#and his reverse racism comment was the last | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

andsheoverthinks · 6 months

Text

Literature Review: The Essential Rationality of Male Violence and Violent Rhetoric: Why the Patriarchy Needs Andrew Tate -- New York Magazine Feature: Tate-Pilled

[Note: this post was drafted in March and does not include updates from the last two months. all emphasis is mine.]

You're living in your own world, where love is all synthetic [...] Yeah, poor little [boy]. Cries [his] eyes out, it's all part of the show. -- G-Eazy, Downtown Love [edited]

Tate-Pilled attempts to hone in on the evil that is Andrew Tate and his appeal to teenage boys. It's very comprehensive. However, I disagree with the premise that devotees of Tate are victimized by feminism and anti-racism and therefore cannot be blamed.

Tate-Pilled relies on a familiar litany in which boys, especially white boys, are constructed as infantile, vulnerable, and in need of validation and protection, lest they take violent and justified revenge when they reach manhood.

Likewise, Andrew Tate himself is constructed in a similarly sympathetic manner, despite the many descriptions of his callous, sadistic, and [allegedly] criminal behavior.

Miller [the author] suggests that Tate's 'barbarism' [her word, not mine] is simply a learned behavior and a rational, or at least, expected response to his experiences. Like the best and most sopping-wet pathetic little meow-meow of Tumblr's own beloved fictional male villains, Tate had a troubled childhood. His Black father was a paragon of the masculinity Tate portrays now -- gambling, drinking, womanizing, and left young Tate with his white mother, blaming her for the collapse of their family [It's a little Othello and Desdemona for my taste]. It's implied the combination of his parents' divorce and growing up poor soured him against all women, instilled in him both severe daddy issues, an adoration for toxic masculinity, and a ravenous hunger for wealth and fame.

As a poor kid in the council flats, Tate would see men driving Ferraris and become enraged that they seemed to be flaunting possessions he could not afford. Things would be different when he became “rich rich.” From Emory, the chess master, Tate seemed to have learned to see human existence as a battlefield with winners and losers, men and bitches, kings and “brokies.”

[Tate frequently alludes to metaphorical battles, and sigh, the 1999 film The Matrix, itself a metaphor for battle between truth and lies]

Tate is portrayed here not even as unstable and tragic, but as the rational outcome of a boy deprived of material wealth and his father. Whether intentional or not, Miller falls into a common pitfall to nearly all cultures -- a belief in the inevitability of male violence, one which almost always holds someone else responsible for a man's acts of violence, whether it's the system for not coddling him, women for not fucking him, or his parents for not teaching him to be a good man.

It wasn't always this way. The Ancient Greeks (misogynistic as they were, especially in Athens) valued small penises and sexual restraint as evidence of the essential rationality of men. Somewhere along the way, the cultural narrative has changed from 'men are always rational' to 'whatever men do is rational.'

In Miller's narrative, Tate's coming-of-age-story is paralleled, unsurprisingly, by that of his followers. However, these 21st century boys are not motivated by a broken home or a lack of material wealth, but instead and perhaps more insidiously, a system that is said to war against their very nature. These boys are facing feminism which has gone too far, anti-racism which has swung into reverse racism, and gay and gender-non-conforming men who stand to destroy all that is good and great about masculinity [shh, don't tell anyone tell them about Achilles and his *good friend* Patroclus].

In 2019, in an opposite corner of the internet, the YouTuber Natalie Wynn made a 30-minute video titled Men. Wynn is a transgender philosopher and commentator on gender politics, and she posted the video on her channel, ContraPoints, which has 1.65 million subscribers. In it, she lays out with surgical delicacy the ways she thinks feminists have failed to address what some now call “the masculinity crisis.” [...] But in Men, Wynn gently asks her progressive viewers to consider the possibility that men’s-rights activists’ concerns contain a nugget of truth: that the suffering of men is real, especially among those who were never high on any kind of ladder. Much feminist theory accounts for this, but many online feminists don’t. “Maybe the average man is also oppressed by the system the feminists call patriarchy,” Wynn says.

What the article neglects to mention is that Wynn is the child of a professor and a doctor, attended prestigious universities and started a PhD before becoming bored and dropping out. Wynn, firmly ensconced in the upper middle class, is very much part of the 'liberal elite.' Wynn has more in common with Elon Musk, fellow PhD dropout, than the average prole.

No one, feminists included, purports that no man has struggled ever, whether it's because of race, sexual orientation, disability, poverty, mental health, et cetera. However, no man suffers by virtue of being a man. Those who are 'never high on any kind of ladder' are not suffering by virtue of being men but for something else. For example, the suffering I experience by being a Black woman does not mean that I experience heterophobia because I happen to be straight and am suffering. I've suffered due to mental health, too, and also the general stresses of life, which escape no one. It's strange how we've all forgotten about the concept of intersectionality and instead try to pretend that women are hysterical and delusional, being the inherently irrational beings that we are and that, for example, white women having power over Black men in some instances means that patriarchy is as real as a dream on a dinner of bad cheese.

Andrew Tate isn't the first, and won't be the last, to seize on 'male suffering' as a rallying cry for violence. Suzanne Collins once described humans as “fickle, stupid beings with poor memories and a great gift for self-destruction,” and I fear she's right. Have we forgotten the translation of Mein Kampf (My Struggle)?

I rather dislike drawing parallels between disenfranchised groups lest it seem too much like a comparison, but I find the resemblances in the rhetoric eerie. Hitler's autobiography glorifies suffering, and how he claims it turned him into a genocidal anti-Semite (as well as xenophobic against the 'wrong kind' of white people). Mein Kampf is a tale of radicalization, of how Hitler claims he went from liberal to fascist.

One feels it again when one sees his photographs—and I recommend especially the photograph at the beginning of Hurst and Blackett’s edition, which shows Hitler in his early Brownshirt days. It is a pathetic, dog-like face, the face of a man suffering under intolerable wrongs. In a rather more manly way it reproduces the expression of innumerable pictures of Christ crucified, and there is little doubt that that is how Hitler sees himself. The initial, personal cause of his grievance against the universe can only be guessed at; but at any rate the grievance is here. He is the martyr, the victim, Prometheus chained to the rock, the self-sacrificing hero who fights single-handed against impossible odds. If he were killing a mouse he would know how to make it seem like a dragon. One feels, as with Napoleon, that he is fighting against destiny, that he can’t win, and yet that he somehow deserves to.

-- George Orwell's review of Mein Kampf (1940)

Further, Mein Kampf also displays a sneering attitude to what present-day manosphere influencers would refer to as 'beta males' and soy boys.

Hitler, because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don’t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags and loyalty-parades. After a few years of slaughter and starvation ‘Greatest happiness of the greatest number’ is a good slogan, but at this moment ‘Better an end with horror than a horror without end’ is a winner. Now that we are fighting against the man who coined it, we ought not to underrate its emotional appeal.”

-- George Orwell's review of Mein Kampf (1940)

All this to say, I think Orwell was right and still is. Hitler didn't invent the glorification of a manhood of misery any more than Tate did. No wonder Tate and his ilk eschew soft fuzzy things like bubble baths, vegan diets, socialized healthcare, and makeup for men. The cultural script of the ideal man as a suffering, Christ-like warrior is incredibly pervasive, and that's partially why boys love Tate so much. He speaks a message that's subtly woven into our cultural cloth.

As Trumpers love to say when explaining their love for Trump, "He says out loud what we're all thinking but too afraid to say."

On a private jet, Tate taunts his brother, Tristan, for eating sushi. Eating “rice in a circle” will make men weak, Tate says, whereas his meal, fried chicken, makes men strong. “You know who eats sushi? Little fucking soy boys. Little fucking Democrats.”

I can't help but wonder if the distaste for protein sources that aren't meat amongst MRAs, specifically tofu and other soy-based products, is perhaps racist given that these are traditional foods in many Asian countries as well as the requisite anti-veganism (caring about the planet and cows is soft and fuzzy and therefore self-destructive).

The insistence that "boys don't cry" and "men are tough" isn't oppression. It's ensuring, and even grooming boys to grow into their roles as stoic oppressors. If we don't insist that they behave like they're meant to be on top of the food chain, they might decide they prefer a 'beta' life of veganism, cat-owning, and respecting women. The castration anxiety we manufacture in boys is the price they pay in order to benefit from patriarchy later on.

Tate’s saturation was so complete that he reached into the blue villages of New York City, where many boys in their bedrooms found his rude and ruthless evisceration of every sacred liberal value hilarious. Feminism, environmentalism, gluten intolerance, literature, Harry Styles, Lil Nas X — Tate assaulted all of these with pejoratives the boys themselves knew not to use.

Despite her best efforts to be 'fair', Miller describes a Tate who is not appealing to a disenfranchised class, but to those who aspire to bully whatever and whomever is not sufficiently male and therefore subhuman. 'Repeal the 19th' (the amendment which gave women the right to vote in the U.S.) is not the rallying cry of a disenfranchised group, but those who wish others (women) would quietly go back to being disenfranchised.

He told the boys they were naturally programmed to want to acquire wealth and to compete to become what he calls “top-tier men” and that, as men, they were evolutionarily superior to women — more rational, better drivers, better leaders. Most of the fans knew better, but that was the funny part: They concede it gave them an illicit boost. If you’re a teenage boy and feeling misunderstood, “it’s helpful to hear I’m meant to be stronger than a lot of my peers, that I’m meant to be better, bigger,” says Jacob, a senior at a public high school in Brooklyn. “It’s appealing to think that you’re more rational than 50 percent of the population, just because.”

There's no secret, no trick to his appeal. Tate makes men and boys feel powerful, just for existing. His rhetoric proves a high that they can't get enough of, one that they begin to feel entitled to.

Furthermore, the peeks at Tate's rhetoric that Miller includes, the more one wonders -- how can anyone who didn't enter with a total callousness for women and girls find this funny? To anyone with the barest shred of empathy, Tate's comments are sickening and enraging. However, in greater society, female-directed violence (despite the adorable videos of little boys insisting that it's wrong to hit girls) is a joke, and every boy knows the punchline.

Men often say in half-hearted defense, I don't think Andrew Tate is that bad. He's a bit distasteful, he's a bit sexist, yeah, but I don't think he's that bad. I can see you're really concerned, but it's not such a big deal, yeah?

Christian [who is, admittedly, 12] regards the Tate panic as a misunderstanding: “He makes a lot of jokes, and people take him out of context.” He sees Tate as “a little misogynist but not much much.”

The context, of course, is a culture that accepts and rewards misogyny.

To many guys, Tate's that friend who gets a bit sexist, a bit callous, a bit rapey after a couple of drinks. To many guys, they'd never do that stuff their crazy friend does, but that's just him. Many guys see Tate as a spectacle, a character, the circus, pure camp, no different from a particularly wild episode of RuPaul's Drag Race or the 'Birds Aren't Real' guy.

He is a character, but he is also Tate, and in interviews, he claims that he’s joking and that he’s dead serious.

They don't think his behavior is a threat to anyone's safety. After all, his only victims are women, who aren't really that important.

I'm an irrational woman, you see, affronted because I don't believe in the inevitability of male violence. I, and every woman who is disgusted by Tate, has refused to get the memo. How would we understand the joke? How on earth would we get the punchline? Women aren't funny.

[The joke, for many, is not how ridiculous Tate looks in this still.]

The joke: women are objects, and you can own them. The joke: women are scum. The joke: women deserve abuse. Et cetera. Ad nauseam.

And when women get angry, when woman swear up a storm and curse and accuse Tate and the manosphere of spreading dangerous rhetoric and normalizing violence against us, we're irrational, because with the inevitability of male violence comes the inevitability of female complacency. Women are supposed to be happy to be abused, or, at least, neutral. To rail against misogyny is to break the paradigm, and what lies underneath isn't pretty.

Given the tribalism of teenagers, I can only imagine that whichever boy in the friend group displays an initial queasiness towards Tate is told to suck it up and join his friends in what they believe is a glorious journey into manhood, facilitated by leaving their mothers' arms and being transmuted by the transformational and ancient power of woman-hating.

The process of dehumanizing a group as a way to legitimize and justify cruelty against its individual members is not something that porn producers invented. It has been a tried and trusted method adopted by many oppressors [...] Once the humanness of these individuals is collectively rendered invisible by their membership in a socially denigrated group, then it is that much easier to commit acts of violence against them.

-- Gail Dines, Pornland

Tate world is a bit like Pornland. In Tate world, the story is that women deserve abuse for refusing anything men desire [submission]. He advises 'disciplining' women for perceived misbehavior in the same way that one might smack the TV in irritation when it's not working properly -- although one would likely have more care for a pricey flatscreen than Tate has for women. If a dog owner treated their dog the way Tate recommends treating women, we'd call it animal abuse.

And yet, his young watchers laugh.

Boys entered Tate world through his most arresting clips — including those that suggest a violent hatred of women. In one TikTok that circulated untold millions of times, he describes what he would do as a pimp if a woman accused him of cheating: “Slap slap grab choke shut up bitch sex,” he said. [...] He had compared women to dogs and children. He said he preferred to have sex with 18- and 19-year-olds because they’ve “been through less dick.” He even appeared to endorse sexual slavery, once insisting on the Dave Portnoy podcast that a woman in a relationship “belongs” to the man, “and the intimate parts of her body belong to him.” [...] “Women have to want to work for you. Women have to want to obey you,” he explained. Tate compares himself to someone who “uses sex as a weapon” and a “reward.” [...] Tate said he had no use for a challenging woman. “All men want robots!” he insisted. “There’s no such thing as too submissive.” He seemed to be laughing, and his hosts, off balance, laughed along.

The distaste for a challenging woman and desire to punish her exorbitantly is unsurprising to anyone who's read Genesis, which tells the tale of a woman who failed to submit, a husband who obeyed his wife, and the destruction of Paradise. Misogyny is women's eternal punishment for disobedience. According to the Old Testament, men listened to us once, and it ruined everything.

And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it [...] -- Genesis 3:15-17, KJV

A warning to all would-be feminists, if you will. Even in the so-called secular West, we cannot escape this notion -- that woman-hating and women's perceived inferiority is divinely ordained. Tate is referred to as 'Top G[angster]', but his followers see him as no less than a god, sending down truths that match our worst cultural norms. Tate-ism is a religion.

[These two lines in the Quran are in fact directed towards Allah.]

What's even more telling about that last quote from Tate in the indent, is the wording. "He had no use." A woman who dissents, even once in a while, is decidedly not an object, and thus cannot be used.

'No' is an uncomfortable proposition, and despite his glorification of struggle, Tate wants his suffering to be exclusively self-inflicted.

Just like snow-struck damsel-in-distress Kai in that lovely, fuzzy fairytale The Snow Queen (who becomes a raging misanthrope until he's rescued by his female friend), Tate's cold heart knows no love, no empathy, no compassion, no kindness. A human woman is of little 'use' to him.

The only good woman is a yes-woman. The only way a woman can be rational is if she is parroting everything a man says. Tate's supposed 'girlfriend' Sofiya epitomizes this as the ultimate NLOG meets traditional femininity.

On her Twitter, Sofiya posts endless tweets expressing love, loyalty, and support for Andrew Tate and his brother and attempting to 'disprove' the claims of human trafficking, even as the daughter of a Romanian MP comes forward, along with the occasional anti-LGBTQ or anti-vax messages, along with a undercurrent of white supremacy (she's also anti-seed oils. I did not know that was a thing before now).

The appeal to teenage boys is obvious: wealth, fame, Bugattis, and a beautiful yes-woman who worships at his feet. In one of Sofiya's Tiktoks, the camera cuts between her staring adoringly up at Tate and Tate, expression obscured by his dark sunglasses utterly still and stoic. Sofiya is perfectly submissive towards him, just how Tate likes his women. The message is clear. Top G is demigod-prophet, and to be Tate-Pilled is to be one of his holy disciples. Time and time again, humans (especially men) are shown to be highly susceptible to magical, religious thinking. This is beyond mere-celebrity worship.

Sofiya's worship at the altar of Tate and performance of ideal womanhood has garnered her perhaps not respect but praise, validation, and effusive compliments from fellow Tate fans.

[ad nauseam]

Despite the overall negative responses of women and girls to Tate (As Miller says, "Girls hate Tate."), his followers have convinced themselves that despite making up a majority, dissenters don't matter by using the age-old smack-down to tell women they don't matter: 'You're ugly.' In this paradigm, beauty is seen as an indication of a woman's inner virtuousness -- here, her adherence to ideals such as submission.

Unsurprisingly, this isn't new or inventive.

[The ugly suffragette vs the beautiful and virtuous ideal woman.]

Ironically, the reason Sofiya (and a few other women) slavishly follows Tate is for the same reason men and boys do: for the endless gravy train of validation. Tate's boys are Not Like Other Boys (NLOB), not like the betas or the cucks or the simps or the white knights or the soyboys. By following 'Top G,' you, too, can become one of the chosen ones.

Many insist that becoming a devotee of Tate alleviates depression as is an excellent form of self-help. Despite this, Tate is not good for teenage boys, and the more self-aware ones know it.

When he was about 13, he spent 18 months down the alt-right rabbit hole before he pulled himself out. Jacob thinks Tate’s influence on young men is “horrible.” ... “Hate begets hate begets hate,” Jacob tells me. ... It’s a kind of arrogance, or at least a misapprehension, to believe that you can take the good without the bad, two different boys told me. One put it this way: “They think they’re taking the valuable stuff and leaving the garbage. But I don’t think they’re successful. People are much more susceptible than they like to think they are.”

Even though Tater Tots believe that no one can tell what their current media consumption habits are, women and girls pick up on the shift in rhetoric often enough.

Besides Tate's chilling rhetoric, there are also his actions.

[...] A sex tape [...] shows Tate hitting a woman with a belt. In the tape, Tate, kneeling in bed fully clothed, demands that the woman say she loves him before he pounces on her and begins thrashing her. (The woman later made a video saying it had been “pure game” and they were still friends.) Seven years later, the real reason for Tate’s removal would come to light: At around the time of the Big Brother taping, one of the women he hired had charged him with rape and another with assault. [...] Two days later, Tate and Tristan were jailed in Romania. They purportedly lured women to that country, then persuaded or forced them to work for their OnlyFans operation, “transform[ing] them into slaves,” according to Romanian prosecutors’ documents viewed by Reuters. In these documents, a Moldovan woman accused Tate of raping her twice and an American woman said she had been kept in a house manned by armed guards, her movements tracked by video cameras. (In addition to the accusations of human trafficking, organized crime, and rape, Romanian authorities said they are investigating the Tates for money laundering.

I've come across a few male social media influencers who promote a kind of 'third way' dudespace that's less reliant on the misogynistic cliches. The Good Men Project comes to mind.

Guys today are neither the mindless, sex-obsessed buffoons nor the stoic automatons our culture so often makes them out to be. Our community is smart, compassionate, curious, and open-minded; they strive to be good fathers and husbands, citizens and friends, to lead by example at home and in the workplace, and to understand their role in a changing world. -- The Good Men Project About Page

Despite this, I've never heard of groups of teenage boys going for these types of blogs or influencers. Is it because of the unfamiliarity of the rhetoric? There seems to be a consensus that masculinity without violence is somehow neuter.

Yet, there remains a pervasive 'counterargument' that boys only become swept up in the manosphere because of a lack of good male role models.

[Jimmy Gomez (D-CA)'s Dads Caucus, 2023]

Many would protest that Jimmy Gomez is too beta (soft, fuzzy, socialist) and not very masculine (warrior, struggle, suffering) in this picture to be someone for young boys to look up to -- despite sitting in the U.S. House of Representatives, a position of immense power in the grand scheme of things. The problem isn't a lack of male role models who aren't foaming at the mouth with dangerous and violent rhetoric, it's the belief that the death of unnecessary struggle and violence is the death of men. For men to be men it is essential to patriarchy that they possess at least the threat of violence.

If a single generation of men collectively decided women are rational people who deserve empathy, misogyny is depraved, and struggle and suffering are nothing to strive for, there might be an end in sight. That's why patriarchy needs men like Tate.

#bso glad people are talking about this #but the mainstream discourse is too shallow #tw andrew tate #i'm so sorry about the jumpscare in the middle #wrote this literally 1 year ago #misogyny

0 notes

anyroads · 4 years

Text

My mom: cancel culture is out of control! The head curator of SFMOMA got fired, just for saying that he would still buy art from white men!

Me (literally, my petty ass sent all this to her in an email): He wasn’t fired, he resigned. Anyway, I pulled together a bunch of quotes from reliable news outlets who published stories on the subject HOLD MY BEER:

"Gary Garrels, the museum’s longest-tenured curator, was asked about comments attributed to him in a @changethemuseum Instagram post in June. The post recounted that when Mr. Garrels had earlier spoken about “acquisitions by POC artists,” he had added, “Don’t worry, we will definitely still continue to collect white artists.” ... When a staff member suggested that Mr. Garrels’s comment was equivalent to saying, “All lives matter,” Mr. Garrels responded: “I’m sorry, I don’t agree. I think reverse discrimination — —”What he said after that was drowned out by gasps and someone saying, “He didn’t say that!” —

New York Times

("Racism and prejudice aren't quite the same thing. Racism, rather, is best known as a system in which a racial majority is able to enforce its power and privilege over another race through political, economic and institutional means. Therefore racism can be described as "prejudice plus power," as the two work together to create the system of inequality.” — Philip Lewis, Mic.com "There has never, ever, ever been a national set of laws or system put in place to systematically oppress white people or push them to a status that is "less than.” Not once. Ever. So "reverse racism" can truly never exist.” — Elite Daily)

"Used by opponents of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the expression [reverse discrimination], said Justin Gomer, assistant professor of American studies at California State University at Long Beach, “has been one of the most effective ways to undercut efforts to achieve racial equality.” He said, “It was popularized in the 1970s by civil rights opponents."

Leigh Raiford, associate professor of African-American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, called the term “the hollow cry of the privileged when they find themselves challenged to share power.”

And even some of Mr. Garrels’s defenders are surprised he used it.

Kevin Beasley, a Black artist who views Mr. Garrels as a supporter, and credits him with collecting his work for the museum, said that when he heard Mr. Garrels’s comment he “was shocked,” and wondered, “Is this Gary? It didn’t make sense.” …

But others say Mr. Garrels did not just momentarily misspeak. Many staff members say they recalled remarks he made during a panel discussion about female artists in January in which he spoke about “parity” for women and that it would take time — and added: “The other thing I have to say is I reassured artists we will continue to collect white men. There are a lot of great women artists but also still a lot of great men out there as well.”

Aruna D’Souza, the author of “Whitewalling: Art, Race & Protest in 3 Acts,” said in an interview that Mr. Garrels’s remark “wasn’t just a slip of the tongue.”

His message, she said, was: “‘Don’t worry, we can keep collecting men, too. Things aren’t going to change that much.’"

“Gary Garrels’s comment,” she continued, “was upsetting because he was making it explicit, whiteness will still be at the center of the institution.”

...

After the Zoom meeting, an anonymous group of former museum employees calling themselves xSFMOMA started a petition that drew several hundred supporters and called out Mr. Garrels for using “white supremacist and racist language.” The petition demanded he resign. — New York Times

""As Senior Curator, he represents the museum in tone and content. Through actions and words, Gary has been obtuse (at best) to the point of offense or deliberately racist (at worst) in his retorts to criticism," the petition says. "Amongst SFMOMA staff as well as in public view, Gary has used and continued to use white supremacist and racist language such as 'reverse racism.'"

The petition further describes Garrels as "ill-equipped to further SFMOMA's agenda of inclusion and equity," calling his removal from SFMOMA "non-negotiable." As of the time of this article's publication, the petition had 280 signatures.” — Newsweek

Then the museum’s store employees sent an email to the executive staff denouncing Mr. Garrels’s comments as racist. “We are not asking for an apology we’re asking for action and accountability,” the letter said.

The next day, Mr. Garrels lost some essential support when an unsigned email to staff from “Members of the Curatorial Division” was sent, saying they “collectively” disavowed Mr. Garrels’s reverse discrimination comments. They added, “We will no longer accept such racism denial; unilateral power over systems, money and colleagues; and comments, made publicly and internally, that are offensive and reckless.”

It demanded “actions and accountability for Gary’s conduct.” — New York Times

"Garrels’s resignation was accepted by both the museum’s director, Neal Benezra, and its board of trustees. A spokesperson was unable to comment on whether leadership requested his resignation or if Garrels had been the subject of any formal complaints prior to the staff meeting.

The curator’s resignation comes at an extremely tumultuous moment for the museum. Since the shutdown, it has laid off or reduced the hours of more than 30 percent of its staff. But it has also been the subject of aggressive criticism regarding its treatment of employees, particularly those of color, and its handling of issues of race and equity.

Garrels is the fourth employee to leave the museum this month in the midst of this internal turmoil. Nan Keeton, deputy director for external relations, left the museum on July 2 by mutual agreement after she was involved in the widely reported censorship of a critical comment on Instagram from a former employee, Taylor Brandon, about SFMOMA’s treatment of Black staff members. The museum’s recruitment staffing manager and its director of HR have also resigned.

Garells recently became the target of criticism after it emerged that he (as well as the museum’s director) had received no-interest home loans from the museum, which some saw as emblematic of its unequal treatment of employees. (Garells’s loan was worth $500,000.)” — artnet

One museum employee of color who asked to not be named because of fears of losing a job said it felt like time for Mr. Garrels to leave.

“We were trying to make all these changes,” the employee said. “He was an obstacle to that. We were working so hard for so long and for him to make these statements, it was so disheartening.”

Mr. Garrels’s departure was part of an ongoing debate about racial equality in the staffing and the collecting at the museum, which draws close to one million visitors annually. The staff, which numbered nearly 500 before a coronavirus closure and layoffs, was 59 percent white, 16 percent Latino, 12 percent Asian and 4 percent Black (the remaining staffers identified with two or more races), a spokeswoman said.

Maria Jenson, executive director of SOMArts, a San Francisco organization that supports art for social change, and a former SFMOMA public partnerships manager, said the resignation was a “reflection of much larger issues.”

“The same types of people keep getting hired for key leadership roles — namely people who are white and privileged,” she said. “Meetings feel like a social club.”

Last year, the museum staff went through racial equity training. But incidents still occurred. At the height of Black Lives Matter protests, SFMOMA had blocked from view a critical comment by a Black former museum employee, Taylor Brandon, who called museum officials “profiteers of racism.”

...No Neutral Alliance, a coalition of artists of color, was participating in the museum’s online exhibitions, but because of the way Ms. Brandon was treated, some of the artists are now boycotting the museum.” —New York Times

#I did not come to play #no he did not get cancelled for saying he would continue to buy work from white men #there were clearly deep rooted issues #and his reverse racism comment was the last #not the first straw

0 notes

qqueenofhades · 2 years

Note

You don't need to post this, I'd almost rather you didn't. But I lived in VT for years and Bernie Sanders' decision to piss in the well if he couldn't be President was just the latest in a decades-long pattern of being useless at best and an active hindrance at worst when it comes to passing any sort of legislation or reform that doesn't directly benefit Bernie Sanders. He says all the right things, but at the end of the day he's a semi-benevolent grifter with 3 houses, a documented refusal to share his wealth in the form of charitable donations, several vacations funded with twenties bilked from gullible teenagers and a long history of supporting the NRA right up until he decided to run for president. There is not a mitten or bird cute enough to make me like or respect that man. Would I have voted for him over Trump? Fuck yeah. Howard Hill's a lousy conman, but he's still better than Montgomery Burns.

If you don't mind, I will indeed answer this, just because it fits very well with what I'd learned from my own impression of Bernie and played into the reasons why I just never warmed up to him, even while he was being hailed as the new leftist messiah. If he had been the Democratic nominee in either 2016 or 2020, yes, I would have voted for him, but in either case, it's extremely doubtful that he would have beaten Trump. When you can just slap the "socialist" label on him and turn off the wishy-washy middle who would see him as far too radical + piss off all of Florida with comments supporting Castro + barely scrape up any African-American support + openly disdain and separate yourself from the party while trying to become presidential nominee of that party + don't have any significant or actual experience in passing legislation or working within the system, it is not a recipe either for an election win or a successful presidency. The Bernie diehards can keep insisting that there's some alternate universe where he was the Democratic nominee in 2016, beat Trump handily, and magically turned the country into a left-wing utopia, the end, but... yeah. It's not real.

I also think Bernie did enormous damage in tacitly encouraging his supporters to boycott the process if he wasn't the nominee, and refuse to support Clinton until it was almost the convention and he had already run the clock out. I will say that I think James Comey, rather than Bernie, most directly cost HRC the election; releasing the "we're gonna reinvestigate her emails that we investigated a thousand times!" letter a WEEK BEFORE THE ELECTION was a spectacular and unforgivable act of political sabotage that probably took just enough off her margins in key states to hand the election to Trump. (Polling from before and after the Comey letter supports this, iirc.) But Bernie was the one who really started and encouraged the Bernie Bros mindset of "don't vote for anyone if you can't have the Perfect Candidate" that has now thoroughly infiltrated the Online Left, to lasting and detrimental consequences. And for that alone, in my opinion, he has a lot to answer for.

If people still want to insist that Bernie would have magically won the election in a landslide and been a far stronger candidate than Clinton, I would like to point out that we had an almost exact Bernie-vs-Trump analogue in the 2019 UK elections. Jeremy Corbyn was the exact same old-school socialist uncompromising grumpy leftist as Bernie, whereas Boris Johnson was the orange-haired populist messiah propelled to power by racism, nativism, and xenophobia (Brexit Brexit Brexit!) like Trump. And what happened? Johnson won a crushing 80-seat majority in Parliament that completely reversed the losses of Theresa May's anemic 2017 performance and is still, at the moment, enough political insulation to save him from the no-confidence vote sparked by Partygate. (Basically, if you don't follow British politics, the Tory government was caught red-handed partying and drinking in Downing Street all winter, while imposing very tough covid-related socialisation rules on the British public, including cancelling get-togethers over Christmas with only a few days' notice. This is because the Tories, like the Republicans, think the rules don't apply to them and are just for little people to follow.) So yeah. We literally saw how that went in the UK, and there's no reason to think that the US version would have been any different.

As I have said, even an old white man with a reputation as an inoffensive bipartisan centrist, ie Biden, had the fight of his life to beat Trump and his hordes of gullible cult/open fascist supporters, and now the Republicans are screaming SOCIALIST and FAR LEFT RADICAL! at him even though Biden is... not. At all. Just imagine the ammunition they would have had against Bernie in a general election campaign, and Bernie himself has made their job easier at every turn, because he still wants to paint himself as a "morally privileged outsider" despite being a senator for 15+ years. (And as you point out, with very few actual legislative accomplishments to show for it, despite all his progressive platitudes.)

Anyway, both Bernie and a certain subset of his supporters never seemed to grasp that there is more to making real change than just giving speeches and posting on social media about it, and their "I'll take my ball and go home and refuse to be a team player" sore-loser attitude has contributed to the fissures in the Democratic party and made a lot of people feel justified in doing the same. So yeah. I am no fan of his either.

#anonymous #ask #politics for ts

53 notes · View notes

reginarubie · 3 years

Text

So, let’s, for a moment discuss this. My post was screenshot and it was used to comment on how white people are playing the victims in this fandom war because of something I said.

Post in reference: https://reginarubie.tumblr.com/post/675622796796346368/ahahaha-me-too-because-you-just

In this I say, and I quote, that the term “they are all just 40yo white hags” used in the tags was derogatory and insulting because of many problems:

a) because it was misogynist against men who ship Jonsa

b) because it was ageist

c) because it contained the term “white” in it used as an offense (a term I refused to repeat — notice I did not use the term “black” either — and explained why) pointing out that it was insulting of all people as a general, but first and foremost it was insulting of POC because they actually advocate for equality and by using the term white as derogatory the person in question was actually offending the POC because they were made to pass off as bad as the racists they fight against; and for obvious reasons it was offending of white people). Now my error — as it happens — laid in the point I made that this use of the term white was reverse racist.

And people got mad about it. Now, I am a white woman and I don’t shy away from all the abuse the POC have suffered in the whole of history from white people, but since I am a person who likes to learn when I saw what was being said I was confused as to why my comment could be taken as “white woman plays the victim”.

Also because my master thesis at university also touched this topics, I usually am very careful about what I write and the way I write it, to not elicit insult to other people.

I was lucky enough to engage into a conversation about it with a POC @undeadlilies — who I thank again for his politeness and availability toward me in explaining things and for having reached out to me to explain the situation — so that he could explain why my comment made such an impact and what could set off people in such a way.

Let’s start by a premise, I am a white woman, but I don’t live in the US, so I’m vastly ignorant about the society structure there. I am from Italy and here racisms is not the same plague as in the US so — due to this ignorance of mine — I have used the term reverse racism inappropriately for which I apologize to anyone who may have felt insulted by it, that was not the intention.

To explain in Italy racism is not as bad, I grew up in a non-racist home and our own fundamental law forbids and acts against any act of mistreatment or different treatment based of one’s skin color, religion, language or sexual orientation (as stated in article 3 and following articles which discipline the single matters):

Art. 3, Italian constitution

All citizens have equal social dignity and are equal before the law, with no differences based on gender, race read skin color, language, religion, political opinion, personal and social conditions.

— do not be offended by the term race used in the text please, because the constitution was written in the late 40s of last century and some words have changed their meaning since and it is commonly regarded as skin color instead of race.

So, that premise done with, I hope this explain that my background is a bit different from US based bloggers and thus has led me to misuse the term reverse racism.

Now, what I meant is that the person in question (who had used the derogatory term of which I was speaking before) was using the skin color (supposed) of other bloggers to insult them, something that — I did point out — was insulting of mankind in general and especially of POC because of how they would be put on the same level as the racists they fight against and have fought for centuries.

So perhaps the term I should have used was prejudiced against (supposed) white people, making a shield of them being POC against criticism (because that is what they’ve done and done again by screenshotting my post and blatantly ignoring what I had said in the post about such an insult to be offensive of all people in general and of all other problems such a derogatory term had displayed — ageism, misogyny towards men and also offense against his own shipmates since in the tags they also commented on how they were pathetic).

Now, while I am sorry my misuse of the term has insulted them and again I do apologize for it, I do feel like the comments that followed the post they made actually do prove what I was trying to say. You are actually being prejudiced toward people you suppose are not of color:

Saying that “white people should be honored to be shat on by POC” and that “white men are all inherently racist, evil and annoying as fuck” are the undeniable proof that you are having race-prejudices against other people and that you resort to use the same kind of verbal violence you have been subjected to against people who are innocent or have done nothing against you. The very same kind of verbal violence POC as a whole — and good portion of white people as well — advocate against!

Not all white people are racist and not all POC are saints; and the reverse is true as well, not all white people are saints and not all POC resort to the same kind of verbal violence/verbal insult that they may have received. People are just people, indiscriminately from their skin color, it’s your actions that show your true self.

And thankfully for it as well!, because some people instead of insulting, debate about misunderstandings and actually find common ground to understand each other — because most times, like in this case, it is about misunderstandings happening because of different backgrounds and not an inherent hate toward each other — and I and extremely grateful to @undeadlilies because our conversation has been an occasion for me to grow and learn new things. Thank you so very much.

Again, I apologize if my misuse of the term has offende anyone, it was not my intention and I hope to have cleared up the air about what I meant.

A more throughout, level headed apology can be found here.

#anti racism #anti discrimination #apology

83 notes · View notes

causeiwanttoandican · 4 years

Text

Harry, Meghan and me: my truth as a royal reporter

I've covered elections and extremism, but nothing compares to the vitriol I've received since I started writing about the Sussexes

By Camilla Tominey, Associate Editor27 March 2021 • 6:00am

It is probably worth mentioning from the outset that I never, ever, planned to become a royal reporter. I mean, who does? It’s one of those ridiculous jobs most people fall into completely by accident.

I certainly wasn’t coveting the position when I first found out how bonkers the beat could be after covering Charles and Camilla’s wedding in 2005. Desperate for ‘a line’ on what went on at the reception, journalists were reduced to flagging down passing cars in Windsor High Street and interrogating the likes of Stephen Fry about whether they’d had the salmon or the chicken.

Watergate, this wasn’t.

Yet when my former editor called me into his office shortly afterwards and offered me the royal job ‘because you’re called Camilla and you dress nicely’, who was I to refuse?

Having planned to get married myself that summer, and start a family soon afterwards, I looked to the likes of Jennie Bond and Penny Junor and figured it would be a good patch for a working mother as well as being one I could grow old with. Unlike show business, when celebrities are ‘in’ one minute and ‘out’ the next, the royals would stay the same, making it easier to build – and keep – contacts.

So if you’d told me that 16 years later, I would find myself at the centre of a media storm over a royal interview with Oprah Winfrey, I’d have probably laughed in your face. First of all, only royals like Fergie do interviews with Oprah. And since when did journalists become the story?

Yet as I have experienced since the arrival of Meghan Markle on the royal scene in 2016 – a move that roughly coincided with Twitter doubling its 140-character limitation to 280 – royal reporters like me now find themselves in the line of fire like never before.

We are used to the likes of Kate Adie coming under attack in the Middle East, but now it is the correspondents who write up events like Trooping the Colour and the Royal Windsor Horse Show having to take cover from the keyboard warriors supposedly defending the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s ‘truth’.

Accusations of racism have long been levelled against anyone who has dared to write less than undiluted praise of Harry and Meghan. But even I have been taken aback by the vitriol on social media in the wake of the couple’s televised two-hour talk-a-thon, in which they branded both the Royal family and the British press racist while complaining about their ‘almost unsurvivable’ multimillionaire lives at the hands of the evil monarchy. And all while the rest of the UK were losing their loved ones and livelihoods in a global pandemic.

Having covered Brexit, general elections and stories about Islamic extremism, I’ve grown used to being sprayed with viral vomit on a fairly regular basis, but when you’ve got complete strangers trolling your best friend’s Instagram feed by association? That’s Britney Spears levels of toxic.

Having a hind thicker than a rhino’s, it wasn’t the repeated references to my being ‘a total c—’ that particularly bothered me, nor even the suggestion that I should have my three children put up for adoption. At one point someone even said it would be a good idea for me to drink myself to death like my mother, about whose chronic alcoholism I have written extensively.

No, what really got me was the appalling spelling and grammar. I mean, if you’re going to hurl insults, at least have the decency to get my name right.

Yet in order to understand just how it has come to pass that so-called #SussexSquaders think nothing of branding all royal correspondents ‘white supremacists’ regardless of who they write for, or sending hate mail to our email addresses, offices – and in some cases, even our homes – it’s worth briefly going to back to when I first broke the story that Prince Harry was dating an American actor in the Sunday Express on 31 October 2016. Headlined: ‘Royal world exclusive: Harry’s secret romance with TV star’, the splash revealed how the popular prince was ‘secretly dating a stunning US actress, model and human rights campaigner’.

Despite my now apparently being on a par with the Ku Klux Klan for failing to acknowledge Meghan as the next messiah, it was actually not until the fifteenth paragraph of that original article that the ‘confident and intelligent’ Northwestern University graduate was described as ‘the daughter of an African-American mother and a father of Dutch and Irish descent’.

Call me superficial, but I was genuinely far more interested in the fact that Harry ‘I-come-with-baggage’ Wales was dating a former ‘briefcase girl’ from the US version of Deal or No Deal than the colour of her skin. A ginger prince punching well above his weight? This was the stuff of tabloid dreams. Little did I know then that covering the trials and tribulations of these two lovebirds would turn into such a nightmare.

The online hostility began bubbling up about eight days after that first story, when Harry’s then communications secretary Jason Knauf issued an ‘unprecedented’ statement accusing the media of ‘crossing a line’.

‘His girlfriend, Meghan Markle, has been subject to a wave of abuse and harassment’, it read, referencing a ‘smear on the front page of a national newspaper; the racial undertones of comment pieces; and the outright sexism and racism of social media trolls and web article comments’. Meghan’s mother, Doria Ragland, had apparently been besieged by photographers, while bribes had been offered to Meghan’s ex-boyfriend along with ‘the bombardment of nearly every friend, coworker, and loved one in her life’.

Suffice to say, I did feel a bit guilty. Although I hadn’t written anything remotely racist or sexist, I had started the ball rolling for headlines like the MailOnline’s ‘(Almost) straight outta Compton’ (referencing a song by hip-hop group NWA about gang violence and Meghan’s upbringing in the nearby LA district of Crenshaw), along with her ‘exotic’ DNA (which I subsequently called out, including on This Morning in the wake of ‘Megxit’ in January last year).

Omid Scobie, co-author of Finding Freedom, a highly favourable account of the Sussexes’ departure from the Royal family, written with their cooperation last summer, would later insist that the couple knew the story of their relationship was coming out and were well prepared for it.

I can tell you categorically that they weren’t, since I did not even put a call into Kensington Palace before we went to press for fear of it being leaked. (I did later discuss this with Harry, when I covered his trip to the Caribbean in November 2016, and to be fair he was pretty philosophical, agreeing it would have come out sooner or later. But that was before the former Army Captain decided to well and truly shoot the messenger, latterly telling journalists covering the newly-weds’ tax-payer-funded October 2018 tour of Australia and the south Pacific: ‘Thanks for coming, even though you weren’t invited.’)

The royal press pack is the group of dedicated writers who cover all the official engagements and tours on a rota system, in exchange for not bothering the royals as they go about their private business. It was a shame this ragtag bunch, of which I am an associate member, was never personally introduced to Meghan when the couple got engaged in November 2017.

I still have fond memories of a then Kate Middleton, upon her engagement to Prince William in November 2010, showing me her huge sapphire and diamond ring following a press conference at St James’s Palace with the words, ‘It was William’s mother’s so it is very special.’

I replied that she might want to consider buying ‘one of those expanding accordion style file holders’ to organise all her wedding paperwork. (Reader, I had given birth to my second child less than four months earlier and was still lactating.)

Not meeting Meghan did not stop royal commentators like me writing reams about her being ‘a breath of fresh air’ and telling practically every TV show I appeared on that she was the ‘best thing to have happened to the Royal Family in years’.

As the world followed the joyous news of the Windsors’ resident strip billiards star having finally found ‘the one’, the couple enjoyed overwhelmingly positive press culminating in their fairy-tale wedding in May 2018, which we headlined ‘So in love’ above a picture of the bride and groom kissing. I tweeted the wedding front page, along with the original story breaking the news of their relationship with the words, ‘Job done’. Yet, as Meghan would later point out in a glossy Santa Barbara garden, that was by far the end of the story.

According to the Duchess’s testimony before a global audience of millions, the seeds for their royal departure were actually sown by an article I wrote in November 2018 suggesting she made Kate cry during a bridesmaid’s dress fitting for Princess Charlotte.

Claiming the ‘reverse happened’, the former Suits star railed, ‘A few days before the wedding she was upset about something, pertaining to, yes, the issue was correct, about flower-girl dresses, and it made me cry, and it really hurt my feelings.’

She then went on to criticise the palace for failing to correct the story – suggesting that royal aides had hung her out to dry to protect the Duchess of Cambridge.

All of which left me in a bit of a sticky situation. As I told Phillip Schofield on This Morning the following day, ‘I don’t write things I don’t believe to be true and that haven’t been really well sourced.’

Having seemingly been completely bowled over by Meghan’s version of events, Schofe then went for the jugular: ‘I have to say, though, that’s all addressed in that interview, isn’t it, because she [Meghan] couldn’t understand why nobody stood up for her?’

Yet someone had stood up for her, on that very same This Morning sofa: me.

As I told Phil and Holly on 14 January 2019, as more reports of ‘Duchess Difficult’ started to emerge, ‘I think she [Meghan] is doing really well, she looks amazing, she speaks well. She has played a blinder.’

So you’ll forgive me if I can’t quite understand why Meghan didn’t feel the need to correct this supposedly glaring error once she had her own dedicated head of communications from March 2019 – or indeed when she ‘collaborated’ with Scobie, who concluded in his bestselling hagiography that ‘no one cried’?

Moreover, how did the Duchess know a postnatal Kate wasn’t ‘left in tears’? And if she doesn’t know, what hope has the average troll observing events through the prism of their own deep-rooted insecurities?

It appears the actual truth ceases to matter once sides have been taken in the unedifying Team Meghan versus Team Kate battle that has divided the internet.

Make no mistake, there are abject morons at both extremes spewing the sort of bile that, ironically, makes most of the media coverage of Harry and Meghan look like a 1970s edition of Jackie magazine.

It perhaps didn’t help my case that the day before the interview was aired in the US, I had written a lengthy piece carefully weighing up the evidence behind allegations of ‘outrageous bullying’ that had been levelled against Meghan during what proved to be a miserable 20 months in the Royal family for all concerned.

The messages – to my Twitter feed, my email, my website and official Facebook page – ranged from the threatening, to the typical tropes about media ‘scum’ and the downright bizarre. Some accused me of being in cahoots with Carole Middleton, with whom I have never interacted, unless you count a last-minute Party Pieces purchase in a desperate moment of poor parental planning.

Another frequent barb was questioning why the press wasn’t writing about that ‘pedo’ [sic] Prince Andrew instead – seemingly oblivious to the fact that no one would know about the Duke of York’s links to Jeffrey Epstein if it wasn’t for the acres of coverage devoted to the story by us royal hacks over recent years.

It didn’t matter that I had repeatedly torn the Queen’s second, and, some say, favourite son to pieces for everything from his propensity to take his golf clubs on foreign tours to that disastrous Newsnight interview.

Contrary to the ‘invisible contract’ Harry claims the palace has with the press, royal coverage works roughly like this: good royal deeds = good publicity. Bad royal deeds = bad publicity. We effectively act as a critical friend, working on behalf of a public that rightly expects the royals to take the work – but not themselves – seriously.

So when a royal couple preaches about climate change before taking four private jets in 11 days, it is par for the course for a royal scribe to point out the inconsistency of that message. None of it is ever personal, as evidenced by the fact that practically every member of the monarchy has come in for flak over the years.

If Oprah wasn’t willing to point out the discrepancies in Harry and Meghan’s testimony, surely it is beholden on royal reporters to question how the Duchess had managed to undertake four foreign holidays in the six months after her wedding, in addition to official tours to Italy, Canada, and Amsterdam, as well as embarking on a lengthy honeymoon, if she had ‘turned over’ her passport?

While no one would wish to undermine the extent of her mental health problems, could it really be true that she only left the house twice in four months when she managed to cram in 73 days’ worth of engagements, according to the Court Circular, in the 17 months between her wedding and the couple’s departure to Canada?

And what of the ‘racist’ headlines flashed up during the interview purporting to be from the British press, when more than a third were actually taken from independent blogs and the foreign media? The UK media abides by the Independent Press Standards Organisation’s Code of Conduct ‘to avoid prejudicial or pejorative reference to an individual’s race’, as well as by rigorous defamation laws. And rightly so – the British press doesn’t always get it right. But social media is the Wild West by comparison, publishing vile slurs on a daily basis with impunity.

Some therefore find it strange that such a litigious couple would claim to have been ‘silenced’ when they have made so many complaints, including resorting to legal action, over stories they claim not to have even read. There is something similarly contradictory about a couple accusing the tabloids of lacking self-reflection while refusing to take any blame at all – for anything.

In any normal world, informed writing on such matters would be classed as fair comment, but not, seemingly, on Twitter where those completely lacking any objectivity whatsoever are only too willing to virtue signal and manoeuvre.

As the trolling reached fever pitch in the aftermath of the interview, veteran royal reporter Robert Jobson of the Evening Standard called me. ‘Don’t respond to these freaks,’ he advised. ‘It’s getting nasty out there. Watch your back!’

Yet despite my general sense of bewilderment at the menacing Megbots, I can’t say it didn’t appal me to discover a close friend had received online abuse, purely by dint of being my mate. After discussing the lengths the troll must have gone to to track her down, she asked me, ‘Do you ever worry someone might do something awful to you?’ Er, not until now, no.

Of course it’s upsetting, even for a cynical old-timer like me. Worse still are people who actually know me casting aspersions on my profession on social media. Often these are the same charlatans who would think nothing of sidling up to me for the latest gossip on the Royal family, while publicly pretending that reading any such coverage is completely beneath them.

Most pernicious of all though – not least after Piers Morgan’s departure from Good Morning Britain following a complaint to ITV and Ofcom from the Duchess – is the corrosive effect this whole hullabaloo is having on freedom of speech. When you’ve got a former actor effectively editing a British breakfast show from an £11 million Montecito mansion, what next?

I cannot help but think we are in danger of setting race relations back 30 years if people are seriously suggesting that any criticism of Meghan is racially motivated. It’s the hypocrisy that gets me. When Priti Patel was accused of bullying, the very same people who willingly hung the Home Secretary out to dry are now the ones defending Meghan against such claims, saying they have been levelled at her simply because she is ‘a strong woman of colour’.

Of course journalists should take responsibility for everything they report and be held to account for it – but Harry and Meghan do not have a monopoly on the truth simply because the close friend and neighbour who interviewed them in return for £7 million from CBS took what they said as gospel.

If she isn’t willing to probe the disparity between Meghan saying someone questioned the colour of Archie’s skin when she was pregnant, and Harry suggesting it happened before they were even married, then someone must. There’s a name for such scrutiny. It’s called journalism.

The public reserves the right to make up its own mind – with the help of the watchful eye of a free and fair press. But that press can never be free or fair if journalists do not feel they can report without fear or favour. I’m lucky that a lot of the criticism I face is more than balanced out by hugely supportive members of the public and online community who either agree – or respect the right to disagree. Along with the hate mail, I have had many thoughtful and eloquent missives, including those that good naturedly challenge what I have written in the paper or said on TV, which have genuinely given me pause for thought.

I am more than happy to enter into constructive discourse with these correspondents, who are frankly sometimes the only people who keep me on Twitter. I mean, let’s face it, I wouldn’t be anywhere near the bloody thing if this wasn’t my day job.

With the National Union of Journalists this month declaring that harassment and abuse had ‘become normalised’ within the industry, never have members of Britain’s press needed more courage. As Winston Churchill famously said, ‘You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.’

Who would have thought that the preservation of the fundamental freedoms that we hold so dear should partially rest on the shoulders of those who follow around a 94-year-old woman and her family for a living?

If I’d known then what I know now, would I still have written the bridesmaid’s dress story?

Yes – doubtlessly reflecting sisterly sobs all round. But after two decades in this business, I am clear-eyed enough to know this for certain: whatever I had written, it would still have ended in tears.

227 notes · View notes

celticcrossanon · 3 years

Note

I’m so sorry for the rant. I just needed to clear my head and got compelled to do it in your inbox. 🙇🏾‍♀️

Not a question just some thoughts. Sorry I’m spamming you so much. I just read your latest reading about the wanna be“tour” and all I can do is SMH. I think to some extent we saw this coming but they are dialing it up and expanding. Conscious humans would’ve called it quits by now. The Remembrance Day pap walk, Going to elementary schools, “donations”, writing letters like they are world leaders, etc. On one hand I can’t see this becoming much of a “thing”. I don’t think MM and Jarry will go on doing this for long unless they can get some Hollywood to pay attention and acknowledge them. I think another reason with the more public European Royals work so well in their media is because their countries are relatively small, like California and Texas are on the large side in comparison, am I right? So much can happen on one side of the country that I only hear of thanks to friends back in California. I can’t see these two visiting any farm in Montana as “royals” if ever. They got a Clinton and Perhaps more big names and “engagement” is to come (oh god 🤦🏾‍♀️) I’m sure they and the sugars are just loving it but it all looks, sounds and feels so incrediblly STUPID & ABSOLUTELY VAPID AND INSULTING. etc etc. I cannot stand entitled people and the fact that these two cut off, trashed, and demand from their own families for a fleeting moment in the spotlight is unfathomable. That’s a testimony to how strong narcissistic delusions can be. It must be the best high I could ever ask for. 🖤Im new to “Royal Watching” if you can call what I do ‘that’, so I don’t really care about all the other indiscretions. I don’t trust the media and I think it’s just the BRF turn in the hot sun to catch hell. See Andrew, see the Clintons and all the others. Whatever drama is going on with Charles, see the rest of big business. I’m a narcissistic abuse survivor and I still study on the disorder. Now here I am watching these two who make my skin craw, this train needs to SPEED UP . I think I’m just looking for a bit of JUSTICE in the world right now. Between this administration, COVID, my job and all my other drama (I’m sure we all have some, if not BLESS YOU and pass it on 🥺) I’m flabbergasted and a little sick in my stomach at watching yet another set of people be able to walk through life seemingly so unbothered. It’s like the world is closing in and I’m suffocating. 🖤Like, your telling me that just because he was born a Prince and she married him and found a way to have children they get to get away with all of this?. The entitlement, the lies, the forced Wokery, using heavy and important subjects like mental health and racism for a PR boost all just to get a⭐️ on the Hollywood walk of Fame? For a couple of royals they sure know how to dump cold water on ya, they are the epitome of LIFE ISNT FAIR. And I’m sure that all depends on perspective, for example; their sugars who must be going diabetic RN. THEY think they have suffered as well. Look at the Cambridge’s who have not put a foot out of place yet have to deal with these tantrums from all over their family. All families have drama and I can see how the Harkles and the rest could be a payback of the Firm and family as a whole. The Queen covered so much and never really saw that Henry and Andrew and god knows who else were set straight. Look what having so much privilege can do. But is there a limit, anywhere?🖤

🖤Anyways, another thought I had was, this could be the end for any thought of reunion. This Narcissist has worked her magic and this clueless tone deaf fool has really gone and done it. I was driving and I thought of Prince William and the entire remaining Windsors & Mountbatten Windsor’s and the whole Aristocracy cutting the Harkles off entirely because the BRF called a wrap (or had to) and the UK became a Republic after Her Majesty. MM get the privlage in her narcissistic head that she’s the last ever to become a Duchess, Cathrine wouldn’t become the Princess of Wales and it all came down in part because of her and Henry’s actions. Yes Andrew and whoever else aren’t helping but these two made it exceptionally difficult. I think they would take pride in that especially publicly but only when they are praised for it. I think the Cambridge’s would have an easier time with moving on with their family, free to live as they please with no pressure to serve the public. Cathrine can be “lazy”, sleep in, & raise her kids and Wills is free to🖕 the paps who would surely still follow them. A La “where are they now”. The two that would have it the worse are the Harkles as they last bit of what they had to separate them from the rest of Hollywood is gone, no more Royal sheen but they don’t have much now. It would be stupid to use the titles after an abolished monarchy but they’d do it and expose themselves further.🖤 If you made it this far, one last thing. I got cut off while driving. That’s not unusual in this Miami traffic and usually i ignore it but with my mental state I couldn’t help but to compare. it was a packed road and I just really wanted to know where the heck the fire was. Why did this person need to rush so much on a busy road that no one else mattered even though we all have somewhere to go? That’s how I feel about the Harkles. What’s the point, where are they going? They went to New England for Christ sake to play faux royalty, in more trashy outfits might I add. 🤦🏾‍♀️

I guess I do have a question, DOES THE WORLD REALLY BELONG TO THOSE WHO JUST Get UP AND TAKE IT?

Thanks for humoring me and providing this space. ✌🏾

Note: My apologies for this very long post, everyone. I can't put a page break in and the writer needs to let it all out. I am sure a lot of you will be feeling somewhat similar to them.

Reply under the cut, so this is not any longer

Hi april14vc,

You are welcome to rant here.

It sounds like you have a lot going on at the moment and it is all becoming a bit much to handle, as there is no relief anywhere. Is there something fun and relaxing that you can do for you sometime today, just to have a break from it all? I feel like you need to tune out for a bit and do something that is just for you.

I am so sorry that you suffered from narcissistic abuse, and so glad that you survived this. I think the Harkle shenanigans must hurt you in a more personal way than those of us who have never suffered under a narcissist. It is very hard to watch the Harkles seemingly get away with all their entitled abuse without any form of justice coming for them.

I think the Harkles are suffering. They usually are unable to get any sort of attention from the media unless they pay for it, and even then they don't trend - it is a 'blink and you miss it' situation. Look at what happened with Meghan's 40 for 40 program - it was dead in the water before the day was over, and she spent a fortune on PR for that. Compare that to the natural (not paid for) hype that surrounds anything that the BRF does, especially the Cambridges or HMTQ. That hype and attention is what Meghan wants, and she is not getting it.

What the Harkles are getting, and what they hate, is mockery. Look at the response to their Times 100 cover. Look at the comments on this pseudo-royal tour. They are a walking joke, and no narcissist would like that. They tried to cull all negative press while they were members of the BRF, were unsuccessful in stemming all of it, and now have no clout at all to stop any negative media attention. The Harkles may live in a delusion of success, but to the vast majority of people they are no more than very risible z-list celebrities.

The Harkles also have serious money troubles. They may be ignoring them, but those debts will have to be paid, one way or another.

What we are seeing now is the slow slide of the Harkles into obscurity, and their desperate attempts to reverse the process, which never work. They are no more popular and wanted now than they were at the time of Megxit, and in fact their popularity has declined since those days. They may look like they are winning, but it is all an illusion, caused by the amounts of money they are prepared to pay to give the illusion of wealth and star-quality celebrity. The paid for events happen, and then nothing. The paid for PR happens, and then nothing. Their slide downwards continues, and nothing that they do is reversing it.

Yes, at the moment they are on a high and beaming put of every report on their activities. Wait a week and then see where they are. This is like the Oprah interview all over again.

My next reading is going to be on the consequences of this pseudo-royal tour for the Harkles, so maybe there will be some justice for you there.

Edited to add: As for taking down the monarchy, I can't see that happening. For starters, the British government would have to put the matter to the people for a vote, and even if they are insane enough to do that, I can't see the British public voting to remove a beloved Queen because of the antics of two people who are despised that that country. The logistics of replacing the monarchy are also staggering - you have to rework the entire government of not just Great Britain, but of all the commonwealth realms who have HMTQ as Head of State, and that is not an easy task or a light undertaking. In addition, those Commonwealth Realms can keep HM as their head of state even if she is ejected by the British people (which would never happen, but I am stretching the bounds of probability here). After HMTQ comes Charles, who will have a short reign simply because of his age and health, and then William will be king, and he is also loved by the British public. I just can not see all that thrown away for the Harkles, who are rightly hated by the British public.

30 notes · View notes

badfauxmance · 3 years

Text

Response

I saw your comments/questions on a couple of our posts @iheartsebandchris so here is the response. At the end of the day we all decide for ourselves what we think of all this. But since you’re wondering, yeah we personally still think this is mostly orchestrated fakery. I’ll try to keep this brief as possible. This blog has been running since early November 2020 and we’ve written for MONTHS about this whole situation so I’m not going to repeat everything we’ve already said about all the reasons why we think it’s mostly orchestrated nonsense.

We’re still skeptical mainly because everything they’ve done acted as reverse psychology on us. Like why does it matter if people like us think this is fake or real? WHY are you pushing so hard to convince us how much of a loving totally real couple you are? In what way do real relationships do all the stuff they’ve been doing for months now? Our honest thoughts were “how are you a private couple when there are literally articles and pap walk pictures of you where it’s obvious the paps were called to take the pictures?”

We already shared articles on this blog from people like a professional photographer and even an article from Rolling Stone where they literally explain how most pap walks are instigated either by the celebrity involved or their publicist. Your actions aren’t matching what you’re saying you’re doing kind of a thing. On top of that, some of their behavior leading up to his birthday is somewhat consistent to what happened LAST SUMMER. It makes us both suspect this is their do over of last summer, which got derailed by both the pandemic and Sebastian’s cancelling that trended last summer once people found out about Alejandra’s history of racism and cultural appropriation. Notice how more people seem to be supportive of this relationship than last year?

At the end of all this however, does it actually matter if they’re “fake or real?” Everyone, including Sebastian, is getting a lot of attention from this, which is the point of doing all this stuff. The problem is that Sebastian is the biggest name in this mess and his reputation with his fanbase is sinking. He looks like a two faced hypocrite who is also selfish and careless of his personal safety and other people’s. Eventually this is going to end because even if this relationship is a real one, Alejandra would probably dump him for someone more famous and bigger than Sebastian to get her more attention. I wouldn’t be surprised if her connection to him was meant to be a stepping stone. Based on her previous partners, they are certain “types” and are relatively more famous than the previous guy. Not sure what anyone else thinks of all this, but regardless of what you might think of Sebastian at this point, he really doesn’t deserve to be connected to a woman who is clearly using him like this.

#when will this trainwreck stop?

14 notes · View notes

land-of-brains-and-chocolate · 4 years

Text

here’s the entirety of the paywalled businessinsider article interviewing charles beacham about marvel’s racism in staffing and editorial decisions!

In the early 2010s, Marvel's comics business focused on a diverse slate of new characters, but by 2017 comic sales had fallen, which resulted in the exit of editor-in-chief Axel Alonso.

Three former Marvel editors and one current editor told Business Insider that in the years since, Marvel has recommitted to nostalgia and classic, mostly white characters, often at the expense of some of those diverse characters like Miles Morales, a biracial teenage Spider-Man.

That shift was guided by an editorial department that lacked diversity, particularly in leadership roles. Today, there are no Black staffers on Marvel's editorial team of about 18 people, and only two people of color, Marvel confirmed.

"My voice and what I brought to the table wasn't valued equally," said Charles Beacham, one of two Black editorial staffers to work at Marvel in the past five years.

Have a tip? Email the author at [email protected] or DM him on Twitter @TravClark2.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Miles Morales was the character who pulled Charles Beacham into the world of comics.

Beacham was studying journalism at Brigham Young University, in Utah, when he walked into a comics shop in 2011 and picked up a copy of Morales' first appearance. Beacham, who is Black, said he was amazed to see Morales — a teenage Spider-Man who has a Black father and Puerto Rican mother — in its pages.

"When I was growing up, I always wanted to be the red Power Ranger, and the other kids would say I had to be the black Ranger," Beacham said. "The same thing happened with Spider-Man. They'd say, 'You can't be Spider-Man because Peter Parker's not a Black dude.' Seeing Miles Morales made me wish I had that as a kid."

Morales propelled Beacham into comics and into Marvel itself, where he worked as an assistant editor.

"I didn't have job prospects when I moved to New York in 2013, but the goal was to work for Marvel because of Miles Morales," Beacham said. When he landed a job at the company the next year, he loved it.

But Beacham, now 31, was living in New York City with a child on a $38,000 salary. He said that after three years as an assistant editor, from 2014 to 2017, without a promotion, he was ready to leave. It wasn't about the money as much as the lack of a path forward.

"I thought I'd be at Marvel forever," he said. "If they had promoted me I'd probably still be there and surviving on ramen."

Beacham is one of two Black editorial staffers to have worked at Marvel in the past five years, the company confirmed. The second Black staffer, also an assistant editor, left this year after five years without a promotion or raise, a person familiar with the matter said. The editorial team of about 18 people now has two people of color.

"I want to be back there all the time," Beacham said. "But when it comes down to it, my voice and what I brought to the table wasn't valued equally."

Disney-owned Marvel has grown into a cultural force that extends beyond its comic books and into movies, video games, and other media. The comics are the foundation for it all, including the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which has become the highest-grossing movie franchise of all time.

The stories that Marvel's small editorial team helps shape are central to popular culture in the US and around the world.

"Who works on these stories can help broaden them," said Regine Sawyer, the founder of Women in Comics Collective International, which helps to spotlight the comics work of marginalized people.

That was clear from 2011 to 2017, when Marvel ushered in a new era for its comic books under then editor-in-chief Axel Alonso, who is Mexican American.

New and diverse characters like Morales took center stage instead of Marvel's decades-old classic characters, who were primarily white. These characters inspired new fans like Beacham, and continue to inspire new fans as they make their way to other media.

But by 2017, Marvel's comic sales had fallen. Marvel's president of sales, David Gabriel, publicly blamed it on diversity. Alonso exited the company and was replaced by a white man in the role of top editor. Marvel reversed course.

Now, in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd and the protests that followed, Marvel is promising to once again introduce more diversity to its ranks and its stories.

Marvel chairman Ike Perlmutter sent a letter to employees on June 18 saying the company would "support more Black voices."

And in a memo to staff sent July 6, Marvel's president, Dan Buckley, outlined three areas of focus for Marvel moving forward:

broaden Marvel's creative landscape, which includes identifying "what has traditionally prevented us in the industry from recruiting and fostering more BIPOC talent."

build a foundation of lasting growth by "examining our internal culture and rebuilding our long-term process for talent recruitment, retention, and outreach to communities of color."

create new initiatives and expansion opportunities by "looking to explore new projects that will enable us to reach and represent an even broader audience."

In addition to Beacham, Business Insider spoke with two former Marvel editors and a current editor. Aside from Beacham, the Marvel insiders spoke on condition of anonymity to protect their stance at the company or job prospects. They said they weren't confident in Marvel's latest initiative.

"The guy who made a commitment to diversity and wanted to try new things was fired," a former Marvel staffer said, referring to Alonso.

'Spider-Man with an asterisk'

Alonso led Marvel through a bold era during his time as editor-in-chief starting in 2011, helping to establish a diverse slate of characters.

Jane Foster was the new Thor. Sam Wilson, aka the Falcon, a Black character, replaced Steve Rogers as Captain America. Riri Williams, a Black girl, was introduced as an Iron Man-like character named Ironheart. Kamala Khan, a Pakistani American Muslim teenager, was the new Ms. Marvel.

It wasn't a new phenomenon in comic books. Characters are regularly passing on their mantles, at least for a while. Dick Grayson, the first Robin, was DC's Batman for a time in the early 2010s, for instance. Sam Wilson wasn't the first person to take over as Captain America. This era at Marvel Comics, however, was notable for how it emphasized diversity.

But by 2017 — Alonso's final year as editor-in-chief — the company's print sales had plummeted (Marvel in 2014 said that Ms. Marvel's solo title was a top seller digitally, but digital comics sales aren't released to the public).

"What we heard is that people didn't want any more diversity," David Gabriel, the vice president of sales at Marvel Entertainment, said that year in an interview with ICv2, a website that covers the comics business.

"I don't know that that's really true, but that's what we saw in sales," Gabriel said. "Any character that was diverse, any character that was new, our female characters, anything that was not a core Marvel character, people were turning their nose up."

What Gabriel meant by "core Marvel character" were the classic, decades-old characters being sidelined for new, younger, and more diverse characters.

Seven months later, in November 2017, Marvel's Alonso stepped down from his role and was replaced by C.B. Cebulski, a white man who faced controversy when he was hired after admitting to writing comics in the early 2000s under a Japanese pseudonym.

"The comics that [Alonso] made me think I could work in comics," Beacham said. "But when a Latinx guy is scapegoated for diversity and replaced by a white dude, and the sentiment was that Marvel was 'getting away from its roots,' what does that mean?"

In a statement after his 2017 comments, Gabriel emphasized that "our new heroes are not going anywhere."

But in the months between that retailer summit and Alonso's exit, Marvel introduced an initiative for editorial staff that had been discussed internally for some time: Phase out the familiar superhero codenames for some newer, diverse characters and give them their own, two former assistant editors including Beacham said.

Marvel confirmed to Business Insider that it had previously considered stripping Morales of his Spider-Man title and giving him a new name, but has no plans to do so right now. Marvel added that it discusses status quo changes for all of its top characters.

Today, some of the classic characters have been thrust back into the spotlight. Steve Rogers has taken back the mantle of Captain America, and Thor is a man again. Miles Morales shares the Spider-Man title with Peter Parker, the original Spider-Man.

Morales has grown in popularity beyond comic books, having starred in Sony's Oscar-winning animated "Into the Spider-Verse" movie in 2018 and in a coming PlayStation video game called "Spider-Man: Miles Morales."

Beacham said he was glad that Morales continued to be a Spider-Man.

"It would have made him less important," Beacham said of Morales' losing the Spider-Man title. "He becomes Spider-Man with an asterisk. It takes away the power for kids who relate to this character."

'There's not a lack of people who can do the work'

Now, Marvel's comic-book slate is once again largely focused on classic characters, though characters like Morales and Khan remain. And there are some comics starring diverse characters from creators of color, like Ta-Nehisi Coates' "Black Panther." But their stories are in the hands of an editorial department run by an establishment of white male leadership.

"There's not a lack of people who can do the work," said Yumy Odom, the founder of the East Coast Black Age of Comics Convention, which helps to showcase the talents of creators of color. "But it's about how receptive the industry is to them. I can think of 20 creators, mostly African Americans, who would be ready to work at Marvel."

Women faced an uphill battle at Marvel as well, the Marvel editors said. A female former assistant editor told Business Insider that she was never promoted or given a raise from her $30,000 salary in her three years at the company. She said she got promoted within a year at her new company, a different comics publisher.

Marvel declined to discuss employee salaries.

The Marvel insiders said a notable exception was Sana Amanat, who is Pakistani American and a former editor. She is now Marvel's head of content and character development, a leadership role outside the editorial department.

'There's a whole cohort of young readers'

Marvel has significantly bounced back from its 2017 sales decline, which might suggest that the refocus on its classic characters reeled longtime readers back.

Of the top 100 best-selling comics of 2020 so far, 69 belonged to Marvel, as of Wednesday, including four of the top five, and the company has accounted for 41% of comic sales this year, according to industry website Comichron. Three years ago, Marvel was lagging behind DC, its biggest competitor.

An example of the start of this resurgence was the first issue of Marvel's "Amazing Spider-Man" relaunch — starring the original Spider-Man, Peter Parker — which ranked fifth in 2018 out of all comics, according to data from Comichron. In contrast, when Marvel launched a series called "Miles Morales Spider-Man" in that year, the debut issue didn't crack the top 200 best-selling comics.

"People of a certain age have a connection with Peter Parker, not Miles Morales," a former Marvel staffer said. "Years from now, that may be different."

The current and former Marvel staffers Business Insider spoke with said they were hopeful that readership could broaden, particularly now that characters such as Morales and Khan are being introduced to audiences in other media like movies and TV. Khan is to appear in a Disney Plus TV series and the upcoming "Avengers" video game, for instance.

There are signs that the comics industry is going through a larger shift in how people read and who is reading, which could also spur change.

Last year, comic sales through the "book channel" — which includes chain and independent book stores and online retailers like Amazon — surpassed comic-book stores for the first time, driven by the increased popularity in children's graphic novels, according to an analysis by ICv2.

Milton Griepp, the chief executive of ICv2, said at the New York Comic Con conference last year that the shift could usher in a new audience for superhero comic books.

"There's a whole cohort of young readers that are being introduced to this medium and may graduate to other forms of content in the comic format over the course of their lifespans," Griepp said.

Beacham said: "Marvel needs to figure out the next stage of its core demographic because it could change rapidly."

#marvel #businessinsider.com is going to hunt me down like a wild animal

307 notes · View notes

this-is-a-podcast-fanblog · 3 years

Note

I want to make it very clear that I’m not the same person as that last anon and I do think that the idea of a pledge drive is not inherently wrong. However, I want you to think about why you, a white person, are trying to present yourself as the face of the fight for Penumbra creators of color. The doc was not particularly tone deaf, as it did serve as a useful resource, but a “pledge drive”, trying to make this into some Big Meaningful Event that you’re spearheading, feels a whole lot like a white savior complex in action. Did you consult with a single one of the creators of color on the doc before turning into an “us-vs-them” thing? Did you consider how this (actively telling people “give your money to these people instead”) only plays into the rant that Harley went on, about bullying and cancel culture? And most importantly- are you, in the future, going to care about more significant reasons to organize and support communities of color, or are you taking the initiative only because you can get fandom clout and a Praxis Seal of Approval from behind your keyboard? I’m sorry but… this really really rings hollow with you at the head of it. Have you consulted a single POC about this “pledge drive”?

(ID: Screenshot of a second reply from the same anon. It reads: Previous anon once again: and since I feel like you might try and misrepresent what I'm saying, I want to make it extremely clear. The problem here is not with the idea of supporting a smaller creator of color financially, or informing people of how to do so. It's with the way you're treating the whole thing like a game, or a fandom event.)

Hi, thank you so much for your input! I am sorry if it seems insensitive for me to be "spearheading" this doc. I want to clarify that the reason my name is attached to it is because I active encourage criticism - which is what you're giving me, and I appreciate it. But it is very much a community sourced document and while I'm the one who started it and the one signal boosting it, I very much don't want it to be seen as "my doc". I'm sorry if it came off that way and accept that I probably should have emphasized the community nature of the document first.

I want to clarify a couple of things about my intentions that you brought up. This is not to say that because my intentions were good, I'm exempt from further criticism - far from it, I welcome more people to comment, either on this post or in my inbox, which will remain open. I just want to answer the questions that you asked in hopes that helps.

1. You ask whether I spoke to people of color in the process creating the doc, and whether I specifically spoke with any of the people on it. The answer is yes to both questions, though I will be transparent and say I did not speak to all of the creators: for example, the Vesbud reverse AU has encouraged people to offer them support following the hiring decision, so I added them to the document without first talking to them. I am open for ongoing conversations like the one we're having now. And I have, and will continue to, support creators of color, before and after and regardless of how Penumbra reacts to this situation.

2. My intention in spreading this doc is not to get attention and clout. It is also not to deplatform TPP. My intention is only to try and signal boost creators of color who are in the community of the Penumbra fandom. I don't view this as an "us versus them", but rather building within a community. Again, if it didn't come off that way, I apologize.

3. I do not want to present myself as a face of the fight. It is not my place as a white person to comment on the racism others have pointed out in TPP's actions or to accept any apology. I am instead trying to use what I have, which is a platform with this blog, to compensate the people most affected by this. That's why I created the doc. I take no credit for anything made by the creators of the document, nor do I take any credit for the ideas presented on it, such as any messages of solidarity people may have posted or "POC Penumbra Week" that fans of color created (an awesome project that everyone should check out, by the way.) My name is on the doc so people can contact me if they want something taken down, or if they want to offer criticism. I appreciate you doing just that.

4. In regards to this seeming like a "fandom event", the reason why I specifically tried to boost the doc further today was because it's the one week mark before the new season releases. The reason I called it a "pledge drive" is because that's a term Penumbra has used before in trying to raise money for the Patreon. Though this was my intention, I'm sorry if it wasn't clear and if it still was tone deaf.

Anti-racism is something I take very seriously. I hope my track record on this blog demonstrates that, but if not, I apologize. I also apologize if anyone was hurt by the creation of this document, or if it seemed like I was doing this for clout. I want to state that the document will stay up, and I will continue to circulate it as a resource, but I will again emphasize I really do not want it to be seen as "my doc". I'd like to hear how people feel about this, specifically if my name should be removed from it?

Thank you anon for the feedback and thanks everyone for reading.

#serious #anti racism #the penumbra podcast #tpp #tw racism

7 notes · View notes

chicago-geniza · 3 years

Text

well i intended to go for a nice evening walk, ended up having a panic attack, ordering a couple of cocktails at the bougie bar, joining a jam session with a bunch of old hippies on the logan green (one of them gave me a handpainted wooden medallion which seems to be carved out of tree bark, strung on a length of yarn???), met a crustpunk train-hopping dude in town for the month (& his dog, in a leather-studded harness) who's lived in 45/50 states & a 44 yr old guy everyone called "the wizard" wearing a tattered, patch-covered robe who shares most of my parents' conspiracy theories & considers himself a latter-day prophet, he bought us sorbet & ice cream, wound up hanging out with them & staying up all night at their indescribably eclectic, cluttered, blood-spattered (!!!) apartment, belonging to 44 yr old guy's art curator father & decorated accordingly, smoking m*th & listening to music & talking (or rather listening to them rant/rave/recount stories from their incredibly wild lives), i gave them advice on applying for unemployment & medicaid & how to appear compliant enough w/ carceral psychiatric intervention so they won't section you without actually submitting to forced medication or institutionalization, especially if they assign you a case worker & do regular "wellness checks." also how to pass off certain aspects of behavioral dysregulation as executive dysfunction, get them to pay for an adhd evaluation, get an adderall IR scrip, sell the 30 mg pills (cite body weight, high doses of other psych meds as reason for higher dose; look sincere; play to systemic biases toward cis white men, unfortunately), & use the cash to buy m*th, if they'd prefer to keep doing that. you can also pass positive psychotic symptoms--agitation etc.--off as severe anxiety, especially if you have a history of trauma, & they will give you benzodiazepines. it is in their best interest to keep you docile, i.e. tranquilized, particularly if your past convictions & involuntary institutionalizations revolve around a pattern of aggressive behavior, & that's On The Record/there's a paper trail. (e.g. one dude got arrested trying to keep cars away from an injured bird on the road, some genre of raptor i think (???) by threatening them with a shopping cart, not hitting them, but like, running at them as if to collide then feinting at the last minute so they'd swerve out of the way. not the safest or most effective maneuver, lotta reckless endangerment, but the motivation was admirable. probably put the fear of god into some drivers, though. he doesn't seem to have, like, impulse control.) it's a lot easier & you have fewer run-ins with the cops if you game the system & appear cooperative. they gave me this coat, which "just showed up in their apartment one day," like i did. 44 yr old guy walked me back to apartment, stole a street sign & tore down a real estate sign en route, lori lightfoot did indeed take down the pride flag in front of her house on july 1st & replace it with an appropriately patriotic american flag, i walked past the idling plainclothes cop car & another marked police vehicle with their Mayoral Guarding Detail inside at like 4.30 am smoking a menthol cigarette (not inhaling), high on m*th, draped in a neon anime jacket, in the company of a visibly insane, unshaven & unshorn middle-aged man in a technicolor patchwork trenchcoat, holding a lit cigarette in one hand & an upside-down traffic cone in the other, which he was using as an ad hoc amplifier for a noise track playing on my phone. he was also carrying the stolen real estate banner &, inexplicably, a stack of mail. i gave him my old backup phone (no SIM card & doesn't hold a charge long, ancient, but still works), since neither he nor the other dude have phones (cops took them), also one hybrid edible for each of them, as a thanks for the m*th & the kindness. their hearts are in the right place but they have some fucked-up beliefs about "reverse racism" being real, while also saying in the same breath that you can tell our country is irredeemable by the way it continues to

treat black people. we were discussing medical weed for seizures on medicaid & 44 yr old guy mentioned one of his close friends, a black epileptic woman, whose seizures were frequent & severe enough they prevented her from working. then he added, in apparent bemusement, they she hadn't spoken to him in some time, & he wondered why. a little while later he relayed their last conversation & i was like "my dude, i can say with 100% certainty she is not talking to you because you said some *appallingly*, jaw-droppingly racist shit & did not even realize it was racist." then i, comma, a white person, explained to this man that he literally thought of their exchange as, like, an abstract argument over insignificant ideas, a theoretical exercise, & therefore considered it simply a smug gotcha to "counter" hotep theories about egyptian origin by claiming that "if that's true, american slavery & the oppression of black people in america are divine retribution for the enslavement of the jews in ancient egypt, an eye for an eye & a deserved punishment." like, first of all, what the actual fuck, if i were that woman i would also never speak to you again, second of all there's the collapse of historical time & mythical time, history & exegesis, an assumption that rests on spurious claims of biblical literalism (zionist colonization logic, btw! him: what's exegesis? what's zionism? me: never mind, not the point. exegesis is the interpretation of religious texts in a religious CONtext, in this case what you would likely call the hebrew bible.)--but most importantly it is 100% irrelevant to this discussion whether or not black americans are Actually Factually descendended from ancient egypt! you just told this woman to her face that the ancestry she claims, of which she's proud, is the reason & justification for SLAVERY & BLACK SUFFERING--not only that, but that if it WERE true, than black people would DESRVE to suffer, by DIVINE DECREE. you are trying to force her to abdicate her claim on this heritage by putting her in a position where she'd be forced to concede complicity in her people's historical & present-day persecution, oppression, & essentially the existence of structural racism. & using The Figural Jew as a rhetorical cudgel to bludgeon her into this corner. what a despicable thing to say. like, he hadn't considered it from her perspective at all, & once he groked why the comment itself was, like, unforgivable (idk, maybe she's more forgiving; she has a virtue-name), i started socratic-method-ing him through why it was particularly unforgivable for *him* to say to *her*--the individual is not responsible for the systems from they benefit, but they are imbricated in them, they are implicated when they actively perpetuate & uphold them, even with speech acts. & finally gave the same "there is no such thing as reverse racism because racism is not an individual act, it is an institutional, systemic phenomenon, & it is an ideology, one which individual acts can bear out or be in accordance with, & to which individuals can subscribe (this bearing it out in their behavior, in their institutional roles, in their interpersonal interactions--here i gave & solicited examples of each) or be subject (also gave & solicited examples). m*th makes me very good at Explaining clearly & he was surprisingly receptive--like, it was astonishing that it had not occurred to him??? but it hadn't, the same way it hadn't occurred to my mother, & she interpreted it as "reverse racist" when their next-door neighbor called her the "white devil" for disputing their property line, & i had to be like "ok but if you called in a random third party to mediate in lily-white [city], oregon, where white supremacists openly drive down the street in pickup trucks with swastika armbands, whose side do you think they would take, statistically speaking, in your property dispute. that's why racism is systemic & institutional, & your rude neighbor calling you a name over a disagreement does not constitute 'reverse racism,' because 'reverse racism' by definition cannot

exist." now this dude wants to like, read books, so i gotta get him some entry-level Intro To Racism primers??? how did i end up here, but better me than his black epileptic (ex-)friend, i guess??? jesus christ. both of these guys have the most chaotic, reactionary politics in a potpourri with these deep commitments to abolition & mutual aid & a kind of proto-anarchist consciousness, none of which would be called by those names, but all of which is borne out in practice & in the politics of everyday life. they remind me a LOT of my parents. i'm loath to imagine how they'd internalize my stepdad's rambling, street-preacher-style libertarian lectures. probably go out & buy guns & invest in gold on the stock market & double down on the conviction that free speech is being curtailed & individual rights are in jeopardy because you can no longer unleash a barrage of harassment against some guy on the street because you think he looked at you funny. these claustrophobic convictions, like the space to express oneself is getting smaller & smaller every day, *other people* are taking it away from you, suffocating you on all sides with their offense demanding your silence, they are *making* the walls close in--when in fact it's more like a holodeck. you're a member of the Hegemonic Group, afforded the privilege of the default, so you don't question the vast verdant expanse that is your domain--ah, Free Speech, the sun never sets on the empire of ~uncensored expression, you can say whatever you want whenever you want without facing consequences because you control all the organs that mete out consequences & you have also determined that those groups who might be adversely affected by your words--emotionally OR materially--are not, well...of consequence. but of course the vast verdant domain is an illusion, photons & forcefields, held together by the all-encompassing TOTALITY of the dominant group's hegemony, power, etc. once that power begins to redistribute throughout the system--however unevenly, however incrementally, however slowly--as even the smallest pieces are appropriated by those deemed inconsequential, who have endured years of systemic, material, institutional violence that allowed the dominant group to become dominant & retain its dominant position--once those 'inconsequential' groups speak up & say "actually, these words bear an indelible imprint of the violence enacted upon us, these words are the legacy of that violence, these words are a tacit endorsement of the ideology behind that violence, which classifies us as subhuman, & even if *you* can't hear those echoes, the words broadcast on two historical frequencies, so now that we're able to broadcast on a frequency *you* can hear, we request you find other language, & consider the implications of the words you've been using for years." well--once The Subaltern Speaks, the dominant group loses its 'innocence,' & becomes aware the vast verdant expanse of language is an illusion of infinite space, aware of the four holodeck walls pressing in behind the simulacrum of the horizon, & suddenly "what one can say without negative consequences"--largely social, sometimes, rarely, if social media goes viral, professional--feels much more claustrophobic. so they get angry. & some of them are just bigots, obviously, but some of them--like my parents, &, even, this weirdly well-intentioned m*thhead who said one of the most shockingly racist things i've heard in my life & *honestly didn't understand why it was racist*, is really riled up about free speech & individual rights, hates the government, hates "FANG" (facebook amazon netflix google) & has a bunch of dystopian conspiracy theories about data harvesting & personal information that only miss the mark in that they get too nefariously biopolitical (billionaires want to put microchips in everybody for surveillance to monitor our movements & sell us more stuff; they don't need to, they already use our phone location & browsing habits to generate the algorithm & sell the information to ad companies lol, it's digital& cast a

single illuminati figure in the role of comic book villain, controlling the operation behind the scenes like an evil puppetmaster (classic conspiracy fare; again, we gotta take that energy, that suspicion, the understanding that they are being taken advantage of & tricked, the idea that power & capital & resources are concentrated among a very small number of people, however it's not an individual wealthy villain with a desire for world domination who wants to turn Free Americans into microchipped drones, it's a *class* of people--or rather several classes, but *who those people are as individuals does not matter*. if you guillotined bill gates, another billionaire would take his place. bill gates qua bill gates is not the problem. it is classes of people who control the means of production & own property & profit enormously from exploiting the labor of a desperate, rapidly increasing underclass, i.e. from the system as it is. therefore it is in their interest to maintain the status quo, because it serves them. 'the rich get richer, the poor get poorer.' the middle class gradually ceases to exist. if you want to compound it by race, consider the GI bill as an example - you learn about it as the leg up that enabled thousands of WWII vets to buy houses, enabling them to enter the middle class. hundreds of thousands of third-gen middle class white americans still reap the structural, socioeconomic benefits of their grandparents' initial upward mobility, including,, very tangibly, those selfsame houses, which can be inherited & then rented out as a second property if the children or grandchildren accrue enough money to buy their own properties. but only about 100 black vets got approved for homeownership loans, despite the staggering numbers of black soldiers who enlisted & applied through the GI bill. anyway! the impulses are there, & they're only being funneled into conspiracy thinking because that makes intuitive sense on a narrative level. these guys have a high school education; so does my stepdad. their reading habits are...eclectic, sporadic, pretty much dictated by occasional recommendations & like, little free libraries around the neighborhood. it's both interesting & frustrating to see like - hey, here are these people, we agree on a lot of things, they're earnest & open & want to learn & would give their neighbor the shirt off their backs as a matter of principle. they'd give a *stranger* the shirt off their backs; they'd share whatever they had. even what chores there are in their collective--they live with two other guys--(dumpster diving, walking the dog, tidying up the apartment) are allocated by ability & inclination. they made advance plans to look after the dog & their roommate with War PTSD on the 4th of july if the fireworks upset them, jokingly called the dog an emotional support animal. you give them the tools, the reading, talk to them like normal people with a stake in society--like, imagine a society that would have a stake in people like you instead of criminalizing you & consigning you to the margins! that's already *political imagination* because anyone who occupies a marginalized position will have their existence politicized, whether they want this or not, so better to become a self-aware, self-reflexive political subject, no?--talk *with* them because tbh i am them, i'm just better at situational masking & also i am very very afraid of cops so i only damage property in groups during planned political actions (not spontaneously, because i feel a flash of rage at my neighborhood gentrifying, & simply do not have a superego, so i tear down the real estate sign for the fancy new apartment complex in a fit of pique, because in this house we believe that spontaneity can & should be developed into class consciousness, again, the seeds of which are there in the initial trigger for the spontaneous reaction, i.e. anger at gentrification. not opposed to a little direct action, but they're just gonna put up a new sign tomorrow, it doesn't advance your agenda or hinder the gentrifiers' progress. now, if

you sabotaged the construction site for the new apartment buildings & painted a few potent symbols + graffiti'd a pithy, written statement expressing your opposition to gentrification generally & these apartments specifically? in a prominent place, large font, eye level, visible & legible from oh, a block away? maybe as a member of a collective, your neighbors, perhaps? & you could sign it "[neighborhood] or [block] residents" to pack more of a punch, the power of a crowd speaking in unison to say "not OUR home, you predatory developers"? that's no longer spontaneous, impulsive, affective violence, & it's also no longer an individual--acting alone leaves you vulnerable. again--i didn't just *intuit* that he tore the sign down because he was mad about gentrification, i asked, in a genuinely curious tone, not at all accusatory, no hint of reprimand or censure, just...interested, "why did you do that?" & he was like "it made me fucking mad." & i was like "what about it made you mad? the apartments? how come?" & he thought about it for a minute & explained. i'm not sure *he* necessarily made the conscious connection until prompted. idk, i know people talk a lot about the fact that breitbart & drudge report are free while NYT & "all the news fit to print" is paywalled, & q-pilled covid hoax sites are free while "reputable" pandemic coverage & public health guidelines & explanations of mRNA vaccines for a lay audience are paywalled & that's true but also We Live In A Society & if you talk to the wingnuts who AREN'T that way because of any far-right ideology, a lot of them are just...autodidacts without much formal education but a lot of raw intelligence that leads to analyzing The Big Picture & trying to deduce a pattern, find a framework that explains why the world is the way it is, profoundly frustrated, deeply aware of American society's, universalized & figured as the world's, exceptional unfairness & cruelty, & *that can be redirected* with reading, discussion, prompting critical thought, introducing community connections, & perhaps most importantly for this genre of person, getting them to see patterns at work in terms of systems & structures rather than individuals, letting go of American individualism's explanatory power & belief in its liberatory potential (see: the sort of ad hoc libertarianism that goes hand-in-glove with much conspiracy thinking, both stemming from 1) mistrusting the government, & 2) ultimate freedom of the individual as the most sacred value, therefore it is what all enemies want to take away), outlining positive, actionable goals rather than just ambient suspicion & anger at authority, & figuring out how those goals can be accomplished more effectively by an organized collective (but this will ultimately benefit the individual). If the world isn't run by a shadowy cabal, if you begin to understand the structures responsible & how they manifest even on the scale of your block (e.g.!!! predatory developers buying up properties during a pandemic, tearing down affordable housing to build expensive condos on the lot, or giving old buildings a "spit and polish" so they can double the rent, pricing all the current residents out, not to mention all the little local businesses, almost all mexican & run by the mexican families who live here, that give our block its culture & will get pushed out by boutique coffee shops & the like, catering to a more affluent & almost certainly whiter clientele)--you can, in fact, change the world, something both of them repeatedly referred to as their purpose on earth. it may not be as a maverick figure, one against an army, but strength in numbers is an aphorism for a reason.

anyway! thse guys were also really weird about jews, in the philosemitic way conspiracy theorists of a certain stripe often are. the itinerant vagabond guy gave me one of his drawings; it's really lovely. i'm going to give them "are prisons obsolete?" & "the wretched of the earth" & some david graeber. 44 yr old guy has this idea that society is atomized & people aren't connected to each other & have lost the willingness or the ability to communicate with each other, also that the overreach of authority has driven some people to violence, & that makes the world feel unsafe to everyone else. he feels guilty because he is acutely aware that language, when wielded adroitly & intentionally, always has the capacity to manipulate; he is afraid of succumbing to the temptation, because he senses the coercive power of language within himself. the other guy was mostly quiet but said 44 yr old guy is one of the best friends he's ever had. he thinks animals are able to sense emotions and to heal, & he thinks they can mediate between people who have become too isolated, who have forgotten humans' innate ability to forge connections, approach others as social creatures seeking to bond instead of mistrustful, apprehensive, rejecting overtures of friendship because they expect subterfuge, or propriety has evolved to deem such overtures inappropriate outside of strictly delineated, artificially orchestrated contexts. deviation from the norm is not permitted. & back again to policing. they have an idea called "the omega family," omega for the end, a group of like-minded people who come together, who encounter each other serendipitously (predicted through auspicious auguries & recognized on sight through a constellation of signs & wonders, because of course we are all psychotic here, it was nice to just be psychotic & discuss these things like they were normal lol), & serve as catalysts to each other's "personal truth." anyway this is why i don't go out when i'm crazy, i always end up in situations like this, see also: the last time i did m*th, in a pizza hut bathroom in tallinn with an art student from glascow named muhammad ali (he went by ali), the son of white muslim converts--we thought it was c*ke but it got lost in translation & that's how i figured out i had adhd. later i got [redacted] by a filmmaker from kazan & he gave me his business card afterward for some reason, which was extremely funny. thankfully these dudes were better behaved. one of them even gave a speech about how men shouldn't rape people??? & also how our society shouldn't construct women as universal victims because in doing so it makes victimhood almost compulsory & shoehorns women into a victim role as part & parcel of womanhood? i was like yes my dude you are almost there, read the essay "abject feminism." (i did not tell them i was trans bc i wasn't sure how that would shake down, to be honest; couldn't get a read on it. did tell them i was gay & they respected it, though one did say he dated a lesbian once, & i explained that many men feel compelled to interject with an anecdote relating an exception to the rule or insist that they will he the exception to the rule, & it's really just bad manners, not even getting into the bad politics. he took it on the chin & talked about how the girl in question came home to find her partner dead of an overdose & his wife had just died of MS, so their relationship was more about grief & comfort than sexual attraction. i was like that's really, really sad, & it's wonderful that you were able to be there for each other at a time of such staggering loss, & i am a person who totally understands what you mean to communicate, but if a lesbian tells you they're a lesbian & you reply that you once dated a lesbian & they get offended & instead of responding with contrition or correction you elaborate on the tragic backstory of the relationship as though that explains the circumstances in which a self-proclaimed lesbian would date a cis man, other lesbians *will* deck you, or at the very least not take you, an unwashed white guy in

his 40s who isn't neurotypical & sits way too close for social convention in a way that could easily be construed as a come-on, in good faith.) tl;dr made some new friends, did some good drügs (i much prefer smoking m*th to snorting it, basically like purer, more potent adderall, & as such will not be doing it again for a LONG time, because i enjoy it FAR too much; slices through the brain fog & the chronic fatigue & the joint/bone pain, makes me able to pay attention, follow the thread of a conversation, actually be *interested* & want to ask *questions* & expand, build, encourage my interlocutor to elaborate, place more kal-toh pieces until the conversation shimmers into a three-dimensional shape, instead of being listless & exhausted & disengaged & *bored* all the time, so obviously i would get addicted immediately if given the opportunity, & i've known this forever lol)--now going to hydrate, refill pill case, write some emails, & meet C at the beach! not how i expected to reboot my brain, but it works! also putting them on limited facebook view because i try to keep some groups of people in my life quarantined from each other & that includes 1) my relatives & my academic ~colleagues (ne'er the twain shall meet), 2) my exes & my family, 3) my relatives, colleagues, & uh. a couple of lovely, but extremely psychotic dudes with very long criminal records i met while doing hard drugs

13 notes · View notes