#cultural rights

[useless-catalanfacts]

Clip from the German stand up comedian Shahak Shapira who did a gig in Barcelona (Catalonia's capital city). He saw it so clearly.

[a-typical]

Many children and grandchildren of immigrants, have, like Sarah, found themselves severed from their family’s cultural rituals. The funeral system in the United States is notorious for passing laws and regulations interfering with diverse death practices and enforcing assimilation toward Americanized norms.

In a particularly heartbreaking example, many Muslims would like to be able to open funeral homes in the U.S. and serve their communities as licensed funeral directors. Islamic custom is to wash and purify the body immediately after death before burying it as quickly as possible, ideally before nightfall. The Muslim community rejects embalming, recoiling at the idea of cutting into the body and injecting it with chemicals and preservatives. Yet many states have draconian regulations requiring funeral homes to offer embalming and all funeral directors to be trained as embalmers, despite the fact that the embalming process itself is never required. Muslim funeral directors must compromise their beliefs if they want a chance to help their community in death.

— From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death, Caitlin Doughty

[mzemo0]

International Tongue Supports Palestine, Hates Normalization!

Israeli steps have recently accelerated in consolidating public normalization with a growing number of Arab and Islamic countries. Since many Arab countries no longer see “Israel” as their enemy, yet their indispensable ally in their war against people and seizing the future of peace, technology and innovation.

While some Arab governments continue to normalize with the occupation “state”, there are Arab countries and positions that have rejected normalization with “Israel” as it entails beautifying and legitimizing the existence of the occupation in Palestinian land.

Political Positions Against Normalization From Mesopotamia, Iraq records a historic day in support of Palestine and Jerusalem, and the collective position of more than 270 Iraqi parliamentarians, who voted in favor of a law criminalizing normalization with “Israel”. It is a position of victory for Iraq first, then Palestine and Jerusalem second. It also sends a message to the Palestinian people, that Iraq refuses to sell Palestine at a cheap price, and will remain side by side with Palestine, supporting the rights of its people, and criminalizing any form of relationship with “Israel” at all times.

As for Kuwait, it seems that the government and its people are strict in boycotting sporting and commercial dealings with Israel, as the Kuwaiti authorities continue to ban the entry of ships carrying goods to and from Israel into Kuwait’s territorial waters.

Kuwait has emerged as the most Arab country and people whose positions cause concern, confusion and curiosity of Israel, its officials and institutions, especially Jewish think tanks and media.

For his part, Tunisian President Kais Saied Al-Amal included the criminalization of normalization in the new Tunisian constitution issued in the Tunisian Official Gazette on June 30, 2022. In the preface to the text, he referred to “the Palestinian people’s right to their stolen land and the establishment of their state on it after its liberation with its capital, Jerusalem.”

Palestinian Salute to International Positions Against Normalization of Sports

A noticeable increase in the number of those who reject sports normalization with the Israeli enemy, with a new group of Arab athletes and solidarity activists from the region joining the ranks of the heroic boycotters who rejected the discourse of “sports for the sake of sport” and “sports above politics”. This record that many international sports associations and institutions did not stop repeating until the trumpets of Arab normalization adopted it and those chasing after some material and moral profits.

With their withdrawal from a number of international tournaments and competitions, the Kuwaitis Muhammad Al-Fadhli, Abdul Razzaq Al-Baghli and Muhammad Al-Awadi, the Jordanians Musa Al-Qutb, Muhammad Al-Saud, Mahmoud Al-Khatib, Ahmed Al-Borini, Muhammad Farhan, Ahmed Al-Batoush, Maysir Al-Dahamshe, Abdullah Shaheen, the Lebanese Aquilina Al-Shayeb, the Algerians Ibrahim Sarqama and Ahmed Touba, in addition to the Iranian Women’s Hockey Team, emphasized one fact that the arenas for resisting normalization with the Israeli colonial and apartheid regime are numerous, and that sport, with its popularity, is on top.

We salute the official and popular stances following the insistence of the President of the Tunisian tennis champion Ons Jabeur that her team participate in the Women’s World Cup in Helsinki – Finland from 2-8 February 2020, despite her prior knowledge that the lottery placed it in the same group as the representative team of the Israeli colonial system.

Let us pressure on the Arab sports bodies to raise their voice against the hypocrisy of these Western sports bodies and dominate them, and to demand consistency in policies, and thus the exclusion of Israel in order to end the occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid regime that has prevailed for more than seven decades.

As the Egyptian squash champion Ali Farag said: […] We were never allowed to talk about politics in sports, but ,suddenly, it is allowed now. As long as it is allowed; then people may look at the oppression happening everywhere in the world. Palestinians are going through this persecution for the past 74 years. […] As long as we can talk now about Ukraine; then we can talk about Palestine as well.

Cultural Boycott The Price of Normalization: Arab Cultural Works Decide to Exclude Artists Who Were Involved in Normalization Works

As awareness of Israel’s oppression of Palestinians grows, more and more artists from across the world are joining the cultural boycott. Support for the cultural boycott and cancellations of performances receive very significant media exposure in Israel, showing ordinary Israelis that there is increasing opposition to Israel’s denial of Palestinian rights.

Many high-profile artists have cancelled events in ‘Israel’

Top artists including Elvis Costello, Gil Scott-Heron, Lauryn Hill, Faithless, Marianah, U2, Bjork, Zakir Hussain, Jean-Luc Godard, Snoop Dogg, Cat Power, and Vanessa Paradis have cancelled performances in ‘Israel’ or declined to perform there. Despite offering large sums of money to international artists to defy the cultural boycott, Israeli promoters complain that it is becoming increasingly challenging for them to attract famous artists.

Thousands of artists from across the world now support the cultural boycott Thousands of artists and cultural workers have signed public statements in support of the cultural boycott. In 2015, more than a thousand cultural figures in the UK signed a cultural boycott pledge. BDS-related initiatives have been launched in Montreal (Canada), Ireland, South Africa, Switzerland, Lebanon, and the US. Distinguished cultural figures who have endorsed the cultural boycott of Israel include the late Stéphane Hessel, Holocaust survivor and contributor to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Chuck D (pictured left), Roger Waters (pictured above spray painting apartheid wall), Talib Kweli, John Berger, Arundhati Roy, Iain Banks, Judith Butler, Junot Diaz, Naomi Klein, Ken Loach, Alice Walker, Angela Davis, Mira Nair, Mike Leigh and many others.

[charles-breaks-beakers]

HETEROSEXUAL CIS-PEOPLE LOOK HERE

Snaps my fingers at you as you scroll past this post

Look at me. Listen.

I'm not the best at serious posts, but that article up there reminded me of how important it is that people like you stand up for us. So hold on while I try to get this out of my mushy end-of-work-day brain.

We could fight this fight ourselves for decades trying to reach the equal laws, gender affirming trans healthcare that doesn't have a 2-5+ soul-eating years of waiting time, medical care with equal knowledge of lgbtqia+ bodies, and, what is often forgotten, inclusion in the little everyday areas of life like our way of speaking or things being set up or designed with the existence of queer people in mind.

But you joining in could get us there so much faster.

The power you have as a hetero cis person is that you set the standard for what is seen as the average way of treating us among other hetero cis people. You have been given the power of deciding what's "normal" and I'm begging you to use it.

Richard Green is a great example of to what extent your actions can help our situation, and smaller ways of support still add up to a great impact on society, and could make the days of the queer people you interact with.

Educate yourself before you speak up, but don't be silent.

[bathroom-sand]

paramount and spyglass are trying so hard right now to save face because jenna ortega rightfully left the scream franchise after they fired melissa for supprting palestine. nobody is dumb enough to believe the excuse that it’s a scheduling conflict hours after rumors she was trying to get out of her contract cause she was pissed. i’m very thankful that jenna is risking her career and using her position to do the right thing. she’s been outspoken about palestine for years now. i hope this begins a trend of zionist losing money for their support and complacency with an active genocide

[hyperlexichypatia]

As I keep shouting into the void, pathologizers love shifting discussion about material conditions into discussion about emotional states.

I rant approximately once a week about how the brain maturity myth transmuted “Young adults are too poor to move out of their parents’ homes or have children of their own” into “Young adults are too emotionally and neurologically immature to move out of their parents’ homes or have children of their own.”

I’ve also talked about the misuse of “enabling” and “trauma” and “dopamine” .

And this is a pattern – people coin terms and concepts to describe material problems, and pathologization culture shifts them to be about problems in the brain or psyche of the person experiencing them. Now we’re talking about neurochemicals, frontal lobes, and self-esteem instead of talking about wages, wealth distribution, and civil rights. Now we can say that poor, oppressed, and exploited people are suffering from a neurological/emotional defect that makes them not know what’s best for themselves, so they don’t need or deserve rights or money.

Here are some terms that have been so horribly misused by mental health culture that we’ve almost entirely forgotten that they were originally materialist critiques.

Codependency What it originally referred to: A non-addicted person being overly “helpful” to an addicted partner or relative, often out of financial desperation. For example: Making sure your alcoholic husband gets to work in the morning (even though he’s an adult who should be responsible for himself) because if he loses his job, you’ll lose your home. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/08/opinion/codependency-addiction-recovery.html What it’s been distorted into: Being “clingy,” being “too emotionally needy,” wanting things like affection and quality time from a partner. A way of pathologizing people, especially young women, for wanting things like love and commitment in a romantic relationship.

Compulsory Heterosexuality What it originally referred to: In the 1980 in essay "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence," https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/493756 Adrienne Rich described compulsory heterosexuality as a set of social conditions that coerce women into heterosexual relationships and prioritize those relationships over relationships between women (both romantic and platonic). She also defines “lesbian” much more broadly than current discourse does, encompassing a wide variety of romantic and platonic relationships between women. While she does suggest that women who identify as heterosexual might be doing so out of unquestioned social norms, this is not the primary point she’s making. What it’s been distorted into: The patronizing, biphobic idea that lesbians somehow falsely believe themselves to be attracted to men. Part of the overall “Women don’t really know what they want or what’s good for them” theme of contemporary discourse.

Emotional Labor What it originally referred to: The implicit or explicit requirement that workers (especially women workers, especially workers in female-dominated “pink collar” jobs, especially tipped workers) perform emotional intimacy with customers, coworkers, and bosses above and beyond the actual job being done. Having to smile, be “friendly,” flirt, give the impression of genuine caring, politely accept harassment, etc. https://weld.la.psu.edu/what-is-emotional-labor/ What it’s been distorted into: Everything under the sun. Everything from housework (which we already had a term for), to tolerating the existence of disabled people, to just caring about friends the way friends do. The original intent of the concept was “It’s unreasonable to expect your waitress to care about your problems, because she’s not really your friend,” not “It’s unreasonable to expect your actual friends to care about your problems unless you pay them, because that’s emotional labor,” and certainly not “Disabled people shouldn’t be allowed to be visibly disabled in public, because witnessing a disabled person is emotional labor.” Anything that causes a person emotional distress, even if that emotional distress is rooted in the distress-haver’s bigotry (Many nominally progressive people who would rightfully reject the bigoted logic of “Seeing gay or interracial couples upsets me, which is emotional labor, so they shouldn’t be allowed to exist in public” fully accept the bigoted logic of “Seeing disabled or poor people upsets me, which is emotional labor, so they shouldn’t be allowed to exist in public”).

Battered Wife Syndrome What it originally referred to: The all-encompassing trauma and fear of escalating violence experienced by people suffering ongoing domestic abuse, sometimes resulting in the abuse victim using necessary violence in self-defense. Because domestic abuse often escalates, often to murder, this fear is entirely rational and justified. This is the reasonable, justified belief that someone who beats you, stalks you, and threatens to kill you may actually kill you.

What it’s been distorted into: Like so many of these other items, the idea that women (in this case, women who are victims of domestic violence) don’t know what’s best for themselves. I debated including this one, because “syndrome” was a wrongful framing from the beginning – a justified and rational fear of escalating violence in a situation in which escalating violence is occurring is not a “syndrome.” But the original meaning at least partially acknowledged the material conditions of escalating violence.

I’m not saying the original meanings of these terms are ones I necessarily agree with – as a cognitive liberty absolutist, I’m unsurprisingly not that enamored of either second-wave feminism or 1970s addiction discourse. And as much as I dislike what “emotional labor” has become, I accept that “Women are unfairly expected to care about other people’s feelings more than men are” is a true statement.

What I am saying is that all of these terms originally, at least partly, took material conditions into account in their usage. Subsequent usage has entirely stripped the materialist critique and fully replaced it with emotional pathologization, specifically of women. Acknowledgement that women have their choices constrained by poverty, violence, and oppression has been replaced with the idea that women don’t know what’s best for themselves and need to be coercively “helped” for their own good. Acknowledgement that working-class women experience a gender-and-class-specific form of economic exploitation has been rebranded as yet another variation of “Disabled people are burdensome for wanting to exist.”

Over and over, materialist critiques are reframed as emotional or cognitive defects of marginalized people. The next time you hear a superficially sympathetic (but actually pathologizing) argument for “Marginalized people make bad choices because…” consider stopping and asking: “Wait, who are we to assume that this person’s choices are ‘bad’? And if they are, is there something about their material conditions that constrains their options or makes the ‘bad’ choice the best available option?”

[doesephs]

it’s always ‘inuit inspired’, girl just admit you can’t be bothered to open google

[womenindiplomacyday]

Why women matter in diplomacy?

Women have been playing a crucial role in global governance since the drafting and signing of the United Nations Charter in 1945. Women and girls represent half of the world’s population and, therefore, also half of its potential. Women bring immense benefits to diplomacy. Their leadership styles, expertise and priorities broaden the scope of issues under consideration and the quality of outcomes.

Research shows that when women serve in cabinets and parliaments, they pass laws and policies that are better for ordinary people, the environment and social cohesion. Advancing measures to increase women’s participation in peace and political processes is vital to achieving women’s de facto equality in the context of entrenched discrimination.

Out of the 193 Member States of the United Nations, only 34 women serve as elected Heads of State or Government. Whilst progress has been made in many countries, the global proportion of women in other levels of political office worldwide still has far to go: 21% of the world’s ministers, 26% of national parliamentarians, and 34% of elected seats of local government. According to a new UN report, at the current pace of progress, equal representation in parliament will not be achieved until 2062.

The UN General Assembly (UNGA) is the world’s largest yearly meeting of world leaders. While the UNGA has been the setting for several historic moments for gender equality, much has yet to be achieved regarding women’s representation and participation. Just four women have been elected President of the UN General Assembly in its 77 years.

The 15-member UN Security Council has primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. While women currently represent slightly over a third of the Security Council's members — far higher than the average — it is still far from enough. Explore the participation of women at the Security Council.

International Day of Women in Diplomacy.

[useless-catalanfacts]

A football referee expels a coach for speaking in Catalan

Sadly this doesn't make it to most news because it's not uncommon, but I will translate this to give an idea to foreigners of the situations we have to deal with.

Yet again, another Catalan speaker has been kicked out of somewhere just because they spoke in Catalan in a Catalan-speaking country. This time, it happened in a local football camp in Petra (town in Mallorca, Balearic Islands).

While reading this story, remember that Catalan is the native language of Mallorca, and is legally recognised as a co-official language.

During a local-level football match, the football coach of the team UE Petra protested to the referee that a decision wasn't right. The referee told him "we are in Spain, Mallorca is part of Spain, not Spain part of Mallorca, and you must speak to me in Spanish". The coach continued speaking Catalan, since it's the language of the place where this is happening, and the referee proceeded to expel him. This is what the referee wrote in the match's minutes:

In the half-time, the coach [...] after perceiving my communication in Spanish and being reprimanded for addressing me with the words "this is shameful", starts speaking to me in Catalan. When I ask him to talk to me in Spanish, he continues perpetuating his dialect, where I understood some lacks of respect. Since I could not make him stop, I decide to expel him.

At the end of the minutes card, the referee wrote the reason for expelling him as "for disobeying my orders".

The other witnesses in the football match explain that the referee was very rude to the coach and never asked him politely to change to Spanish, only rudely saying "in Spanish!". Later, the referee also wrote that the coach was "perpetuating his dialect", as we have seen. Using the word "dialect" for a language that has suffered persecution, illegalization and discrimination is an extremely loaded term based on bigotry, only used by the hardcore Catalanophobes who defend that Catalan (and other discriminated languages like Basque and Galician) aren't languages because they're not important or respect-worthy enough to be a language, only a "dialect" (understood as a derogatory word).

The football club UE Petra has complained that this referee is partial and "has taken decisions, as can be seen by the wording used in the minutes, influenced on a coach using his mother tongue in the place where it has been official for centuries".

Now, a few days after the game and the UE Petra publishing a statement explaining it on their social media (you can read it here), the referee has pressed charges, claiming that she has been "threatened" when it was posted on social media. 🤦

Can you imagine if this happened to a Spanish person for speaking Spanish in Madrid? Or French in Paris, or English in London? Can you imagine if doctors threw them out for speaking Spanish in Madrid, French in Paris or English in London? Or hotels, banks, petrol stations did? If policemen identified them because speaking it was seen as lack of respect? Then why do we have to accept that it's normal when it happens to us?

You can find the statement published by this coach's football team UE Petra here (in Catalan). Some sources from newspapers who reported on it: Esport3, Ara Balears, Vilaweb.

[nando161mando]

#1: “let’s form a union.”

[vriskan8or]

let her go

[animentality]

[luthienne]

anyway literally everyone is going through something all the time!!! everyone is wounded!!! everyone is human & no one makes it out of this life unscathed!! maybe try approaching people in good faith instead of always defaulting to the worst possible interpretations of each other

[crippledpunks]

i love you so much if you are diabetic, or pre-diabetic. our society treats diabetes so poorly. it's such a readily mocked condition, people often times resort to blaming the individual for having it, even going so far as to pass judgment on the diabetic's character, regardless of what type of diabetes they have.

diabetics are wonderful and deserve to love themselves regardless of whether or not they 'gave' themselves their diabetes. whether or not the person is "unhealthy" whether or not the person eats "right" or knows how to eat in ways that are safer for their body doesn't matter, they still deserve love, respect, and compassion.

diabetes is not a fucking judge of character. diabetics deserve better. diabetics deserve respect. diabetics deserve to be recognized as disabled. diabetics deserve kindness, love, care, compassion, and support. no matter what.

[odinsblog]

I would be sO incredibly chill you would not believe it

[a-rabbit-obsessed-queer]

Aspec men deserve much more respect and recognition in the aspec community than they receive. They often face a different form of aphobia specific to them ("men are naturally sexual they can't be ace" "all men are unromantic that's not unique") this rhetoric is spouted by many, even members of our own community and I hope for a day where that is no longer the case. As an ace and demiro woman (demigirl but that's beside the point) I want to encourage folks to take the time to give the aspec men in their lives support and to the aspec men reading, you are who you say you are no matter what people say and you deserve the world. I'm sorry for the ways in which toxic masculinity has harmed you. You are a valued member of the aspec community and the queer community as a whole. No ace or aro person is broken and neither are you. I'm sorry if anyone has ever told you otherwise.