Why do some black women embody the mammy stereotype?
Firstly, if you are unaware of what the term mammy means or the history behind it, I highly recommend watching this. https://youtu.be/mEy9ZKf5NOo?si=9iK_ibAfO4AaR6e7
Just a series of thoughts I had while walking my dog. Black women, in particular, divested Black women have had a tendency to switch from being the mammy of the black race and left-leaning politics to being the mammy of the white race and right-leaning politics. But why? Neither of these groups have historically or currently respected black women nor have they done anything for us. Two sides of the same bird and black women as a collective find themselves sliding from one end to the other.
My observations had led me to believe black women are trying to earn love, admiration, and respect. These women are fully aware that with most people they meet, they start at a social deficit and will be guilty until proven innocent. This attempt to earn their keep has never and will never work. To me, these types of things are not transactional but black women generally refuse to come to terms with this. Despite the obvious signs that the mammying is not working out for them, black women continue to embody the stereotype.
In their defense, humans have a natural urge to want to feel a sense of belonging and have a place in a group. The mammy is often very unattractive. Obese, never dolled up, lacking in feminine style, hair tied in rags or covered with a bonnet. They want to feel wanted but it likely won’t come in the form of male attraction or the jealously of other women. And the need for external validation seems to be ten fold and more obvious with this demographic. Black women are rarely genuinely praised for beauty or womanhood outside of their romantic partners. The most obvious examples of this is the barrage of pandering from other demographics when they want praise, money, or clout. Instead, our nature of caring for others and looking attractive has gotten us exploited, preyed upon, and abused. When you pay attention to how others speak of you or black women as a whole, you’ll notice the reverence is often exploitative. The first thing that comes to mind is the infamous ‘black women will save this country’ cry from liberals during the last election cycle. It was completed with the artwork of an overweight black woman in a superhero outfit. Not ladies. Not souls to be protected and cared for but a shield used to prop up and protect others.
On the opposite side, a self proclaimed “conservative” black male posted a video of a conservative black woman repeating talking points and the video is titled ‘Black Women are waking up.’ To no surprise of mine, there was a white person who left the comment to the tune of proclaiming how happy he was that black women were on his side, and that’s great because black women work tirelessly to get things done and influence others. I’m paraphrasing of course.
Seems the mule and wakanda warrior image is on both sides suffocating black women. The same commenters praising the Republican woman of course can be seen in previous videos commenting how horrible, disturbing, overweight, unattractive, and useless black women are. Quite interesting. Not to say we aren’t allowed to have opinions or be politically informed. I myself am independent yet am baffled by the behavior of other black women who jump at the first opportunity to make politics their entire identity to seek approval from others.
So the question stands, do other people like and appreciate you or do they want to use you, knowing you will take on the role of a trooper that will do anything to push their agendas? The most important question though, do you care black women? My point is, mammies are seeking out appreciation by trying to sit others on top of their shoulders because the admiration is just not coming automatically. But despite my demographic clearly seeing this tactic of theirs is not working, they continue doing it anyways.
Why do black women continue to do this?
Do black women have a savior complex? They want to be praised for something even if what they’re doing is ultimately harmful to our safety or image. The best example I have for this is very recent with the Tyler Perry discourse. Black women all across the interwebs latched onto this discourse and refused to let go for at least a month. Some of them are still trying to squeeze out discussions about this dead horse. Didn’t these women already come to the conclusion they will level up, open their options, and focus on high value men? So why the excitement to jump on this repetitive conversation?
My hypothesis: They just wanted to keep repeating that they are making more than black males (btw this is not true, at least not yet. In America, males make more on average but Black American women are more employed). They want to feel better than someone else and take on the role of a superior. A mentor, a leader, a teacher, or a mother. They believe they aren’t wanted by the people they seek validation from and they resort to being needed instead.
To disarm others
I have many observations on the sambo type behavior I’ve seen coming from the collective of the black demographic in America, but particularly Black women I think this could be their form of self preservation. Like I already mentioned, these women are well aware upon their first meeting with almost every person that they are immediately seen as negative stereotypes. Historically in this country, little black girls and grown women alike have had to suffer verbal and physical abuse, especially from white women. The modern media machine makes it clear they want the black girl image to be on the sideline in a support role, not the main character. Various post on social media have also made it known that Black women are also aware when they don’t play this supporting role in real life, they are demonized and viciously attacked. Mammying is also a form of keeping the attackers at bay.
Trying to find identity in the west
Lastly, my speculation of the mammy archetype played out by so many Black women is the lack of identity the collective has outside of social justice. Ignoring the incorrect generational stereotypes, Gen Z has improved at finding purpose and hobbies outside of fighting for something. Unfortunately with the timing, it’s right around the time the media and certain demographics would like everyone to believe black girls eat, sleep, and breathe fighting the system and it’s been heavily pushed onto us through movies, books, and the social media algorithm. The most well known image of us comes from the 60s Black woman standing strong with her fist in the air. This is the portrayal cast over our normal everyday lives or modern accomplishments. Mix that in with the overweight, abrasive, asexual, unthreatening mammy and we have the perfect recipe. Most importantly this is the personality some Black women know when in doubt, they can fall back on.
In my next post I want to expand on this and touch on Black women’s reluctance and discomfort when setting boundaries with others who demand the mammy comes to their aide and include them in everything. Will Black women continue to allow multiracial women to bully them into silence and erase their representation? Will Black women continue to let the male race intimidate them into supporting males whom brand themselves LGBT?
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What kind of saber is baxia anyway?
I love my bloodthirsty princess of a cursed blade, and in my heart of hearts i am nothing but a sword nerd, so i've been extremely fascinated by Baxia and how we know frustratingly little about what she actually looks like!
I mean, look at bichen, right?
Bichen in the donghua:
Bichen in the drama:
They're clearly not exactly the same. The scabbards are different, and the guards have a different shape. But these are recognizably different iterations on one theme, right? Thin jian with a white grip silver guard, light blue tassel and silver mounting accents on the scabbard.
Now this is baxia in the donghua:
And baxia in the drama:
????????
THAT'S A COMPLTELY DIFFERENT WEAPON
it doesn't stop there either, the audio drama is kind enough to give us ANOTHER COMPLETELY DIFFERENT BAXIA
pretty! But how is that he same sword??
And when we go back to the novel, we get very little information on her appearance other than the fact that her blade is tinted red with all the blood she's absorbed. Which none of these designs incorporate.
This is not a dig on the designs itself, they're all quite gorgeous in their own right and i'm going to spend a while discussing all of them! Because isn't it fascinating how, since we know little about novel baxia beyond "saber" all of these designs ended up so different? What kinds of sabers are these, anyway?
So, a chinese aber, aka a "dao" (刀) just means a sword that has only one cutting side. As opposed to a jian, which has two.
You can see how that leaves a LOT of room for variaton.
I've actually seen some people get confused because Huaisang's saber in the untsmed is thin and quite straight, making it superficially resemble the jian more than drama!baxia, but it is still clearly a saber!
See? only one cutting blade!
This, to me looks a lot like a tang dynasty hengdao
credit to this blog for providing his image and being a great source for all this going forward.
TANGENT: during all this I found out the english wikipedia page for dao is WRONG! Ths is what they about the tang hengdao!
So that sounds like the hengdao was called that during the sui dynasty, but then, after that, started being called a peidao, right?
WRONG
I LOOKED AT THE SOURCE THEY USED AND IT SAYS THIS:
IT WAS CALLED THE PEIDOU UNTIL THE SUI DYNASTY, AT WHICH POINT IT WAS CALLED A HENGDAO. Which would carry over to the Tang dynasty. This was the source wikipedia linked! and it says something else than they say it does!
Anyone know how to edit a wikipedia article?
ANYWAY
BACK TO BAXIA
Since we're already at the drama, let's look at drama baxia: She's also straight! the general term for straight-backed saber is Zhibeidao, but that's a modern collector's term, and doesn't really say anything about which historical kind of saber baxia could be based on. Another meta i found on the drama nie sabers already went on some detail here.
I'm gonna expand on that a little: The kinds of historical straight-backed sabers we see resemble the hengdao a lot more than they do baxia. They don't go to their point as harsly as she does (she's basically a cleaver!) and they're all way skinnier.
No, my personal theory is that instead of being based on any kind of historical sword, drama!baxia is based on a Nandao.
I mean, come on, look at it!
Baxia!
The Nandao... isn't actually a historical sword. It was invented for Wushu forms. There's a really fascinating article about its conception, but that's why the swords in the images look a little thin and flimsy. Wushu swords are very flexible and light, they're dance props, not weapons to fight with. There are actual steel versions of Nandao, but they're recreations of the prop, not the other way around.
So That's one way in which Baxia differes from the Nandao: she's actually a real weapon. The other is that, as you can see above, the nandao has an S-shaped guard. Baxia doesn't. She's also much more elaborately decorated, of course. Because she's a princess.
Now: audio drama baxia!
This is much easier. with that flare at the tip?
Oh baby that's a niuweidao, all the way!
There are more sabers with that kind of curved handle, but the broad tip is really charcteristic of the niuweidao. The Niuweidao is also incredibly poplar in modern media, often portrayed as a historical sword, but it originated i nthe 19th century! And it was actually never used by the military!
That's right, the Niuweidao was pretty much exclusively a civilian weapon! That makes its use here anachronistic, but so is the nandao, and considering that the origin story of the Nie is that they use Dao intead of Jian because their ancestors were butchers, portraying them with a weapon historically reserved for rebels and common people instead of the imperial military is actually very on theme!
Finally, Donghua/Manhua baxia. These two designs are so similar I'm going to treat them as one and the same for now.
Unlike both previous baxias, The long handle makes it clear this baxia is a two-handed weapon, though Nie Mingjue is absolutely strong enough to wield her with one hand anyway. Normal rules don't count for cultivators.
Now, this is where things get tricky, because there are a lot of words for long two-handed sabers. And a lot of them are interchangable! This youtube video about the zhanmadao, one of the possible sabers this baxia could be based on, goes a little into just how confusing this can get. This kind of blade WAS actually in military use for many centuries, making it the most historically accurate of all the baxias. But because of that it also has several names and all of those names can also refer to different kinds of blades depending on what century we're in.
So here's our options: i'm going to dismiss the wodao and miandao, because these were explicitly based on japanese sword design, and as we can see manhua baxia has that very broad tip, so that won't work
(Example of a wodao. According to my sources Miaodao is really just the modern common term for the wodao, and the changdao, and certain kinds of zhanmadao... do you see how quickly this gets confusing?)
Next option: Zhanmadao.
Zhanmadao stands for "horse chopping saber" so... yeah they were anti-cavalry weapons. meant to be able to cut the legs and/or necks of horses. That definitely sounds like a weapon Nie Mingjue would wield. But if you watched that youtube video i linked above, you'll know the standardized Qing dinasty Zhanmadao looked very different from earlier versions. It was inspired by the japanese odachi, and more resembles the miandao than its ealrier heftier counteprarts.
Earlier Ming dynasty Zhanmadao on the other hand were... basically polearms. the great ming military blog spot, another wonderful source, says these are essentially a kind of podao/pudao (朴刀) which looked like this
Now that blade looks a lot like baxia, but the handle is honestly too long. Donghua!baxia straddles the line between sword an polearm a little, but while zhanmadao have been used to refer to both long-handled swords and polerarms, this was undeniably a polearm, not a sword.
If you want to know what researching this was like, I found a picture of this blade on pinterest-- labeled as a "two-handed scimitar"-- and the comment section was filled with people arguing about whether this was a Pudao, Wudao, Zhanmadao, Dadao, Guandao, or a japanese Nagita.
So... that's how it was going. This has kept me up until 2 AM multiple times.
However! Thanks to this article on the great ming military blog I found out there have historically been pudao blades with shorter handles!
Specifically, Ming dynasty military writer Cheng Ziyi created a modified version of the pudao to work with the Dan Fao Fa Xuan technixues-- aka technqiues for a two-handed saber, which would alter heavily influence Miaodao swordmanship-- thereby, as the article points out, essentially merging the cleaver-polearm type Zhanmadao with the later two-handed japanese-inspired design.
This is the illustration for the Wu Bei Yao Lue (武備要略) a Ming dynasty military manual
This blade shape in the illustration doesn't match Baxia exactly, but since it's a lengthened Pudao-like blade and we've seen above that those can match Donghua Baxia's shape, i'm gonna say that calling Baxia a Zhanmadao with a two-handed grip isn't all that innacurate!
However, because all of these terms are so intertwined, there are a dozen other things you could call her that would be about equally correct.
To show that, here's a lightning round of other potential Baxia candidates:
Dadao (大刀)
Which are generally one-handed and too short. However!
Another youtube video i found of someone training with a Zhanmadao that resembles baxia a little also calls it a "shuangshoudai dao" (雙手带 刀) shuangshou means two-handed, and while 雙手带 seems to refer to a longer handled weapon, when looking for a shuangshou dao or shuangshou dadao (双手大刀) we find a lot more baxia-resembling blades like here and here
I also found that, while the cleaver-like Dadao is strictly a product of the 20th centuy, since dadao just means big sword or big knife, it has been used to refer to loads of different weapons! Some people could've called the zhanmadao and pudao "dadao" during the Ming dynasty as well.
Another potential baxia candidate that mandarin mansion classifies as similar to the later dadao (though longer, as seen in the illustration below) is the "Kuanren Piandao"
Which piqued my interest because this diagram classifying different tpye of Dao:
Claims that a Kuanrenbiandao (diferent spelling, same sword) is the same as a modern day Zhanmadao.
(So once again, all of these terms are interchangable)
Another opton Is the Chuanmeidao/Chuanweidao (船尾刀) below you can see a diagram, based on the Qing dynasty green standard army regulation, of blades all officially classified as types of "pudao"
The top middle is the Kuanren Piandao, and bottom left is the Chuanweidao.
Both of these have a lot of baxia-like qualities.
So there you go! live action baxia is based on a Nandao, audio drama baxia is based on a Niuweidao, and Manhua/donghua baxia is some kind of two-handed Zhanmadao/Pudao/Dadao depending on how you want to look at it.
I'm honestly surprised no one has made the creative decision to portray Baxia as a Jiuhuandao, aka 9 ringed broadsword yet.
I mean look at it! Incredibly imposing. Would make for a great Baxia imo. (@ upcoming mdzs manga and mobile game: take notes!)
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Toying around with a sort of Apex Polarity spin involving Sun and Moon and having them as Arctic Fox type of creatures (think werewolf monster body types but fox style) and Y/N is an Arctic Hare-esque humanoid mythical being with white fur and long ears tipped in black. Of course, it's set in the Arctic tundra. Thinking of calling it Of Fox Maws.
You've seen the fox men before. They'll skirt the outsides of the large valley you like to go to gather arctic willow and sedge out of the snow. Their eyes glint in the harsh Arctic light, watching you. You warily tense your legs, always ready to bolt should the two fiends decide they're hungry enough to attempt to chase you down.
You can't trust foxes.
But you always skip away, out of sight and far from the terror of what could easily be your last day. This happens for a season. Sometimes, they attempt to creep closer in plain view but you turn tail and run, ducking behind snowy hills and hiding low until you're certain they're gone.
Once, you were caught off guard in the middle of your foraging. One voice called softly out to you. You jumped back and found the fox men too close, almost within lunging distance—your little heart fluttered as if to take flight and escape—but you ran and ran and ran until you couldn't breathe. Then, you look behind you.
The fox men were nowhere to be found.
One day, you're amid a rocky field of purple saxifrage, happily picking blossoms to toss in your mouth while twisting your long ears this way and that to listen in for any predators or creeping fox men that might try to break your little neck in their vulpine jaws. You never expected the teeth to come from the ground you placed your foot on. A snap of metal. A bone crack. You're bitten by something cold and terrible, and it chains you to the ground. Terrible pain eats your leg as blood, crimson among the snow and rocks, begins to drip down your fur.
You panic. Such is your nature. You thrash and struggle while the metal trap digs deeper into your leg. The safety of daylight begins to fade as exhaustion and fear begin to take hold, and then you see them. Their glinting eyes, their sharp ears narrowed, their fur white and strangely marked with colorful swirls on their underside, their claws scraping over the ground as they come closer and closer.
You cry it in your terror—you could always run before. They talk low and soft to you, one anxiously coaxing you to stop moving, to stop hurting yourself, but you tug and struggle in your wild franticness. The teeth keep biting your leg—you flounder before a set of arms catches you, pinning you down with strange gold and red fur on his chest that warms your deathly chilled body. You scream but another set of hands holds down your caught leg—this one with deep blue and silver swirls in the fur on his chest. You dissolve in the horror of the end that will come from too many jaws—
A musical steel note plays when he breaks the chain in half with his raw strength. You keep thrashing, struggling to get away, but the fox men are too strong, and the one holding you keeps asking you to stop being frightened—they only want to help. The other digs his dark claws into the metal trap and pries it apart as the other drags you out of reach of the contraption maw, and you cry from the pain of it all.
The two begin yipping and fussing. When they press their hands to the bleeding bite mark on your leg, the anguish overwhelms you until all you see is white, then nothing.
They become frantic at your slumped form and all the blood on your silky white fur. Sun takes to your wound and Moon takes you in his arms, and keeping pressure on the strange bite, they carry you back to their den. There, you'll be safe and warm, and there, they can help you with your broken leg.
Hopefully, you won't keep screaming when you wake up. (You will.)
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