#white american guilt

[azrael-5]

I hope you dumb niggas who voted for Stein because she'd be good for Palestine even though she has ties to Israel, is running with an anti-abortion transphobe, and is genuinely just a shitty grifter are super fucking proud of yourselves right now

[alwaysbewoke]

the lies white people tell themselves to escape accountability and a real adult conversation on race, racism and history is just so sad smfh

[finalgirlsamwinchester]

re: last post and rambling thoughts on torture before i pass out - the key thing about represented torture to me is a matter of bodies being humiliated and punished before an audience. there's a distinct line between who experiences bodily torture and gets violated on screen vs. the threat of or implied past torture. more important to me is the matter of who gets visually stripped of power before us, as the voyeuristic audience. when i speak on humiliation - it can be something as simple yet starkly different as dean getting to keep his shirt on while hooked up in hell vs. meg strapped to a table naked in s6. abbadon threatening dean with possession described as a kind of rape (9.02) vs. crowley making a rape joke before possessing sam a few episodes later. (and yeah, stuff like possession falls under the added filter of genre fantasy, separating us from the reality of the violation that's occuring). really, torture just comes down to one thing: what gets shown to us. what gets lingered upon.

no one's free from physical torture/humiliation on this show. but there's a hierarchy for depicted humiliation etched out on the basis of masculinity (a Hero can never appear too weak) and gender - but most importantly, divided by monstrosity/humanity - especially obvious in how it treats its women (thinking on the good charlie/bad charlie plot from s10. who gets brutalised on screen?). there's also the added dimension of race, and the brutality of deaths inflicted on characters of colour on this show. there's a difference between a regular on-screen death and an excessively cruel one. the difference between getting stabbed vs. being made to drink bleach while your wife watches (3.01) vs. your head garroted on screen (3.07). one carries heavier overtones of humiliation. because to bring it back around again - torture is a theatre of punishment, first and formost, just like a public execution. it functions as a warning, but it also acts as a social sacrificial ritual. a means of collective punishment.

and on this show, the lines get blurred between its metaphorical hierarchies (monstrosity/humanity) and incidental inclusion of real world systemic oppression (along the lines of represented gender/race/disability etc.). monstrosity often gets used metaphorically in speculative fiction to stand in for categories of marginalised people, and it also functions similarly on this show. it all boils back down to a fundamental truth: torture, just like sexual violence, just like abuse, is the natural language of hierarchies. it's the language by which power (re)asserts itself. everything falls under the umbrella of systemic violence.

Black Sails S2E1 because this is one of the clearest illustrations of this principle i've seen yet on tv

(yes i'm throwing Foucault's Discipline and Punish onto a harebrained Supernatural meta i'm writing at 2 am. what about it)

[eddiediazenjoyer]

can i speak. i think that eddie Catholic Guilt is hard to believe and dare i say. not real. for many reasons. one of them being Not All Latinos Have Catholic Guilt especially not in the way that white catholics conceptualize it. and TO ME it’s a bit of a cop out . and i don’t think we should believe eddie when he says that’s the reason for literally anything bc it’s a really convenient excuse for being insane and repressed but i just don’t think it’s true . and i think that something much more nuanced is afoot (aka a complex racial identity and relationship with expectation).

to me he was really like. barely raised catholic tbh. he was raised AROUND folk/cultural catholicism which ofc impacted how he was raised and his perspective. but this kind of catholicism is so different from institutionalized (and white) catholicism it's difficult to even compare the two. and i honestly don’t think that the catholicism is the main problem. like his parents just don’t strike me as being devout in the way that imparts guilt onto their children (they have fun OTHER ways to do this). i think they are traditional and crucially. catholic when it’s convenient and when it allows them an avenue for control (biggest example here is eddie getting pressured into getting married to the girl he impregnated as a teenager.) but to me. this stemmed from complex cultural traditions and beliefs. which catholicism is an easy simple explanation for . but isn’t really the root of the problem. it's a part of it ofc but honestly i think things are often ascribed solely to catholicism bc catholic guilt is a widely applicable perspective when it honestly doesn't make much sense. like i think that eddie being a mixed race mexican-american has more to do with anything than catholicism does. and again. these things are interwoven. but not in a way that it makes sense to blame capital c Catholicism for things where culture (and cultural catholicism) makes way more sense as an explanation

like ik that eddie talks about how he was raised going to mass every sunday etc etc. but even the way he says that he just... stopped... says so much. like the fact that he was even allowed to do that tells me that his parents honestly never really cared that much about that kind of devotion. and the way he talks about it really makes it sound to me like he was one of those kids that never really bought into it at all and so the institutionalized teachings of the church never really got to him. what did get to him however is the folk catholicism/mexican-american teachings of Right and Wrong (aka you get somebody pregnant you commit to them. you feel emotions you tamp them down in order to protect others etc.) and this is not necessarily Catholicism in it's classic conception.

i have no idea if this makes sense and it is really hard to explain how this interplay works if you haven't grown up in it but basically.... hegemonic constructions of catholicism are vastly different from the kind of "catholicism" that i think eddie was raised in. and bc of that i think that "catholic guilt" is a weak explanation for eddie's perspective and best and just. inaccurate at worst. and we should NEVERRRR listen to eddie when he gives too clean of an explanation for his repression. that man is a liar

[llitchilitchi]

do you ever see a lore analysis take and you just know it was written by an american that has never learned a lick of world history

[steveyockey]

I know people are busy and have lots of potential valid reasons they can’t but it really feels like anyone who isn’t right now making time to go to protests and call their reps is living in a parallel universe

[bnnuy-wabbit]

this entire Music Taste debate thing re:rap is getting annoying really fast. Im not USian enough for this.

[alltimewhat]

this is not new to say but i feel like the internet and social media and instant gratification have absolutely destroyed people's will and understanding of being uncomfortable. sometimes it's good to be uncomfortable. sometimes it's necessary. refusing to ever engage with ideas that make you uncomfortable will never get you anywhere but complicity and moral laziness

[hussyknee]

This is very important: Part of USAmerican egocentrism and exceptionalism is believing that white Christian USAmericans are a special kind of oppressive, ethnosupremacist demographic and that the USA is a uniquely oppressive imperialist. Neither of those things are true. They are exactly like every other race and ethnicity that has been and will ever be given majoritarian power over others. Imperialism is an outgrowth of nationalism, which is in turn created by ethnosupremacy, colonization and exceptionalism. The same power dynamics play out in microcosms within the smallest states in the world. It's power, privilege and the paranoia of losing both that makes people harmful by default, and not anything inherent in their racial, religious or national identities. None of us are special or exempt from this reality.

[cannedpeachess]

Gil constantly being way too nice to Yang out of the special American edition of white guilt:

[gabriestat]

you hate to see it but one of my favorite moments of supernatural has the angel in it. but what can i say "so you're saying you're just well adjusted?" / "no, god. i am just well fed" scene in my bloody valentine ep sits so much in my head

[bijoumikhawal]

one dumbass tweet about how white "and Black" actors are "incorrectly" cast as MENA characters and it unleashes race scientists, antiBlack Imazighen, and a guy trying to argue there's a trend where Alexander Siddig would not be cast as African today vus 20 years ago because of woke I guess

Alexander Siddig. Who has self described as Black and only has been cast as an explicitly African character a few times in his 30 year career.

[wachi-delectrico]

Spent all of yesterday studying on the problem of Nationality and the creation of a National Identity and ngl I haven't stopped thinking and trying to figure out how yankee's modern idea of nationality came to be, specifically thinking of white American people who say they're of a nationality based on "ancestry" with no personal cultural ties to it

[gynoidgearhead]

trying to talk to europeans about the state of race politics in the US gets infuriating. bruh, our shared ancestors created a state of terror on this whole continent, and we all experience negative effects from it every single fucking day, even the people who are privileged by it. and i'm glad you don't have to live with that shit trying to crawl into your brain through your ears all the time but the least you could do is learn how this bullshit works before opening your mouth about it. you don't get to pretend it's innocuous. i'm grabbing you by the shirt collar. get back here and look at this mess we're left to clean up by ourselves. look at it

[zorthania]

A piece about survivors guilt.

This comic isn't perfect. I started it back in October 2023, and every time I picked up my pen, I wept.

I bring this to you today, on 9/11, in hopes that you reflect on this day a little differently than how most Americans would. Let it move you to continue to boycott, protest and challenge your family, friends and colleagues. You have a bigger impact than you would believe.

Thank you for reading this with an open heart.

From the river to the sea...

I'd like to bring to attention the fact that the figures depicted above are a gross undercount of the actual number of deaths. I scoured the internet high and low to source my findings and not a single one could break down the devastation that befell an individual ethnicity. Instead, they lumped a bunch of ethnicities together, provided a general timeline, and called it a day, reinforcing the sheer scale of dehumanization propagated in the west. The only consistency between all the articles I looked up was the 4.5 to 4.7 million figure I've included above, and even then, they were all published by western media news outlets... the very same that have been so unreliable and complicit in the genocide of Palestinians today. So I have to take everything they say with a grain of salt.

We are not just numbers.

All of us have ambitions and desires and lives worth living.

With that said, this is your friendly reminder to:

Donate an e-sim

Donate to PCRF to provide Palestinian children aid

Donate to Pious Projects to provide woman with feminine hygiene kits

Donate to CareForGaza to provide food to displaced families in Gaza either through their Gofundme or their paypal

Donate to any of the vetted gofundme campaigns on GazaFunds to help Palestinians trying to flee Gaza.

And if you or someone you know sees or experiences a hate crime and can afford it, SUE. This is a more effective use of your money than most realise. The reason zionists act with impunity is because of the normalization of white supremacy and oppression of ethnic minorities. Challenging that in any capacity tells them that there are consequences to their actions and makes them think twice before engaging in hate crimes and helps raise all of us up against the systems currently in place that let them get away with it.

If you can't donate or spend any money, you can:

Do your daily clicks.

Boycott targeted companies on the BDS list (if you're like me and you don't want a single dollar to go towards anything supporting Israel right now, you can use Bdnaash to double check what products are okay to buy, but the BDS list is sufficient as it is a strategic attack and proven very effective thus far)

Flood your representatives emails and voicemails with how you won't be voting for them unless their politics align with an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

Attend a protest, be LOUD.

Challenge your circle of friends, family and colleagues with conversations about Palestine. (THIS IS THE MOST UNDERRATED AND MOST EFFECTIVE THING YOU CAN DO)

and if you're really up to, be disruptive in any capacity that you can think of towards major corporations benefiting from this onslaught. (i.e. halting military manufacturers from production + shipments, sticking boycott stickers on products at your market etc)

And finally, if your country wasn't mentioned in the above excerpt, it was no deliberate omission on my part and I encourage you to come forward and tell your story about the suffering of your people so that this may be a learning opportunity for everyone.

You are seen.

You are not alone.

Thank you again if you've read this far.

From the river to the sea...

[lotussokka]

any time i dress up, usually in a flavor of high feminity that boomers particularly love, i find myself wondering if any queer people think i have a grabbable little waist (masculine)