that had been changed to match their gender identity than when this wasn’t the case; when they saw themselves with a body that corresponded with their gender identity, when they were “valid” by society’s definition, they felt more themselves. When J.K Rowling tells trans people that their “real identity” is the sex they were born with, she is denying them this right to be themselves and due to her large platform, encouraging others to do the same. YOU are doing that, J.K. And who knows why? Where does your transphobia come from? Peel back the bullshit layers of waffle about feeling silenced and threatened, which you know you are directing at the wrong group of people, and admit it’s for less noble reasons. Taking the time to unlearn the instinct embedded into your generation to see people according to the cultural status quo of biological determinism is effort, I know-but you wrote a 700+ page book. I’m sure you can manage it. Or is it an ego thing? You don’t want to admit that you may have been uneducated on gender and sex in the past, and now have to stick by your reductive position so your image as an “intellectual” isn’t compromised. I don’t know. Only you do. But your position is irresponsible and dangerous either way. You can make up bullshit reasons as to why the link between trans individuals and the incidence of suicide attempts and completions isn’t relevant or representative of the struggle that trans people face due to the hatred that people like you propagate but it is there, and you J.K Rowling, someone who has spoken in the past about the horror of depression, should know better. You should know better than to CLAIM you know better than the experienced researchers who have found the same pattern time and time again-that the likelihood of trans individuals committing suicide is significantly higher than that of cis people. 

No, Rowling’s transphobia has never been as upfront as saying “I don’t believe transgender people exist” but she continues to imply that when she makes claims such as womanhood being defined by whether or not one experiences menstruation, and the completely subjective concept of whether an individual has faced sex-based violence from cisgender men. I’m sure she’d be out here taking chromosome proof cards like Oysters if it wasn’t for intersex individuals throwing her whole binary jam into a tailspin. Yep, there’s even suggestions that the binary biological model might not be so binary these days-just because two people have, say, XY chromosomes, does not mean that these chromosomes are genetically identical between individuals-the genes they carry can, and do, vary and so their actions and expressions of sex vary. 

Ideally, what TERFs want to do with their language of “real womanhood” is create an exclusive club that trans women are left out of when they too suffer under the same patriarchal society that those who are born female do. Yes, they might not experience ALL the issues a person born with female genitalia do, but no two women’s life experiences are the same anyway. Trans women also have their own horrible experiences with the patriarchy, and are often victims of a specific kind of gendered violence that is purported by the idea of “real womanhood”. Don’t throw trans sisters under the bus because you’re angry about your experience as a woman on this planet-direct your anger at the fucking bus. Don’t claim that “many trans people regret their decision to transition” when the statistics overwhelmingly show that this is the EXACT FUCKING OPPOSITE of the truth (according to British charity organisation Mermaids, surgical regret is proportionately very low amongst gender affirmation outpatients and research suggesting otherwise has been broadly disproven) because you’ve spoken to a selective group of trans individuals probably handpicked by the TERFS you associate with to confirm their biases, and then have the nerve to claim that trans-activists live in echo chambers on top of that. Don’t use anecdotes and one-off incidences where “trans women” (I say trans women in quotation marks because we’re pretty much talking about a completely statistically insignificant group of perverted cis men who have, according to TERFs, somehow come to the conclusion that going through transition will make their already easy-to-get-away-with hobby of assaulting women even...easier to get away with?) have committed sexual crimes to demonise and paint as predatory group who are largely at risk and in 99.9% of situations, the ones being preyed on. It’s a point so disgusting that trans activists shouldn’t even have to respond to it, but the idea that an individual would go to the pains of legally changing their gender and potentially the hell of the harassment that trans people face, the multiple year long NHS waiting lists to see specialist doctors,  just so that they can gain access to women only spaces is ridiculous. It’s worth noting here just how sinister you repeatedly bringing up this phantom threat of cis men becoming trans women in order to assault women in “women only” spaces is. The implication here is that they should use the toilet corresponding to the sex they were born as, right? Because it’s all about safety? Well, statistically speaking, far more trans women are abused whilst having to use men’s toilets than when they use women’s ones and the same goes for trans men, and yet you don’t mention it once. Your suggestion also puts people born female who identify as women but maybe do not dress or present in a typically feminine way at risk of being ostracised when THEY need to use the women’s bathroom. The idea that by ceasing to uphold values like yours we are putting women at risk is quite simply, unsubstantiated; the legislation to allow individuals to use the bathroom corresponding to whichever gender they legally identify as has been around since 2010 in the UK and yet we’ve yet to see the sudden spike in the number of women being assaulted in bathrooms you imply will exist if we create looser rules around gender identity and let people use whichever toilet they feel the need to. Similarly, in a study of US school districts, Media Matters found that 17 around the country with protections for trans people, which collectively cover more than 600,000 students, had no problems with harassment in bathrooms or locker rooms after implementing their policies. If cis men want to assault women, they will. They don’t need to pretend to be trans to do so. Don’t pretend to be speaking as a concerned ally of LGBTQ+ individuals when you’re ignoring the thoughts of the majority of individuals who come under that category.

(Just Some of the Trans Women Murdered for Being Trans Over the Last Couple of Years, L-R: Serena Valzquez, Riah Milton, Bee Love Slater, Naomi Hersi, Layla Pelaez, and Dominique Fells)

Trans women are not the threat here. Bigots like you are the threat. HOW DARE you use your platform to reinforce this rhetoric that gets trans people killed when there are so many much MUCH more important things going on right now. Two black trans women had been murdered just for being black trans women in the week you wrote your essay defending those initial tweets. This is an ongoing issue. As a cis woman, my opinion should read as sacred texts to you right, Joanne? Because I’ll say with my whole chest that I feel far more threatened by bigots like you who do not care for the harmful impact of their words than I do by trans women. I do not feel threatened by trans women AT ALL. And yeah, to me, unless they tell me otherwise that they like to go out their way to affirm their trans-ness (which I completely respect-it takes a lot of courage to be proud about your past in a world that condemns you for it), they’re just WOMEN like any other. Yes their experience of “womanhood” may be different to mine but no two individuals experiences are the same anyway and our gender related suffering has the same cause. As a rich, white, cis woman, it’s wild that you are painting yourself as the victim in this debate when trans people can face life in prison and in some places a death sentence for openly identifying with a gender different to their sex in a lot of countries. Nobody is saying that you can’t talk about cis women. Nobody is saying you can’t talk about lesbian issues either, though it’s a bit of a piss-take that you like to throw that whole trans women erase lesbian existence argument out there as a kind of trump card to say “look, I can’t be a transphobe, I’m an LGBTQ+ ally!”, an argument akin to the racist’s age old “I can’t be racist, I have black friends!”. You know from the responses you get to your transphobia that majority of the LGBTQ+ community are very much adamant that trans women are “real women” and that the same goes for trans men being “real men”, so don’t claim to speak for them. You cannot simultaneously care about LGBTQ+ rights and deny trans people their right to live as who they are, however veiled your sentiments around that may be. The whole gay rights movement of the 60s and 70s exist partially BECAUSE of black trans women such as Martha P Johnson if you didn’t know, and though it’s kinda common knowledge I’m doubting that you do because very little of what you tout is backed up by any kind of research. The articles you retweet, echoing the views of lesbians who also happen to be TERFs do not count-the idea that trans people existing simultaneously erases the existence of lesbians only applies to individuals such as yourself who don’t see trans women as women in the first place. That is the problem! Most people don’t have an issue with the fact that you may have a preference for certain genitalia, but I would argue that ignoring exceptional circumstances related to trauma or some other complex issue, relationships are supposed to be with the person as a whole, not their “organic” penis or vagina and it’s kind of insulting to anyone in a same sex relationship to reduce their bond to that.

Back to my point though, of course there are issues that cis women and lesbians face that need talking about, but trans people are affected by the same patriarchal system. You don’t need to go out of your way to mention that they’re not included in whichever given specific issue when there are also cis women who may not have experienced some of the things TERFs reference. You especially don’t need to act as if trans women are the reason we need to have these discussions in the first place. As I’ve said, as MANY women have said, repeatedly-they are NOT the threat here. It is disgusting to see someone I once had so much admiration for constantly punch down at a group that is already marginalised.  It’s 2020, J.K, there’s so much info out there. YOU’RE A FULLY GROWN WOMAN. There’s no justification. We get it, you had a tomboy phase. You weren’t like “other girls”. You didn’t like living under a patriarchal system. So you think you understand the mindset of people who want to transition. You think you’re not doing anything wrong by helping to slow the advancement of trans rights because well, you turned out fine? But you clearly fundamentally misunderstand what being trans is. It’s not about your likes and dislikes and having issues with the experience of being a woman (god knows we all do but I doubt anyone truly thinks for one moment that being trans would be any easier), it’s about how you think and feel at your core. It’s such a complex issue, and all the majority of trans people are asking you to do is LISTEN to them. You may be determined to live in binaries, yet the bigger picture is always more complex and fluid and it’s ever-changing, so all we can do is keep an open mind and keep wanting to know more and gather more evidence. If you’re capable of the mental gymnastics required to retcon the piece of work you wrote in the 90s to make it seem as if you were “ahead of the diversity game”, to the extent that you are now claiming Voldermort’s snake has always actually been a Korean woman and see nothing wrong with that when paired with the fact that the only Asian character you originally included was called Cho Chang, then well…I’m sure you can put your ego aside and do the groundwork to understand what trans people are trying to tell you too. You inspired a lot of children and teenagers and even adults, and got them through some very difficult times, taught that the strength of one’s character matters far more than what anyone thinks of you. You claimed you wanted to stand up for the outcasts.

Well, stand up for the outcasts. Now’s a better time than any. And once again: TRANS WOMEN ARE WOMEN AND TRANS MEN ARE MEN. They shouldn’t have to hear anything else.

Lauren x

[DISCLAIMER: shitty collages are mine but the background is not, let me know if you are aware of the artist so I can credit!]

[ravencromwell]

Disability Wealth Gap in the U.S.

Have been pondering the U.S. disability wealth gap a lot over the last few days while simultaneously realizing the lack of familiarity around disability finance outside the fairly narrow disabled community. So here's the disability wealth gap breakdown in the U.S. no one asked for.

Let's get a couple terms out of the way first, on the understanding these are fairly generalized explanations--the accompanying links will give you more broad information.

SSDI is social security disability insurance, available only if you've paid taxes into the social security system, usually for at least five years.

SSI is supplemental security income--a needs-based program for low-asset holding disabled folk, that requires no taxes having been paid into the system.

But! unlike disability insurance, where there's a fairly generous yearly earned income cap and no asset cap, both those things exist with SSI--one of the reasons means-testing is one of neoliberalism's worst evils

Essentially, SSI is the greasy spoon compared to the meat & 3 that's available if you've paid in the system. Your only criteria is being born disabled and low-income. And then are promptly kicked off of if you have assets over $2,000. Yeah, you read that right: no fluffy college degrees if you're disabled. You better make damn sure you get something that'll keep you employed come hell or high water

You'll notice that both the source links are to breakdowns regarding income; I'm not the person to ask about eligibility, particularly when it comes to Social Security disability insurance, having never been one of those lucky tax-paying folks. I'm here to talk assets and economics if you're born disabled and poor. More specifically, how disability--especially when viewed intersectionally with other isms--makes it damn near impossible to escape poverty

So, you're allowed to have $2,000 in assets as a single person and qualify for SSI. Assets, as defined by the social security administration include:

cash

money in a checkings or savings account

cash value in life insurance policies (over $1,500)

stocks and bonds

vehicles (they grant us the grace of one for transportation)

real estate (except our house)

(Source link)

Do a real slow once-over of that list. Barely any life insurance; no easily accessible investment opportunities, and most of all, no easily accessible savings or checking. And this's a flat rate, assessed yearly; your accounts can never, under any circumstances, go over $2,000 in a year. (Easily accessible is an important caveat here, because there are beginning to be some legal work-arounds which I'll address later)

And the SSI payment itself? I'm on the upper-most end, and it comes in at about $800 a month, which you'd better spend within that month, cause remember, no accumulating over $2,000. Average one-bedroom apartment rent in the U.S. in the year of our lord 2019? $1,078. This rent report, while capitalist as hell, in that it celebrates the growth that's sucking everybody dry, is a very good overview of just how bad the rent situation is. If you're insanely lucky, you can scrape an apartment at $601, and if you're shit out of luck, you'll end up at $2,311.

I specifically mention one-bedrooms because disabled folk tend to be shy of apartment-sharing arrangements. There're a lot of reasons for this, from needing to carefully organize our refrigerators by memory to avoid expensive labeling technology (if you really want a trip, go look up the price of a roll of Dymo tape, which's the best kind of tape for inserting into a brailler for labeling.) to serious concerns on the part of nondisabled folk about rooming with us. The fear of being asked to change your life in significant ways or take on responsibilities outside those normally expected of apartment-sharing agreements is one I heartily sympathize with.

And then, there is, of course, disabled folks' healthy fear of crime. This isn't a topic I want to linger over, particularly because I think there is a real danger of inflating carceral myths around crime that've already ravaged poor, majority-minority communities. But it is a reality that disabled folk are three times more likely to be victims of violent crime than their nondisabled counterparts. Just as with many other marginalized folk, we need to take care in our housing situations etc. etc.

The unfortunate reality, however, is that the low-wage work that many marginalized folk rely on for survival is barred to us, especially if we have significant physical or visual disabilities. As a blind person with cerebral palsy, for example, cashier and receptionist are out for me.

There're two vitally important discussions that need to be had that don't fit neatly into this 101 post where I'm specifically using the most universalist language possible to encompass the broadest cross-section of the disability community, but which I want to acknowledge nonetheless: the complete lack of a social safety net, and the fact that even as a dirt-poor white, I'm farther up on the privilege ladder than most people of color.

One of the most enlightening passages of Brittney Cooper's Eloquent Rage is the following:

Skyrocketing childcare costs continue to disadvantage Black families, particularly in households like mine, headed by a single breadwinner mother. According to the Institute for 206Women’s Policy Research, 60.9 percent of all Black families are headed by a single mother who is the breadwinner for the family. Another 20 percent of Black households rely on a married mother as the breadwinner. In every state in the United States, there are more single than married Black mothers. In every state in the United States, there are more married white mothers than single ones. In twenty-four states, the cost of childcare exceeds the cost of rent, and in many states the cost of childcare exceeds the 10 percent income-affordability threshold established by federal agencies.

Consider that many of those single women are also disabled--a definition complicated, I'm beginning to learn, by the racism of the white disability community and many black folks' distrust of identifying with any term that harkens back to eugenics. Especially as utterly baseless, slanderous filth about intellectual or physical inferiority is still propagated as one of the multiple cudgels of racism to this day. (which is one of the reasons, honestly, that I'm doing this post; because disability, and the financial limitations thereof, often intersect with the movements against police brutality in ways not immediately apparent. If we as disabled folk are three times as likely to be victims of violent crime, you know! black disabled people, be that an identity they embrace or no, are going to be more vulnerable.)

But I also bring up Cooper's point above because it highlights the scarcity of resources and general social mobility. I've been trying to obtain a housing voucher for years. This would allow me to set aside some of my SSI money--in those legal work-arounds I'll touch on in a moment. Not a lot, mind you, but enough to build on a slight savings foundation. As a person with disabilities, I'm even considered high-priority. But there simply are no openings. The waiting list is lengthy, and gets lengthier every year. Because the people reliant on said vouchers can't gain better-paying employment. * So they need those vouchers, and the state and federal government refuse to create more. (And understand, this goes beyond simple dem or gop administration categories. I was as thoroughly fucked, housing-voucher wise, under the Obama admin as the Trump one. There is a fundamental housing crisis HUD has failed to grapple with, of rising rent and shrinking availability for low-income individuals. This failure has been a long time in the building, and just happens to disproportionately impact those of us with disabilities.)

In a system where the statistics Cooper cites are a grim reality for so many black women, it is absolutely no surprise the system is gridlocked, especially when you look at Cooper's elucidation that in 2011, median wealth for white families was over $141,000 while black families' rested at $11,000. And single black women: had a net wealth of $5, while single white women had an average of $42,000.

I may be dirt-poor, but I recognize that my ability to be left a tiny nest-egg of an inheritance is a massive fucking white privilege, and I want to make clear again that a lack of spots on that voucher list is absolutely not the fault of anyone but the folk in power. But when you can't get an entry-level job, and you! can't get a voucher, having anything to build on is insanely tough.

Especially because: the first legal work-around to SSI didn't arrive until the year 2014. Yeah, you fuckin read that right: six years ago. Known as the Able, or A Better Life Experience Act, this let us create savings accounts. We can--and are expected to--sock money away in those for investments in housing, education, etc. etc.

And look; it's revolutionary, ok. It lets me have a tiny nest-egg without having my SSI snatched away. But when your SSI is $800 a month, it's essentially eaten up by expenses. If and when disaster makes that nest-egg dwindle, there's nothing to replenish it. And understand: this is significant progress. Remember that $2,000 SSI asset limit? Until March 9th, 2005, household resources were counted towards that total. (Yeah, that means everything from furniture to your cell phone counted towards your assets, and then people ask why there's a disincentive in the disability community towards employment when your SSI is so often tied to decent, affordable insurance.)

There is progress made, but god there is so much more to be made. I didn't even know about the trusts until two years ago. Until this week, I didn't know that friends could gift directly into the trust, when I went looking after generous people offered help and I went: but can I take it without fucking up the SSI, cause god knows I desperately need replenished savings, but can't possibly get kicked off that, too. There are so many people who have no idea Able accounts exist, or the means to fill them.

Disabled people who aren't employed in white-collar jobs and want to get married? are absolutely fucked. If you have SSI, you can only have $3,000 in assets between you and your spouse, excluding some pensions etc. etc. Exceed that limit, and poof, you're done. So if you're born disabled, better either go to college or have a spouse who makes enough to support two. (These restrictions are slightly less onerous with Social Security Disability Insurance, or SSDI, but as I've said before, I'm not the one to speak to that.)

Part of making that progress is being well-informed. Start understanding how race and disability are woven together--something I'll freely admit I'm just learning. Start understanding that programs like a child allowance? are simultaneously some of the best antiracism and antipoverty work we can be doing, and would be revolutionary for parents with kids with disabilities.

Even more revolutionary, and the program I hear no one talking about? baby bonds!

You have to understand: there is a lot of shit Senator Booker and I disagree on--google his notorious charter school support. But this program? was one of the best things to come out of the 2020 campaign--aside from Warren's wealth tax, and the entire policy page which's just a well-constructed dream suite of proposals.

Booker's baby bonds program makes me do the delighted flaily hands. A. the strides it would make to reduce the black and white wealth gap between young people are just phenomenal. B. it would so radically reshape the landscape for disabled folk I haven't even entirely managed to wrap my head around all its implications. But let me give you an example.

As members of the disability community, there is some limited aid available to us for college. States will usually pay the amount of tuition for an in-state student at a local university of their choosing. So let's say $9,500. Now, we all know that's not going to go very far at all, particularly if you go out-of-state for college. And considering the steep unemployment rate in the disability community--most reputable studies put it at around 70% in the blind community. Well.

Even taking into account methodology concerns e.g. not necessarily surveying whether someone wants a job or are cognitively capable of job performance, but instead relying on whether they have one, those statistics are fucking grim. (I try really hard not to ponder it; the only way to pursue my ambitions is to believe, with either mad optimism or bulldog stubbornness, in my chances of success.)

When you're looking at those steep odds in a world where networking is already hard for non-disabled professionals: you need! the burnished credentials of a fancy school. You oftentimes need that gloss just to get you noticed as a blind individual. And that? means a lot steeper tuition than what the state departments of rehabilitation will fork over.

If you're straight out of high school, you have some real hope of scholarships for your undergrad. If you are, like me, a nontraditional student, things get...complicated.

Current plan looks something like: take advantage of the free 2-year-college that just! got passed in my GOP state about a year ago. And have the amount of a semester's tuition (so around $16,000) in savings by the end of that. After that first semester, I'll use internships and work study and fuck knows what else, but I need that first semester: to undertake the arduous task of learning routes as a blind person. To understand what my resources are on-campus as a disabled person and how to utilize them.

Booker's baby bonds? An account worth tens of thousands by the time I was eighteen? would've erased so many of those obstacles. By now, I'd be out of college, out of law school, gainfully employed. The possibilities are almost too vast to contemplate.

So, yeah. I have no neat conclusion to this. Start understanding disability issues as critical intersectional issues. Fight for economic equality, understanding that you're fighting, in large part, for disability equality. Ask questions. I'm open to them. I suspect you have other disabled friends who are, too

*There's a whole discussion around incarceration crippling employment, especially in majority-minority communities. Follow any good decarceral thinker, from Chris Hayes to Josie Duffy Rice to Ruth Wilson Gilmore (the latter understands disability as a crucial part of the struggle in ways I deeply appreciate) to understand the issue better.

[danwhobrowses]

Rant: Phobia and -ism in Sport

I said I would write it so here it is. This is gonna be a bit of an oxymoron in being a meaty but delicate one, but I have to start this with this is not meaning all people. This is not directed to attack sport as a whole, it’s more the darker side of things. So, let’s begin

Most people in the world love sport, for many they love sport with extreme passions. They wear a lot of their emotions bare in the heat of the moment, but the heat of the moment is a dangerous place, things can be said that can be hurtful or outright not okay. There’s also public opinions that seems a little intolerant, which mostly gets exposed within sport since everyone has an opinion. So why does this happen? And What can we do to prevent it? 

Where this Rant is Coming From I have sat on stuff like this for a while, but I really wanted to do this near the end of August. However, I didn’t want to rant on Tumblr about this just out of the blue, and when I had started writing stuff like this the whole scenario had calmed down a little, so it wasn’t prominent. But I knew on Wednesday the topic could be brought up again, so I waited after. The main catalyst came from Wrestling, the brand All Elite Wrestling had been prepping to crown their first Women’s Champion, on their All Out PPV Pre-Show in August, they had a Gimmick Battle Royal to determine one challenger and a match to determine the other, the winner of that Royal was a wrestler known as Nyla Rose. Now, the main thing to know about Nyla Rose in this case is that she’s a Transgender Woman, she was assigned at birth as a male. And while I was perfectly fine seeing an athlete wrestle, it seemed that people didn’t agree, calling her ‘Santina’ (Male wrestler Santino Marella won a Women’s battle royal at Wrestlemania disguised as his ‘sister’ Santina, a comparison which is unfair and not relative) and constantly pointing out ‘But Nyla’s a dude’. Now if you don’t like her as a wrestler then fine but I draw the line with this stuff, especially in Wrestling: people can believe that the Undertaker is an Undead Being or the Luchasaurus is a literal humanoid dinosaur but they can’t accept that Nyla Rose is a woman? That’s quite obtuse, and very transphobic. So that was the origins of my rant, it reinvigorated on Wednesday when Rose faced Japanese wrestler Riho for the vacant title - which she lost. And I do feel like these negative, transphobic responses were related to her being booked for defeat; people who want to hate on AEW would never let them forget if they had Nyla won because they’ll always say ‘AEW’s first women’s champion was a man’. And it’s sad that this was clear as day what would’ve happened. This rant was only enhanced with Football (UK person here, it’s Football, we use our feet) with the Benjamin Mendy incident when teammate Bernardo Silva tweeted a fairly racist comparison between Mendy and the mascot of Conguitos Chocolate (the mascot itself quite racist-looking anyway). So with both these things, I thought it was an appropriate time to discuss and theorize why ism and phobia happens in sport.

Racism: The Cruel Underbelly of Sport It’s well known that despite this being an age of equality that racism still exists in sport, be it from the professionals themselves or the fans that support it. The disappointing thing is while sports boards can deliver punishments to players and coaches they have little control over punishing fans, and so every so often you’ll hear about disrespectful displays of racism from the crowd, be it monkey chants, chanted slurs or throwing stuff that can be regarded as racist (bananas for instance). You can ban someone for life but it doesn’t stop the problem, it only leaves you with a bitter racist outside the stadium. So why is that a problem? Well, people tend to have friends, and family and likely kids, and all of those are mostly at risk of sharing the same opinions. I remember a comic strip once of how a chain of intolerance festers and the content of that is what happens here. The Nature of ism and Phobia within People Now, nobody is born racist, nobody is born phobic. When you’re born you only have few things you’re innately afraid of; falling and loud noises, both being survival responses. So the only way you’re going to be either of these things is by being taught it. Unfortunately, though we currently live in an age of tolerance, the history of intolerance dwarfs it by longevity, even in some countries LGBTQ+ communities are shunned and even prosecuted for just being, and while it is horrible it’s because the history of intolerance is still used as a teaching tool for the future. Sadly, and I stress that I’m not trying to be controversial or attacking with this remark, everyone likely has that twinge of ism and/or phobia within them because of that, you can be an upstanding person, not racist or phobic because you’ve learned to be above such things due to a good or eye-opening upbringing, but in your life you’ve likely had an experience where your impulse thought was in favour of an ism or a phobia, even if it was just discomfort or a casual blaming, and though your conscience knows and stresses that this is wrong, your superego still thought it, and while you hate that it did you thought it because you have experienced people who thought it too. The usual suspects here are family members; parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents, because to them they lived in an age where they could say those kind of things with little reprimand, they don’t mean harm by it (mostly, there can be parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents who out and out don’t like communities or races) but it’s because they lived in an age where their family considered that the norm. So this, wretched seed (the metaphor I’ve seemed to have stuck with) within us is still a problem, but it’s a problem we work on, and work hard to erase - which is wholeheartedly fantastic, living without it is ideal but rising above it is divine. But when the passion of sport consumes people it can lead to some impulsive thoughts of that nature, some more virile than others, and when one starts there’s the ripple and the mob effect and from there we get the cases of isms and phobia that are associated with crowd hooliganism. The Internet: Weapons of the Anonymous On the other hand, there are people who are for a lack of a scientific word: Dicks. The mob effect is probably at its worst over the internet, the use of anonymity meaning that the threat of accountability is reduced. Internet trolls will try to slur to pull out response, and people who ripple from that will join in with the faux safety net that they’re ‘only joking’ and label you a ‘snowflake’ for challenging their intolerance. You see it all the time, not just racism or phobia but general slurs like ‘retarded’ or ‘autistic’ and misspelling slurs to bypass moderation, you can block these people but they can just make another account, so it’s the usual problem that People can be the Worst, a sad fact of the matter being that focus usually surrounds the ones least deserving than the ones who deserve it the most. Internet trolls often seep into sport livestreams and chatrooms because sport is popular and diverse, meaning it gives the trolls more range. The combat of trolls is a delicate one as well, after all people don’t want to punish everyone just to get a few, so many just abide it, ignoring trolls being the double edged sword since it removes power but sadly doesn’t solve the problem. Honestly, if I were in the chatroom with the whole Nyla Rose stuff back in August, I would be liberal with reporting, even if they do come back if one gives up then it’s a small victory nonetheless. What more can we do to Stop it Alone we as people can’t do much, it’s like a school dealing with bullying - they can only dispense gestures that mean nothing to the culprit. You tell a racist to stop being racist they won’t listen, you tell a homophobe or a transphobe that they’re being phobic and they’ll outwardly deny it. So the only real way to stop it is to make sure the next generations aren’t taught it; it’ll unfortunately be a slow build, even when 3 generations of people who don’t harbour the wretched seed come around there will be people from other cultures who treat isms or phobias as the norm which may end up planting it once more. It’s not to say that the effort is fruitless, this is an effort that should be pursued to the best of our abilities, but you cannot ever expect this to be truly eradicated. We can only hope to encourage the circles around us to treat people equally, and that especially goes to being an example to children - which should go without saying, wanting a better world and life for your child should be an optimum and paramount goal as a parent - and with hope the amount of cases where ism and phobia appear in sport will fade along with cases around the rest of the world. Conclusion This essay won’t change anyone, and I don’t have any expectations that it will - I can easily look at this rant even if it gets 0 reactions - but there are many times where I see isms and phobias when watching sport and think to myself ‘that’s crossing a line, why are you doing that?’, so basically I decided to air it out.  I can get that some things can go a bit far on the other side, accusations thrown and using the threat of labeling others of ism or phobia as a weapon do happen also, but if someone isn’t doing anything wrong you shouldn’t mock them; Nyla Rose identifies as a woman, many athletes are POC, they’re not doing anything that deserves such comments, I’m not telling anyone what to do here but if you do feel implored to mock that perhaps respect that these are human beings trying to live their best life without the harm or oppression of others and maybe work on erasing that seed before it becomes a weed that spreads to others.

In likelihood I won’t touch such a strong subject again and focus on lighter things like character studies, appraisal and theorycrafting, so if you expect more subjects like this, don’t, even if I do feel like I haven’t crossed a line saying what I’ve said I don’t want this to become an full on verbal war, so simply consider it food for thought and continue trying to make society and our lives better

[morningmindsetpodcast-blog]

MM218 - Are you a Victim?

You can be productive and independent or you can be a victim. The decision is up to you. Sadly, the victim card is so tempting and too easily accepted.

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Episode Transcription

[INTRO]

♫ Trenches by Pop Evil ♫

*Alex*

Welcome to Morning Mindset. A daily dose of practical wit and wisdom with a professional educator & trainer, Amazon best selling author, United States Marine, Television, and Radio host, Paul G. Markel. Each episode will focus on positive and productive ways to strengthen your mindset and help you improve your relationships, career goals, and overall well-being. Please welcome your host; Paul G. Markel.

*Professor Paul*

Greetings and salutations. Welcome back to the Morning Mindset podcast. I am your host Paul Markel and we're going to continue on the brand new year on the Journey of a new year with a question. Are you a victim, and you say your knee-jerk reaction is “No”. Well if the answer is no, then stop acting like one. I feel like I have to address this because I've seen it far too often. I use often I use productivity tools and one of the productivity tools that's really not that productive at least for me anymore. - But it's a thing called LinkedIn and many of you if your contractors or your business professionals. The reason that I have a LinkedIn account is that some of the other business professionals that I do business with they have them and I set it up. I don't know years and years ago. I don't use it that much often anymore because now I don't rely on other people for my jobs. I actually rely only upon myself, but I digress one of the things I started noticing. On LinkedIn was when people would put their status and I'm United States military veteran. - I think I've spoken to that enough times for you guys to know that I served in the United States Marine Corps as an infantryman, and I did a bunch of other things as well, and I was in the first Gulf War with six Marines and we didn't know it was the first Gulf War at the time kind of like World War One, you know, when those guys were over there in Europe fighting in the trenches in World War 1. They didn't call it World War one because they didn't know it. I was the first one but I see military veterans, you know recently discharged military veterans, and in their LinkedIn accounts, they'll put things like “Disabled veteran”. - Now, I know that that might seem like a wise thing to do, you're like "Oh, but Paul don't you know that there are certain companies and businesses and programs that if you hire disabled veterans, then you get tax breaks and so forth?" Are you calling yourself a disabled veteran? Are you calling yourself Disabled? Is that how you refer to yourself? He's like "Well, you know, what's wrong with that?" It's generally, that is embracing victimization. If this hurts your feelings is just too damn bad because I'm not here to worry about your feelings. I'm here to help you lead a positive and productive life and I am here to tell you that you cannot and you will not be able to lead a positive and a productive and an independent life if you Embrace victimization. Every human out there listening to me has different abilities. - Some people are in wheelchairs some people use crutches. Some people don't some people lost limbs overseas. That sucks. You know what it doesn't mean that you are disabled for life. Does your mind still function properly? Are you able to speak and communicate with others? Yes, the answer is yes. You have something to contribute you are not a victim. I see in our modern world in our modern society a push a huge push for victimization the victim mentality. Everyone is a victim of an “ism” of sexism or racism or this is a more of that ISM many of the big rights movements of the 60s and 70s, maybe even go back to the 50s or whatever the rights movements started out. - As you know, potentially productive and good things and we want equal rights for all people equal rights for men equal rights, you know for women equal rights for you know, whatever your skin color is and your ethnic background and you know, all that stuff. It seems on the face of it in the beginning that it is empowering, and we throw these words around all the time. You see in you here empowering Empower this Empower that but unfortunately what these movements devolve into is not Independence and empowerment and strength what they devolve to is these masses of victims. - Rather than people saying yes, I'm going to take charge of my own life. I'm going to take charge of my own destiny. I'm going to work. I'm going to earn what I'd you know, just I'm going to deserve what I earn and learn what I deserve instead what these rights movements do is they create massive groups of victims. They make it easy for people to accept the victim card and fall prey to that, and if you have accepted the victim card if you put yourself if you will line yourself with another group of put-upon victims, you can't you are hindering yourself. Now. It's easy. It's part of the human condition human beings love their we have two brains. - We have two minds. We have the weak mind and the strong mind we have the lazy mind in the productive mine. In the lazy week, productive mine says heck. Yeah. I'm a victim of *blank*. I'm a victim of something. something or someone or some group of people did me wrong and now I'm a victim, and because I'm a victim then it's not my fault that I don't work hard. It's not my fault that I'm not productive. It's not my fault that I don't have the job that I want to have that I don't have the life that I think I deserve because I'm a victim. That's bull crap, that's toro caca. The United States of America was not a country built by victims. - It was a country built by people who said we're going to take charge of our own lives, and we're going to accept both our successes and our failures. We're not going to take our failures and blame them upon some other circumstance or some other group of people and say it's okay that I failed because it's not my fault. That is not how you lead a positive and productive life. My friends, I have a lot of acquaintances business partners friends close friends that have been in war and have lost body parts, and I'm proud that the vast majority of these people are productive individuals. Could you sit around and say woe is me, life sucks. It's not fair that this happened to me. It's not fair, you know, that I have red hair and freckles. - I'm teasing them kidding. You sure that's easy. Anybody can do that. Anybody can sit back and whine and cry and say I'm a victim, therefore, it's not my fault. You can you know as an American as a human you can do that. I would recommend against it because you're never going to be happy victims are not happy people victims are miserable people because victims don't take charge of their own lives. You can't be independent. You can't lead a productive and positive life. If at the same time you are dwelling on victimization and that is sick and twisted, just what do you want to say and I'm keeping this family-friendly and I hope you appreciate that because tomorrow is not going to be so much. - You can't live a positive and productive life if you've allowed yourself to buy into the victimization mentality. You know, what if you are a US military servicemen, if you're a veteran if you lost a leg or two legs, I have had the great Fortune of getting to know a US Army veteran a colonel who lost both of his legs from above the knee, bionic legs. Usually use a chair, sometimes crutches. Sometimes this guy has the most positive can-do spirit of any human you ever want to do encounter. He could sit around and say I'm a hundred percent disabled veteran and everyone needs to feel sorry for me poor me. Give me, give me, feel sorry for me. - He could but he doesn't. Gets up every single day puts on his bionic legs. He puts on a happy face and he says let's get this job done. I'm going to have to struggle it's going to be harder than it used to be but I'm going to do it. You don't have to be a victim. You don't have to buy into other people may have told you other people may have said, you know, wow life really wasn't fair to you. It sucks. You should you know, you have every right to sit in the corner and pout and you can and maybe you should for a little bit but get out of that corner. - It's time to start leading a positive and productive life. It's time to be independent. It's time to be strong and you cannot do that. If at the same time, you're calling yourself disabled, you're calling yourself a victim stop referring to yourself as disabled stop referring to yourself or thinking of yourself as a victim of something that's is where you're going to start. That's we're going to start right now today for brand new year no more victimization. Alright, ladies and gentlemen, I'm your host Paul Markel, and I will talk to you again real soon.

[OUTRO]

♫ Trenches by Pop Evil ♫

*Alex*

Thank you for spending time with us today. To get show notes, submit a topic request, for more from your host Paul G. Markel, visit MorningMindsetPodcast.com. That’s MorningMindsetPodcast.com. Please leave a review of this podcast on your favorite podcast player, we appreciate your time & effort, and we look forward to reading your honest feedback.

Download this Episode!

[multiracialmedia-blog]

Hold Up! Who Called the Mixed Identity Police?

Hold Up! Who called the Mixed Identity Police?

As if People of Color (POC) in the U.S. don’t have enough to worry about trying to avoid and survive rampant police brutality, we Multiracial folks often face another type of policing: that of our identities. And it can come from all directions—from strangers on the street to people with whom we share DNA.

While Identity Policing is far less threatening and terrifying than the risk of physical harm, arrest or death at the hands of actual cops, it is still deeply problematic and it needs to stop.

What Does it Mean to Identity Police?

WHAT: Identity Policing is the act of questioning, challenging, assuming, presuming, denying, decrying, debating and/or berating any other human’s racial/ethnic/national or related identity. It commonly takes the form of people saying:

You can’t be…

You must be…

You have to be…

You don’t look like…

But you look more like you’re…

Are you sure you’re not…

I don’t believe you…

No, let me TELL you what you are…

(Feel free to add your own…)_________________________________________________________

Who Identity Polices us?

Strangers

Teachers

Students

Bosses

Colleagues

Clients

Customers

Friends

Lovers

Partners

Spouses

Parents

Other Relatives

Those who are Ethnically Ambiguous Looking tend to be Identity Policed more often (particularly by strangers or new acquaintances) and more rigorously than others. For some of us, it is a constant in life. Speaking for myself, I understand why some people stare and wonder and assume, and I don’t usually mind when they ask. I prefer that to when they prejudge and create a whole story about who they think I am that has nothing to do with reality.

Who Calls the Identify Police and Why Does Identity Policing Happen?

Humans are an inherently tribal species. Unfortunately, that too often involves various forms of domination, oppression, exploitation, etc. But generally, categorizing other people is something that some of us do naturally and others learn to do, usually at an early age. We do it with gender, with race/ethnicity/nationality/religion and other identity markers relevant to our tribe(s) and environments. I have been guilty of Identity Policing people in the past, though now that I’m aware of it, I try harder to avoid it. But it’s easy to see why it’s so commonplace.

Think about gender. A few years ago, before we were introduced to the concept of gender non-conforming identity options beyond the traditional Male/Female binary. When we saw an androgynous person, we sometimes stared at them in an attempt to shove them into our mental binary where only two options existed, wondering “are they this or are they that?” Our society is gradually expanding those options and now we have new language and the beginnings of wider and more diverse categories with which to consider people, including “gender non-conforming” to replace androgynous.

When it comes to race and ethnicity, people tend to do the same thing. And while it’s not fair to other groups of people, the dominant racial binary in the USA remains Black and White at the core, with Native American on the side, and other groups such as Asian/Pacific Islander and Latinx rounding out the most common categories.

Those are the designations that most folks have in their minds when considering someone whose appearance (and perhaps mannerisms) doesn’t give immediate clues as to how they should be considered or labeled.

The identity policing starts when they ask some variation of “What are you?” They might volunteer their guess or assumption even before we answer; sometimes even in the initial question. “Are you _____?” “You’re________, right?”

When we tell them what we are, they often jump into being the Identity Police, claiming expertise over our truths and our lives. We’re not the only ones who experience this, but it’s common to many of us, especially those whose looks automatically prompt the questions. We can be Identity Policed by many different groups—those with whom we share ancestry as well as others.

Multiracial people recognize that our mere presence causes some people to feel uncomfortable. It’s not always personal and it doesn’t necessarily mean that the uncomfortable person is racist. Our existence often challenges the Black vs. White foundation upon which this nation was built. Even with the rapid rise in interracial coupling and the fact that Mixed kids are the second largest group being born in the U.S. today, swirling (particularly Black/White) is still considered juicy forbidden fruit—edgy, taboo and vaguely dangerous. Add other groups and racial/ethnic combos to the mix, and Multi folks function as natural disrupters of the status quo simply because we are here.

There’s also a power dynamic to Identity Policing. When someone questions or challenges your truth, they have appointed themselves your superior, and assumed that they are qualified to judge you. You can feel the dynamic when it’s happening to you—that push-pull of someone vying for the alpha position in your interaction.

That’s what bothers me most about people who Identity Police—those presuming superiority over who we are and how we choose to move through the world. History shows us why they feel this way: as if we are a problem to be solved; a looming disaster needing to be contained and constrained in those narrow categories that have no room for the glorious variations that we represent. In a society built and run upon the premise of closely-controlled racial and ethnic identity, we threaten the status quo. And this isn’t limited to any particular group—all kinds of folks want to control us rather than understand us and the gorgeously complex and messy truths that we represent.

Now, for the first time in U.S. history, we Multiracial people are staking our claim as a stand-alone category. This is a natural result of the presidency of the very Biracial President Barack Obama, finally getting a semblance of a Census category, and news that Mixed babies are the second-largest group born today. Add to this the ability that social media has given us to congregate and speak up against the popular stereotypes and Identity Policing, and you can see the complex dynamics at play.

But even as Multiracial folks are beginning to come together, some of us still Identity Police each other. I’ve seen it on social media, including some Mixed Facebook groups. At times, it takes the form of criticizing folks whose cultural affiliations might not be the same as ours. Some folks whose mixes include Black are very vocal against those who are (or aren’t) Black-identified. I’ve seen groups of Mixed folks drawing lines and referring to the more Black-identified people as “One Droppers.”

This kind of divisiveness disturbs me even more than when we’re Identity Policed by others. If being Multiracial means nothing else, it is an expression of human diversity worthy of our support and celebration. How can expect others to respect us if we don’t respect ourselves? The last thing we need to do is appoint ourselves judges of how other Mixed people choose to self-identify and culturally affiliate. We can show the world what embracing diversity looks like—and give them a glimpse of the beauty of life beyond the blinders of the common binary. We represent the spectrum of possibility. Let’s not limit ourselves or each other in our quest to be recognized for our entire realities.

What can we do about Identity Policing?

Call it out. Challenge people (taking into account the appropriateness of the situation) and ask that they respect the truth of your identity as you choose to describe and define it.

Reject it. Let folks know that you and you alone are in charge of your identity, your category and your descriptors. They don’t have to like them, agree with them or approve of them. They just need to stop trying to dominate you with their opinion.

Make it a teachable moment. If you have the time and stamina, and determine that this person is worth the investment, you might want to do the deep dive and discuss the various aspects of why you are in charge of your identity and they’re not. Warning: No matter how great a job you do at this and despite your best intentions—and sometimes theirs—don’t expect them to suddenly “get it” and magically agree with you. As they say in Disney movies, “it could happen.” But don’t bank on it. If you choose this option, manage your own expectations so you don’t drown in frustration.

Ignore it. Yes, you read that correctly. I’ve had to learn to pick my battles. We are living in perilous political times on top of the everyday racism and other isms that we navigate every day. You do NOT need to explain or defend who you are, your ancestry, your life choices, or any aspects of your identity. Even. To. Those. Closest. To. You. And if they push, feel free to disengage.

We can’t fight all forms of isms and inequality at one time. But this is one area where we can and must push for change. We can benefit by coming together to challenge and fight Identity Policing in all its forms. We can claim agency over who we are and how we demand to be considered—as fully human and deserving of respect at all times.

Then and only then can those who Identity Police be arrested and put on lockdown, where it deserves to be.

Hold Up! Who Called the Mixed Identity Police? if you want to check out other voices of the Multiracial Community click here Multiracial Media