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frankendeers · 3 years

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I am Made of Love and It’s Stronger Than You: Steven Universe and Models of Queer Resistance in Science-Fiction

Chapter 1. Science-Fiction and Resistance in Queer Subjectivity

“In other words, queer resistances emerge when the mechanisms of heteronormativity are exposed, when the concepts of gender and sexuality are being rearticulated in ways that defy the exclusion of subjects whose identities, desires, and practices are considered contradictory and unintelligible, and when ‘the presumption of heterosexuality’ no longer holds.” (Dhaenens, Articulations of Queer Resistance 4).

In order to articulate how Steven Universe makes use of Science-fiction conventions to explore models of queer resistance, it is first necessary to examine how queerness is woven into the fabric of its setting. Although Gems as a species are distinctly queer, their society serves as a metaphor for the various ways the centre seeks to regulate categories of identity and desire. This section will not only demonstrate how the show utilises its speculative elements to express different modes of queerness, but also argue that herein lies a possibility for resistance. In the world of Steven Universe, queerness is not merely a vector for non-normative forms of desire and expression but also a powerful tool to dismantle systems of oppression. Refusing to assimilate to the hegemonic discourse means exposing the artificial processes with which these are constructed and denaturalising them in the process. These forms of denaturalisation function simultaneously as a legitimising force for queer subjectivities. It will, furthermore become clearer, how Steven Universe sees queerness in itself as a force of positivity.

1.1. Gender and Performativity

One of the most notable aspects of the show is the fact that all members of its alien race, the Gems, are presenting as female. Due to his hybrid nature, Steven is the only alien character to exhibit a male gender identity. This immediately separates Steven Universe from the values of hegemonic society which usually sees the masculine as representative of universality: “[…] the female body is marked within masculine discourse, whereby the masculine body, in its conception with the universe, remains unmarked.” (Butler, Gender Trouble 17). The show subverts the expectation of maleness being an unquestioned neutral, by never fully explaining why the gems refer to themselves using female pronouns and to what extent they actually identify with womanhood. Instead, Steven Universe asks the viewer to accept this premise and, in the process, turn the feminine into the new “unmarked” position.

While the idea of single gender alien societies is not new, it is indicative of science-fiction’s power of questioning “heteronormative implications of progress” by “reimagining […] gender, sexuality, and identity.” (Thibodeau 263). In other words, while the Gems are repeatedly shown to be a highly advanced species, their singular gender separates them from the concept of heterosexuality. In fact, the heterosexual matrix cannot operate in Gem society, as it relies on both the existence of a rigid gender binary and the stability of the two genders it represents (cp. Butler, Gender Trouble 184).

Steven Universe’s Gem race adhere to neither standard. Thomas adds that the Gems themselves have no biological sex or gender identity, in a way that humans might understand, therefore inviting queer analysis (cp. Thomas 4). Seeing as Gems are “outside of human conceptualisations of sex and gender” (cp. Férnandez 64), it only follows that their means of reproduction must also differentiate itself from human ideas about birth and sexual intercourse. In its place, the show offers an alternative model that shows Gems as artificially grown in gigantic plantations referred to as “kindergardens” (“On the Run”). The inorganic nature of Gem production completely subverts the heterosexual narrative around the importance of birth and family making. Such an analysis harkens back to Lee Edelman’s polemic No Future: Queer Theory and The Death Drive. Here, Edelman famously argues that the centring of the Child as the symbol for heterosexual reproduction stands in direct opposition to queerness. The Child is used to always deflect political action onto the future, stalling meaningful change (cp. Edelman 3). For Gems, neither children nor heterosexual reproduction are of any concern. The show establishes that they “burst out of the earth’s crust already knowing what they’re supposed to be” (“Greg the Babysitter” 06:50— 06:59). By utilising the genre of science-fiction, Steven Universe thus suggests to the audience that a separation of creating life and heterosexuality is possible, which broadens the perspectives about queer possibilities.

The possibilities configured in the show’s alien species also expand to the realms of more profound matters of queer identity. The episode “Steven the Sword Fighter” reveals that Gem bodies are not material. A Gem’s consciousness is merely stored within her gem which in turn projects the body to the outside world. Therefore, a Gem’s appearance is merely “a conscious manifestation of light” (“Last One Out Of Beach City” 09:46—09:50). This feature of alien biology relates to Judith Butler’s theory on the performativity of gender. According to her work Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, gender is not essential nor innate, but produced through repeated performative acts. These behaviours are regulated by cultural norms which then are projected onto the body: “[…] [A]cts, gestures, and desire produce the effect of an internal core or substance, but produce this on the surface of the body, through play of signifying absences that suggest, but not reveal, the organizing principle of identity as a cause. Such acts, gestures, enactments, generally construed, are to express fabrications manufactured and sustained through corporeal signs and other discursive means.” (Butler, Gender Trouble 188). True to this notion, the Gems reflect their identity onto their bodies, proving that, at least for them “gender is always a doing” (Butler, Gender Trouble 34). Steven Universe successfully shows by means of alien biology how femininity is a performance that can be presented by anyone or anything (cp. Thomas 6). This is a notion that is conform with queer theory’s aim of rendering essentialist notions of identity obsolete (cp. Hall 93) and contributes to the larger goal of achieving queer liberation.

The ways the different characters make use of their abilities to play with gender are manifold and reflective of their progression as characters. Valentín rightfully states that one of the more interesting aspects of the show is the unique ways in which all characters straddle the lines between masculinity and femininity (cp. Valentín 203).

Amethyst in particular promises deeper insights into the potential of different configurations of gender and identity. As Gem bodies are essentially illusions, Gems have the explicit power to shapeshift, stressing the usefulness of speculative elements for queer explorations. Here, Amethyst stands out as she makes use of this power the most, constantly shifting between different appearances. She impersonates people, turns into animals, and even embodies inanimate objects for her own amusement. The casualness with which she regards shapeshifting show cases a fluid stance towards identity that is explicitly revelling in the act of imitation and queers her abilities. Moreover, it could even be said that Amethyst constantly parodies the notion of identity itself and mocks those with a more rigid mindset. Thomas implies that her experimentation with different gender expressions suggests a complicated relationship to identity, while still remaining open and playful (cp. Thomas 6). When Steven’s father, Greg, tells her, he is uncomfortable with shapeshifting, she transforms into him and replies: “Oh, I forgot. You’re so sensitive.” (“Maximum Capacity” 09:00—09:10). For Eli Dunn, these instances can force the viewer to recognise the implications of gender as a construct in ways that hold meaning for making a queer worldview more accessible: “The ability of the Gems to change their gender representation at will is a type of magic that fundamentally disconnects notions of gender from gender identity in the mind of the viewer. When the viewer is told that the Gems bodies are constructed and unreal, the viewer is forced to reconsider the implications of the female coded body traits […]” (Dunn 47).

Regardless, Amethyst’s queer approach towards identity does not mean a complete disconnection to the concept itself. On the contrary, the effects of internalised self-hatred are most visible in Amethyst’s expressions of body variance. A later episode shows Amethyst’s physical body being repeatedly destroyed, forcing her to retreat into her Gem and regenerate (“Reformed”). Due to her impatience, she does not undergo the process as intended and returns in a deformed state. As the episode continues, her teammates chastise her to do it properly, leading to her spitefully taking on more and more ridiculous forms. While doing so, she mocks the notions of what constitutes a “proper” body at all: “Just as bodily surfaces are enacted as the natural, so these surfaces can become the site of a dissonant and denaturalizes performance that reveals the performative status of the natural itself.” (Butler, Gender Trouble 200). In this way, Amethyst’s alien abilities function as a tool of critique, revealing how the body can act as performance. The interesting part is, that Amethyst’s questioning of bodily norms does not only read as decisively queer, but also thematises how repressive norms can affect an individual.

As Gem society is extraordinarily normative, Amethysts are expected to attain a certain standard of height. Even though shapeshifting is a possibility for Gems, the ability requires conscious effort and is therefore not sustainable. It is because of this reason that Amethyst’s lack of height is considered a defect on Homeworld. Melzer states that identity performance always acts within a “highly regulative set of norms” which dictate what is considered a valid representative of any given category (cp. Melzer 43). Amethyst moves between gendered positions by means of coping with Gem society finding her to be insufficient. As height is often associated with strength and masculinity, Amethyst occasionally takes on the wrestling persona of “Purple Puma” (“Tiger Millionaire”). While in this form, she towers over ordinary people, exhibiting a flat, hairy chest and uses masculine pronouns for herself (cp. Valentín 204). Jack Halberstam recognises that some forms of female masculinity are a form of “social rebellion” or “the place of pathology” wherein women use masculine signifiers to escape restrictive expectations (cp. Halberstam, Female Masculinity 9). These observations are in accordance with Butler’s assertion that gender as a performance is “open to splitting, self-parody, self-criticism, and those hyperbolic exhibitions of “the natural” that, in their very exaggeration, reveal its fundamentally phantasmic status.” (Butler, Gender Trouble 200).

Not only does Amethyst’s repeated mockery of body and gender norms expose them as illusions, but the show itself hints at experimentation with identity possibly alleviating feelings of inadequacy. Amethyst confesses later that she does not need the figure of Purple Puma anymore, as she now accepts herself the way she is: “I needed it when I felt like I wasn’t good enough. But I don’t feel that way anymore” (“Tiger Philanthropist” 07:10—07:16). Nevertheless, the show manages to avoid pathologizing queerness. The end of the episode shows Amethyst return to her alter ego, not in search for validation but because her time as a wrestler “meant everything (to her)” (“Tiger Philanthropist” 09:03—09:06). Without disregarding the play on parodic masculinity as a coping mechanism, Steven Universe attests a healing quality to the experimentation with gender. The alien body is presented as the site of social criticism, as well as positive connotations to queerness itself. These positive feelings towards queerness are depicted as harbouring an immense power for resisting further oppression.

How an acceptance of one’s own status as a queered entity can be harvested for resistance, is perfectly encapsulated in Amethyst’s confrontation with the enemy Gem Jasper. The parallels between these two opposing factions are clear: Jasper, similarly to Amethyst, was created to be a Homeworld soldier. Contrary to Amethyst, however, Jasper is described as the perfect example of what her specific Gem type should be (cp. “Beta”). Jasper herself asserts her superiority and makes clear the consequences of not fulfilling Homeworld’s demands: “Every Gem is made for a purpose: to serve the order of the Diamonds. Those who cannot fit inside this order must be purged!” (“Earthlings” 02:00— 02:06). In this sense, Jasper functions as the embodiment of Homeworld’s hegemonic discourse that excludes undesirable bodies and identities. She looks down on queerness and explicitly connects her abilities to serve the rigid system to her own worth: “Fighting is my life! It’s what I was made for! It is what you were made for too, runt.” (“Crack the Whip” 07:35—07:42). As Jasper repeatedly judges Amethyst according to normative standards of body and identity, Amethyst’s desire for victory over Jasper is framed as Amethyst complying to Homeworld’s demands. Instead of accepting her difference and alignment to queered identities, Amethyst attempts to meet Jasper on her terms which can only result in failure: “Steven... I can't win. No matter what I do, no matter how hard I work, she came out right, and I came out... wrong...” (“Earthlings” 03:54—04:05). It is when Steven redirects her focus onto the strength of their shared status as queer subjectivities, that they decide to team up: “That's just what Jasper thinks. She's the only one who thinks you should be like her! Stop trying to be like Jasper. You're nothing like Jasper! You're like me! Because we're both not like anybody.” (“Earthlings” 04:05— 04:18). In this way, Amethyst’s acceptance of her queered body leads to a connection to Steven as an ally in shared marginalisation. Their subsequent fusion defeats Jasper with ease where both of them alone where unable to do so.

Although fusion will be examined in detail later, its role in this encounter is particularly meaningful. Fusion, as the process of merging bodies, revolves around the feminine realms of emotional connection and the queer concept of blurring the boundaries of body and mind, turning it into the perfect metaphor for the strength of acceptance and unity for queer liberation purposes. In contrast to Jasper, Amethyst’s closeness to fluid identities and queerness makes it easier for her to engage in fusion and find strength. While it is true that Steven Universe does not negate physical limitations, the show proposes queer solidarity and self-acceptance as means of liberation.

The theme of gender expression standing in direct correlation to healing is also explored from a different angle in the character of Pearl. Pearl’s relationship to gender fluidity and performative identity is best understood when analysed through the lenses of lesbianism and female masculinity. Naturally, this beckons the question of how technically genderless aliens can be regarded lesbian. This is deeply connected to the nature of the category woman itself. Jack Halberstam criticises the mindset of restricting the boundaries of womanhood while leaving the lines of masculinity open: “[…] why is it [….] that one finds the limits of femininity so quickly whereas the limits of masculinity [….] seem fairly expansive?” (Halberstam, Female Masculinity 28). The policing of womanhood can be traced back to the masculine as unquestioned neutral territory when the feminine is only allowed to be represented by a highly specific set of features. When we return to Butler, the problem starts to dissolve in her theory of performativity. Womanhood is a set of behaviours and not dictated by biology: “The very subject of women is no longer understood in stable or abiding terms.” (Butler, Gender Trouble 2). The category of woman is henceforth rendered queer, as it is unstable and subject to change.

To regard Pearl as a woman and lesbian is therefore to view her identity not in terms of heteronormative discourses of biology, but allowing for the possibility to extrapolate valuable insights about gendered positions in society: “However, in an exploration of the fundamental instability of the category “women” does not find against feminism but, in resisting the urge to foreclose prematurely that category, licenses new possibilities for a feminism that constitutes “women” as the effect of, not the prerequisite for, its inquiries.” (Jagose, Way Out 273). With regards to the popular definition of lesbians as women cultivating romantic relationship with other women, identifying Pearl as a lesbian is a valid point of analysis. Steven Universe takes great care to repeatedly emphasise and explore the relationship between Pearl and Steven’s mother, Rose. The romantic attraction Pearl harbours for Rose defines her character and affects most of her actions throughout the course of the show. Interestingly, her progression in terms of lesbian affiliations and resistance towards Homeworld’s demands are reflected onto her body in increasingly explicit ways. Pearl embodies a progression into female masculinity where her gender performance changes with her widening understanding of liberation. This harkens back to Halberstam’s identification of female masculinity as a tool to subvert masculine power by turning a “blind eye to conventional masculinities and refusing to engage” (Halberstam, Female Masculinity 9).

To understand this better, one needs to examine the role Pearl is meant to fulfil in the social hierarchy of her home planet. Pearls, as a category of Gems, are made to serve and entertain elite Gems: “[…] Pearls aren’t made for this. They are meant for looking nice and holding your stuff for you […]” (“Back to the Barn” 03:02—03:12). Pearls are therefore, more than other Gem categories, marked with femininity and womanhood. Simone de Beauvoir remarks upon women’s role as subservient to masculine powers, always forced to obey as the perpetual Other (cp. de Beauvoir 29). Pearls are not only meant for the purpose of servitude, but also reduced to their appearance which usually mirrors that of her master: Upon examining Pearl, a Homeworld Gem remarks: “It looks like a fancy one, too. Who do you belong to anyway?” (“Back to the Barn” 03:38—03:42). Pearl herself disturbs these lines and expresses liberation through a refusal of participation in the hegemony of Homeworld, going as far as to openly rebel against it.

The progression becomes ever so clearer when the programme offers a flashback to show how Pearl conducted herself on Homeworld. Her dress is designed to be decidedly feminine while she defaults to a subservient body position. As Homeworld demands conformity to the role of a “Pearl”, the parallels to earth’s gender discourse become highly visible. Despite the Gem at the core of their being serving as the only material reality behind their existence, Homeworld society expects a certain set of presentation and behaviours from each Gem. Deviation from the norm is not allowed and can be met with punishment. With regards to her latter transformation, Pearl’s position on Homeworld recalls Butler: “Femininity is taken on by a woman who ‘wishes for masculinity,’ but fears the retributive consequences of taking on the public appearance of masculinity.” (Butler, Gender Trouble 70). After Pearl flees to earth and joins a rebellion against Homeworld’s regime, her presentation and performance become masculinised. She takes up sword fighting, fully knowing that this is not acceptable for a Pearl (“Sworn to the Sword”), and her subsequent regenerations take on more masculine aspects with each iteration: “The lesbian body, then, (like every body) is discursively constructed, a cultural text, on the surface of which the constantly changing, and contradictory possible meanings of “lesbian” are inscribed and resisted.” (Jagose, Way out 280).

First, Pearl’s dress is exchanged for a pair of leggings with a tule skirt serving as a layer (“Gem Glow”), the second transformation shows her abandoning the skirt while still suggesting a feminine alignment by incorporating a large bow into her outfit (“Steven The Sword Fighter”). Meanwhile, the colour pink becomes less apparent in her design with time. The show suggests Pearl’s move from the feminine towards the masculine end of the spectrum that is used to embody resistance to Homeworld’s demands of femininity. In other words, Pearl’s female masculinity is constructed in the same way, even conceived through the same discursive means, as the hegemonic identity she inhabited before (cp. Jagose, Way out 278). Pearl’s identity becomes queered as her body proves to be signifier of gender fluidity that always changes within contexts (cp. Butler, Gender Trouble 188). This can be seen as a typical articulation of queer resistance, as it not only exposes the artificiality of gendered categories but also refuses to replicate them (cp. Butler, Gender Trouble 201). Steven Universe implies a connection between queer desires and the ways they are reflected on the body. Halberstam himself states that this mixture can be particularly dangerous to heteronormative society: “[…] when and where female masculinity conjoins with possibly queer identities, it is far less likely to meet with approval. Because female masculinity seems to be at its most threatening when coupled with lesbian desire.” (Halberstam, Female Masculinity 28).

The programme outright states that the moment of awakening for Pearl is directly incited by her love for Rose to whom she was gifted as a servant: “I was supposed to make her happy. I just never could” (“Now We’re Only Falling Apart” 03:06—03:10). Seeing how Rose is uncomfortable with the restrictions on Homeworld, Pearl incites the first sparks of rebellion in an effort to make her happy. She suggests tricking the authorities and spending a day on earth when it was explicitly forbidden for Rose to do so (“Now We’re Only Falling Apart”). This slight misdemeanour quickly spirals out of control, as both Pearl and Rose grow endeared by Earth and develop a desire to live there freely. The liberational implications of their actions are hard to miss. They harken back to the building of queer utopia which proves how queerness itself “is a longing that propels us onward, beyond romances of the negative and toiling of the present. Queerness is that thing that lets us feel that this world is not enough, that indeed something is missing.” (Muñoz 1).

However, Pearl’s freedom from authorities may be paradoxically stifled because of her connections to Rose. The programme grapples with the fact that Pearl’s wish to follow Rose may be interpreted as her remaining subservient to her former master instead of breaking free. To counter that, it can be said that Pearl’s love for Rose is completely inappropriate to Homeworld society. When Pearl attempts to fuse with Rose, she exclaims: “This is very not allowed.” (“Now We’re Only Falling Apart” 09:58—10:01). This means that their lesbian relationship is a societal taboo that gives room to further transgression and ultimately, rebellion. How exactly queer love and the war against oppression are cause and effect of one another within the show will be examined at a later point. For now, it is important to note that Pearl’s inability to let Rose go is presented as a failure to completely liberate herself. While the relationship is still queer, it is not equal and remains tenuously connected to the hierarchy out of which it was born. Various scenes suggest that even after Rose’s death, Pearl is unable to let go of their relationship: “Everything I ever did, I did for her. Now she’s gone. But I’m still here.” (“Rose’s Scabbard” 09:30—09:35). It is when Pearl accepts Rose’s death and experiences attraction to a human woman that her arch is completed. The episode “Last One Out Of Beach City” shows Pearl trying to flirt with a mysterious girl and breaking various rules in the process: “I am done thinking about the past. Tonight, I am all about the future.” (“Last One Out Of Beach City” 04:50—05:00). The symbol for overcoming the boundaries of her past and freeing herself from the last constraints of Homeworld’s oppression are encapsulated in her wearing a jacket. As a Gem’s attire is normally an inseparable part of her body, wearing clothes overstep Gem conventions and signify human territory. Here, she crosses lines between cultures to fulfil a romantic desire. Even her interest in the girl itself is significantly queered as an example of interspecies romance.

The importance of this experience can be observed with Pearl’s last regeneration. Her new form reflects the change towards a more queer, liberated identity onto her body. The colour pink is entirely absent from her design, signifying her removal from symbolic femininity as well as her freedom from Rose. The ways the design incorporates pants and a jacket recall the events of “Last One Out Of Beach City” while suggesting a close alignment to the classical butch identity (“Change Your Mind”). (Fig. 1. Pearl in her jacket. “Last One Out Of Beach City.” 02:52) Amethyst shrugs off masculinist notions about strength and overcomes her desire to fit into hegemonic society by questioning the nature of normativity itself. Pearl, on the other hand, escapes demands of femininity and her fate as a servant with the transformative power of queer desire. Consequently, Steven Universe uses the alien biological components of shapeshifting and the fantastical element of alternative societies to subvert expectations of hegemonic gender and reveal the artificiality of identity as a construct. While doing so, the programme also refers to Butler’s theories in ways that renegotiate queer subjectivities along the lines of political change: “The critical task is, rather, to locate strategies of subversive repetition enabled by those constructions, to affirm the local possibilities of intervention […]” (Butler, Gender Trouble 200). Both Amethyst and Pearl gain the strength to overcome the hegemonic oppression put upon them by their home planet through means of performativity. The queer reality of Pearl’s and Amethyst’s victories negate hegemonic assumptions about identity in ways that threaten oppressive forces. Queering one’s own identity is deeply connected to envisioning a future where categories break down. By engaging in performative practices, one is already in the process of building this exact world: “Performativity and Utopia both call into question what is epistemologically there and signal a highly ephemeral ontological field that can be characterized as a doing in futurity.” (Muñoz 26).

Works Cited:

Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex. New York: Vintage Books 1989, c1952. Print.

Butler, Judith. Undoing Gender. New York: Routledge, 2004.

--. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. 1990.

Dhaenens, Frederik: “Articulations of queer resistance on the small screen”, Continuum 28.4, 2014. Pp. 520-531.

-- “The Fantastic Queer: Reading Gay Representations in Torchwood and True Blood as Articulations of Queer Resistance”, Critical Studies in Media Communication, 30.2, 2013. Pp. 102-116.

Dunn, Eli: “Steven Universe, Fusion Magic, and the Queer Cartoon Carnivalesque.” Gender Forum: An Internet Journal of Gender Studies 56, 2016. Pp. 44–57.

Edelman, Lee. No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. 2004.

Halberstam, Jack. Female Masculinity. Durham: Duke University Press, 1998.

Hall, Donald E. Queer Theories. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.

Hollinger, Veronica.: “(Re)Reading Queerly: Science Fiction, Feminism, and the Defamiliarization of Gender.” Science Fiction Studies 26.1, 1999. Pp. 23–40.

Jagose, Annamarie. Queer Theory: An Introduction. New York: New York University Press, 1996. Print.

--: “Way Out: The Category ‘Lesbian’ and the Fantasy of the Utopic Space.” Journal of the History of Sexuality, 4.2, 1993. Pp. 264–287.

--: “The Trouble with Antinormativity” Differences 1 26.1, 2015. Pp. 26–47.

Jameson, Fredric. Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions. London: Verso, 2005.

Melzer, Patricia. Alien Constructions: Science Fiction and Feminist Thought. University of Texas Press, 2006.

Merrick, Helen: “Gender in Science Fiction.” The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction, edited by Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn, Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp. 241–252.

Moore, Mandy Elizabeth: "Future Visions: Queer Utopia in Steven Universe," Research on Diversity in Youth Literature 2.1, 2019. Pp. 1-17.

Muñoz, José E. Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity, 2009.

Pawlak, Wendy Sue: “The Spaces between: Non-Binary Representations of Gender in Twentieth-Century American Film.” Dissertation Abstracts International, 73.11, U of ArizonaProQuest, 2013.

Pearson, Wendy Gay: “Alien Cryptographies: The View from Queer.” Science Fiction Studies 26.1, 1999. Pp. 1-22.

--: “Science Fiction and Queer Theory” Published as a book chapter in: The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction. Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn. (Eds.), 2003. Pp. 149-160.

Roqueta Fernandez, Marta: “Posthumanism and the creation of racialised, queer identities and sexualities: An analysis of ‘Steven Universe’” Monográfico: Nuevas Amazonas, 2.7, 2019. Pp. 48-84. 78 Shelley,

Valentin, Al: “Using the Animator’s Tools to Dismantle the Master’s House? Gender, Race, Sexuality and Disability in Cartoon Network’s Adventure Time and Steven Universe.” Buffy to Batgirl: Essays on Female Power, Evolving Femininity and Gender Roles in Science Fiction and Fantasy, edited by Julie M. Still et al., McFarland & Company Publishing, 2019, pp. 175–215.

Vasques Vital, André: “Water, gender, and modern science in the Steven Universe animation”, Feminist Media Studies, 2019. Ward, Pendleton, creator. Adventure Time. Cartoon Network Studios, 2010.

Wälivaara, Josefine. Dreams of a Subversive Future: Sexuality, (Hetero)normativity, and Queer Potential in Science Fiction Film and Television. Umeå, 2016

#Steven Universe #Steven Universe meta #Steven Universe analysis #SU analysis #SU meta #SU #Queer Studies #Academia #Media analysis #Long text #Rebecca Sugar #LGBT media #My M.A thesis #at least part of

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carllisle · 3 years

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Hi Ellie. Would you kindly share some of your lesbian Carine and bisexual Esme headcanons with us?🥺 Thank you very much, please, thank you to you ma'am.

miss ma’am!! thank you!

Lesbian Carine

The history of lesbianism in England in the early modern period is very interesting, as much of the anti-gay rhetoric put out by the Catholic (and later, more local) Church was focused on male/male homosexual activity. There was some preaching against female/female homosexuality but it was something that was talked about even less than the already-taboo male/male activity. Because of this, I think that Carine didn’t even know what love and sex between two women even was, it was just a concept that didn’t exist to her during her human life. During her time as a human, she never felt attracted to men, although she had a few superficial crushes that never amounted to much (thanks to the compulsive heterosexuality of it all smh).

I think her first introduction to same-sex love was during her time in Italy with the Volturi. Athenodora and Sulpicia were a mated pair, and the bond between them hit Carine like a train. Because some of the Volturi’s lifestyle was not something that Carine could get on board with (primarily feeding on humans), this same-sex love and bond was not something Carine was comfortable with. I think her initial realisation that perhaps she wanted that too was very difficult for her to understand, and it manifested itself as discomfort and resentment, which she in turn interpreted as disapproval. So, yes, at this time Carine was a homophobic homosexual who was so deep in the closet she was in Cair Paravel. I think also that Carine was of the mindset that she was a monster and fundamentally unlovable - it’s like my mother always tells me, it doesn’t matter what your sexuality is if you’re ugly enough (i.e. gay or straight or bi, if you ugly NO ONE wants you thanks mum lmfaoo)

Because of her own self-loathing, I don’t think Carine ever wanted to consciously pursue a romantic relationship, much like her Carlisle counterpart. She just wanted a companion, not a mate. I like to think that she posed as a man in order to study medicine (as there are examples of exceptional individuals throughout history doing this it’s not an especially outlandish idea). While posing as a male doctor, she first began noticing the attention of women. Women she treated saw a beautiful man and some would develop crushes on her without realising she was a woman. Perhaps even one or two saw through the ruse and knew Dr Cullen was secretly a woman - of course, not wanting to put her at risk, they never said anything except to Carine herself. Carine found the advances and interests of women exciting but disconcerting. At first she hated them because of her internalised prejudice, but as time went by with the decades she became more comfortable with it. She read the histories of women in Ancient Rome and Egypt and Greece, and in the 1910s the Sappho fragments were found and they were the final piece in Carine’s puzzle - to love a woman was not a sin, to love a woman was to love oneself and to love the world, to love God. It was around this time that she first met Esme.

Bisexual Esme

Esme had a much less complicated relationship with her sexuality. When she met the strange and beautiful Dr Carine Cullen when she was 16, Esme had already kissed girls in her father’s fields of corn, and she had already kissed boys. She liked both, they both made her feel as light as air. As a teenager, the fantasy of an older lady, grown and radiant and kind, was wonderful and gave her butterflies. When she was 17 she first knew physical love with the daughter of one of her father’s seasonal workers. They had a season under the summer sun but when the harvest was brought in and the fields were empty, both girls knew it was over. The worker moved on and took his daughter with him and Esme cried for weeks. Still, it was the way of the world, Esme knew that, and the sadness disappeared and she looked back on the memory with fondness more than anything.

She knew she would have to marry a man one day, and she just hoped for a kind one. Ch*rles seemed kind at first - he was polite to her mother and sisters, he was friendly to her brothers, and he was respectful to her father. He was a good enough choice as any, and Esme agreed to the arrangement.

Come 1921 and Carine found her in the morgue. She remembered Esme’s sweet face although it was swollen and bruised and broken from the fall, and she had to change her because this bright girl, this shining woman couldn’t die, she had to live, she had to! Esme opened her eyes once the transformation was complete and she saw the face of God in Carine. She remembered that face, she dreamed of that face, and she had never truly let her go, not like she had been able to let the others go.

Esme’s crush quickly turned to love and after two hundred and fifty years, Carine was finally secure in her faith and her sexuality. But she had never known romance or love like Esme had, and she was nervous and didn’t know what to do. She knew more about the act of love between a man and a woman than she did two women, and she still believed that love must be consummated in marriage alone. Of course, legally they could not marry but Carine so desperately wanted to be wed in the eyes of God. They snuck into a church with Edward as their witness and they pledged their love to one another, their devotion, and they exchanged rings as a symbol of their love. They called each other wife in the chapel in 1921, and they never looked back.

When the first same-sex marriage was allowed in the Netherlands in 2001, Carine and Esme booked their flight (civil partnership was not a label they wanted - they wanted to be, in the eyes of the law, married) and got married in Rotterdam. Already wed in the eyes of God, they did not have a religious ceremony. The whole family came with them, including their Denali cousins. They have their wedding certificate framed and hanging in their bedroom. Carine has copies of their wedding photos in her purse and wears her wedding ring on a thin chain around her neck. Esme wears her wedding ring on her finger and on the twentieth anniversary of their legal marriage (which took place 80 years to the day that they first said their vows in an empty church, making it their 100th religious anniversary) they renewed their vows and exchanged eternity rings in church.

#needahugfromesme #ask #carlesme #gay twilight #headcanon #carine #esme #i hope you like this!!!#esme is bisexual in every iteration of twilight she just has the Vibe #i know in twilight shes deffo had a lowkey crush on kate #but thats ok cause so does carlisle

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piracytheorist · 3 years

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So I went down some t*rf tags the other day to find which blogs I should block, as you do, and of course in order to avoid accidentally blocking people who were mocking the ideology or sarcastically agreeing with it, I actually read the posts there and scrolled down some of the blogs.

And with some of the things I saw... it made me understand how they reel people in. In some of the stuff they said, I understood them. I understood their struggle, and their anger, and I got how their feelings could make them burst out the way they do in their blogs. Also the fact that many of the blogs I scrolled down and blocked were by women between the ages of 15 and 19 didn’t help. That’s the exact age where you do the most reckless, the most emotional, and the least experienced thinking. It’s when you think of something and immediately think you’re right, because you’re not developed enough, neither mentally, nor emotionally, nor from the aspect of life experiences, to know better and reflect on how well developed your thoughts are.

And to see them act the same way older t**fs do, like in the ages of 26+... it’s fucking scary. It genuinely feels like a cult, where teen women, frustrated with the misogyny they experience, come to a website to vent out their feelings about that and find passionate adult women agreeing with and supporting them and saying that they’re in the right to hate men and trans women... it solidifies their at then immature thoughts.

Like, give me one (1) cis woman who during her mid- or late teens didn’t hate men, even for just a few months, in reaction to being treated as lesser just for having a female body. Just one. I specifically did. I was, for a couple of years actually, believing the bullshit going around that “Girls are more mature than boys”, that “Girls love truly, boys only want sex”, that “Women are statistically smarter than men” etc etc. But then you grow up, you reflect on those thoughts and you go like “Damn older people are right when they say that teenagers do stupid stuff sometimes”.

And that’s the thing with being a teenager; it’s the time to do mistakes, it’s the time to screw up, to vent out your frustrations, and when you grow older and have more life experience, look back at how you used to think and say “Wow, cringe. Good thing I grew out of that.” Absolutely not saying that everything teenagers do is stupid, if anything, most people start discovering themselves at that age. But that’s it; it’s a start. And on that road you’ll make mistakes, you’ll reflect, you’ll change your mind, you’ll learn, you’ll grow. The things that you start connecting with as a teenager which you keep on in your adult life also change, in the way that you look at them deeper, you understand them differently... it’s like with favourite films. Any movie you love as a teenager and as an adult, you’ll have a different mindset on the two occasions. Even if it brings you back to those times, you still have developed and you see it in a different way. Both ways may be positive, or fundamentally similar, but they’re still different, maybe one is the evolution of the first; it’s still not 100% the same. Because you grew up. It’s kinda sad, in a way.

So the issue I have with indoctrinating young women into the t**f ideology from so early on, is that it’s an ideology based on hate. By saying that women are only those who experience misogyny, you’re basically normalizing misogyny and abuse, and averting the blame. You’re saying that it’s expected from men to be misogynistic, and that women should band together against the oppression... instead of looking into why men are misogynistic and looking how you can inspire change in that. It’s victim blaming, basically.

By saying that “trans women are not women because they don’t grow up experiencing the effects of misogyny and patriarchy on themselves” (in a way that’s bullshit but as a cis woman I can’t expand on that, read trans women’s stories instead), you’re putting the responsibility of erasing misogyny on trans women. And again, you’re normalizing the abuse, and you’re defining your gender by the abuse you went through.

Like, fuck no. I was bullied for more than half my school life. It has impacted me greatly, many of the emotional scars I carry them still, my character has been affected by the abuse I went through, but by fuck no does it define me. I choose to try to be kinder. I choose to see abuse as wrong. I choose to be an educator so that I can help bullying stop being a thing in the schools I’ll be teaching. And not because I feel ashamed, or that I pity children who are being bullied, but because I want to make this world a better place, because I believe in teaching the younger generation into not perpetuating any kind of hateful ideology.

That’s not what t**fs do. They just say they hate men and perpetuate the idea of female supremacy... as if women, even women who are privileged in every way other than having a female body, can never do wrong.

Like on one hand, they deify JKR who said that “I am not a victim, I do not pity myself and I’m growing out of my trauma strong” in a very, very victim-shaming way, and on the other hand they define their femininity on the fact that they’re victimized by the patriarchy. Make it make sense.

And in general, it is still an ideology based on hate. When you take a group of people that are struggling both on the inside (either through gender dysphoria or through the pressure of not feeling free to express themselves) and on the outside (either because they’re bullied if they act “out of the gender norm” or because of transphobia if they come out), and you hate on them, when you put the entire responsibility of erasing unrealistic expectations on beauty and appearance for women on that specific small group that’s in a fundamentally disadvantageous position... bro I don’t know what you call it, I call it targeting. You have your frustrations with the patriarchy and sexist men, and because those people won’t listen to you - mostly because they’re privileged and assisted in that by the system they create - and you take it out on a group of people that’s just trying to live their lives in a way that doesn’t hurt anyone.

Like, I saw someone being upset by people comparing t**fs to nazis because she’s Jewish and I’m like... how the heck can you not see the similarities? How can you grow up Jewish and not see that it’s wrong to target an entire group of people, massively hate on them, say that they “have an agenda” just because they want to be themselves and aren’t hurting anyone? How can you not see that cherry-picking the unkind or misled ones and defining the entire group by those few people is wrong?

In fact, how can you not see that “trans women are perpetuating Hollywood’s beauty standards for women” has the exact same basis as “immigrants of colour are stealing white people’s jobs”?

And you may say, “Lillpon, you’re doing the same with t**fs right now. You’re going out there and blocking them after having said you hate blocking people” and I’ll say, I am not hating on them. As I said, I’m scared by seeing how many of them are teenagers, but at the same time, it’s telling. It’s a cult-like mentality, it finds people who are frustrated with how they are treated, who feel wronged, who feel they’re in an unjust world, and it takes those feelings and targets it to one specific group or characteristic. For t**rfs, that’s the XY chromosome set. For neo-nazis, that’s non-Caucasian races. The whole “finding young people who are alone, who see that the world is unjust, who feel no-one listening to them and indoctrinating them to an ideology of hate” is point-blank exactly how neo-nazi groups work. Here is a very interesting TED talk on the matter by a former neo-nazi, if you’re interested.

Also, I never said I hate blocking people, or that I think it’s wrong. I just don’t think it’s something to be proud of, and in fact I’m not proud for blocking those people, I even feel a little guilty as I understand how many of them are just victims of indoctrination.

You’ll say, “But Lillpon, a lot of neo-nazis are spoiled, privileged white men! How can you know how privileged t**fs are??” And to that, I’ll turn communist and whisper in your ear, “The privileged are few. They’re the minority. And they depend on the lower classes fighting against each other so that people forget that it’s the privileged who make all the laws and standards that hurt all the lower classes.” To that extent, you can never, never know who truly hides behind the blogs and twitter accounts with “r*dfem lesbian” on their bio. There are many occasions, especially on twitter, where accounts that claimed to be queer poc were found out to be run by straight white men.

... So, who can guarantee that everyone running a blog with “r*dfem lesbian” on their bio is actually a cis, lesbian woman? And again, on its basis, it’s the same.

Neo-nazism is putting the blame on people of colour; that not only causes a rift between neo-nazis and poc, but also between neo-nazis and white people who oppose them. It’s in fact a pawn so that the white people in power - the people who are responsible for the problems poc and lower class white people face - can avoid having everyone against them. They give poc and less-racist lower class white people a scapegoat.

T**f ideology is putting the blame on people born in male bodies - absolutely no matter what their character is. Again, that causes rifts between t**fs and cis men, t**fs and trans people, and t**fs and cis women who support trans rights. Instead of focusing on seeing how we can stop cis men from being sexist - which of course will inconvenience the men in power who rose so high because misogyny is holding women back - we’re fighting against each other. It’s again, a pawn, a scapegoat, to distract us from blaming the one who’s truly to blame.

If anything, if you’re a t**f, the fact that what you do is helping the white men in power - because absolutely nothing you or your friends can do can affect them in a negative way - should be a reason by itself to not be a t**f. But what do I know.

#anarchist lillpon coming out #long post

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how2do · 2 years

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aqvarius · 4 years

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[REVIEW] Her Love in the Force: Shusuke Soma - Who I Once Was

Guys, I’m supposed to be dieting during this quarantine period but Voltage is keeping me FED with all this new amazing Soma content.

HLITF fans, we have been blessed with amazing Soma content recently. Soma’s S3 Love’s Battlefield route was probably one of, if not the, most memorable HLITF routes I’ve ever played. I also adored his PoV despite it not covering all the moments that I personally wanted to read. (I understand disappointment over it, but I found that the bonus scenes they gave us made up for it, and it allows me to play with my own imagination a bit and potentially write up some fic for the scenes not in his PoV hehe.)

Like the manic Soma fan that I am, I had to IMMEDIATELY buy and read this route. I love him so much I am willing to do anything just to understand him even a little bit better. To my delight, I’m not even a little bit disappointed. And the route even made me spend 300 more coins to buy Goto’s Episode 0 so well done Voltage lol.

I will summarise my thoughts on this story and then get into some more detail in the cut below. With that said, if you know Soma’s back story already, there isn’t much information to spoil. But I’ll leave some of the more surprising details under the cut.

This story shows us an unfamiliar Soma. This is a Soma that is far colder than even when we first meet him as a Special Instructor at the Academy. He battles with his conflict over his future and what he feels like his life’s purpose is, which is all sparked over his sister Kurume’s comment that she sees him as a hero. Throughout the route, he struggles with aimlessness and his futile attempts to investigate the metro gas attack even while doing his work in the Criminal Affairs/Investigations department, where he becomes the mentor for new recruits Ichiyanagi and Goto. That’s RIGHT, we finally get the Soma/Goto/Ichiyanagi Criminal Affairs dynamics that I have been waiting for years for ever since finding out that they all worked there together! (The only thing missing is Hayase but I guess he’s from a different timeline lol).

This is something that makes the route super enjoyable to read because we get to see a Soma who isn’t as gentle and reticent as the one we know. He’s a bit colder, a bit harsher, and has less tolerance for antics. We also see Soma as a mentor before he became an instructor and it’s so cool to realise that Goto and Subaru are so capable partially because of the harsh but fair mentoring of Soma and the way that he’s not only drilled the fundamentals of police work into them but also supported them emotionally through the trials of losing a loved one. This route really helps you understand why Goto has so much trust and respect for Soma (and I’d like to see more Soma/Subaru interactions!)

We also get to see Kurume for what I believe is the first time, which is incredible to be able to put a face to the name. I am such a sucker for big brother Shusuke and seeing more of his life with Kurume really adds depth to our understanding of his character and why/how losing him has made him lose perspective of his own life and identity.

(I don’t know if I can explain in words how devastated seeing the two of them together made me feel...)

The route also gave some more insight into the Goto/Kazuki situation which was used really well to offset Soma’s own situation regarding vengeance and unresolved grief. We also get to see more of the relationship between Soma and Goto and how much Goto respects him as a senpai even though Goto transferred to Public Safety first (on the recommendation of a certain elite ;)). There are also some great Ishigami/Soma moments which I’ll elaborate on under the cut, as well as some things I discovered while cross referencing between this story and Goto’s Who I Once Was.

I love that there’s a theme running throughout the story, which is about defining a hero. This is a crucial question which underpins Soma’s incessant yet pointless attempts to figure out his identity and purpose in life. I love that we begin to see him figuring out what being a hero means to him and that Goto’s own grief and slow road to recovery, and the way that he’s affected Goto’s life, is what sets him on this path towards figuring out where to go from here on out. This path is then what leads him to his MC, who we can see is someone who grabs him by the hand and pulls him ever forward.

To put it briefly, this is a route you’ll enjoy if you love Team Ishigami. You get to see both Soma and Goto pre-trauma (you get to see a younger Goto than in his own episode 0), but then you see both of them forced to confront grief head-on, and then you can see how they both help each other to move forward in their own subtle ways. This story also showcases the best of Ishigami, a man who is collected and analytical but is always thinking of how he can help those around him who are hurt. Like how Ishigami and Kaga are saved by Namba, I would say that Soma saves Goto, then Goto returns the favour, and then Ishigami saves them both.

Keep reading under the cut to see my further thoughts on Soma: Who I Once Was. I provide extra details about the story and provide some analysis on his relationships with his colleagues and his MC with lots of screenshots for evidence!

Okay so first off: Soma’s parents are ALIVE??? Why have we never met them?! You would think that they would come to Kurume’s grave on Soma’s birthday to see their children at least. For some reason I genuinely thought it was just him and Kurume but no it turns out that he’s had parents this whole time?! Either way, it’s so wonderful getting to see Soma’s home life from back when he was a teenager.

In the past, I’ve made joking comments about Soma being confused over familial and romantic love and wondering if he just cares for his MC like he cares for Kurume because how can you have sex with someone and then still wonder if you just care for them like a SISTER. But this story definitely helped me understand his mindset a bit better and why he sees similarities between his MC and his sister.

So I think we’ve discovered quite early on that Soma’s sister died on his 19th birthday. We also see scenes of them when Kurume is in high school and already having to fill out forms about her future. So she would be 15 at the very least while Shu would have been probably in his first year of uni? I think he’s mentioned that Kurume and his MC would be around the same age but I was really reminded of that in this route.

Honestly it devastated me to read that conversation because her future was just stripped away from her like that. And to see her get all excited about all the possibilities her future held just wrecked me emotionally. She was considering being a florist or a baker or a pharmacist. She would have been around the same age as the MC :’( To see Shu suggest that Kurume could consider studying agriculture made my heart ache because it made me think of how much care Soma puts into maintaining his plants and how much it means to him that his MC takes care of them for him when he can’t, especially because that’s what Kurume did. I also now believe that Soma is so invested in doing whatever it takes to guide his MC towards the best possible future for her because it’s his way of almost atoning for Kurume never being able to live out her dreams and future.

So rather than mistaking familial and romantic/sexual love, I think it’s rather that Soma sees his MC as symbolic of how his sister might have grown up. Rather than thinking of his MC as his sister, he wonders if he’s just fond of her because she’s similar to how she might have been, sort of like how you might make friends more easily with people that remind you of other friends or siblings/people close to you. That’s why he gets so confused when he feels more beyond just affection and can’t control his emotions, because he’s never felt love beyond just worrying and wanting the best for someone until his MC.

On a side note, Soma did a 4 year degree at a university before joining the police academy? What did he study?!?! I want to know!!!!!

I also love that we got to see Soma not really wanting to be a mentor. We get to see him at his most candid, and at a time in his life where he’s still figuring himself out and doesn’t have any goals except for getting to the bottom of the Crimson Wings case. So when he has to take two rambunctious young men under his wing, it’s so amusing to see how much they annoy him at first with their bickering. In the main stories, we only really get to see a bit of this when he deals with Kurosawa but when he does that, it’s kind of jokey and snarky but man Subaru and Goto really pissed him off at times LOL. Like I mentioned, we’ve only seen him as a seasoned instructor who goes out of his way to help you develop, but he is so reluctant to look after these kids at first. He calls them goons, the gruesome twosome, annoying, a pain in the ass… It’s so funny seeing this side of Soma.

I did think it was so cute that Subaru immediately jumped to calling him Shu and Goto was so polite and called him Soma-san but then somewhere down the line ended up calling him Shu as well (which is what he still calls him to this day. I would literally DIE to see some present-day Subaru/Soma interactions – will someone who’s played Goto’s Adversaries let me know if the two of them interact? Subaru is so alpha male especially now, I’d love to see him defer to Soma in the present day.) It was also so cute that they tried to throw him a birthday party (but also very tragic because his birthday is also the anniversary of Kurume’s death and none of them knew that).

I also loved seeing Soma’s response to Kazuki’s death and the way that Goto’s loss and Soma’s loss kind of play off each other. He knows how it feels to lose a loved one, he’s been dealing with the repercussions of it for at least around 5 years at this point with frankly very little progression. If Goto was not able to move forward because he was stuck in time, Soma is not able to move forward because he is lost. Goto’s grieving puts in in a static place where he can’t move, but Soma’s grieving has him constantly moving, but without direction. He’s haunted by Kurume’s words and even says as much: “I had no idea where I was supposed to go… I just let myself float along”.

This is why Soma scolds him both in his own story and in Goto’s story, and it is Soma’s experience that allows him to guide Goto towards his growth. It’s also (at least partially) because of Soma that Goto ends up in Public Safety.

Ishigami approaches Soma for an evaluation of Goto, stating that “students raised by an elite teacher are elite themselves”. Soma’s evaluation sets the stage for Goto to eventually be able to confront his grief and develop as an undercover specialist through Ishigami’s guidance; Goto even calls him his “benefactor”. In Goto’s story, he says “It has to be him. The one who found me on the neon-lit street” and Goto then mentions a line about being blinded by revenge that I’m pretty certain is something that Soma said during their nighttime (and thus presumably neon-lit) back alley chat. So I’m not 100% certain who Goto has in mind but 95% he’s thinking about Soma, especially since he later thanks him for the transfer.

We know that Soma essentially helps Goto without trying because he’s confused when Goto calls him his benefactor. In evaluating Goto to Ishigami and cornering him in that dark alley, without even knowing it, Soma effectively helps to push Goto into facing his future – the two facets that Goto says makes someone a hero.

We also discover that Soma is recruited to Public Safety through a recommendation by Goto, who is presumably “the elite who nominated” him. I love that if Soma pushes the frozen-in-time Goto into moving forward, Goto helps the lost Soma begin to find some direction.

For years, Soma has been chasing this elusive concept of “being a hero” without even knowing what that means, which is why he never gets closer to fulfilment, because he doesn’t know what it’s supposed to be like to “feel like a hero”. No matter what he himself does, he is never able to see himself as a hero either because he couldn’t prevent the death of the one person he wanted to save. I will say probably that the thing that first changed Soma into making him feel like he has more sense of purpose in becoming one step closer to the “hero” that Kurume said he was is that Goto basically called him his hero. I think it’s so special because here we can really see the links drawn between Goto’s life, Soma’s life, and the narrative theme of being a “hero”.

Something that I thought was missing was how Goto (and potentially Subaru?) finds out about Soma’s past. We never see him tell him about it, but I wonder if that’s the reason why he nominates Soma to join Public Safety? We know that Ishigami knows about it, but I think Goto would probably have found out through Soma himself?

On another note, I actually wondered why Soma, Goto and Kurosawa all have fairly similar strategies and strengths as detectives while Kaga and Shinonome have more specific specialties. Now I realise it’s because Goto trained under Soma, and Kurosawa trained under both Goto and Soma.

These two routes made me realise that Goto needed Soma, Soma needed Goto, and they both needed Ishigami and Public Safety in order to be able to keep walking forward without being trapped in neverending grief. I just need to talk for a little bit about how incredible Ishigami is. Ishigami’s judgement in picking his team is amazing. The fact that he finds these people who have personal vendettas who are working covertly and independently to achieve vengeance and then sees how they evaluate each other shows that he is actively building a team that respects each other and work well together. He sees that they have the skills for Public Safety work but also that they have personal issues that Public Safety can help them deal with, and then he does everything he can to help them attain their peace. Ishigami is unbelievably supportive. He works quietly and diligently within the system to get his subordinates to where they need to be and I LOVE THAT SO MUCH.

Okay with all this said, I cross referenced between Goto’s Episode 0 and Soma’s Episode 0 and found some timeline discrepancies? Right after Kazuki’s death, we know Goto spends a while completely depressed until Subaru drags him up to go to Kazuki’s funeral. Then after her funeral, he becomes obsessed with working independently to try to avenge her death. This goes on for long enough (weeks) that Soma has to corner him in a back alley to lecture him (which by the way happens surprisingly often with Soma lol). Goto transfers to Public Safety soon after Kazuki’s funeral. We know this because he transfers and we see him start doing work for Ishigami but when he goes to see her grave and Subaru says that he’s transferring to SP department, this happens on the monthiversary of Kazuki’s death (not even her funeral). Then, it says that Soma transfers to Public Safety a few weeks after Goto’s transfer (meaning it would have happened within a couple months at most after Kazuki’s death).

In Soma’s route, we know that he goes to see Goto a few weeks after Iijima (Kazuki)’s funeral with the bananas. This occurs while Goto is still at Criminal Affairs because Soma references “the other day” when Soma lectures him about his personal life getting in the way of his job. I’m assuming this happens after the back alley lecture when Goto has returned to normal life for that one week before he gets called to transfer to Public Safety. However, later Soma, still working in Criminal Affairs, says “Years have passed, but the one responsible for [Kazuki’s] case wasn’t caught”. This suggests that Soma was still at Criminal Affairs for years after Goto’s transfer to Public Safety rather than weeks? So what’s the TRUTH?

I also just briefly want to gush about how much I love the CG. We see those typical important Soma elements (his hair and the bonsai) but I just love the look on his face. I mean he looks impossibly handsome, but he looks so serious and determined while at the same time still lacking the warmth that we see in later CGs that he only develops after meeting his MC. Am I reading too much into this? Maybe, but let me PRETEND.

Finally, I want to end my thoughts on how this relates to his relationship with his MC. Soma says that she’s helped him to face the future. As I previously discussed, I genuinely believe that part of this is because his MC lets him see glimpses of what Kurume could have been. Soma is attracted to her brightness, her bravery, her diligence, her conviction and her optimism. (He also starts enjoying everyday life with her when they pose as a married couple and let’s not forget that he does find her physically attractive even before he falls in love/realises he’s in love lol). But more significantly, I feel like this is because of how important he is to her.

Soma has previously said that he doesn’t trust Public Safety, but for some reason they seem to trust him. This reveals that he’s not sure of what his value is to his department or to his colleagues. While he has moved forward, he’s still working towards being that “someone who pushes you to face the future” and “helps people without trying”. Even though Goto basically implies that Soma is the one who has helped him face his future, Soma sort of interrupts so he doesn’t explicitly voice it. However, when his MC confesses how important he is to her with that unwavering conviction of hers, I believe in that moment he suddenly realises his own worth. His MC, who in some ways is a vicarious symbol of Kurume’s potential, helps him see that he has already been a “hero” to those he has saved through his Public Safety work and to his colleagues. This, combined with her trust in his colleagues and them actually coming to the rescue, is what makes Soma able to trust his colleagues. Because he finally knows his own worth, he can finally see how significant he is to his colleagues and how far they would go for him. I think this is also what makes him believe in Public Safety as an institution. For years, he’s been unable to trust or forgive Public Safety because of what happened to Kurume, but now he can finally see that they as an institution have actually helped people and saved people’s lives, and this is partially due to his own involvement.

Finally, the last facet of his relationship with his MC that I want to talk about is how mutually important their relationship is. I’ve already discussed how his MC sees him as a hero by those guidelines that Goto helped him set down, but by those same guidelines, his MC is also his hero. I mean first off, he first became conscious of her as a woman when she gave a ridiculous display of bravery. But more importantly, if a hero is someone who helps people without trying and someone who pushes you to face the future, she has done both of those for him. He says so himself: “With her, I think I can focus on the future and moving forward”. And she has helped him just by being herself. This theme really comes to a head when she literally throws away her own future to help him finally get closure. When he decides to cut his hair, he says this:

“I’ll make the cut, draw the distinction between the past and the future, because I love them both.

I have to let go of what I’ve lost and look to what I can still gain.”

He learns this because of her.

Soma: Who I Once Was is an incredible story that really helped me to understand my favourite character’s psyche, history and relationships just a little bit more. For that, I’m so thrilled and so grateful. I’m so pleased at the quality of this content and all the insight it provides, and I’m excited to see how Soma and his relationships continue to grow and develop in the future.

#shusuke soma #seiji goto #hideki ishigami #subaru ichiyanagi #her love in the force #hlitf #voltage #voltage inc #voltage otome #otome game #otome blog #otome romance #love 365 #love 365 find your story #snow writes #review

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morlock-holmes · 4 years

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I think I kind of get the Bronze Age Pervert (I keep wanting to call him Bronze Age Patriot) thing, even though I don’t really agree with the approach.

I think a lot of people out there, especially young people, are struggling with two basic questions:

What should I do when I get up tomorrow morning?

Why should I even bother to get up at all?

I know the term meaning gives all my mutuals hives, but, like, for now just go with me that something as big and abstract as “the search for meaning” is very wrapped up in those two questions.

I think there are some major gaps in addressing these questions, particularly from the left and, honestly, to a pretty big extent in my circle of mutuals here, too.

And I also think that the sort of “Weird Right Self-Help Diaspora” represents both an effort to answer those questions, and, just as importantly, an effort to assert that those two questions are worth asking and taking seriously.

@sophia-epistemia

When I say authenticity is the problem, it’s not because there won’t be things that immediately grab each of us and say, “Yes, this is something I love” or that we will immediately be talented at.

The question is more, what is to be done with the vast swathes of life that don’t fall into those categories? Particularly, to be an adult involves things like budgeting, cooking, cleaning, scheduling, dating, etc. many of which I believe can be sources of joy or pride but which will rarely come naturally to us, and instead often require quite a bit of work both to master and to learn to take pride in.

I think there’s basically two thoughts that the people who get into these kind of right-wing self help movements struggle with related to authenticity.

The first is a voice that sort of tells them that anything that doesn’t immediately spark this sort of uncoerced, authentic joy is, at best, a kind of absurd, laughable affectation, and at worst a terrible chore to be ruthlessly avoided.

The second is a sense of deep shame that this uncoerced joy of exploration or doing only seems to come out when it comes to, I don’t know, Lego collecting, and does not appear for the kinds of self-care and self-improvement tasks that help us live well-rounded lives (e.g. keeping the bathroom clean, going out on dates, job hunting, etc.)

And a voice asks, “If all you do is lie in bed all day and occasionally buy legos, aren’t you just fiddling while Rome burns?”

That’s where the shame comes from.

And, I think the modern left, particularly as the internet becomes more and more a source of our political news and hashing out of belief systems, nurtures these thoughts and offers little in the way to relieve or reframe them.

Like, I’ve talked about my friend who believes that the collapse of civilization is essentially fait accompli in the absence of violent overthrow of several governments, and there’s also this meme here on Tumblr which goes,

“Remember, there’s no such thing as ethical consumption under capitalism!”

I thought this might be a paraphrase of some famous philosopher, but it really does just appear to be a meme, which makes it easier to criticize.

The intent, I suppose, it to galvanize people into radical action, but in practice I see it driving people towards profound cynicism and a sense of helplessness. Because at some point the food in your fridge runs out and you have to consume something just to survive.

In the worst case, you could get complete amorality, where people just decide that since whatever they do is equally unethical, they might as well just take what they can and screw everybody else.

But more often, people still make ethical decisions, but, because they fundamentally believe that those decisions don’t matter, it becomes gauche and self-indulgent to discuss them, or to make explicit whatever ethical framework they’re using.

Ethics and politics are the realms of the vast impersonal systems of oppression, and the small cadre of people who have enough power and influence to pull strings and direct those systems. They can and will wash away whatever you might accomplish, so there’s something a little quixotic about pretending like the shit you do every day is worth discussing or taking pride in. It’s just simply not important enough to bother with.

If all consumption is unethical, then it would be insane to discuss how you choose what to consume in ethical terms.

If that upsets you, I find that most people respond with “Something something existentialism.” and, when that inevitably doesn’t help, a suggestion that you go to Therapy.

It’s not that therapy is bad advice here, but rather, to go back to the beginning of this essay, it sort of makes much more concrete the idea that the question of what you should do when you wake up in the morning, as to why you should even bother to, are questions that are irrelevant to ethics, philosophy and politics, and are not fit matters of public discussion, but are rather basically trivial, silly things best worked out in private one on one conversations with professionals.

This in turn increases your sense that your actions are deeply disconnected from the world around you, and in my experience, I find there’s a strong implicit attitude of, “Ugh, you’re on this meaning bullshit again? The rest of us just get our chores done without all this bullshit, you know.” which in turn increases the sense of shame I mentioned above.

What your BAP or Jordan Peterson seems to give people is, for one thing, a framework to make sense of the questions I outlined above, as well as a community of people who understand why they are important.

I still don’t like what little I’ve read of BAP. For one thing, as I said before, I think his ironic/not ironic pose largely functions as a strategy to avoid engaging in debate or engaging with the people he sees as his enemies.

Second, the reason I brought up authenticity is that I think the red pill and black pill types fundamentally have it wrong. When they hit that bit where things seem uncomfortable, where “adulting” simultaneously feels like an unnatural affectation and you feel shame that it doesn’t come more naturally, he appears to sort of create this narrative where the reason that it feels like an affectation is that your natural state of being has been stolen by a terrible coalition of fags and women, who are conspiring to empty you of your precious masculinity.

I use the term “fags” because from what little skimming I did, BAP’s cohort and a lot of similar groups really heavily buy into what CJ Pascoe termed, “fag discourse”.

That is, there are a cohort of unmasculine men, who are both laughable and pathetic, because they lack male vigor, they lack the male drive to conquer and fight, they allow themselves to be penetrated, they represent the opposite of everything strong and virile but they’re also dangerous, because they have the sinister power to sap the virility and strength out of other men. Sometimes they ally with women (Who are basically aliens in this framework, and kind of inherently not worth discussing) to sap the masculinity from real men more effectively.

And of course, we’ll never be real men again unless we fight back.

Now, I think this is a big ‘ol pile of horseshit, but beyond the obvious moral concerns, you also get this dynamic where the guys buried in this mindset spend a ton of time looking for signs of faggotry (or soy, or bugman, or whatever synonym is used in a given culture) in others and carefully arranging things so that they can’t be called out as fags themselves.

Which energy, I think, tends to distract from the kinds of concrete projects which might actually cause being an adult or being a man to begin to feel less like affectations.

#essay #BAP #slurs #long #meaning #self-help

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awhitemanlearning · 4 years

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What is institutional racism, and is it currently present in the UK?

Institutional racism is a phrase that has always been with us and is a matter that has rapidly risen to the surface following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, US.

Over the past couple of weeks I have engaged in lots of debate with people about institutional racism. What is it? Is it present in the UK? How can we prove this?

A lot of the discussions I have had with people have been both engaging and insightful, without being particularly progressive. It’s great that we’re talking about the matter, but if we really want to address it – we need to look a little deeper into understanding it.

Below are extracts of studies and reports of institutional racism in the UK that I have sourced online to share with people who are open to learning about the matter. I’m not trying to pass off the below content as my own wisdom or findings, but I have added some interluding paragraphs to give context to today’s situation.

Italics are mine own words.

The Stephen Lawrence Enquiry

One of the most thorough reports into systemic racism was the enquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence – this was based on events in the 1990s, and includes more recent reports to suggest that not enough has changed.

“Stephen Lawrence (13 September 1974 – 22 April 1993) was a black British teenager from Plumstead, Southeast London, who was murdered in a racially motivated attack while waiting for a bus in Well Hall, Eltham on the evening of 22 April 1993. The case became a cause célèbre; its fallout included cultural changes of attitudes on racism and the police, and to the law and police practice. It also led to the partial revocation of the rule against double jeopardy. Two of the perpetrators were convicted of murder in 2012.”

On 31 July 1997, the Home Secretary Jack Straw ordered a public inquiry, to be conducted by Sir William Macpherson and officially titled "The Inquiry Into The Matters Arising From The Death of Stephen Lawrence", and published as The Macpherson report. Its report, produced in February 1999, estimated that it had taken "more than 100,000 pages of reports, statements, and other written or printed documents" and concluded that the original Metropolitan Police Service investigation had been incompetent and that officers had committed fundamental errors, including: failing to give first aid when they reached the scene; failing to follow obvious leads during their investigation; and failing to arrest suspects. The report found that there had been a failure of leadership by senior MPS officers and that recommendations of the 1981 Scarman Report, compiled following race-related riots in Brixton and Toxteth, had been ignored.

Detective Superintendent Brian Weeden said during the inquiry that mistakes had been made in the murder investigation, including his own ignorance that he could have arrested the suspects four days after the killing simply on reasonable suspicion, a basic point of criminal law.

The report also found that the Metropolitan Police was institutionally racist. A total of 70 recommendations for reform, covering both policing and criminal law, were made. These proposals included abolishing the double jeopardy rule and criminalising racist statements made in private. Macpherson also called for reform in the British Civil Service, local governments, the National Health Service, schools, and the judicial system, to address issues of institutional racism.

The report was criticised at the time by Michael Gove (later Secretary of State for Education and Lord Chancellor) in The Times, who said, "The tendentious reasoning and illiberal recommendations of that document have been brilliantly anatomised by the ethical socialists Norman Dennis and George Erdos and the Kurdish academic Ahmed al-Shahi in the Civitas pamphlet Racist Murder and Pressure Group Politics." The pamphlet referred to by Gove is a publication by the right-wing think tank Civitas, which criticises the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry, its procedures, its findings and its reception, as well as broadly exploring what it calls “The fanatical mindset... of the militant anti-racist” with references to Malcolm X among others.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Stephen_Lawrence#The_Stephen_Lawrence_Inquiry

The full enquiry, which can be found below, is 389 page long PDF - but not all of this is text so isn’t as long a read as it sounds. It also has a 16 page, thorough index which breaks down the investigation, details, and findings; so if you want to save time you can read the points related to the topic.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/277111/4262.pdf

I also found a concise summary about the enquiry by Rachel Morris, who at the time was working for the Traveller Law Research Unit at Cardiff Law School.

The Murder

Stephen Lawrence was stabbed to death on 22 April 1993. The incident which led to

his murder lasted no longer than fifteen to twenty seconds, was undoubtedly racially

motivated, and involved five or six white male youths. No-one has been convicted of

the crime. Three of the prime suspects were taken to trial in a private prosecution in

1996, which resulted in acquittal due to lack of evidence. Two other suspects were

released at committal for the same reason. These five men continue to be suspects,

but cannot be retried under the present system of British law; general publicity and

comment about their guilt would prejudice any further trial.

The Inquiry

The Police Complaints Authority engaged the Kent Police to investigate a complaint

by the parents of Stephen Lawrence that the first investigation by the Metropolitan

Police Service had been botched, and the Kent report confirmed that many aspects

of the MPS work could be criticised.

On 31 July the Home Secretary, Mr Jack Straw, asked Sir William Macpherson to

chair an Inquiry into matters arising from the death of Stephen Lawrence, in order

particularly to identify the lessons to be learned for the investigation and prosecution

of racially motivated crimes. Three Advisers were appointed by the Home Secretary

to advise and support the Chairman: Mr Tom Cook, retired Deputy Chief Constable

for West Yorkshire; the Right Reverend Dr John Sentamu, the Bishop for Stepney;

and Dr Richard Stone, Chair of the Jewish Council for Racial Equality. The Report

sets out their unanimous views, based on the material and evidence put before them

during the course of the Inquiry.

Part I of the Inquiry looked specifically at the Lawrence case; Part II was aimed at

the second part of the Inquiry terms of reference i.e. looking more generally at the

'investigation and prosecution of racially motivated crimes'.

The Police Investigation

The police investigation following the crime was found to be 'a sequence of disasters

and disappointments'. The MPS have been roundly criticised in both the Kent and

Macpherson Reports, and they accept that their investigation of the murder was

palpably flawed.

During the Inquiry Mr Neville Lawrence, father of Stephen, concluded his statements

by saying "When a policeman puts his uniform on, he should forget all his prejudices.

If he cannot do that, then he should not be doing the job because that means that

one part of the population is not protected from the likes of those who murdered

Stephen." The underlying cause of the police failure has been found by Macpherson

to be, not purely incompetence, but institutionalised racism.

Witnesses, including those who were also victims such as Mr Lawrence's friend, as well as Stephen's parents, were found to have been treated badly due to stereotyped assumptions

about them and their character based on skin colour.

'We believe that the immediate impact of the Inquiry, as it developed, has brought

forcibly before the public the justifiable complaints of Mr & Mrs Lawrence, and the

hitherto underplayed dissatisfaction and unhappiness of minority ethnic communities,

both locally and all over the country, in connection with this and other cases, as to

their treatment by police.'

Institutionalised Racism

'The Inquiry was not of course an inquiry into the general relationship between police

and minority ethnic communities, and detailed examination of other individual cases

would have been misplaced. Inevitably the Inquiry has heard many sounds and

echoes concerning, for example, stop and search and the wide perceptions of

minority ethnic communities that their cases are improperly investigated and that

racist crime and harassment are inadequately regarded and pursued.'

The Inquiry found that 'Unwitting racism can arise because of lack of understanding,

ignorance or mistaken beliefs. It can arise from well intentioned but patronising

words or actions. It can arise from unfamiliarity with the behaviour or cultural

traditions of people or families from minority ethnic communities. It can arise from

racist stereotyping of black people as potential criminals or troublemakers. Often this

arises out of uncritical self-understanding born out of an inflexible police ethos of the

"traditional" way of doing things. Furthermore such attitudes can thrive in a tightly

knit community, so that there can be a collective failure to detect and to outlaw this

breed of racism. The police canteen can too easily be its breeding ground.'

Sir Paul Condon, then the Police Commissioner, stated that "I recognise that

individual officers can be, and are, overtly racist. I acknowledge that officers

stereotype, and differential outcomes occur for Londoners.

Racism in the police is much more than 'bad apples' . Racism, as you have pointed out, can occur

through a lack of care and lack of understanding. The debate about defining this

evil, promoted by the Inquiry, is cathartic in leading us to recognise that it can occur

almost unknowingly, as a matter of neglect, in an institution. I acknowledge the

danger of institutionalisation of racism. However, labels can cause more problems

than they solve." Sir Paul did not accept that there is institutional racism within his

force, as the Inquiry found.

Institutionalised Racism Defined

The Inquiry struggled to find a definition for 'institutionalised racism' and, while they

arrived at one workable for the purposes of the Inquiry, caution that it should not be

treated as cast in stone:

'The collective failure of an organisation to provide an

appropriate and professional service to people because of

their colour, culture, or ethnic origin. It can be seen or

detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which

amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice,

ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping which

disadvantage minority ethnic people.'

'It persists because of the failure of the organisation openly and adequately to

recognise and address its existence and causes by policy, example and leadership.

Without recognition and action to eliminate such racism it can prevail as part of the

ethos or culture of the organisation. It is a corrosive disease.'

The Inquiry also acknowledged that 'Racism, institutional or otherwise, is not the

prerogative of the Police Service. It is clear that other agencies including for

example those dealing with housing and education also suffer from the disease. If

racism is to be eradicated there must be specific and co-ordinated action both within

the agencies themselves and by society at large, particularly through the educational

system, from pre-primary school upwards and onwards.

Part II of the Inquiry

‘ Wherever we went we were met with inescapable evidence which highlighted the

lack of trust which exists between the police and the minority ethnic communities.

At every location there was a striking difference between the positive descriptions of

policy initiatives by senior police officers, and the negative expressions of the

minority communities, who clearly felt themselves to be discriminated against by the

police and others. We were left in no doubt that the contrast between these views

and expressions reflected a central problem which needs to be addressed.'

One universal area of complaint was to do with the use of police powers of 'stop and

search'. Statistics for 1997/98 showed that "black people were, on average, five

times more likely to be stopped and searched by the police than white people. The

use of these powers for Asians and other ethnic groups varied widely." Black people

are also "more likely to be arrested than white or other ethnic groups".

The Inquiry concluded that ' It is pointless for the police service to try to justify the disparity in

these figures purely or mainly in terms of the other factors which are identified. The

majority of police officers who testified before us accepted that an element of the

disparity was the result of discrimination. This must be the focus of their efforts for

the future. Attempts to justify the disparities through the identification of other factors,

whilst not being seen vigorously to address the discrimination which is evident,

simply exacerbates the climate of distrust.'

Collective experience was found to be that while senior police officers adopt sound

policies and use fine words, there was rampant indifference on the ground at junior

officer level to racist incidents. There was also a weight of opinion that the National

Curriculum does not adequately reflect or value a diverse multicultural and

multiethnic society, and that school exclusions are disproportionately imposed on

ethnic minority pupils.

Other submissions during Part II asserted that the working definition of 'racial incident' was inadequate; that there was a need for more multiagency partnerships to combat racism; and that the police complaints system was unsatisfactory and not sufficiently independent.

Conclusions

The main conclusions reached by the Inquiry were:

'There is no doubt but that there were fundamental errors. The investigation was

marred by a combination of professional incompetence, institutional racism and a

failure of leadership by senior officers. A flawed MPS review failed to expose

these inadequacies. The second investigation could not salvage the faults of the

first investigation' (para. 46.1).

'There can be no excuses for such a series of errors, failures, and lack of

direction and control. Each failure was compounded. Failure to acknowledge and

to detect errors resulted in them being effectively concealed. Only now at this

Inquiry have they been laid bare' (para. 46.23).

Mr Panton, the barrister acting for Greenwich Council, argued that if the colour of

the victim and the attackers was reversed the police would have acted differently.

'We understand why this view is held. We have examined with anxiety and care

all the evidence and have heeded all the arguments both ways. We do believe,

that institutional racism is apparent in those areas described. But we do not

accept that it was universally the cause of the failure of this investigation, any

more than we accept that a finding of institutional racism within the police service

means that all officers are racist. We all agree that institutional racism affects the

MPS, and Police Services elsewhere. Furthermore our conclusions as to Police

Services should not lead to complacency in other institutions and organisations.

Collective failure is apparent in many of them, including the Criminal Justice

system. It is incumbent upon every institution to examine their policies and the

outcome of their policies and practices to guard against disadvantaging any

section of our communities' (paras. 46.26-27).

'First and foremost and fundamentally we believe that there must be a change so

that there is genuine partnership between the police and all sections of the

community. This cannot be achieved by the police alone. The onus is upon them

to start the process. All other agencies, particularly those in the field of education

and housing must be involved. Co-operation must be genuine and vigorous.

Strategies to be delivered under the new Crime & Disorder Act will provide an

opportunity in this respect. Training will play its part. The active involvement of

people from diverse ethnic groups is essential. Otherwise there will be no

acceptance of change, and policing by consent may be the victim' (para. 46.40).

Recommendations

These are contained in Chapter 47 of the Report and include:

1. A Ministerial Priority be established for all Police Services to increase trust

and confidence in policing amongst minority ethnic communities, using

Performance Indicators, the overall aim being the elimination of racist

prejudice and disadvantage and the demonstration of fairness in all aspects of

policing.

2. The definition of 'racist incident' should be: 'any incident which is perceived to

be racist by the victim or any other person'. Reporting and recording of racist

incidents and crimes should be improved by a new and comprehensive

system.

3. The Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) should review its Good

Practice Guide for Police Response to Racial Incidents and other policies, and

that the MPS review their procedures generally.

4. All Police Services should have locally available designated and trained

Family Liaison Officers.

5. The Home Office and Police Services should develop guidelines for the

handling of victims and witnesses.

6. All 'public contact' police officers should receive ongoing training in First Aid,

racial awareness, and the valuing of cultural diversity.

7. Changes to Police Disciplinary and Complaints procedures proposed by the

Home Secretary should be fully implemented and closely and publicly

monitored as to their effectiveness.

8. the Home Secretary, in consultation with Police Services, should ensure that

a record is made by police officers of all "stops" and "stops and searches"

made under any legislative provision (not just the Police and Criminal

Evidence Act). Non-statutory or so called "voluntary" stops must also be

recorded. The record to include the reason for the stop, the outcome, and the

self-defined ethnic identity of the person stopped. A copy of the record shall

be given to the person stopped.

9. the Home Office and Police Services should facilitate the development of

initiatives to increase the number of qualified minority ethnic recruits.

10. Consideration should be given to amendment of the National Curriculum

aimed at valuing cultural diversity and preventing racism, in order better to

reflect the needs of a diverse society.

http://miris.eurac.edu/mugs2/do/blob.pdf?type=pdf&serial=1017225511163

I believe this report, coupled with the clear acceptance by the Police Service, shows that there is an issue with inherent racism, and accurately proves that as recently as the late 1990’s racism, albeit mostly unintentional, drastically increases the black members of the UK chances of facing a life in prison, being turned down for a job, hampered education opportunities, lower chances of finding deserving housing, increased health risks – and that black people are systemically born into this position before any of their life choices and actions effect their treatment by police, figures, and society.

It could be counterargued that this report was two decades ago, changes were implemented, and the problem no longer exists. I do not believe that the message has been remembered, and it is arguable whether the message was ever fully understood. Here is some proof that not much has changed since:

Augustine John (born 11 March 1945) is a Grenadian-born award-winning writer, education campaigner, consultant, lecturer and researcher, who moved to the UK in 1964. He has done notable work in the fields of education policy, management and international development. As a social analyst he specialises in social audits, change management, policy formulation and review, and programme evaluation and development. Since the 1960s he has been active in issues of education and schooling in Britain's inner cities such as Manchester, Birmingham and London, and he was the first black Director of Education and Leisure Services in Britain. He has also worked in a number of university settings, including as visiting Faculty Professor of Education at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, as an associate professor of education and honorary fellow of the London Centre for Leadership in Learning at the UCL Institute of Education, University of London, and visiting professor at Coventry University. A respected public speaker and media commentator, he works internationally as an executive coach and a management and social investment consultant.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gus_John

The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry, chaired by Sir William Macpherson, has gone down in British social and political history as a watershed moment in British race relations.

For one thing, the 1999 report drew attention to the existence and extent of institutional racism in institutions of the state, public organisations more generally, and most of all the police. Twenty years later, how has that report impacted upon state institutions, their policies and practices, and black people’s experiences of them?

Whatever happened with race awareness training?

Macpherson made 70 recommendations covering matters from policing to education. Following the publication of the report, the then Home Secretary Jack Straw mandated race awareness training for the 43 police forces across the country with Ionann Management contracted to deliver that training.

In 2002/2003, I was commissioned by the Home Office to evaluate the training and what my team and I found, as we went from police area to police area observing training being delivered and interviewing senior police officers, was truly shocking.

Most officers resented being compelled to attend the training and set about making life hell for the trainers. In fact, some trainers were so traumatised by their experience of doing this work that they had to go into therapy, or at least seek clinical counselling, something that their employers did not provide.

The response of police commanders and chief constables to such conduct by their officers was mixed. Some were as appalled as I was, and b about it, others pleaded that such conduct was to be expected, for if it did not exist or was not anticipated, there would be no need for the training in the first place. Yet others were complicit, with one assistant chief constable telling a chief inspector who was passionate about police/community relations that this area of policing was a ‘career graveyard’ and that someone as bright and ambitious as he was should avoid it at all costs if he wanted to ‘rise up the ranks’.

Crucially, however, none of the police forces had put in place measures for assessing the extent to which the training their officers (of all ranks) were receiving was having any impact on their operational performance or decision making. Astonishingly, discussing the mandatory nature of the training, some senior officers protested that they could not see what relevance such training had for their firearms officers, or for their highway patrol officers. Needless to say, those whom they line-managed and deployed into those roles were less than happy to be made to ‘endure’ such training. But then, I suppose some would argue that this was before Mark Duggan, before Tasers and before spit hoods.

Some trainers pointed out that communities were convinced that racial profiling and police abuse of power were largely responsible for the disproportionate number of black people stopped and searched and those who die while in the custody of the police. They suggested that those numbers would be even higher if police were given more powers to stop and search and especially if more police were issued with firearms. Such assertions were met with howls of abuse and accusations of slander and police bashing.

My evaluation report reached many conclusions and made many recommendations, not least about a competency framework for police managers. The overall conclusion I reached was that the entire, nationwide training operation was a costly and wasteful exercise in ‘dipping sheep’.

The police and the state: inseparable partners in institutional racism

In my view, the police as a public institution and a key apparatus of the state, epitomised the weakness in Macpherson’s analysis of racism in the society and in policing. Macpherson failed to situate police failures in the Stephen Lawrence murder investigation within the general context of state expectations. What does the state expect and require of the police in our society if not keeping black people as unwanted immigrants and ‘dark strangers’ in check and under control?

The institutional racism in the police cannot be separated from the structural racism of the state, as manifested in its immigration laws, border control practices, civil service, its failure to tackle the legacy of empire through schooling and education and its failure to guarantee black people’s rights by ensuring compliance with anti-discrimination legislation. The list could go on.

In other words, the state exemplifies the failure to understand how structural, cultural, institutional and personal forms of racism and discrimination intersect and manifest in black people’s experience of everyday life. Following the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry Report published in February 1999, there was much public debate about institutional racism, with many public and corporate organisations resisting the label. Macpherson defined institutional racism as:

(As mentioned in Rachel’s report)

The collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture, or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people.

More recently, Macpherson’s construct of unwitting prejudice, has been translated into ‘unconscious bias’ that gives rise to attitudes and behaviours which people with protected characteristics (as defined by the Equality Act 2010) experience as discrimination, or exclusion on account of discrimination. The problem with ‘unconscious bias’, however, is that it is more often than not assumed to relate to the actions, behaviours and decision-making of individuals, as distinct from institutional structures, policies, processes and practices. It is for this reason that the late A Sivanandan, then director of the Institute of Race Relations offered this alternative definition of institutional racism:

Institutional racism is that which, covertly or overtly, resides in the policies, procedures, operations and culture of public or private institutions - reinforcing individual prejudices and being reinforced by them in turn.

To expect that Macpherson was going to have any impact upon how the British police treated black people was to fail to understand the British state and its institutions, and crucially the positioning of black people in Britain, British born or not. Since 1999, there have been at least double the number of black deaths in police custody than ever before. Yet, it remains the case that 50 years after David Oluwale was hounded and murdered by officers in West Yorkshire Police in May 1969, not one police officer has been successfully prosecuted for the killing of a black person while in police custody.

Normalisation

And 50 years after activists like myself campaigned about police carrying out ‘fishing expeditions’ to find suspected ‘illegal immigrants’, it has been normalised that the police round up the Windrush generation who have lived here for more than 50 years and cart them off to Yarl’s Wood to await deportation and a woeful existence until death.

So, let us not make Macpherson’s institutional racism our measure of ‘the progress we have made’ since the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry. In this regard, it would be negligent and dishonest not to mention that Macpherson led that inquiry because of the collusion of the police with the visceral racism of Stephen’s murderers. This is something which highlighted the fact that they, the police, were on the same spectrum as those racist murderers. One innocent young man lay dead and his murderers were strutting around the place as if they were invincible, only because the police failed to do their duty by Stephen and his family.

Since Stephen was murdered, hundreds of other young black men (and fewer women) have been murdered and buried in London, Manchester and elsewhere, and their murderers are still strutting around the place. In too many cases, having committed even more murders of young black men, enjoying the protection of people no less black than those who have lost sons, fathers and daughters.

Black lives matter

(Please note for context – this was written May 2019, in a world where Covid-19 was not among us, but George Floyd was).

In typical fashion, the state has appropriated and canonised Stephen Lawrence and crowned his mother, but how many more of the likes of Stephen have we lost at the hands of young people like themselves in the last 20 years? If the Metropolitan Police failed Stephen Lawrence and his family on account of racism, too many of us have blood on our hands and can know no peace because we are complicit in the murder of too many young people, not least by harbouring known killers and hiding guns and knives for them. A mother’s grief, a family’s grief is no less accentuated by the knowledge that their loved one was killed by a black youth and not a white racist.

If those young people whom we have buried in such alarming numbers since 1999 had been white, we would have had a Macpherson type inquiry every couple of years, coupled with calls for national action, because white lives matter. We must never fail to speak truth to power, fearlessly but we as a community too seldom speak truth to ourselves.

If ‘Black Lives Matter’ and they clearly do, we have a responsibility to defend black lives and ‘save the children’, irrespective of who it is that renders them worthless and dispensable. Given the rate at which our young people are slaughtering one another in our communities, why has the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement been so silent on the issue? Is it because we are possessed of such a ‘victim’ mindset that we have no praxis for dealing with the phenomenon of victims taking on the mantle of our murderous oppressors, thus heaping more grief, trauma and misery upon us?

We expect the police to be racist and to see our lives as meaningless. But we are demonstrating to them, to the state and to the entire nation, that we, too, see our young people’s lives as redundant and dispensable. There is surely no more urgent challenge facing us just now than that.

That is why I want to see us focusing relentlessly on what we are doing about it, rather than worrying about whether Macpherson and his report changed relations between the police and Black Britain.

Gus John is an academic and political activist who has been writing on policing and youth matters since the late 1960s. He works internationally as an independent consultant.

My Own Conclusion

Giving the exemplary credentials that the author of this review boasts, remarkably covering all of the niche departments that this report concerns, it is unquestionable that this is a reputable source.

The extensive knowledge on the subject matter that Professor Gus John possesses has enabled him to assess that since the original report by Macpherson on institutional racism, the problem has not actually improved; in stark contrast to the desired effect it appears that the implementations have actually had a negative effect on the racism inherent in our society, institutions, and attitude.

Police were proven to be resentful of the training, and still failed to recognise the irrefutable evidence that racism had to be addressed, and appropriate training had to be provided. It was also shown that at some of the highest level of the police institution, senior figures discouraged young talent from helping to improve ethnic community relations as it was deemed disadvantageous to their career prospects.

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flash-impact-for-good · 4 years

Text

“You’ve come a long way, baby”

This slogan, “You’ve come a long way, baby”, was splashed across the glossy magazines of my youth, vaunting women’s progress – via their rights to consume products that had once been reserved for men only. The issue of women’s progress in the business world is another debate entirely: the proverbial glass sometimes seems to be filling gradually (e.g. , according to the French secretary of state in charge of equality between men and women, women held 45,2% of positions on SBF120 management boards in 2019); but the glass moves slowly at the top (21,4% of positions in Exco or equivalent). And these broad numbers hide huge disparities. As mentioned by Guy Le Pechon, MBA INSEAD 69, head of Gouvernance et Structure, and a data specialist on equality between men and women, three corporations among the CAC 40 don’t have any woman at their Exco; and only one reaches the ratio of 40% for this entity.

Yet forward movement is undeniable. I would like to offer here a random walk through some 15 years of experience designing, delivering, and observing initiatives to strengthen the representation of women in companies. Along the way, the useful question I hope to explore is what we have learned about fostering gender balance, and how these insights may help us move further down the road towards greater gender balance.

When several large French companies signed the “Charte de la Diversité” in 2004, our Head of Human Resources asked me to develop a program that would support women’s career development in the organization. I looked at the market to see what was available and was struck by the way that many training firms seemed to assume that women had to be “fixed”, taught to overcome “weaknesses”, or trained in more masculine behavior. This did not feel right – how could we “strengthen” our pools of female talent by focusing on what women might be “doing wrong”? We chose instead to tackle the issue indirectly: I set up a training program led by a specialist in career management for high potentials – a brilliant older man. “Female issues” were never addressed directly in the program – it just so happened that all the (very interesting and carefully selected) participants in each session were women. (What we didn’t know then was that in this way successfully avoided triggering a dangerous unconscious bias about women’s competence, sending instead the message that anyone, and of course women, could benefit from enhancing their career management skills). My first learning: don’t “fix” people who aren’t “broken” – build their strengths.

Interestingly, it was a member of what one could call the “old guard” – a highly successful gentleman in a very powerful job – who made another significant contribution to levelling the playing field. “We have lots of women entering the pipeline,” he told me, “but after a first role, the men all ask to lead a sales team, while the women want to move into marketing – jobs do not give them line management responsibility and credibility.” To counter this, he carefully mapped and measured something which had previously been intuitive: what were the key career steps that opened the way up the corporate ladder, and where relative to those steps were the pools of female talent? The corporate “ladder” actually looked more like a vertical maze; often several steps along a same level were necessary before one could climb to the next rung on the ladder. But like any maze, it was easy to get lost. Second learning: By providing clear experienced-based information about the critical steps on any given level, this gentleman basically “injected information” into the career management process – not to tell women what to do with their careers, but to offer more effective advice, starting early on.

Driving for more women in management eventually began to provoke some pushback: some male colleagues would quietly ask me, “Do I have a future in this organization? Will there always be a woman ahead of me on the promotion list?” Hearing men share such concerns troubled me: if you are promoting a worthy idea and yet generating a sense of unfairness, then the idea needs to be reviewed – not rejected or reduced in ambition, but re-examined. This is when we clearly understood that we had to change not only the way that women looked at themselves in the organization, but also how the organization looked at its people.

A conversation at a conference on diversity with a woman who held a very senior position in her organization gave me additional insight. Asked about her success, she pointed to the “pairs of eyes” that had watched her work over the years and could vouch for her. It was as though her capabilities had to be cross-checked – which was of course equally true for her male colleagues, who intuitively moved around and got themselves “seen” by several potential sponsors. Long before “sponsorship” became a popular concept, she had realized that it was easier for one person to say, “She is ready for the next job!” if someone else could back up the statement.

Waiting for this to happen through multiple-year job rotations, we realized, would take much too long. Then I encountered a talent manager in a small financial services organization who had crafted a clever process to respond to precisely this issue: he organized “walkabouts” for talented individuals, setting up a series of meetings for each with high-level executives who might never meet that young woman (or man) until it came time to make a key staffing decision – which was too late. By putting rising potentials in front of senior management, this talent manager was transforming them from names on a CV to real humans whom the senior executives could get to know. Again, this practice plays to our human nature – no amount of data on a page can replace the power of what we learn from interacting with someone. This learning could be called, “you have to be seen to be believed”.

Despite the value of all these approaches, these actions remain focused on shifting individual mindsets. At some point, on a topic as complex as gender balance, institutions, not just individuals, need to change. And I still did not have the answer to my vague discomfort, my concern that some people felt our efforts to level the playing field were potentially unfair.

Interestingly, it was ideas from INSEAD research, adopted into our organization, that gave us some of the keys. Most INSEADers are familiar with Kim and Mauborgne’s work on “fair process” – the concept that a fair, well-run decision-making process will lead to better acceptance of the outcome, even by those who do not obtain what they want. This work made its way into our organization: the “fair process”, in which all the voices relevant to a decision were heard and considered before that decision was made, became institutionalized as an essential feature of our people management. A fundamental part of the fair process is feedback: because it embraces the full variety of perspectives on a topic or a person, the process makes it possible to provide feedback to the person, so that the individual can continue to learn and grow. Next learning: good process and good feedback confirm that both your intentions and your decisions are fair.

In 2018, INSEAD celebrated 50 years of women at the school and hosted a Summit to showcase research from its Gender Initiative. One presentation by Ivana Naumovska, Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship, particularly caught my attention. She had performed meta-analysis of multiple diversity initiatives across companies and sectors and had teased out lessons about what did and did not work.

The two areas identified as having greatest positive impact were mentoring programs and network-building initiatives: mentoring because it enabled the participants to understand the rules of the game, how their organization really worked (this was true for both mentees and their mentors), and network-building because it cultivated awareness in the individuals of what opportunities – for jobs, projects, useful partnerships, and even just information sharing – were available across their organizations, especially outside their silos. I was pleased to see these conclusions: they were an academic validation of the intuition which had led us to set up mentoring and networking for communities (not just individuals). In other words, by creating groups of mentors or mentees and getting them to coach each other on how to take up these roles, we let people see that this was simply part of “how we do things around here”. Next lesson: if you want to change institutions, not just individuals, give people shared responsibility to build something new together.

Beyond creating “institutions” that support diversity, what has emerged over time is a culture shift. In the way we pursue gender balance, we are really striving to make good use of the organization’s talent to adapt to changing organizational needs. There are ongoing challenges: how well do all these changes resist a major economic crisis, or a corporate reorganization? As we move out of a public health crisis and towards a difficult economic situation, we need to remain vigilant about topics like diversity. Looking further ahead, I wonder how the “recipes” described above will stand the test of time. Traditional management is being replaced by agile tribes, collectively-managed feature teams, and networked organizations. Millennials have shifting expectations about the meaning of work. What will be the secrets to career success for women (and men) in the organizations of the future? Time will tell, but it is a safe bet that attention to individual mindsets and corporate culture will remain key.

Jocelyn Phelps, MBA INSEAD 93D Program Director, Leadership and Organization Development at Société Générale

#INSEAD #INSEADFORGOOD #BusinessForGood #WomenInBusiness

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childotkw · 5 years

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When you write your fanfics, do you plan ahead or write what comes to your mind?? What aspects must a fanfic have to be good quality in your eyes?? BTW big fan of yours;P

It’s a bit of both to be completely honest, darling. Most stories I have the general outline already planned out before I start writing. I knew pretty much the entire plot of Consuming Shadows before I started writing (and that was 3-4 years ago). Same with you belong to me and Gold Dust and yesterday i died, tomorrow’s bleeding. I know the overarching plot like the back of my hand, all the major moments and points of character development. There are no big surprises for me when I’m writing, and very rarely will a scene that has serious ramifications on the overall story/characters come to me. I actually have a rather rigid focus when it comes to that.

That being said, a lot of the details of the scenes seem to almost write themselves. I know the basic gist of what I want to happen in the scene, but the dialogue and the individual actions tend to just come to me on the fly as I go. Take the kiss scene in CS Chp. 38. I knew I wanted the kiss to happen in that chapter. I knew I wanted Hadrian to threaten Riddle with the knife. I knew I wanted Hadrian to be marked. But I had no concrete plan of getting from one moment to the next. That just comes to me randomly as I go.

If that makes sense??

As for what makes a good fanfiction? This is purely my personal preference, and I don’t mean to say that stories that don’t have any of the elements I like can’t be good. This got a bit long so there’s more under.

PLOT

I just find it extremely hard to get into multi-chapter stories that have a weak or uninteresting plot. I need stimulation. I need mystery. I need intrigue. The more compelling a plot, the more likely I’ll get drawn in. Plot is just such a core part of long stories, that it has to be strong enough to weather itself. A plot can’t burn out. It can’t lose too much traction. Of course there can be moments of respite or calm, but the longer the story, the bigger the tension needs to be to keep interesting. It’s a really thin line to walk, since you don’t want your story to be so high-strung it turns people off and they never get a breather, but at the same time you don’t want long gaps of inactivity. CS is where I’ve been trying to learn this balance of action vs. inaction, and I still feel like I’m failing in most instances.

But yeah, I typically know within the first chapter if I’ll like something enough to keep with it, and I know that’s kind of rough, since like CS, most stories take a couple of chapters to really do anything, but that’s always been me.

CHARACTER

My second biggest thing is character. I can’t stress how much I need to click with a character, on some level. There needs to be something about them that I can look at and be like I get that. I think the more emotionally/mentally damaged the character, the more intriguing they are. That’s basic human nature in a lot of ways. We’re drawn to the broken ones.

More often then not, my favourite characters are the ones with issues. Tony Stark. Wally West. Harry Potter. Tom Riddle. Naruto Uzumaki. Keith Kogane. Izuku Midoriya. Bruce Wayne. Stiles Stilinski. Edmund Pevensie. I am drawn to every single one of these characters because they are, in some fundamental way, fragile. (And yes, I know that all of them are male, don’t think I’m hating on damaged female characters, there’s plenty to pick from, these are just my personal favourites). The more compromised a character is, the better.

No one likes a Mary Sue (though they certainly have their place, too). For me though, characters need to be flawed in some way. Whether through some form of trauma, through their own reckless sense of morality, or simply from something as simple as a personality trait. It’s important that characters reflect some version of reality. No one’s perfect. Everyone’s got something that’s a mark against them. Once you find that for a character, it instantly makes them more interesting - note, interesting, not likeable, there’s a strong difference between a likeable character, and an interesting one.

TENSION

This is a lesser thing, but still remarkably vital in my eyes. There needs to be some form of tension or conflict (of course, this isn’t always the case, I just tend to drift to the angsty stories because I’m a glutton for that sweet, sweet pain). Tension is key because it instantly gives us things like stakes, and obstacles, and, perhaps most importantly, growth. A character or story with tension/conflict is immediately presented with an opportunity to grow. The higher the tension/the more painful the conflict, the more room you have to play with. Tension let’s writers experiment with their characters.

Tension let’s certain things be revealed - the type of person your character is, their desires, their motivations, etc. This kind of ties back into the plot in a lot of ways as well. Stories need a good balance of tension and resolution. Each problem in your story should have a solution - whether the character actually solves it is just another point of tension. Or perhaps it’s something they could easily do, but something holds them back? (Sorry to keep bringing my own work into this, but take Hadrian and Riddle’s interaction with the kiss/mark. Hadrian could have easily avoided that whole mess if he just sat down and spoke with his mother, but because he didn’t, it became a much bigger problem than it should have been. And that snowballs from there. Tension.)

DIALOGUE

Last point, I swear. Dialogue is also a thing for me. Stories with good dialogue are excellent. I think a lot of stories/author don’t understand what an effective tool dialogue can be when used properly. You can reveal so much about a character with just one single line of dialogue. You can solve a million issues with a simple sentence, or, alternatively, you can cause a whole storm of problems with one slip of the tongue. Dialogue is dangerous because it serves so many purposes. You can have conversations between Character - Character, or Author - Character - Reader, depending on your wording. It’s a beautiful, multi-layered thing that doesn’t always get the credit it deserves. Dialogue is one of the most fascinating things at your disposal when writing, and you can always tell a good story from a great one based on the dialogue (not all stories have dialogue in them, of course).

Speech patterns, vocabulary, all of it. Dialogue can breathe life into characters. It should never be underestimated.

I’m so sorry! This turned into a bloody essay. Omg. I don’t normally rant this much, but your ask come when I was doing my Creative Writing assignment on the techniques used in a book I’m reviewing so I was in the analytical mindset. I hope this helped though? Please note that I’m not saying these are the ‘be-all and end-all’ of good story elements. There’s plenty of stories out there that are fantastic without some of the aforementioned things. Again, personal preferences! Thank you though, Anon! I’m glad you like my stuff

#anonymous #writing #this is a long one #whoops #my personal preferences for stories

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