#as if queer people don't exist in south america??

[hellothepixel]

Marginalized Person: "Hey this character is just like me, maybe they're x-coded?"

Other person of same marginalization: "What's with all these people who are not x claiming this person is x?? They have no idea what they're talking about."

Marginalized Person: "Oh I guess I'm wrong then."

[callmebrycelee]

I've been mulling this over for the last few days and I figured I'd just put what I'm thinking out there in hopes that someone will understand what I'm coming from. I'm reading a wonderful fanfic where Buck leaves the 118 and goes to work at Air Operations. He is paired with Tommy and the two of them strike up a friendship and an eventual romance. I'm only a few chapters into the story and there's a conversation where Buck and Tommy are relaying their backstories to each other. Buck talks about getting crushed by the fire engine, the subsequent surgery and setback, and him suing the LAFD. Tommy talks about his time in the Army and ultimately joining the 118. He goes into vivid detail about every single awful thing he did to Chimney and Hen. He ends the story by telling Buck that even though the Chimney and Hen chose to forgave him, he can't quite move past his guilt and works hard daily to become a better person. The thing I've been mulling over is the concept of white guilt and how it often triumphs over forgiveness extended by people of color. I find this so funny because even when people of color, esepcially Black people, are at their most vulnerable and open, whiteness still finds a way to be greater than.

Now I'm not here to excuse any of what Tommy did during his time at the 118, but I have to admit that the majority of the people I have seen taking umbrage with Tommy and his behavior, even after he has been forgiven by those whom he offended, and even after he has taken strides to change, are white, non-queer individuals. And before we making this a B*ddie versus BuckTommy situation, I have seen individuals from both sides of the fence taking Tommy to task.

Before I jump into my thoughts on this, let me just say that I'm a Black man. I'm also a queer man. Most importantly I'm a Black queer man and let me tell you a little something about poor behavior from white people. It happens so much and so frequent that oftentimes I don't even see it happening until I am allowed to have a moment to process and reflect. With that said, quite a few of my close friends and acquaintances are white and all of them at some point have said or done something deliberately or accidentally offensive to me. Now not all Black and/or queer people are a monolift so let me make this very clear right now. I am speaking on behalf of myself and myself only.

Now that I've gotten out of the way, I will say that in any and all cases where I have been offended, my forgiveness is more for myself than the other person. Forgiveness is something I do to protect my peace. I fundamentally understand how whiteness works here in America and I understand how it operates. You don't get to half 39 years as a Black queer person without learning this. Especialy living in the the south. I also realize that at the apex of whiteness is the white, straight male and whether we realize it or not, we all, for the most part, at some point, seek proximity to him. You see this happen with white women, with Black men, and evenwith gay white men. In fact, the only group you don't tend to see this with is Black queer women and I believe this is because they are truly the antithesis of the white apex.

With that said, any time my friends or acquaintances have behaved badly, especially towards me, especially regarding my race and/or sexuality, I understand where that energy comes from. I really do. And, if we are being truly transparent here, there have been moments in my younger existence where I actively participated in the oppression of Black women and queer people. I, too, was a Tommy who hid myself by participating in the toxicity directed towards queer people. And yes, I felt tremendous guilt for my actions when I had time to reflect.

Here is the thing people forget about guilt. Much like grief, guilt ebbs and flows, and it doesn't really go away. What happens, or what should happen, is that your world gets bigger and bigger to the point where that grief or that guilt doesn't occupy as much space. That's exactly what I believe has happened to Tommy Kinard. Yes, he still feels bad about what he did to his friends back then (and he should) but his world has gotten so much bigger since then. That guilt that was once a loud roar is hopefully only a whisper now because he has done the work to understand why he behaved the way he did and has taken strides to be a better version of himself.

So, to all the white, non-queer individuals out there who have been taking Tommy to task for things he did a long time ago, things he's been forgiven of a long time ago, parts of himself that he has made better, ask yourself this one simple question. Why should my guilt (white guilt) be bigger than the forgiveness provided to him by those he offended? Second question I would ask you to ask yourself. Why am I demanding that Tommy actively punish himself and be punished for something he has already been forgiven of? When you answer that question, there is one last question I want you to ask yourself. Why am I feeling guilty and projecting that guilt onto someone else?

Again, I am not excusing any of what Tommy Kinard said or did during that time of his life. I just find it strange that so many of you are condemining him of something he once did when you should be asking yourself, am I actively participating in the oppression of those around me. There's a 99.9% chance you are so maybe focus on your own garden before you start asking others to clean up theirs. Also, for those of you coming at this from the angle of, well we didn't see Hen and Chimney forgive him. So what! Unless you have a camera following you around 24/7, no one will ever get to see you be forgiven of the fucked up stuff you've been doing. Most of all, stop projecting onto fictional characters. It's weird. Okay, those are my thoughts. Do what with them what you wish. As always, these are my opinions.

[alpaca-clouds]

CyberSix - The 90s trans Animated Series, you did not know about

Okay, I think it is time for me to talk about this Canadian/Japanese/Argentinian animated series, because it just is... surprisingly really good. And while maybe the entire trans/queer subtext was not entirely intended... It is so clearly there and really fucking amazing.

CyberSix is about, well, CyberSix, who has been created in genetic experiments by a Nazi scientist, who after WWII escaped to South America. While Cybersix escaped the laboratory, the Scientist Dr. Von Reichter still conducts genetic experiments on all sorts of animals and people. But he also wants to see Cybersix returned to him. So, to hide from him, Cybersix takes up the identity of the male teacher Adrian Seidelman, who teaches at a school for troubled teens. Things complicate, though, when she develops feelings for her colleague Lucas.

Now, let me be up front about two things... No, three:

Due to low ratings outside of Canada, the show was cancelled after only one season. Which also means that the ending of the show is kinda bittersweet - as what was meant to be a cliffhanger ended up to feel very finite.

The comic this was based on was on one hand very anti-Nazi. But at the same time it also uses a lot of racist stereotypes when depicting the Japanese characters (of which there are quite a few). While the characters are portrayed as good people, mind you, who end up helping Cybersix, they are depicted in a very racist way.

Also, if you look at the open ending and think: "Oh, maybe I should read the comic." Don't. Just don't. Trust me on that one. I read it. And it is... oh boy. Cybersix in it mostly exists as a male sexual fantasy. And in general the comic is very, very happy to show us naked women all the time, at times with explicit rape scenes. So, yeah, you definitely want to skip that one.

Still, despite those flaws. The show... is actually really fucking good. Especially because of the queer stuff.

While in the comic this was based on the fact that Cybersix hides under a male identity is just a plot device, in the series it actually is a lot more complicated. Because in the series we see Cybersix struggle with her gender identity. After all, she has been created, her sex was quite literally assigned to her. And while on one hand she kinda fantasizes about being with Lucas as a woman, she at times also feels more in home being seen as a man.

And while Lucas does not find out her true identity till the end of the show (again, there was another season planned), he kinda has feelings for Adrian and for Cybersix, not knowing they are the same person, making this king bisexual or pansexual (I read him as pan).

Meanwhile, of course, the main plot of the show is quite literally about punching Nazis, which is something I always can get behind. It literally deals with something that has happened in the real world (Nazi folks fleeing to South America) and I kinda think that this is neat.

For a while the show was on Youtube, but it sadly seems it was removed. You can still find it on... certain websites, though, given that the DVDs are hard to get a hand on.

I really recommend everyone to watch this show. Its just 13 episodes and it is... really, really good.

[blackautmedia]

The Deku Scrubs and Racism in Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask

Content Warning: Depiction of Racism, mention of cannibalism

I briefly touched on this in my Zelda video, but I wanna talk about the way the Deku in Majora's Mask are portrayed.

Zelda utilizes racial coding to depict nearly every group/race in the series. Racial coding if you're not aware is you apply traits associated with our real-world understanding of race, gender, disability and so on to non-human characters. It's neither inherently good nor bad to do and can enrich a story if used consciously and carefully.

It can also be done unintentionally without a storyteller realizing the implications often because they're repeating elements from stories they enjoy without catching these details.

It can also just be used maliciously in making harmful commentary using racial coding as a way to bypass any restrictions or legal issues that would come up in showing something directly. Much like queer coding, it also offers a form of plausible deniability.

A lot of cartoon characters wear gloves for instance because they were designed to embody minstrel caricatures popularized as a way to perpetuate Anti-Blackness. The practice of minstrelsy has never really died out, it's only changed and evolved with time.

Legend of Zelda uses that same coding in its storytelling. The Deku are plant people with a great deal of plant clothing and architecture. Their color also gives them a dark brown appearance which is common with a lot of the savage islander tropes used here.

They're also portrayed as prone to violence and anger, impatient and impulsive in how they wrongfully assume this monkey harmed their princess, and most notably they utilize the trope of boiling their victims alive as a scene of shock for the white explorer:

During the first section in the Southern Swamp, you can't even access the Deku palace as they don't welcome any outsiders except those the same race as them, not realizing that Link is a white boy with magic powers and has taken the form of their bodies (which is a thing all on its own in this context.)

Even then they don't welcome outsiders of any kind but only allow Deku Link entrance to witness a spectacle at a barbaric showing of publicly executing a monkey they believe has kidnapped the princess.

This is a trope commonly used toward several groups of people, many of them often lumped together as vaguely "brown" people, but you see it done with a lot of Native characters, Black people, Pacific Islanders, Asian folks, and many groups in South America. There's real-life overlap of these people--Afro-Indigenous and Latin Indigenous people exist for example--but the point in the eyes of a white gaze is to depict these as some evil and dangerous other to the horror of the white protagonist.

It conflates a lot with race, nationality, and ethnicity and which specific demographic of people will vary, but it's often done by portraying dark-skinned people of some kind in contrast to the civilized, rational white protagonist.

A lot of times this often goes hand in hand with the portrayal of cannibalism and blood rituals which isn't shown in Zelda, but to give an example of what this trope looks like, compare the visuals in Majora's Mask to the 1932 Mickey Mouse episode Trader Mickey:

Note: (you can watch the entire episode here if you'd like.)

There's an entire genre of film that utilizes the savage brown person in with the white explorer protagonist that go into this idea of framing whatever group of people it is weird, uncivilized, dangerous, and thoughtlessly impulsive often utilizing white fears of the "other" to portray them as beings of horror.

Often these films had usually one "good" brown person and often would have a lone woman character, usually the tribe leader's daughter who was objectified for the protagonist and audience and was usually portrayed as the only civilized or "good" ones, often exoticized and hypersexualized. If she wasn't, she was often abused into submission for the white character.

Also adding to this is the...everything about the Woodfall temple and the boss, Odolwa leaning into the same tropes.

I bring this up mostly as a way to provide an educational resource for other Zelda fans so we have a better frame of knowledge to not reproduce these narratives in fanart, fanfics, and so on. Majora's Mask is my favorite Zelda game! But that doesn't mean it's above critique especially in how it utilizes racial coding.

I'm deliberately avoiding showing more graphic imagery of film examples to make this as not triggering as possible, but cannibalism is a common element in these portrayals as well.

This kind of imagery pops up in quite a few Nintendo games and outside the gaming sphere as well. Off the top of my head, there's Kirby Superstar with Wham Bam Rock as portrayed in the SNES version and the Spear guys from the Mario brothers series.

Here's the Zelda Gerudo video if you haven't seen it before.

[intheholler]

glad i found your blog. i’m in a large city right now and was getting in a spell of homesickness for where im from in southeast missouri/southern illinois. it doesn’t have the same kind of reputation as appalachia, but it was settled by people from there and exists in a weird gradient of culture between appalachia and the ozarks, abandoned coal mines and poverty and rich culture and hills and all. no one is as nostalgic for my home, so your blog is helpful. glad to know there are people like me out there who see their queerness through a rural lens and that people from all over america are similar in so many ways 💖

i'm so glad you find something you resonate with here <3 we can love home while also recognizing that there is still a lot of work to be done!!

as an aside, i find it impossible *not* to view my queerness from a rural standpoint when there is absolutely a difference in growing up a rural queer and growing a big city queer. (i don't have to tell you this, i know, but now im just thinking aloud)

there is such a stark difference living somewhere progressive with access to resources and support and the experiences of other queer folks, as opposed to growing up isolated in backwards communities where sometimes you are the only "out" person in town. it's crushing, taking the brunt of the queerphobia, and--at least in the south/appalachia--dealing with the constant barrage of "you're gonna burn in hell" coming from every angle without any escape from it.

its hard growing up queer and not having any of those resources that those in bigger cities have to keep ourselves afloat, or the safety net of the broader queer community to fall into, and that's def something i think rural queer folks from any region can relate to.

us rural queers are tough as fuck!

thanks for being here <33

[rosysugarr]

What about southern xenophobia and racism?

I don't know how to tell you that not every individual person who lives here is xenophobic and racist if you don't already get it. And that there are people from the north who are also xenophobic and racist. Like. Those are very much things that happen all across the country.

My point isn't that every single person who lives here is innocent and perfect forever, it's that there ARE good people here just like everywhere else who don't deserve the way we're treated. The south has queer people. The south has POC, the south has allies, the south has good, kind people just like anywhere else in America. I'm not saying that bad people don't exist here, but they aren't ALL we are. We are not a monolith solely represented by only the worst of us.

[jeanmoreaux]

top five book quotes that haven't left your mind since you've read them!! <3

omg juno that’s a such a superior prompt!! so the way i decided on this is literally just the first 5 quotes that popped into my head because that has to mean something, right?

also some of these quotes are SO LONG (don’t worry i don’t know them by heart). i thought i indulge in the ones that are not just punchy one liners (for once). everything is under the cut <3

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.” — the bell jar by sylvia plath

He smiled, "Why, you will go home and then you will find that home is not home anymore. Then you will really be in trouble. As long as you stay here, you can always think: One day I will go home." He played with my thumb and grinned. "N'est-ce pas?" "Beautiful logic," I said. "You mean I have a home to go to as long as I don't go there?" He laughed. "Well, isn't it true? You don't have a home until you leave it and then, when you have left it, you never can go back." — giovanni’s toom by james baldwin

“Once having set up her idols and built altars to them it was inevitable that she would worship there. It was inevitable that she should accept any inconsistency and cruelty from her deity as all good worshippers do from theirs. All gods who receive homage are cruel. All gods dispense suffering without reason. Otherwise they would not be worshipped. Through indiscriminate suffering men know fear and fear is the most divine emotion. It is the stones for altars and the beginning of wisdom. Half gods are worshipped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood.” — their eyes were watching god by zora neale hurston

“When a person dies, he only appears to die. He ist still very much alive in the past... All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.” — slaughterhouse-five by kurt vonnegut

“I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.” — the song of achilles by madeline miller

honorable mentions:

“Humans were so circular; they lived the same slow cycles of joy and misery over and over, never learning. Every lesson in the universe had to be taught billions of times, and it never stuck. Maybe it was good that the world forgot every lesson, every good and bad memory, every triumph and failure, all of it dying with each generation. Perhaps this cultural amnesia spared them all. Perhaps if they remembered everything, hope would die instead.” — blue lily, lily blue by maggie stiefvater

“For me, culture is as much about what we encourage as what we actually permit,” […] “Most people don't do what we tell them to. They do what we let them get away with.” — beartown by fredrik bachman

“I didn't fall in love with you. I walked into love with you, with my eyes wide open, choosing to take every step along the way. I do believe in fate and destiny, but I also believe we are only fated to do the things that we'd choose anyway. And I'd choose you; in a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, in any version of reality, I'd find you and I'd choose you “ — the chaos of the stars by kiersten white (technically cheating because i have not read this book i only know this quote but i think about it every now and then sooooo)

ask me my top 5 anything

[eolewyn1010]

Dragging Frankenstein - Chapter 17

Finally, the De Lacey exposition is done with, and we're down to brass tacks. Let's greet our next plot point, the Distressing Damsel! Or at least the hypothesis of her.

“with whom I can live in the interchange of those sympathies necessary for my being” – what a convoluted way to describe The Horny™. And yes, that is exactly what he’s after. For all he talks about human company and whatnots, there’s no way to read this without a sexual connotation.

“one as deformed and horrible as myself would not deny herself to me” – worse yet, it is about sexual entitlement. The Creature is a fucking incel, his argument being “if she’s ugly as well, she has to put up with me.” I can’t begin to count the ways in which I hate him. Oh, wait, I already have.

“but you shall never make me base in my own eyes” – pfffft. Victor? You’re still not base in your own eyes? Alright then. DELUSIONS OF GRANDEUR: 13

“instead of threatening, I am content to reason with you” -.- just like his dad, the Creature wants a price for basic decency. “Hey, I’m not threatening to kill you rn! Cookie pls!”

“the human senses are insurmountable barriers for our union” – huh, this reads like DAS GAY: 24

And seeing as it’s still Victor he’s talking to, it also gets INCEST VIBES: 11

(And if you think this point is invalid, consider that he asks the man he calls his father to make him a bride, in the same way he was made – that would be his sister.)

“What I ask of you is reasonable and moderate; I demand a creature of another sex, but as hideous as myself; the gratification is small, but it is all I can receive, and it shall content me.” So, not only would he curse another to the same wretched life he lives, he also has the nerve to preemptively look down on her for not being as beautiful as human women. Can he get any worse of an incel?

LOL, of course there are no people in South America. None.

How would the two of them even cross the ocean?

“How inconstant are your feelings!” LMAO. The Creature of all people complaining about this…

Interesting how he has gone from craving sympathy simply as normal human interaction to being owed sympathy in form of The Horny™. And by interesting, I mean fuck this.

“quit Europe forever” = “depart from the company of men” Because only Europeans are actual people. *nods* Sounds about right.

“by the fire of love that burns my heart” – what, you mean the constant assumption of purely transactional relationships, the blackmailing, the entitlement? That is love now? Or is it The Horny™ and you looking forward to the relief of it?

“And also, I’mma stalk you while you work on this.” Heh, there’s a habit formed.

Pretty pretty landscapes to give a background to Victor’s self-pity. IT’S ALL ABOUT ME: 16

If you want out of the deal, just kill yourself already. Yeesh.

And then he, once again, can’t be arsed to talk to his family about shit. IT’S ALL ABOUT ME: 17

At least reassure them that you didn’t get robbed and raped in the mountains??

“Yet even thus I loved them to adoration” but not enough to tell them wtf is going on, of course.

Wondering if anyone ever set up a psychological profile of Victor Frankenstein. Like, ADHD, narcissist personality disorder, and so on. Therapy whomst? Dunno her.

Honestly? I don't think the Creature's reasons for wanting to make the Distressing Damsel are one iota better than Victor's reasons for creating him. Yeah, the queer interpretation of Victor making him as a sexual partner is half-joking on my part since I cannot fully verify it on the text, but the point stands: The Creature values his desire for company and actually someone he holds power over more than the well-being of this hypothetical new creature, cursing her into existence when his own life of the same sort is fucking miserable.

That isn't better or more sympathetic than Victor creating him for the sake of his own glory - or to have someone he holds power over, because he was thrilled by the thought of someone being subservient to him due to owing their existence to him, just as the Creature is thrilled by the thought of a helpless, confused and incredibly miserable woman being at his beck and call. If the point of Frankenstein is that the Creature is a tragic character I'm supposed to feel for - too bad; I hate this guy. He's exactly the same kind of asshole that Victor is.

[creepykuroneko]

I hate how impossible it is to find books whether they be physical or audiobooks in my library's collection that are written by brown and black people!

My library does not include any of the books written by brown and black authors who are from the city I live in (and yes I live in a major city).

Yet some random book written by a white person from England or a book that just came out by a new author from Japan who no one has ever heard of, those are available.

For those of you who have no reading comprehension whatsoever, I'm not trying to come down on Japanese authors I know they get their own shit thrown at them.

I'm just mad that because of racisim, the model minority myth, and the fact that white people do consider East Asians especially Japanese people honorary White people, it's a lot easier for Europeans and East Asians to get more recognition, credit, and love for their contributions to pop culture here in the USA than it is for actual brown and black people who are from the USA to get their works recognized.

Because it's Black History Month everyone is pretending to care about the contributions of African Americans. So of course you'll find books about the Civil war, a book or two about civil rights, and a book by Dr. King but that is literally it. You don't find actual entertaining works of fiction written by African American authors. No books on the downfall of the Black Panthers by the American government. Nothing about the history of rap and hip hop and how they shaped the community. Most definitely nothing about queer black Pioneers who shaped the community.

You're also not going to find anything by Brown authors. Whether they be indigenous authors from North, central, or South America. My Library only has one audiobook written by Sherman Alexei a internationally famous Native American Author who's been publishing books for decades. We only have one of his books available for audio download! Books written by Brown women? They don't exist in my library's eyes.

But I'm so happy I was able to find another cozy mystery book, written by some white person I've never heard, of who lives overseas and their book provides no substance whatsoever.

[angelsaxis]

Idk if its just me but I feel that the backlash against OFMD was not enough. Like everyone here is so LOUD about LGBTQ issues and other issues plaguing people but they legitimately dont boost voices or concerns when it xomes to black people. Specifically.

Im brown and I dont live in the US, but Ive heard and read enough to know that white people and many poc too, just dont give racism the attention it deserves.

And I wanted to ask if you think Im right in feeling angry or am i over reacting because I just dont feel okay with how easily the shows creators' reasoning was just accepted by the majority of blogs on here, where he explained how they were rewriting stories and changing the narratives or whatever. There were many ways to go about making shows and choosing two slavers to do it was absolutely the worst possible take.

No you're 100% right anon, what nonBlack PoC and white gays like to do is pretend that anything that gets Black people upset is "worth it". They're fine if their über queer gay rep is in the form of rehabilitated white supremacists because they have no empathy for Black people and no understanding of just how bad slavery was. Kidnapped Africans were raped, abused, killed for fun, and even eaten by white people because white supremacy was (and is) just that violent and destructive. Environments were permanently changed, genetic maps were permanently changed, there's millions of descendants of indigenous Africans in diaspora now across North America, the Caribbean, and South America (as well as other places) because of slavery. Stede Bonnet and Blackbeard contributed to that.

But if there's one thing white queer people and nonBlack PoC (whether queer or not) have shown themselves to be, it's incredibly callous, self centered, and dismissive of what Black people say about antiBlackness. NonBlack gays would have dumped this show in a heartbeat if there was any homophobia, transphobia, or acephobia. If Stede Bonnet or Blackbeard were notoriously homophobic and turned into an uwu tenderqueer couple, they'd be up in arms and trying to get the show cancelled. When Black people say to stop making white supremacists relatable, we get patronizing and irrelevant remarks about how All Pirates Are Evil, as if theft and human trafficking are the same thing. We get false platitudes about how they're ~thinking critically~, as if they don't end up just watching and talking about and supporting the show anyways.

You know, the Chicago tribune published a review for OFMD and the racism it's predicted on, and there were nonBlack gays who's heads were so far up fandoms ass that they easily convinced themselves that this review didn't come to exist because of a genuine desire by the author to talk about the racism inherent in this show, but because it was Big Cishet Media lashing out against one of the only positive representations of healthy gays. No matter what, nonBlack gay people will make themselves the victim before even remotely respecting Black people's perspectives. I can't even begin to tell you how many of these people claim to support Black Lives Matter while also gaslighting the shit out of Black people, making us seem like we're uneducated idiots for expecting a comedy to teach us about pirates, making us seem like we're being unfair and even homophobic for wanting this show to not be a racist pile of trash, and pretending like Taika Waititi doesn't already have a history of antiBlackness going back years now that keeps popping up in his projects.

These people are 100% okay with their happy healthy gay media being about white supremacists. I have zero sympathy or patience for people who gush about that show.

[yuri-alexseygaybitch]

I figure it's only a matter of time before this "story" gets picked up by the Western MSM (it's already being "reported" in some shoddy publications like GameIndustry.biz and spread about Reddit, cause anti-China gaming stories are like meth to Reddit), so I'm going to try and debunk some of the hysteria surrounding it.

The source for this claim is an article by South China Morning Post (which I'll link in archive format since it's behind a paywall). SCMP is an anti-CPC/pro-capitalist newspaper owned by Jack Ma, the richest dude in China who has been butting heads with the Communist Party for a while, so they often run provocatively anti-CPC articles aimed at Westerners to try and rile up anticommunist sentiment. Always keep in mind your sources and their material interests and reasons for what they're reporting!

First and foremost China is not "banning" anything. The article references an alleged internal memo from a state-backed "gaming training course" (which the article does not include as a primary source, the writer just says they saw it) about what content would be "seen favorably" by regulators. That's obviously a pretty far cry from "banning" anything like the clickbait headlines would suggest. My friend @mushroomtale who lives in China and works in games tells me they haven't even heard of these new "regulations".

The part of the article that concerns queer content and got reported on as CHINA BANNING GAY STUFF FROM THEIR GAMES in the West is as follows:

Once again this article does NOT include the original memo in Mandarin, we just have to trust that this translation is accurate. Admittedly it seems pretty shitty, but it doesn't say anything about same-sex relationships. The whole "effeminate men" thing has already gotten tons of circulation in the Western press and is largely another case of something being mistranslated, blown entirely the fuck out of proportion and sold off to panicked Western gays as part of the wider sinophobic hysteria in the anglo press.

Does any of this mean I approve of these regulations or think they're "good"? No. But in all honesty what is that even worth? I'm not a Chinese citizen or CPC member. There's nothing I can do about how China conducts its internal affairs no matter how much I may dislike them. That goes for everyone in the West who is going to see these headlines and be incensed by them. So what is the purpose of reporting what some obscure internal memo says about femboys in video games? Well at the end of the food chain it's just to get clicks and money, but the macro purpose is to continue to make people hate and fear China so the emotional basis for continued aggression towards China exists. Every story about China in the capitalist press is oriented around that goal. Running clickbait headlines about banning femboys and gays from video games directly translates to more people in America and the West acquiescing to or enthusiastically supporting more sanctions, more military build-up, more efforts at regime change etc. crazy as that may sound. Literally all you need to do is look at the batshit insane comments under the Reddit posts about this to see it working.

So if this does blow up in the Western press and people start posting about it on here, just keep in mind what's happening in the world right now. We're all living through a vicious new Cold War on China as America and capitalism slides towards defeat brought about by overexploitation of the world and its people. Every story about China in the capitalist press is geared towards serving that purpose. Don't fall victim to it.

[sabugabr]

How "Loki" managed to make Loki's "outed" version also be their most heteronormative one

Well hello again!! This one's gonna be a single post, and relatively shorter than my previous ones (God I hope). I just want to get into one little detail that bothered me while watching Loki — the blatant heteronormativity of all that.

I'm not even talking about plot, the well is deeper ( that's a Brazilian saying, I don't know if it exists in English. Oh well)

SO KKKKKKKKKKK LOKI HUH. Unless you've been hibernating for the last few months, you probably know that some time ago, Disney+ debuted its third series on the platform, Loki, AND TUMBLR WAS ON FIRE. And there's already been a lot of discussion regarding some aspects of the series, some plot choices, well, all sort of things. However, I won't get into all the issues regarding his bissexual representation, or the gender fluidity issue, or even anything regarding Sylvie or Mobius. If you want to know more about it, you can have quick walk around tumblr, or even just go and see what Russell T. Davies has to say about it. It was a crazy ride, this series.

But I know there are a lot of different takes on this matters, and there're many ways in which you can relate to a media or story, and it's not my place here to meddle. If you liked the series, if the queer representation of this series was something that resonated with you, was something meaningful to you, that's genuinely great. So I'll abstain myself to my area of study, Visual Culture, and therefore what I want to talk about here is costume design. More specifically, Loki's.

(just a disclaimer, I'll be refering to Loki using he/him pronoums, since in the series is clear that he identifies himself as male. Also, I won't cover any aspects of Loki in the comics — or even Norse mithology or other medias —and their portrail there, because otherwise this would be WAY longer, so I'll just stick to the MCU)

So let's talk about queer coding, shall we?

1. QUEER CODING

Ok so, let's say you walk into a room full of queer people and ask anyone who loved Disney villains as a kid to raise their hand.

There'd probably be a very fair share of hands up, right? I mean, I know mine would. The relationship between Disney and queer kids has always been an interesting one, to say the least. And it's very common for many of us to feel especially drawn to the villains, and one of the possible reasons for it is the fact that most of the previous Disney villains (and some movie villains in general) are queercoded.

(and Kuzco. Interestingly, I never saw Kuzco being mentioned in these Disney queercoding discussions. Maybe The Emperor's New Groove is just more popular in South America...? Or maybe because it's like a positive representation, so it doesn't count? He's great tho, this movie is wonderful it's truly Disney's finest work I should make a whole post just extolling it just watch me BUT ANYWAY BACK ON TRACK)

If you google it, you'll see that queer coding is

"the subtextual coding of a character in media as queer. Though such a character's sexual identity may not be explicitly confirmed within their respective work, a character might be coded as queer through the use of traits and stereotypes recognisable to the audience. Such traits are greatly varied, but traits of exaggerated masculinity and femininity, vanity, and hypersexuality are frequent." [source: Wikipedia]

In the context of those movies, this was often made purposefully, blatantly, and in a very hurtful way, with very damaging implications, to associate (in a pejorative and stereotyped way) queer = evil. If you want to know more about it, and I highly recommend you do, there are two videos on YouTube by Rowan Ellis that explain these issues in a very complete, didactic way, and much better than I ever could. One's all about Disney villains, and the other is about the historical and social panoramas from queercoding to queerbaiting. I linked them both right there.

But the thing is, even though these are very problematic issues, what ended up happening is that many of us reclaimed those Disney villains. We felt attracted, drawn, captivated by a lot of them (not the Pocahontas one, that one is just bad). To the point where they might be our favorite characters in the movies. And why does it have to do with Loki?

Well, because, let's face it, Loki looks like a Disney villain.

the attitude. LOOK AT HIM

And that was one of the things that amused me the most when I'd go see a Thor or an Avengers movie, because not only would Tom Hiddleston's impeccable acting make the character completely captivating to me, but his outstanding looks always caught my eye.

In my humble opinion, in all the movies he's been in Loki has the most interesting costumes. They are always not only incredibly beautiful but also richly detailed, always following the color palette of Green, Black and Gold, even when he's wearing casual style. I also love how the gold is always used in adornments, and how well-fit his clothes always look. He looks like he'd only wear Asgardian haute couture.

I mean, look at the patterned scarf (which looks enormously like a leopard print to me) with green accents, stylishly matching his black vest and longcoat. THE CANE.

Of course the other costumes are also ok (Thor's armor for example has shades of blue, silver and red, all opposite to Loki's colors - although unlike Loki he almost never changes his outfits, which is a bit disappointing to me). But look at how Thor's outfit is made to make him look big, strong, MASCULINE and caricatured, while Loki's is simply elegant and slim.

His shoulder pads resonate the same shape as Thor's, but are narrower, making him look smaller in comparison. And I find it interesting how (unlike Thor who has an outfit pretty much the same as his comics counterpart) they stripped the more rustic fur trim from Loki's comics design, but kept the characteristic (and more elegant) square shoulder armor/pads.

In short, it's like his whole visual concept is to look dark, slim, fit and elegant.

And oh my, the sass

And Loki's costume designs actually have very beautiful meanings? As you can see in this Buzzfeed interview with Co-Founder and former Co-Head of Visual Development at Marvel Studios Charlie Wen and Marvel Studios Senior Visual Development Artist Anthony Francisco, when designing the character's casual Asgardian clothes, they made the clothe's lines

"more angular, almost architectural in its repeating angles. The purpose was to contrast the soft interior greens (Loki’s primary color) with the rigid blocky exterior (symbolizing Loki trapped inside the rigid walls of Asgard)."

The green color represents his soft interior. In a similar association, his characteristic collar was inspired by the flower faux calla lily, symbolizing "sacrifice and a resurrection motif". It's all very poetic. They deepened this concept in Loki's clothing in Ragnarok, where the replacement of green for blue in his clothes was meant to represent grief and sadness, and his personal growth.

"It's kind of like a nice arc for him. In the beginning of the movie he's green, then he's blue, then he's green again...by the end of the movie, he finds who he is," they said

But with the blue outfit, they added a yellow cape to represent that things would be all right at the end. Yellow and blue also make green. So like, colors mean something here. And they also wanted the blue to evoke a peacock, since Loki was showing himself off to the Grandmaster. A 10/10 outfit. Because you see, asides being elegant and dark and all that, the thing is Loki is flashy, both in his style as in his body language.

And of course none of this necessarily means anything. Things like physical appearance, fashion choices and personality traits have absolutely nothing to do with a person's sexual orientation or gender identity. But just as in the case of the Disney villains, there are certain characteristics and representations tendencies that due to both social constructions and pre-established media codes (such as the ones influenced by the Hays Code, and others), when watching, we feel more inclined to perceive as being queer. And while this usually has a pretty negative connotation (since these evocative traits are usually based on harmful stereotypes), with Loki this wasn't necessarily the case.

Even though he was introduced as a villain from the beginning, Loki has always been decently built, deepened and humanized throughout the films. Even though he was queercoded, he was never defined by grimaces, clothes or stereotypes, nor were these ever necessarily the target of bigoted jokes.

And on top of that, his personal narrative revolved precisely around the sense of feeling like an outsider within your own family. Of feeling less loved, less valued, "trapped", because of a trait he desperately has to keep secret. In this case, it was being blue. But you can change blue for queer that still works fine. It was a very familiar narrative to many queer people watching. So in a way, I think we ended up reclaiming him as well.

And I genuinely think that might have been one of the reasons this character became so loved by the LGBTQIA+ and tumblr communities. He was fabulous, and his presentation and personality reflected that perfectly.

And where did it all end? In Loki.

2. HETERONORMATIVITY

Because you see, in Loki, the only scenes where he actively wears his usual clothes are at the beginning of the series, and then never again. For the rest of the series, he wears the TVA brown coat and later a plain white shirt with a tie.

And while he was on TVA, ok, perfect, they required him to wear these clothes, fine. But after he runs off with Sylvie, he finds himself in SEVERAL situations where he might as well change his clothes. As is constantly explained to us, he can alter his appearance as he pleases and magically create fabrics and clothes at his own pleasure.

But in the one situation where he actively does this (in the train), he chooses to continue with the clothes he got from TVA (and Mobius, which is a cute point of view, but not the point here)

SO JOYFULL!!!

And for the rest of the series, he apparently forgets about his clothes and sticks to that. In that same train, is also revealed to us as an audience that Loki is indeed queer. In a intimate conversation with Sylvie, he is said to like both men and women, and the director reffered to him as bisexual.

And from there he develops a deep affective relationship with Sylvie, a woman (as we were emphatically told in that slightly misogeneous scene between the Lokis where they debate the mere existence of a "female Loki"), which regarding his queerness would be perfectly fine, if it weren't for the change in Loki's presentation from then on.

BECAUSE YOU SEE one of the major point of the Loki series is the development of the title character. Especially, his development in becoming "a better person". He starts off being a so-called pompous narcissist (much like Kuzco if you think about it), meets people who change his perception of himself and the world, and then he starts trying to improve, and redeem himself. In short, becoming a hero (again, just like Kuzco, only The Emperor's New Groove does it better).

And one of the most important things about character design is that a character's costume essentially reflects who that character is, much more than their lines or actions. Just by looking at a character's costume (if it's a good costume) you can basically know everything the movie or series or play wants you to know. And especially if you're telling a story where a character goes through internal changes, the exterior (ie, their costume) should reflect that as well.

So, Loki goes through his great journey, changes, evolves as a person, becomes a hero, and how does his presentation reflects that?

I could laugh but then my laughter would turn into tears

No, really, please. I'm not talking about Sylvie please don't think I'm in any way attacking Sylvie here, just look at him. The kinda grimy white tight shirt, enhancing his chest? The rolled up sleeves??? The leather straps holding his weapon and once again enhancing his chest? The creases in his pants evidencing his pelvis? HIS POSE????? This is a CLASSIC cis straight heroic white male lead pose. This is the kind of aesthetics I'd expect from Chris Pratt in a Jurassic World movie, and I know that you can see it too.

At no point in any movie has Loki ever presented that kind of body posture, that kind of body language. It's as if the show was saying "See? He's tough now"

And there is none of the elements that Wen and Francisco had so beautifully enshrined in Loki's costume composition, in the visual narrative that his clothes would tell. No color scheme, no green, no lily, nor nothing reminiscent of the characteristic curved necklace centerpiece he always wore (which according to Wen and Francisco, is an element that symbolizes Loki's mother, Frigga, like a "mother's crest". Interestingly, notice tho how Sylvie's costume has it, and I don't know if I find it endearing or disturbing)

So, since there's no reference to anything previously used by Loki in the first Thor and Avengers, the only symbology I can attribute to this costume choice is to show how Loki now doesn't care about things like looks anymore. His clothes are dirty, he didn't even bother to change them at all, he's not the same man who started this journey, he dropped Gucci. (They even made a joke about how he magically summoned an ugly blanket to cover him and Sylvie) And consciously or not, I genuinely think it's possible they wanted to make him more "hero-looking", "good-guy-looking". And apparently that meant making him less queer-looking.

And of course there's no way I'm saying queercoding is a good thing But why couldn't he save the world with his fabulous looks? Why couldn't he be the good guy and be flashy? Why couldn't he go through the arc of discovering emotional vulnerability and being able to open up to other people and still enjoy nice clothes and gold? Why couldn't he kiss the girl and have, idk, black painted nails? To me this has the same bitter taste as the recent Disney movie Jungle Cruise, in which the queer character proves his worth when he "man-ups". (And besides, this film is very derogatory in the portrait of South America??? But anyway)

And again, of course none of this necessarily means anything. Your choice of fashion has no direct bearing on how queer you are or not. People express themselves in different ways, but we're not talking about real people. Loki is not a real person, but a character whose wardrobe and gestures and lines were all decided and thought out by an external group of people, with goals and direct consequences in our perception.

And this is even more evident and difficult to ignore for me by how much the series itself shows. In the scene where he meets the other Loki variants, if you notice, everyone is dressed in very elaborate costumes. Honestly, President Loki is MAGNIFICENT with that green vest, the one sided shoulder pad detail, and the textured tie evoking something reptilian (I also loved how they adapted the characteristic gold necklace into a tie pin). But the thing is, he is represented as being, in a way, evil.

They all are. They are shown to be, you know, "the older Loki" versions, those who haven't evolved as much, you know. They're still treacherous, and liars, and slippery, and cowards, and suspicious, and back-stabbers, and narcissists, and bla bla bla. "Our" Loki even calls them "monsters". And since he stands out so much from them all, with his simple, modest, heteronormative clothes, it's very easy for our brain to make an association between "dressing" and "acting." And suddenly Loki's old flashness turns into a harmful stereotype.

Because now the way he dressed is a possible implication of when he was a "bad person". From when he had all the characteristics I mentioned above (all commonly associated with queer people in a pejorative way). And that's so disappointing to me, because in my opinion they missed a great opportunity to get the exact opposite message across. In a social context where the media still villainizes queer traits SO MUCH, where works like Rock Horror Picture Show are still seen as grotesque and villainous by so many people, they could have made a fabulous hero. A queer hero, with characteristics reclaimed by us as a community, portrayed in a beautiful and positive way, just as we see them.

So, this was all only the point of view that I took from the costumes. But the point is that costumes tell a story. They deliver a message. So in Loki's case, what message is this?

Think about it.

Anyway, thank you so much for reading!!!

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Hello! Sorry to disturb you, but who are "woke" people? This is the first time I hear about them and I have no idea what they do and why they are being "problematic" right now. Thanks in advance

The word "woke" became popularized by singer Lead Belly (1888-1949) in the context of black people being aware of their surroundings and safety, particularly in the American south.

It has been repurposed for an ideology with origins going back more than 40 years, which started to become quite visible during the 2010s, and became dominant over the last few of years, and certainly in the last 18 months.

It's based on a mishmash of philosophies and beliefs, including French postmodernism (radical skepticism about objective reality, obsession about language and belief that it's an expression of power), and German Marxian conflict theory (at its most simplistic, take Marxism and replace class with various identity groups).

It insists that America in particular, is racist, sexist, etc, right down to its very core. That racism, sexism, etc, is woven right through all of society, everywhere, at all times. That even the Civil Rights Movements were essentially a conspiracy to pretend to make things better for minorities, and even that the neutrality of the U.S. Constitution supports this conspiracy.

==

The following is from a paper written by Robin DiAngelo, author of White Fragility. It documents the conclusions - or creed, really - that participants at a particular racial pedagogy (education) conference came up with:

https://robindiangelo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Anti-racism-handout-1-page-2016.pdf

• Racism exists today, in both traditional and modern forms • All members of this society have been socialized to participate in it • All white people benefit from racism, regardless of intentions; intentions are irrelevant. • No one here chose to be socialized into racism (so no one is “bad’). But no one is neutral – to not act against racism is to support racism. • Racism must be continually identified, analyzed and challenged; no one is ever done • The question is not ”did racism take place”? but rather “how did racism manifest in that situation?” • The racial status quo is comfortable for most whites. Therefore, anything that maintains white comfort is suspect. If you are white, practice sitting with and building your stamina for racial discomfort.

Someone who is "woke" is like someone who is "born again." They have this racial enlightenment, this racial sight, and like Neo in The Matrix, they can see the hidden code of the Matrix, the invisible expressions of power every time a white person and a black person talk, every time a woman and a man interact. The carefully hidden forces flowing just beneath the surface that even the participants themselves don’t notice.

What this results in is situations such as an example described by Helen Pluckrose.

She participated in a project a few years ago which demonstrated that much of the academic scholarship that has come out of the theoretical humanities (e.g. Gender Studies, Queer Studies, Post-Colonial Studies, etc) is ideologically polluted. You don't need evidence, you don't need a sound, reasoned argument. Instead, you can start with your pet peeve as your conclusion and work backwards, as long as you blame everything on the right type of people. This is how their project managed to get a mildly rewritten chapter of Mein Kampf published in a feminist journal.

Here's a video where they explain the project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVk9a5Jcd1k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NelsKQQDTxU

I've referenced her sufficiently that I have an entire tag for her. She’s lovely: https://religion-is-a-mental-illness.tumblr.com/tagged/Helen-Pluckrose

==

But returning to what I was saying. She gives an example of this type of ideology at work:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmJXitG9Co0&t=53m4s

Helen: An example I give of this when people are trying to understand Problematizing is, suppose that you have a white sales assistant and a black and a white customer walk into the shop at the same time.

Now, if she approaches the white customer and offers help first, this can be read as racist because she’s assuming the white customer is more important. But if she was to approach the black customer first, this could be considered racist because she doesn’t want the black customer unsupervised wandering around the shop.

There wouldn’t be, if somebody, a critical theorist or somebody with this kind of activism, somebody who has come to look at a situation and problematize it - there isn’t a right thing to do. That racism must be there, that must be what it is, the shop assistant now needs to apologize for her part in this and try and do better.

Karlyn: But there’s no better that she can do, literally, damned if you do damned if you don’t.

Helen: Yeah, I mean if she was to say, no, I went to that customer first because they were slightly closer to me, or you know, any other reason though, so it doesn’t matter what your intentions were, your actions were experienced by the black customer - even if they weren’t - as a racist microaggression. And this really harms people.

As you can see, her example isn't some kind of strawman. It exactly touches on the dot-points from DiAngelo's list above. Line them up and tick them off.

What’s astonishingly dehumanizing that might have not been overtly apparent, is that not only is intent of the shop assistant irrelevant, but so is the opinion of the black customer. It doesn’t matter whether they’re bothered that they were assisted first or second. They may not have even noticed.

What matters is that the Woke person has analyzed this situation, read the code of the Matrix, found the expression of invisible, numinous power dynamics, and thus exposed the “racism” in this system. There doesn’t even need to be a victim here; the Woke activist can get offended on behalf of someone else who is not offended.

This isn’t even something the overwhelming majority of black people even want. They don’t want to be treated as foolish, ignorant children with no agency who need a savior to rescue them because they’re just that helpless. Many of the loudest voices against this are black and brown members of America and Britain’s thought leaders.

==

This is why you find such insanity as traffic lights, hiking, smiling, not smiling and milk being "racist" and/or "sexist." It's activists with this type of ideology going around doing the job of problematizing. Just as a Xian goes looking for the sin and telling people about their sin. Whether it's there or not.

But of course they find it, even if it isn't actually there, because when you're ideologically motivated to look for something, you're going to find a way to find it. There's a TikToker called Savvy who has a really interesting way of describing this.

Problematizing is what you could call a sacrament and obligation of this belief system. In the same way that jihad is an obligation of a Muslim, and testifying is an obligation of an evangelical Xian.

Once you are "woke" it is your responsibility to continuously find and expose all the hidden, concealed racism and sexism. Regardless of intentions. Because intentions don't matter. If you didn't find the racism and sexism, it's because you're a racist and a sexist. "No one is ever done." If this sounds cultish, it’s because it is.

What's troubling is that all this noise about all this petty shit makes it difficult for people to tell what they should pay attention to and what they should ignore. Everything is framed with extremely hyperbolic terminology: "Cow's milk has long been a symbol used by white supremacists," "The Racist History of Soap," "NAACP links earthquake signs to white supremacy."

People don't know that they can, and should, just laugh these off as cranks, the same way they laugh off Xian doomsday prophets. Partly because of the loaded language, and partly because this stuff is emanating out of organizations, publications and institutions that used to be reputable, but have been ideologically captured.

This, by the way, is intentional. It’s a feature of the ideology, not a bug. This is what disrupt, dismantle, decolonize, etc, means. Because it sees society through power dynamics and language, that’s how it attacks. It redefines words. Suddenly people who weren’t racists are panicked about being inherently racists. What’s changed? Nothing has actually changed, just the definition of a word. This is how this ideology has attained power at all levels of many institutions.

==

Bigotry - which is the umbrella term under which racism, sexism, etc sit - has objectively been on the decline for decades in western, liberal, secular countries. One of the ways this has occurred is by adopting Martin Luther King, Jr's view of "not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." What's referred to as the "colorblind" approach.

This is sometimes misrepresented, almost as a caricature, as if it means "oh, I couldn't tell they were black," "I had no idea you were a woman." This is not what this means. It means that we reduce the social significance of these differences, even if we can still notice they're there. They don't matter. As Morgan Freeman said "stop talking about it." Start thinking of each other as individual humans.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeixtYS-P3s

"I'm gonna stop calling you a white man, and I'm gonna ask you to stop calling me a black man. I know you as Mike Wallace, you know me as Morgan Freeman."

The woke ideology says that this is exactly the wrong approach. Explicitly. As Kimberle Crenshaw wrote:

"We all can recognize the distinction between the claims "I am Black" and the claim "I am a person who happens to be Black." "I am Black" takes the socially imposed identity and empowers it as an anchor of subjectivity. "I am Black" becomes not simply a statement of resistance, but also a positive discourse of self-identification, intimately linked to. celebratory statements like the Black nationalist "Black is beautiful." "I am a person who happens to be Black," on the other hand, achieves self-identification by straining for a certain universality (in effect, "I am first a person") and for a concomitant dismissal of the imposed category ("Black") as contingent, circumstantial, non-determinant. There is truth in both characterizations, of course, but they function, quite differently depending on the political context. At this point in history, a strong case can be made that the most critical resistance strategy for dis-empowered groups is to occupy and defend a politics of social location rather than to vacate and destroy it."

This is full of unnecessarily complicated and obtuse jargonese language masquerading as depth, as the theoretical humanities is prone to do, but what it's saying is that MLK got it wrong. The Civil Rights Movement was wrong to forward a common humanity - "I am a person who happens to be black" - instead of making race the most important thing of all - "I am Black", in this sense, politically Black, rather than racially black.

We were doing just fine. Which is not to say that everything was fine, but we were making great inroads, chipping away at what remained of these bigotries. Declarations of equal opportunity, equal treatment, etc, had been written into laws, making available a fulcrum against which remaining discrimination could be prized off.

==

And this is what's going on right now in American culture, across education, industry, government and even entertainment. People can see the effects, even if they don’t quite understand why. TV shows are changing, becoming obnoxious and preachy. Science classes, calculus classes, even knitting Instagrams are being consumed by fixation on race, gender, etc, rather than remaining focused on science, calculus and knitting. Evergreen State College completely melted down because of this ideology.

It's working to create beliefs, policies and laws, such as that:

black kids shouldn't be expected to do math properly, they need separate-but-equal math lessons which considers "body/emotions" and "windows/mirrors" (not kidding) rather than actually doing math

a black kid shouldn't be expected to show their work, because "attention to detail" is regarded as an expression of "whiteness"

science is a "white" way of knowing, black kids cannot be expected to do it, and should be discouraged in favor of superstition and storytelling

anti-discrimination legislation should be repealed in order to allow institutions to discriminate about who they accept, because there's "too many" of those people (e.g. of Asian ancestry)

when black people behave badly, it's the fault of white people. Because black people can't know right from wrong on their own.

in the name of diversity, equity and inclusion (not what you think they mean), high school students shouldn't have to demonstrate writing and math skills in order to graduate, but kindergarteners should be expected to deconstruct their identity categories and their privilege. Again, not kidding.

Any of these initiatives could be expected to come straight from the mouth of Strom Thurmond, but are instead the projects of people declaring themselves to be on "the right side of history."

You may notice that it's racist against everybody, yet dressed up as a virtue. To disagree with any of this bigotry-of-low-expectations is to be told you're a racist, sexist, etc, etc, and/or just don't understand it (a heretic).

==

There's a ton of stuff I can suggest to get you familiar with the subject matter. Much of it gets very complicated very quickly, because of the ivory tower echo chamber in which it originated and percolated.

I think listening to and reading what Helen has to say provides the gentlest, most approachable introductions to begin with.

Here's some specific suggestions:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zy7O-xgN3hw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AvyqUOKhGA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeXfV0tAxtE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmJXitG9Co0

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2hrUFtAPRXdXIIXZujl26XvpibnHhk_p

https://religion-is-a-mental-illness.tumblr.com/tagged/Helen-Pluckrose

This is a book she wrote with James Lindsay:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08BGCM5QZ

https://religion-is-a-mental-illness.tumblr.com/tagged/Cynical-Theories

It covers the origin of the ideas that underpin the Woke ideology, and particularly helps explain how these ideas are directly opposed to liberalism (liberal ethics), how they do the opposite of what they claim, and how we can guiltlessly reject them. The same way we can reject Xianity, Islam, Mormonism, etc.

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

Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on liberty, consent of the governed and equality before the law. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but they generally support individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), democracy, secularism, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion and a market economy.

[wastingoxygensince1983]

hey, i just saw what you said about encanto and the irony. my family and i are all white and something we agreed on is we probably missed a whole load of context for things, etc., because we aren't part of columbian culture/aren't familiar with anything more than the basics of spanish familial structure. it was really cool to watch encanto (and coco, too, actually, tho obviously that's about mexico).

Hey Hello! Thank you for reaching.

Glad you like Encanto and Coco. And thank you for your comment about my post.

The thing is that, this is technically the first movie that has it roots in Colombia that doesn't involve Narcos, or the violence and it focus more in showing that there's way more things that makes us, well us. Or at least, how the trauma of that violence touch and affects families after generations that we lived it(and spoiler, things like what happened to Alma and Pedro are still happening right now).

So a movie that focus in things like this are such an important part, and I think most of Colombians would think the same.

And I get how it doesn't fit the format of other movies when there's a villain, but for a lot of use there kind of things are way more importance.

That's why I roll my eyes when I see complains that the movie lack villains, or people headcanon Bruno as a villain. And each to everyone to do. But it would be even more important to when they do, they research information about the country and our history.

Instead for the majority, is a copy paste for the characters that people simp to include in their narrative.

And I'm not having a problem with that, like I said every person can do what they want, but it bothers me is when people push aside the growth of Alma and Isabela because they can't fit that part in their own traumas.

To tell you that in my own family I'm a mix of Mirabel and Bruno myself, and for personal experience I can tell you that if I was Mirabel or Bruno and hear people saying what I have read about Alma any of them would deck them.

We are fiercely strong about family, even if we have issues, even if we have trauma between us.

And I understand, most of the white/the US culture growths in family that is almost normal to leave their places around 18yo. When you still have homes in Colombia where different parts of the same family live together, and you have at minimum 4 generations of a family in the same house. People usually only leaves because they had to or they were forced too.

So our perceptions about family are different, and how close we are to that family too.

So what would be a little better is people do like you and reach to us, and ask. Like I said, If we don't have to talk about Pablo Escobar, most of us are thrill to share about our amazing country and culture.

Saying that I don't think the issues are about the sexual orientations or genders. Because queer Colombian and no binary Colombians exist in the country. Like I mentioned in a post before(that I'm not sure how to add in here, if you can check my posts about encanto), the problem is not per se the headcanon of their sexualities, is more the fact that people deliberately ignore what we are saying about the costumes.

So yeah, thank you for reaching.

A little advice if I may: is Colombia. not Columbia. Columbia is the state in the United States, Colombia is the country in South America.

Some Colombians are very resentful about that, and there's even merch(like t-shirts) that say "is Colombia, not Columbia".

Have a nice day!!

And what's your favorite part of the movie? Did you tear up?

[hussyknee]

I'm exhausted having to police my language to accommodate Western diasporas and Americans and Europeans and Western queer people when talking about my experiences as an Asian woman living in Asia, so they won't be taken out of context. We don't have Black people or Jewish people in many regions (except for a few migrants). All white people are equally exploitative and white supremacist to us, no matter how disenfranchised they are in white countries, or geo-politically. Asian cis men are violent and exploitative to women and AFAB people, and we have so much generational trauma from them. All Western people have privilege over us as long as we live in the Global South.

African and Asian passports are so worthless we can barely get tourist visas to Europe and North America. We don't earn in dollars so we can barely afford plane fees and accomodations to travel to First World countries, let alone money to work and study there. Our poor live so far below the poverty line that they don't have access to indoor plumbing, clean toilets or menstrual products. Even those of us who aren't poor can't afford or plain have no access to a lot of medicines, medical procedures, goods and services, technology and resources that GN people take for granted.

First World minorities join militaries that raze brown countries. We're currently witnessing a medical genocide because of the West's vaccine hoarding. There's a huge influx of brown immigrants to the Global North that are undocumented or asylum seekers because of wars and conflicts started or aided by EuroAmerican colonists and economic interests. And whenever we point out that race created the Global South to be sucked dry by white countries, that geo-political privilege exists, that the majority of brown, Black and indigenous people live in the Global South, you have the gall to call us racist.

You demand our allyship while never giving anything at all back, because it doesn't concern you, or you find our language problematic or reductive, or you don't think we're that oppressed, or or or. It's awful how normalized communism is among the Western left. Nazism is recognised as inherently genocidal and violent by all but the right-wing, but you have no issue insisting or tolerating people that insist that communism is just misunderstood. Our genocides, our people who have died fighting your wars, our people that die and become disabled so you can have everything from chocolate to mobile phones, our people you slaughter and genocide and call it "serving your country"...none of us matter one whit to you, no matter what race or minority you are.

There's also no recognition that most of us have no context for a lot of the issues and experiences Western minorities face, and learning about them entails getting yelled at until we figure it out ourselves somehow. More and more I don't really want to deal with any Western people, except you dominate every single Anglo social media platform. Trans people, queer people, disabled people, feminists, anti-capitalists, racial minorities - every single one of you will actively erase, silence, police or plain stab Global South people in the back at every opportunity.

I'm heartbroken and tired. And pretty broken in spirit. My allyship is non-conditional because it's the only right thing to do and I'm not an asshat who puts conditions on my support of human rights. But it also entails just standing there while getting slapped in the face, over and over.

[qqueenofhades]

Hey, I loved your post about queerness in historical fiction. I was wondering if you could help me find a better way to explain (or know of someone who could) to the white (usually male) fans of Tolkien who are currently losing their minds because in the series for Amazon they have cast Sir Lenny Henry (a black man) as a hobbit. It feels like the exact same argument that was dealt with when Anya Chalotra was cast as Yennefer for The Witcher. It just seems like only white people are screaming that the entire cast must be white in both the case of the Witcher and Middle Earth in order to be "historically accurate to the Dark Ages" when it's all fantasy. I'm a white person and I don't get it. It's really frustrating that the only way to convince them that people of color should be allowed to play characters who aren't evil-doers is to bring up the existence of the potato in both Middle Earth and The Witcher. In this most recent fight, I've been called all kinds of names (one dude keeps saying I'm racist when I haven't brought up race or anything like that) and it's ridiculous because Henry was cast as a Harfoot who were hobbits with dark skin that they claim means Mediterranean not Black.

Ooof. I admire your initiative, I really do, but also: there comes a point where all good-faith efforts are totally futile, because these people don't actually WANT their beliefs challenged, and there won't be anything you can do about it except to exhaust yourself. You can throw all the material or documentary evidence at them that you want, but it won't work, because racism, white superiority, and the assumption of a monolithically white medieval history are a helluva drug. They are eager to split ridiculous hairs like "dark skin means Mediterranean instead of black" because, well, racism, whether or not they want to acknowledge that. Because Mediterranean is at least European, whereas for them, Black is Bad, Inferior, or otherwise Unacceptable. This doesn't even get into the types who want to claim that Ancient Rome (which was rather notably, y'know, Mediterranean and North African) was actually lily-white, because even dark-skinned Southern and Eastern Europeans can't ultimately make the racist cut.

Tolkien himself obviously had problems with his depiction of race and racialized people (witness the Haradrim, "men from the South," being the only people of colour in the story and generalized as an indiscriminate evil force fighting for Sauron against the white/Northern European heroes). That's not to say Tolkien was actively racist (see: the letter he wrote to the Nazi German would-be publishers of The Hobbit, inviting them cordially to get fucked), but it does mean that he was steeped in the usual assumptions and expectations of a white upper-class British man in the 1920s and 1930s, and not least the mindset that the (white) rulers of the (nonwhite) British Empire were superior, morally correct, and the privileged resisters of "evil" political systems. (This isn't even getting into how Germany was admired throughout the long 19th century for its perceived cultural and social superiority, the American eugenics movement directly influenced the Nazis, a lot of people thought that Hitler's only mistake was being too obviously crazy, and America and Britain only actively entered World War II when their territory/perceived global power was infringed upon.)

White people tend to assume that if they personally don't hold discriminatory attitudes (and they usually do, just because that's what society has taught them for almost all of modern history), they can't be racist, and it's a personal insult to call them that. They know that Racism Is Bad, but likewise, it's always someone else's fault, not theirs. See the huge brouhaha over the supposed plan to teach "critical race theory" in American public schools, which is really just acknowledging that centuries of racism and discrimination have created a system that disadvantages people of color at every level. This is absolute heresy for today's right wing (which has become ever more extreme, reactionary, and historically amnesiac) to admit. They can admit historical racism, sometimes, maybe, only in demonstrably "bad" people, but as far as they're concerned, there was no lingering effect whatsoever, and it's "un-American" (read: anti-white supremacist) to insist otherwise. Land of the free! Everyone treated the same! Etc. etc. The continued inferior or disadvantaged life outcomes of people of color is, according to these types, simply a result of them not being motivated/ambitious/smart enough to fix their own broken circumstances. Those centuries of genocide, cultural destruction, use as literal chattel slaves, etc, has nothing to do with it.

If this sounds ridiculous: well, obviously, it is. But as reactionary mindsets have become troublingly normalized and social media has allowed people to spread both passively and actively racist content to unprecedented degrees, it has also leaked into media. The type of white-man-fan you're arguing with won't accept any "historically accurate" argument for the inclusion of non-white people, even as they're staking their own (bad) arguments on that hill. This is because they want to claim the sole privilege to create a nostalgic/imagined/fantasy space that looks just like them. Their underlying belief is that people of color never had any power or consequential role in history, and shouldn't have, so they don't want to see a space, even an explicitly fantastic/non-historical setting (like LOTR, The Witcher, GOT, etc.), where this is the case. Whether or not they want to say it, or even if they're aware of it, they feel that even if they've been unhappily forced to accept a small lessening of their cultural power just because we no longer automatically accept that white men get to run everything, they at least can take comfort in a (white) past. And now, or so they think, the "politically correct" types also want to ruin their racist fantasy comfort zone. They can't even escape from multiculturalism in media, as it too has become steadily more diverse.

Basically: it's racism, Jan. It's many levels of racism, you can't argue those people out of it, and you have to identify and understand that, especially since their favorite diversionary tactic will be the schoolyard maneuver of going, "no, YOU'RE the racist!!!"

(Also: "historically accurate to the Dark Ages" should tell you everything you need to know. These people know absolutely nothing about history, but that won't prevent them from weaponising it in defense of the perceived threat to their cultural and racial domination. Besides, yet again, fantasy universes have no claim to historical accuracy, and if you say that, I assume you just want to feel justified in creating a fictional universe where the only powerful/consequential people are white heterosexual western European-coded men, because you not-so-secretly wish it was still that way in reality.)