#class bigotry

[mifletzet]

I attended a seminar today on building community resilience to radicalization to violence. The lecture was really informative and covered a wide spectrum of different types of extremism, including political, gender motivated, racial, etc. I don't feel the need to share all of the information here, because the focus was primarily on radicalization in my state specifically, but I did want to share this specific part on identifying indicators that someone is on the path to, if not fully, radicalized:

If you see any of these in your community, call it out!

This is what has been proven to lead to mass attacks against marginalized groups.

If you see something, say something!

[thottybrucewayne]

The way nonblack leftists speak about Black leftists is interesting, to say the least. Yall know nothing about Black liberation or self-determination politics or pretty much ANY Black leftist thought but you feel secure enough to call us overly identitarian and dismiss our concerns about how pervasive antiblackness is within yall spaces (online AND offline) as idpol nonsense. You don't even hold community with Black people. The single drip of knowledge yall possess of Black leftist theory has been run through a filter of at least 15 white and nb breadtube discord voice call conversations and at least one vaush stream before it got to your ears and yet, STILL, you have the gall to tell Black people that WE are the ones who don't read. Okay

[politijohn]

Target's defense of removing Pride merchandise for 'worker safety' overlooks their donations of over $439K to anti-LGBTQ Republicans in 2022, totaling $1.8M since 2018.

You can't claim to be protecting employees when your financial capital funds hateful politicians who fuel the threats in the first place.

Target's response should have been 1. Cease funding right-wing bigotry. 2. Support employees and the LGBTQ community by pursuing legal action against those responsible for threats and violence in their stores, sending a clear message that such actions are criminal and will be treated as such.

Caving to bigotry does not make Target's employees safer. All it does is say, "threatening violence works, so continue to use it." Stop defending Target.

[clotpolesonly]

okay so i've been seeing some love for the show's latino!Gansey and i just gotta say, i can't relate aldfkjgh

no shade, i get that we're all desperate for minority rep, and it's really nice to get a latino character that breaks so many stereotypes (wealthy, universally respected, an academic, beloved by literally everyone but without being unduly sexualized, etc etc)

HOWEVER

i feel like people think Gansey as he's written in the books is a blank slate that they can project onto and racebending him won't/shouldn't/didn't change anything about him, but honestly i think that's a bit of lowkey racist take in and of itself? in a way?? in the sense that it plays into the white supremacist idea of whiteness being the default (aka nothing) instead of being its own something with identifiable characteristics.

book!Gansey does have a cultural identity and very strong cultural influences that play a crucial role in his characterization, and that cultural identity is WASP

(the irony is not lost on me alkdfjgh)

White Anglo Saxon Protestants, essentially the "ruling class" of the US for centuries, The Establishment™, etc. they're known primarily for being wealthy, snobbish, and repressed. they're the kind of people who like to think they're Good People but are soooo concerned with image and reputation that they'd rather perpetuate harm than admit they were ever responsible for it.

Mrs Gansey guilt tripping her son for missing her fundraiser instead of, ya know, being worried that he's not responding to any of her texts?

Gansey literally fleeing the country as a PRETEEN because his ptsd made him messy and embarrassing for the family?

his very first thought upon being fatally stung by hundreds of hornets being that he was going to interrupt and ruin the party?

that entire family luncheon where Gansey is constantly on red alert, searching for passive aggression in every single comment (and finding it), reading into every word for What They're Actually Saying Without Really Saying?

that is so WASP it should be in the dictionary next to the term!!! being presentable is more important than communicating directly, at all times, and the protestant roots mean that Suffering In Silence is a VIRTUE. it's a sin to need things and a double sin to ask for them. god forbid you impose upon another person, it's contractually required that you suffer quietly for a respectable amount of time while you drop the subtlest of hints in the direction of whoever you want help from in the hopes that they will do the good respectable charitable christian thing and offer you that help out of the goodness of their hearts, and if they don't, then you suffer some more and also nurse a lifelong grudge against them in the most passive aggressive unspoken festering way possible.

being raised in that culture informs everything about Gansey's personality and how he interacts with other people and forms relationships.

and it also informs Gansey's relationship with his wealth and his position!! Gansey's class guilt is like half of his character arc!!! and we can't pretend that class and race aren't tied together, okay, we can't get away with pretending that race doesn't play a part in people's place in society. for the Ganseys to be old money like they are, and old virginian money at that, to make them anything other than white introduces a whole HOST of complications that, frankly, the show is not engaging with.

the showrunners have made so much noise about diversifying the cast since the books were so white, and they're reeeeaaally patting themselves on the back for this, but it doesn't feel like they put any THOUGHT into how this change would actually affect the characterization!!!!

do they think that a latino in the upper echelons of the (white) (republican) virginian old money social scene wouldn't have a different experience? a different relationship with their money, and with their own heritage, and with other pocs?? that it wouldn't affect and complicate Gansey's relationship with Blue, especially with how much stronger they've leaned into Blue's connection with her cultural heritage and her political activism and how vocal she's been about intersectionality as a poor non-christian mixed race Black woman in appalachia.

Gansey is a latino man who can't speak spanish living in a mansion on a former slave plantation and Blue doesn't have anything to say about that?? Gansey doesn't have any extra layer of guilt or shame about his disconnect from his own culture?? Gansey is so full of guilt and insecurity about so many things, but there's been NO indication so far of how his race intersects with that.

for them to make this kind of huge change, i would've needed to see them really commit to it and show me that they understand the sociological implications of this decision. and they haven't done that. i know we've only gotten season 1, and hey, maybe i'm wrong and there'll be an arc about it somewhere in season 2, but so far i'm wholly disappointed. it really feels like they slipped it in there just to say that they had and then functionally ignored it aside from that one spanish-speaking scene.

what was the POINT except to pat themselves on the back??

[femvent]

I just checked the comments under Neil Gaiman's last post to see if anybody was even talking about the situation and saw someone say that not trusting cis men is TERF rhetoric. You all are a lost cause. You hate TERFs more than you care about women and their oppression at the hands of men.

[spacecasehobbit]

Still obsessed with Saltburn, never gonna stop being obsessed with Saltburn. It feels like there's new things to notice every time I rewatch even part of it, but there's also certain lines that I've loved since the first time I saw the movie. Lines that make me so baffled when people say Saltburn isn't that deep, because even these casual lines pack in so many layers.

For example, there's the one right after Farleigh gets kicked out over the Palissey plates (which none of the Cattons questioned him trying to steal, even though he was actually set up by Oliver), when Venetia says to Felix and Oliver about Farleigh,

"He's more spoiled than we are. He gets everything he asks for."

That line? It is so brutal, like kudos to Emerald Fennell for writing it and to Alison Oliver for delivering it with such casually earnest perfection.

On the one hand, it's a ridiculous claim that, "He gets everything he asks for," when we just watched Oliver overhear an argument between Farleigh and Felix a few scenes earlier in which Farleigh was all but begging for something and getting very much denied what he was asking for.

On the other hand, it's a perfect example of one major way that privilege maintains its power. Even if you take Venetia's statement as hyperbole and assume that Farleigh still gets a lot of what he asks for, then we could turn that around and say Felix and Venetia get everything they want without even having to ask.

And not having to ask means they don't have to outright acknowledge they wanted everything other people just give them, and therefore they're not the ones who go around asking for handouts like someone "more spoiled than they are".

And it's good class commentary, but it's not just about money and class. It's the same reason that Felix gets so defensive in that argument Oliver overheard, when Farleigh brings up race in a roundabout way, and Felix acknowledges that Farleigh was bringing up his race and then turns around anyway and tells Farleigh,

"You're family! We hardly even notice you're... different."

Of course they notice that Farleigh is "different," but Felix can't outright say that the difference in question is Farleigh's black skin, or that the Cattons do absolutely think that makes Farleigh different than they are, because to acknowledge Farleigh's skin color would be to acknowledge their own privilege by proxy.

And if the Cattons acknowledge their privilege, then they might actually have to think a little more deeply about how they use it and how they treat others who are marginalized in ways that they aren't, if they still wanted to think of themselves as good people.

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

By Gregory L. Williams

Southern politicians who sold their souls to the corporations and banks are a bit rattled right now, and who can blame them? Volkswagen workers won big in Chattanooga, Tennessee, when 73% of plant workers voted to join the United Auto Workers Union.

This is the first time that autoworkers have successfully unionized via election in the South since the 1940s! What if more of us workers here in the South get an idea? 

[jebiknights]

Don't feel like making a longer post rn (bc I'd need to do research) but the way this fandom seems to almost purposefully misunderstand not only pacifism but especially political pacifism is honestly concerning. And the thing people seem to misunderstand the most is that pacifism is NOT the same as inaction, which seems to be at the heart of like every anti New Mandalorians critique lmao.

[sword-and-nightingale]

I'm stuck with my mom watching Fox News, and they're trying to claim that Christians can't talk about their faith... in America. As if Christian values aren't the only ones that are put into laws, as if Christianity isn't seeped into the very roots of America. White American Christians want to be oppressed so badly that they pretend that online heckling is the same as oppression while queer communities are holding funerals because someone else possibly throwing around Christianity as the reason was so disgusted that we exist, give me a fucking break.

[captainjonnitkessler]

"American individualism has a lot of problems and can lead to a loss of supportive community networks" - true, a problem worth talking about

"Individualism is a poison and anyone who wants to maintain a level of independence from their family, culture, or community is suspect" - BAD. WRONG AND BAD. THIS IS EXTREME CONSERVATISM DRESSED UP IN A PROGRESSIVE HAT

[gamblegun]

The implicit or explicit r//dfem belief, that the only bigotry that Really exists is misogyny is a really odd one. Like, it's stupid to single out a single form of bigotry as the True One, but you're not even going to consider class? How do you think your clothes are made?

[aphverse-confessions]

i find people who include fantasy racism, sexism and homophobia in their rewrites for ‘added drama’ and ‘issues’ are extremely unoriginal and lacking creativity. if your go to conflict is always fascism just because you have no creativity to try and come up with anything else besides what you know and is obviously ingrained in your brain, you should sit down and think why your go to awnser is always fascism.

.

[thefirstknife]

While I 100% agree that if people aren't having fun they should take a step back/quit, I don't like the "if you're not having fun just go find another game" argument because it's so often used to shut down actual legitimate criticism from people who are otherwise enjoying the game but want genuine problems to be addressed. (I've seen it, for example, when people try to bring up bigotry in games and suggest maybe making some changes to remove it. I always get wary when I see people say it now.)

Oh yeah absolutely. There's real criticism that we have to be able to point out and discuss. A lot of the times people use this for any minor criticism someone has and I agree, that's often a way to shut down the conversation. Criticism in general is supposed to come from a place of love: you love something and you want to see it be better.

Unfortunately, in this case, when the community turns into ONLY negativity and criticism, it's kinda hard to believe they care about the game anymore. If people still had some positive stuff to engage with and were enjoying the game but had issues, then sure. But most of the negativity online right now is just purely rage bait. Bungie apparently has no redeeming qualities, and Destiny is dead. Misinformation is spreading about everything: all devs abandoned Destiny to work on Marathon (claim with no source that's accepted as fact and makes no sense: Destiny is the only game making them money, they can't abandon it before Marathon is out. Like, logically), monetisation is the worst in the industry (I genuinely don't believe that they play other games if they think that Destiny's monetisation is the worst in the industry), Bungie is maliciously banning people for fun (????) but also Bungie isn't banning people enough, Bungie is maliciously making server issues and didn't develop a "fix server" button in their office, game development is easy and Bungie is just lazy and the devs don't want to tell us anything because they're evil, Destiny is falling apart and nobody is playing anymore (just trust me bro), and most recent one which is possibly the most baffling of all - Bungie Foundation is a scam to write off taxes. Yes, that is currently discourse (which apparently gets recycled every year). Bungie Foundation, a charity organisation that's been going on for 13 years and is an independent registered organisation, is a scam. This is where we're at with the community mentality. And there's even more.

When we're at this point, it's truly something else. Like, if they believe conspiracy theories about Bungie and think Bungie is scamming them, maybe they just shouldn't play the game anymore. Why are they still here if they think this is all a scam? I would drop the game if I believed any of this so strongly.

Normal people having criticism and all is perfectly fine however! I did my fair share especially recently about the season pass pricing changes which I called a predatory practice and still believe it is. There's a lot more stuff to complain about while still enjoying the game and not basing your entire online existence and personality on hating Bungie. If they've got nothing else to do besides sitting on twitter shitting on Bungie, maybe it's time to move on.

I've also had my suspicions about the motives for hardcore Bungie hate after the incidents involving transphobic attacks on Bungie devs following the LF showcase, as well as all the crap about Nimbus and their VA. Given the recent developments about the general anti-LGBT+ mentality, I wouldn't be surprised if there's a contingent of people who are focusing on Bungie more than anyone else for how outspoken they are in their support for LGBT+ causes. Like, not to do some big reach or something but it's fairly curious that gamers online are adopting the anti-LGBT+ sentiments while Bungie is aggressively supportive. It just rubs me the wrong way that the one company that's committed to this and has been for years before most other companies jumped on the bandwagon is the one that they're choosing to paint as the worst villain. And the LGBT+ support isn't even all, as Bungie has other initiatives where they actively support women's right, reproductive rights, poc rights, disability rights and so on). I don't know, I've been a part of the gaming community for a long time and while there's been massive changes since the early days (and since gamergate days), the issues of bigotry in gaming remain. It feels particularly suspicious to, out of ALL companies, single out Bungie which invests in charities and progressive causes. Like, in the grand scheme of things, every corpo is robbing me blind, I know that, I have to give money to corpos to live on this Earth, so I at least want to give it to a corpo that considers me to be a human being and funds causes that promote my rights, instead of wanting me dead.

Ironically, all of this weird hate makes it harder to have actual normal criticism. It just gets drowned and lost in the sea of exaggerated bullshit and lies and conspiracies perpetuated by people who just don't seem to like the game anymore. At the end of the day, it's a video game. Whatever criticism we have, if it gets to the point where we just can't handle the state of the game, the best way to show it is to simply stop playing. A deluge of harassment on twitter will not bring about meaningful change nor will it adequately convey our criticism to anyone. If they truly want some changes, they would do this criticism in a way that matters, instead of creating a horde of angry gamers who will latch onto every lie and create a hate bandwagon.

[ariclassof09]

"Since the end of the Cold War, the Kalashnikov has become the Russian people's greatest export. After that comes vodka, caviar, and suicidal novelists."

— Nic Cage (Lord of War, 2005)

So my dad made me watch Lord of War and then talked to me for two straight hours about the history of Russia.

Why is Russia like that? First it was poor, hungry dictatorship run by the Tsar; then it was a poor, hungry dictatorship run by Lenin; then it was a poor, hungry dictatorship run by Stalin; then it was a poor, hungry dictatorship run by other guys; after that it was a poor, hungry dictatorship that didn't have a dictator, and now it's a poor, hungry dictatorship run by Putin.

Why can't the Russians just get it right already? Are they this bad at running countries? Why does it keep happening?????

Can't they just do whatever America did? How hard is it to govern a country that apparently has tons of oil, according to my dad?

Just don't have a dictator! It's that easy!

God!

Also, Dad, if you're reading this, how many European monarchy alternate history short stories of yours am I gonna have to read until you learn that nobody publishes alternate history?

It's the world's most boring genre, people don't even like REGULAR history!

[deadendtracks]

i've seen condemnation of tommy for being a dirty capitalist oppressing his workers (mostly in s4) and that's not wrong but also... that is... the fourth season... out of 6 (planned 7)... this is a character arc...

sorry.

[mars-ipan]

this post is not going to be very well planned out so i’d like you all to be niceys to me if i bungle the wording but i feel like the moment people understand that certain forms of bigotry stem from hatred for certain groups but can affect people not belonging to those groups and hurt them just the same is the moment a lot of our conversations about diversity, oppression, and how to combat marginalization stop going so hard in circles and start being productive