#especially women from marginalized racial or religious groups

[marzipanandminutiae]

Of course, the burkini ban is messed up on grounds of religious freedom and racial discrimination. But also

Under any other circumstances, people would be HORRIFIED at a government mandate that women have to show a certain amount of skin. Like. That’s fucking dystopian, and the absolute opposite of feminism. If a government tried to pass a law that all women had to wear tube tops and miniskirts to go outside, people would rightfully be up in arms demanding blood

But because it’s targeting a marginalized religious group, many folks are lauding the blatant forced sexualization of women. Appalling

(apparently the ban also outlaws things like sun – protecting bathing suits if they cover too much skin. Which like. Yes, let’s give everyone skin cancer just so we can spite a religion we’ve decided to hate. Sounds like a good plan </s>)

[girlsmoonsandstars]

A continuation of this post, I’ve managed to get my hands on a copy of the article in question. some interesting tidbits as I’m reading:

Worthen (2018) argues that “LGB people may be particularly inclined to adopt liberal political attitudes because they are keenly aware of their stigmatization by various groups that are overtly hostile toward them (e.g., the religious right, family values groups, conservatives)” (p. 2). Building from this theoretical framework, it follows that others in the LGBTQ community, in particular pansexual, asexual, transgender, non-binary, and queer individuals, may also be especially likely to adhere to liberal political and social justice-motivated perspectives that work toward improving their own experiences as marginalized people as well as others who experience oppression. 

I find it very interesting that the term “queer”, here, is being presented as a distinct entity from LGB people. Similarly:

Specifically, sexual identity (heterosexual, lesbian/gay, bisexual, pansexual, and asexual), gender identity (cis man, cis woman, trans man, trans woman, and non-binary), and queer identity are explored as they relate to liberal perspectives (liberal ideology; law/policy support of those in poverty, racial/ethnic minorities, immigrants, and women; feminist identity).

Why is it the authors describe examples of sexual identity, gender identity, and liberal perspectives, but don’t expand on queer identity? Are we to assume this is an umbrella term covering sexuality and gender identity? If so, why even list it out as being separate from the prior two? If not, do the authors presume the audience doesn’t need examples of “queer identity” the way they do “sexual identity” and “gender identity”? Perhaps the authors, themselves, aren’t sure what they mean by the term, only that they are expected to use it?

Thus, for the purposes of this study, liberal political perspectives are conceptualized as liberal ideology, liberal law/policy support, and feminist identity.

I can tell you right now why trans women aren’t as supportive of this as other members of the rainbow “community”...

Scholars note that these LGB liberalism patterns hold firm even when sociodemographic controls and other common correlates of political ideology (e.g., age, race/ethnicity, education, income, and religion) are considered.

Interesting. Also interesting:

...bisexual individuals were significantly less likely than lesbian women and gay men to have voted for the liberal 2016 US Democratic Party candidate, Hillary Clinton (see also, Strolovitch et al., 2017). However, in contrast, Worthen’s (2018) college student study (N = 1940) found that bisexual individuals, and in particular bisexual women, were more likely than lesbian and gay individuals to identify as political liberals

So they’re identifying as liberals more often, but being liberals less often. I would be interested to see if this bears out across other elections or if this is a one-off from 2016.

They go on to talk more about “queerness” as an identity but honestly... these kinds of research papers never really expand on what specifically they’re talking about because they’re all using doublespeak. The article says they found women who identify as queer to be "more fluid in their attractions and identities” than bisexual women but don’t really expand on that at all. Are they saying that women who identify as “queer” have more same-sex interactions or relationships than bisexual women, or are women who identify as “queer” simply indicating a higher engagement with “TQ+” people, and this is being reported as “fluidity”?

LGB respondents were more liberal than heterosexuals in their perspectives about race, immigration, and gender issues. [...] being a lesbian woman was positively and significantly related to being involved in activism across multiple issues including women’s rights, civil rights, and welfare 

I was thinking earlier today about the propensity of lesbians to be involved in activism and community service. i’d like to research that more. And then I read on to find what I was really looking for:

Unfortunately, however, differences among trans men, trans women, and non-binary/ genderqueer individuals were not included in either of these existing studies

so we’re either not collecting the data, or not including it in our analysis. okay. okay, cool. cool cool cool. (i wonder if they tried to analyze the data and found the differences between trans men and trans women troubling enough to leave it out, but that’s pure speculation on my part.)

aaaand of course we come to this ahistoricity:

For example, although the 1969 Stonewall uprising (which is often credited as the watershed demonstration that began the US gay liberation movement) was instigated and supported by two trans women of color, Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson, these women have been repeatedly erased from discussions about LGBTQ rights. 

the fact that academic scholars can just sit here and lie over and over and over and over and as long as they repeat themselves enough the lies become public truths... there’s no hope for humanity. we’re irredeemably stupid, as a species.

Cis men are significantly less liberal than trans men and non-binary individuals, less supportive than cis women of laws/policies that help those in poverty and racial/ethnic minorities, less supportive than cis women and non-binary individuals of laws/policies that help women, and less likely than cis women, trans women, and non-binary individuals to identify as feminist.

shocker. what actually surprised the researchers though:

In contrast, cis men are significantly more supportive than trans men and women of laws/policies that help those in poverty and more supportive than trans women of laws/policies that help racial/ethnic minorities.

I’m tired, will come back to this later for more insights.

[marveltrumpshate]

Since there is no Avengers Initiative working to physically fight our way to a more equitable world, we have to rely frequently on advocacy, public education, and litigation to bend the arc of the work more quickly towards justice. If this is your personal charitable focus, you have a lot of options to choose from, from organizations working on systemic change for marginalized populations to those focusing on freeing individuals from the prison industrial complex. Several of these are featured in our other spotlight posts, but as a major part of their work deals with legal advocacy for and education about civil and human rights, we wanted to include them here.

Common Cause

Common Cause is a U.S.-based nonpartisan grassroots “organization fighting for an accountable government, equal rights/opportunities/representation and empowering voices to be heard.” Their work includes advocating for voter rights and election protection, combating gerrymandering, reforming campaign finance, pushing for fair courts, supporting net neutrality, and much more. Over the past 50 years, they've had landmark successes such as leading the campaign that secured the 26th Amendment, which allows 18-year-olds to vote, and suing Nixon's campaign, which played a key role in unfolding the Watergate scandal.

Due to the election in November, they've received far more volunteer interest than anticipated. While this is great, it is also putting an immense strain on their staff and resources, and they require assistance in the next few weeks to train, equip, and place volunteers.

Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund

DREDF is the leading civil rights organization in the United States that fights for and is directed by people with disabilities and parents of children with disabilities. Not only does DREDF work directly with their clients to help them know their own rights, but they train and educate lawyers, lawmakers, and other societal gatekeepers to make sure they know those rights as well.

Equal Justice Initiative

Anyone who saw the film Just Mercy, starring the MCU’s own Michael B. Jordan, is familiar with the story and work of the EJI. Founded in 1989, EJI is a disruptive entity within the criminal justice system in the United States that strives to end mass incarceration, excessive punishment, and racial inequality. They provide groundbreaking research and pragmatic education along with legal representation and advocacy for people who don’t have the resources to fight wrongful convictions, institutional abuse, or the like.

Innocence Project

The mission of the Innocence Project is deceptively simple: exonerate those who have been wrongly convicted through the use of DNA evidence. The reality of it involves much broader strokes involving criminal justice reform. While this organization was started towards the end of Thurgood Marshall’s life, the law school that bears his name in Houston is a member organization. The mods want to highlight that connection in honor of Chadwick’s brilliant portrayal of the Supreme Court justice in the film Marshall.

Lambda Legal

“Founded in 1973, Lambda Legal is the oldest and largest national legal organization whose mission is to achieve full recognition of the civil rights of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender people and everyone living with HIV through impact litigation, education and public policy work.” Their work touches upon various aspects of life and issues for all ages such as employment, fair courts, marriage and family protection, health care, HIV, immigration, police and criminal justice, race, and religious exemptions. Lambda does not charge any of their clients for representation or advocacy, relying exclusively on donors for operating costs.

NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund

Founded by Thurgood Marshall in 1940, NAACP LDF is the U.S.'s first and foremost civil and human rights legal organization and law firm. Their mission is “to achieve racial justice, equality, and an inclusive society” which they accomplish through direct litigation, macrosocial advocacy/research, and public education. This is another Chadwick connection via his role in Marshall.

National Immigration Law Center

NILC is at the core of ensuring an equitable and accessible future for low-income immigrants and their families in the United States. Their work encompasses a wide variety of issues: DACA; access to health care, government economic support, and education; workers' rights; tax navigation; immigration policy and enforcement reform, especially with regard to detention and deportation; and more.

Native American Rights Fund

NARF is the oldest and largest nonprofit that defends Native American rights and provides legal assistance to Native American tribes, organizations, and individuals across the U.S. They concentrate on issues such as tribal sovereignty, land rights and treaty compliance, tribal natural resource protection, education on Native American human rights, and more.

Planned Parenthood

The largest provider of reproductive health services in the U.S., Planned Parenthood has offered a wide array of services for over 100 years. In addition to confidential patient care, they provide sex education and advocate for the protection and expansion of reproductive rights and access to health care, especially for women. PP also promotes research in reproductive technology and works towards global women's and reproductive health with partner organizations around the world.

Southern Poverty Law Center

They’re mostly known in the U.S. as a hate group watchdog of sorts, but their work goes beyond tracking and exposing hate groups and promoting tolerance education programs. SPLC works on voting rights advocacy, children's rights, immigration reform and family reunification, LGBTQ+ rights, economic justice, and criminal justice reform, working "with communities to dismantle white supremacy, strengthen intersectional movements, and advance the human rights of all people." Essentially, if there is injustice against a vulnerable and/or marginalized group in the U.S., SPLC aims to address and fix it.

For more information on donation methods and currencies per organization, please refer to our list of organizations page.

[cavemanfeet]

LABELS - PLEASE READ

Let's have a little lesson in the definitions of labels because I have had a few of these labels thrown at me as of late because I have certain political views, religious views or values . These words or labels are used to shame someone for their differing views or to suppress the views of others or coerce others into thinking what they think. This is not a way to change ones mind about politics, religion, values or any other difference of opinion. Any one that knows me knows that I respect the views of others, the rights of others, and other people's freedom to express their views. These hateful draconian measures need to stop on both sides of the arguments. If we continue on the way we are going, it ends badly for all of us. Today you might end up on the "winning" side of something and you can say hurray for my side and the other side can eat $#!t. Keep in mind, you may not always be on the "winning" side and then you will get to eat $#!t. Do you really want this to be the way it is? It is like an obnoxious football fan rubbing your nose in it when their team scores, you find yourself hoping for the other team to lose. THINK ABOUT IT before you speak. You yourself may be one of these things that you are labeling people as because they differ from you. Be a good sport. Be a good human.

BIGOT - a person who is obstinately or unreasonably attached to a belief, opinion, or faction, especially one who is prejudiced against or antagonistic toward a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular group.

RACIST - a person who is prejudiced against or antagonistic toward people on the basis of their membership in a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized.

HOMOPHOBE - a person with a dislike of or prejudice against gay people.

MISOGYNIST - a person who dislikes, despises, or is strongly prejudiced against women.

INTOLERANT - not tolerant of views, beliefs, or behavior that differ from one's own.

HYPOCRISY (Hypocrite) - the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform; pretense. 

[bleeding-star-heart]

YA ALIGNMENT CHART

Before we begin, let’s clarify what each section of the chart means: 

Problematic: The story is chock-full of harmful messaging from start to finish. It  contains harmful stereotypes about racial minorities, LGBTQIA+ folks, disabled people, the neurodivergent, religious minorities, or any other marginalized group. It spreads misinformation, leans into harmful tropes, and teaches morals that perpetuate oppression. 

Prob-Spiring: The story is a mixed bag of both positive and harmful messaging. It has both messages that inspire positive social change and morals that inspire allyship and help unlearn internalized bigotry as well as potential harmful stereotypes, misinformation, and/or morals which help perpetuate oppression. 

Inspiring: The story is relatively free of harmful messaging. For the most part, it inspires positive social change, helps people unlearn internalized bigotry, and inspires people to be allies to the marginalized. A story in this area is not perfect, and may contain small, minor problematic elements, but for the most part, the creator has done their research and has been careful to avoid putting harmful messages in it. 

Regressive: The creator is DELIBERATELY attempting to teach morals which uphold oppressive systems. Any content that supports oppression is put in the story on PURPOSE. The creator either does not understand why these morals are harmful, or does not see the oppressive systems they are upholding as wrong.

Neutral: The creator is not trying to teach any moral that is either progressive OR regressive. They are neither upholding nor trying to dismantle oppressive systems. The work is meant to be entertainment; any morals that arise are accidental. 

Progressive: The creator is ACTIVELY trying to dismantle oppressive systems/teach morals that dismantle oppressive systems through their work. Any harmful content is most likely accidental. 

Now for the explanation of why these works fall into specific categories: 

Twilight, obviously, is Regressive Problematic because it contains harmful messages, and because those harmful messages were intentional on the part of Stephanie Meyer. 

The Mortal Instruments falls into the Problematic axis because its main queer couple is a highly pedophilic ship (Alec is a teenager where Magnus is a centuries-old adult), the bisexual half of that couple, Magnus, is a stereotypical Promiscuous Bisexual, and because the characters of color are treated terribly. Oh, yes, and it also romanticizes incest. However, it is Neutral Problematic not because of its content, but because Cassie Clare does not appear to be trying to teach a moral with these books. 

The Throne of Glass series is Progressive Problematic because while SJM is trying to teach feminist messages with it, she fails on every level, causing the story to be laden with harmful messages. Imperialism is glorified, abuse is glorified, guardian/ward sexual tension is glorified, black characters die solely to further white characters’ arcs, and the heroine spends the entirety of at least TWO books utterly stripped of agency. 

Chronicles of Narnia is Regressive Prob-Spiring, because C.S. Lewis actively attempts to uphold oppression with everything he does, and his children’s series is no different. On the good side, we have four strong female leads in Lucy, Susan, Jill, and Aravis. Aravis is especially good because she is brown alongside being female, and strong female characters who happen to be brown are RARE.  It also somewhat positively depicts an interracial relationship. On the problematic side...The Calormenes are portrayed in the most racist manner possible most of the time, the characters actually don BROWNFACE in the final book, the story, despite the awesome female leads, manages to be amazingly sexist in places, and the rulers of a country deny schooling to a specific group and that is portrayed as a GOOD thing. Hell, school/education of ANY kind is portrayed VERY negatively, which is a bad message to send to children. Yes, I know C.S. Lewis had a bad school experience, but that doesn’t excuse the anti-education slant. 

Harry Potter is Neutral Prob-Spiring, because it does use fascism as a plot device, it is not trying to dismantle oppressive systems that AREN’T fascist. Those are mostly left in place, neither challenged nor supported, so it’s neutral. The inspiring: Hermione Granger. The problematic: Rowling’s opinions on trans people. The anti-Semitic caricature that is the goblins. 

Percy Jackson is Progressive Prob-Spiring because unlike Harry Potter, it is, in a way, attempting to dismantle SOME parts of the oppressive system. Not all, but the story was intentionally written for the purpose of learning disability representation, and has very anti-homophobic themes. Of course, RR’s characterization of Piper is racist-there is no denying this-and the portrayals of the PoC women are colorist in that they make sure PoC characters are as light-skinned as possible.The characterization of Aphrodite is also very misogynistic-in canon, Aphrodite is a bad mom, despite this not being mythologically accurate-parenting was actually one of Aphrodite’s strengths.  She is painted as shallow, and Hephaestus’s entitled Nice Guy attitude is NEVER examined (because Hephaestus is an absolute Nice Guy).

Regressive Inspiring, you will observe, does NOT have an example, because it is IMPOSSIBLE to deliberately teach oppressive morals AND have a product that has positive, anti-oppression morals. It’s just not. Thus it’s a unicorn, because unicorns are fictional. 

Divergent is Neutral Inspiring, and that might make some people mad. But it is that because while the author does not appear to have given it a purpose either way, the story does accidentally have some uplifting messages. Allegiant especially rightfully points out that it is wrong to discriminate based on genetics, and that all people are equal, a moral that is very necessary for today’s world.  While it may have a small anti-intellectual bent, Roth herself acknowledged this and did better later on. Also, it has an anti-conformist message, and a message that people in general are complex and cannot be pigeonholed. 

And The Hunger Games is Progressive Inspiring because while there may be some anti-femininity messaging by accident, in general the book is all about those progressive themes. It critiques the glorification of violence, too much obsession with women’s love lives, and has a brutal anti-war stance to boot. Plus, a heroine who is mostly likely a PoC, too. 

[finelythreadedsky]

Hello! When we say 'organized religion' we really don't just mean Christianity. Organisation leads to hierarchy leads to power leads to corruption of power and corruption of spirituality itself. You are dumbing down interesting and important religious conversations by pretending all bad religious practice comes from Christians.

5 part ask, other parts and response under the read more

(2/5) (Responded to separately here) My ask about organized religion did not mean "I hate religious people". It was about power, spirituality and human nature and it's very telling that you answered me without publishing. Religious leaders of all religions across the world get caught abusing power again and again and again. It is not religion or their believers I have an issue with, it's the hierarchical structures within them that makes abuse easy. And those structures are in place in all large religions.

(3/5) Haha, I'm sorry, feel a bit stupid now, of course you get a lot of bullshit asks about this... That being said, that's great, sounds like a healthy relationship to God and community, which I think is quite common within American Judaism. But organization = hierarchy is not an inherently Christian thing, it's an inherently human thing. (Gonna send a follow up!)

(4/5) I'm not trying to argue that all religions are the same and have the same structures or values. Some, say Islam or Catholicism, are inherently more authoritarian in nature than say Judaism or Buddhism. But all religions have authoritarian versions, even Judaism, even Buddhism. Which is why we need to acknowledge and talk about it, cause not only does abuse of religious power emotionally (and sometimes physically) hurt people, it also spirituality hurts them. (Another short one coming!)

(5/5) Also I'm sorry if I came off as short from the get go! I think and care about these things quite a lot and the "you just talking about Christianity actually" thing always really gets to me, haha

first of all, and this is something that’s come up a lot in the notes of that post: I absolutely did not say that only Christianity is or should be subject to criticism. I am not pretending all bad religious practice comes from Christians. I think we all know that other religions are also subject to criticism, because we often see them criticized as a whole. Think for a minute about the number pulled on the American cultural perception of Islam in the past two decades. It’s become commonplace among certain circles to publicly condemn an entire religion with well over a billion adherents across the world as violent, regressive, and misogynist. And Judaism as a whole— well, Bill de Blasio, two weeks ago: “My message to the Jewish community, and all communities, is this simple: the time for warnings has passed.” Our culture is all too ready to criticize Islam and Judaism very broadly and tends to paint other religions with a very broad brush as well. I’d appreciate it if we could flip the script a little and subject Christianity as a whole to a fraction of that scrutiny that other religions receive.

What I did say and what I meant is that it is critical to avoid overgeneralization and that I would like it if people would, when making criticisms of religion, take a minute to ask themselves whether their criticism really does apply to ALL ‘organized’ religions and whether they have enough experience with EVERY religion that falls into the category of ‘organized’ to make broad statements about them. If you have not studied or interacted with pretty much every religious group on the face of the earth, you are not qualified to make statements about ‘organized’ religion. Very often I find that people’s broad criticisms of ‘organized religion’ are based solely on their experience with Christianity, extrapolated and assumed to be consistent with other religions. I would appreciate it if people would refrain from condemning religions about which they know nothing.

And yeah, a lot of people do think it’s a radical and progressive take to say they don’t just hate Christians but also Jews and Muslims. I would really like everyone trying to talk about ‘organized religion’ to please take another look at what they’re saying and consider whether it plays into perpetuating antisemitism, Islamophobia, and racism. Minority and marginalized religions do bear the brunt of the blame for such broad criticisms, largely because we as a culture are able to separate a person from their religion if they’re Christian (i.e. this is a person who hates women and is also Christian, they are not representative of all Christians or even of their entire religious community and their existence does not mean that Christianity hates women) but are unable to extend that courtesy to people of minority religions, especially those who are also racial or ethnic minorities.

Maybe when you say it you are applying nuanced and critical thinking about global religion, I don’t know, I don’t know who you are. But the the majority of the people who use general categories of religion in a way critical of ‘organized religion’ are taking their negative experience with Christianity and assuming that the elements of Christianity that they didn’t like (including some very serious issues) are part of being in a religious community and refuse to consider the possibility that those issues may come from being in a Christian community. For instance, many people are very negatively affected by Christian rhetoric about hell that they are exposed to as children. This rhetoric of doing good to avoid going to hell is not a factor of the community being religious, it is a factor of it being Christian. Yet many people assume that all religions share a similar view and engage in similar rhetoric and make broad criticisms of all ‘organized religion’ for that.

I would define ‘organized’ as a religion that requires multiple people, a religion that cannot be practiced (in the long term) alone. Hierarchy is not an inherent part of organization. Yes, many common ‘organized’ religions today are hierarchical or contain elements of hierarchical organization. That does not necessarily mean that every ‘organized’ religion is or must be hierarchical, and I think the common conception that religion is inherently hierarchical is a result of the cultural dominance of Christianity for the last millennium.

I took an entire course last semester interrogating the concept of ‘Abrahamic religions’ and the categorization of religion in this way. I think what I said last week holds here: our cultural concept of what a ‘religion’ is, what ‘organized’ means in terms of religion— those are defined by the cultural dominance of Christianity. And it’s by no means simple— for the last fifteen hundred years Judaism, for instance, has developed in response to Christianity (and Christianity in response to Judaism, especially earlier than that). Those historical evolutions cannot be untwined from each other, so, to a degree, modern Judaism has evolved in response to Christian definitions of what ‘organized’ means and what ‘religion’ means, sometimes internalizing and sometimes resisting those definitions, sometimes both. It is critical to religious studies to question those definitions and categorizations. Who do they benefit? What do they simplify? What do they gloss over? When are they useful, and when are they harmful?

[mehrauli]

First, activist responses to my past academic work analyzing anarchist collaborations with indigenous peoples’ struggles and how anarchists’ gender bias and atheism both get in the way of “solidarity” efforts encouraged me to articulate in more detail the gendered history and cosmology of classical anarchism. In this previous publication, which was based on fieldwork I had done for my master’s degree in anthropology, I described how a group of anarchists working in diferent activist collectives, including our Zapatista collective mentioned above, collaborated to organize a speaking tour of two indigenous activists from Mexico throughout Quebec and Ontario, Canada. I then analyzed the events of this well-intentioned tour to illustrate various unacknowledged forms of racism and sexism in constructions of “anarchoindigenist” solidarity work among white (settler) solidarity activists. Within this particular ethnographic case, Montréal anarchists had marginalized the voice of the indigenous woman activist Magdalena during her speaking tour, due to a combination of gendered and racial prejudice. During speaking events, Magdalena tended to recount stories about her experience as a community health worker (promotora), describing how government representatives tried to persuade her to promote sterilization among indigenous women in the region. Magdalena also spoke of the need to maintain harmonious ways of life among the communities (pueblos) and the need to respect all of Creation—land, water, animals, and people. According to many anarchist audience members, she did not have an “analysis” since she situated her struggle in religious as opposed to political and economic terms, while she also displayed less “experience in politics,” because she had not participated in “union movements,” but rather worked against the forced sterilization of indigenous women—a distinction based on gender. Each of these prejudices would have worked against her independently, but the overlapping effect of two public/private dichotomies (as applied to sexuality and religion) made it especially difficult for her listeners to understand her as political. In my essay I elaborated how this conjuncture was no coincidence. Secularization in the West privatized religion during the same historical process and by way of the same logic that it privatized the sexual. The coincidence of “public versus private” discourse as applied to both the domestic/political and religious/secular dichotomies in anarchist politics thus relies on a gendered order. The disqualification of religion from the modern left and its feminization were one and the same, with each dichotomy serving to reinforce the other. I suggested that more attention to both current and historical correspondences of secularism, colonialism, and gender could benefit both scholarship on left politics and contemporary anarchist solidarity activism. Following the publication of that article, responses by both academic and anarchist activist readers held to a certain pattern. Most were happy to admit that we must “pay more attention to gender,” generally speaking, and regarding my question of anarchist atheism, many agreed that we should indeed be more “respectful” of “indigenous identity.” This last continually disturbed me, as I had taken care to emphasize that the problem goes beyond a failure to be sufficiently polite in the presence of difference. Beyond being “disrespectful,” the modern Western insistence on a mechanical universe delimits the radical imaginary in general. To refrain from telling the non-atheist activist they are wrong (while continuing to think they are), simply because he or she is a person of color, is altogether different than deconstructing one’s colonial mentality, which treats the religious as Other in the first place.

Occult Features of Anarchism, With Attention to the Conspiracy of Kings and the Conspiracy of the Peoples

[octothorpetopus]

SVU Needs Better LGBTQ Representation

I talk about this a lot, but I think a lot of people just hear me, as a queer person, wanting everything to be gayer.

Wrong.

SVU is a show that champions itself as a pioneer for marginalized groups- racial and religious minorities, women, and, of course, the LGBTQ community. And yet, out of over 400 episodes, only 24 have focused on LGBTQ issues.

24. Out of 400. That’s less than 7%.

And keep in mind, these are all episodes in which a queer character was either the victim or the perpetrator. Over the course of all 20 seasons of this show, only two recurring queer characters exist- George Huang and Ken Randall.

George Huang was the forensic psychiatrist on the show, appearing in 15 out of the 20 seasons of the show. However, despite being openly gay, his sexuality is a fairly minor aspect of his character and it only comes up once or twice. While this is in some ways beneficial, because it deviates from the gay character we see often on TV, where being gay is their only major personality trait, it also detracts from the quality of the representation because it feels like that aspect of his character is just there to placate queer viewers.

The only other recurring LGBTQ character is Ken Randall, Fin’s son. This is also the only same-sex relationship on the show, between Ken and his husband, Alejandro. I think the way SVU handled Ken’s strained relationship with his father was actually fairly high quality, but it plays into an overused stereotype by the media. That’s not to say it isn’t realistic and that it doesn’t happen, but it also isn’t a particularly unique storyline.

I have two main issues with both of these characters. One, they’re both gay men, which, while gay men make up a substantial percentage of the LGBTQ community, are just one element of the community. My other is that, although Huang was technically a main cast member, neither one appears consistently in every episode (or almost every episode).

I, like a lot of other people, thought we might find this representation that was lacking in those two characters in Sonny Carisi, especially in his relationship with Rafael Barba. Rumors had spun for years over Barba’s sexuality, given that he had been implied to be attracted to women, but also that Raúl Esparza is openly bisexual. So, when Carisi was introduced and we started to see the between them, it was no wonder that a new ship was born: Barisi. Whether or not you ship barisi, I think it’s undeniably obvious that there was some level of attraction there, especially obvious in the season 17 finale, “Heartfelt Passages.” At the end of the episode, after Dodds’s funeral, when they’re having a drink together, the way Barba looks at Carisi is a look I have never seen before between two people whose relationship is entirely platonic.

What followed is one of the best examples of queerbaiting I’ve ever seen-

For those of you who don’t know, queerbaiting is exactly what it sounds like. Writers will create a character that queer watchers will relate to. They give the character queer-codes behaviors, making them recognizable to queer watchers but not enough so that straight people see it. Once non-queer people start to catch on, they switch gears almost immediately, so that queer watchers are left asking themselves if they were imagining it, if it was all just wishful thinking. Often, writers will do this by putting the character into a straight relationship or creating sexual tension with a character of the opposite sex where previously, there was none. That was how SVU chose to deal with the situation.

Warren Leight’s departure as showrunning following season 17 signaled a major change for barisi. Not only was there nothing that could even be called sexual tension, they almost ceased to interact. They acted differently, spoke differently. They even dressed differently. The show started to focus more on Carisi’s relationship with Rollins, even including a storyline in season 19 in which Carisi’s girlfriend leaked a story from within the NYPD. And that was essentially the end of Barba and Carisi’s entire relationship. Barba didn’t even say goodbye to Carisi when he left.

Some people might say that this isn’t queerbaiting, it’s just people seeing sexual tension where they want to, rather than where it actually is. To that, I say this- replace one of them, either Barba or Carisi, with a woman. Would the general public look at it as sexual tension? I say yes. The trouble is, in this heteronormative society, people don’t want Carisi to be bisexual or gay, because he doesn’t fit their expectations of what that looks like. But that’s also why he would be the perfect choice. He subverts the entire expectation of what a mlm guy should be. His character was revolutionary in the first place because he was so unexpected. The cop who was just supposed to be another brash, rude, Staten Island paper-pusher turned out to be the most empathetic, compassionate, and understanding one of all. So why not make him bi while we’re at it? Peter Scanavino said in an interview, "I think it would be cool because it would kind of against type, you know what I mean? And I think it would be interesting.”

Even if we don’t find what we’re looking for in Carisi (although I hope we do #GiveCarisiABoyfriendChallenge2k19), I hope that season 21 is groundbreaking in more ways than one- it’s the longest running primetime live-action TV series in history- in its diversity as a cast. SVU promotes itself as diverse, and in some ways it is, but this would finally be a way to satisfy what SVU fans have been begging for since the start of the show.

[neurodiversenerd]

How to Include Autistic Women in Your Feminism

Hey, given that this is an activist post, I might be mentioning certain issues that might be triggering to some. Check the tags and stay safe. Ily. ❤️ 

Ever since activist and feminist Audre Lorde devised intersectionality as a way of describing the experience of multiply-marginalized women, feminism has adapted to include women of color, trans women, queer women, disabled women and religious minority women. Although white, non-intersectional feminism is still pervasive and is the dominant ideology carried on by cishet white women, a significant portion of the feminist movement has embraced the identities and diversity among various groups of women.

Intersectionality allows for us to look at the various ways womanhood affects those experiencing it, instead of just slapping one catch all experience of femininity onto all women. It lets us understand that a woman of color, for example, has less amounts of racial privilege than a white woman and must deal with the burden of specific stereotypes around being a woman of color. Intersectional feminism centers the women with multiple identities, or “intersections,” that society considers unfavorable or marginalized.

However, with all the strides intersectional theory has made in social justice circles, the plight of Autistic women is largely ignored by even the most inclusive feminist circles.

Disabled women as a broader group are often lumped together, even though cognitively disabled, intellectually disabled and physically disabled women contend with incredibly different forms of ableism. Alternatively, the feminist movement also tends to cater to physically disabled women who often have more visibility (which, granted, isn’t a lot) and acceptance than those whose minds are thought to be lesser.

It’s common in the disabled community for people to justify their humanity by asserting their neurotypicality, while erasing and oppressing non-neurotypicals. The pro-Autistic movement itself is mostly made up of women, queer individuals and people of color, and yet somehow it always ends up headed by cis white men. In both feminism and Autistic advocacy, women (especially ones with multiple intersections) are ignored and pushed to the sidelines despite typically facing greater oppression than cis autistic men.

Thus, it’s important to make sure to be inclusive towards autistic women and GNC individuals in both feminism and disabled activism. Here are some ways that I’ve compiled on how to make your feminism both inclusive and accepting as a queer, Autistic feminist.

1.       Mention Autistic Women and Bodily Autonomy

Women’s rights to their bodies are an important topic to discuss in feminism, but Autistic women deal with specific challenges in regard to consent and access to care and their bodies, so it’s important to bring up these issues in your discussions.

For starters, the court case Buck v. Bell still stands to this day. The case itself took place in the early 20th century during the eugenicist movement, and the court’s ruling allowed the forced sterilization of anyone labeled feebleminded. It’s legal for parents and guardians of the disabled to sign paper and sterilize anyone under their control regardless of whether the person in question consent to it even now. This is especially unsettling for women of color, who have historically been abused by eugenicist doctors. (See The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and the book Imbeciles for more information on these topics).

In the medical industry, there are also barriers Autistic women must deal with. Today, there are still ableist debates about whether Autistic and other disabled people deserve emergency medical treatment and organ transplants. Once again, this is especially bad for women of color who deal with medical abuse and malpractice committed against them in modern times.

The gist is, the most vulnerable Autistic women often don’t have the ability to consent to harmful and damaging procedures.

For transgender Autistic women, the burden is tenfold. Many Autistic trans people on social media have shared their stories about how people struggled to believe that they were trans because of their neurological difference. This makes transitional care and access much harder for GNC Autistic people and trans people, as their gender identity is viewed as a symptom.

2.       Talk About Consent

Along with consent to medical procedures, there’s also the fact that Autistic women are particularly vulnerable to the whims of violence against women. Here are some ideas to mention when talking about consent.

First off, many Autistic women use alternative methods of communication. Neurotypical women can usually say an explicit ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ though they still face violence. For Autistic women who are nonverbal and communicate through AAC, in a victim blaming culture such as ours their hindered ability to consent can be used against them.

Through ABA therapy, Autistic women are also further taught that their ‘no’ doesn’t matter. True ABA therapy, created by Ivar Lovaas, is essentially legal conditioning. The aim of this psychological form of abuse is to train Autistic children into seeming more Neurotypical instead of embracing their unique neurology and changing their environment to fit their needs. These kids are taught to obey authority at all times, or else they’ll deal with the use of an aversiv e. This of course, discourages their active consent to a situation and puts Autistic women in a dangerous position.

If they are physically as well as cognitively disabled, they may not physically be able to resist or run from an attacker. In many cases, an incidence of assault is justified by the perpetrator claiming that the victim wouldn’t have had a consensual encounter otherwise because they are “ugly” or unworthy of a healthy relationship. Autistic women are often considered to be such..

Trans women and women of color, who are often assaulted more frequently than cis white, women are of course very vulnerable when it comes to this issue. As such, it’s vital to mention this at any discussion of consent.

3.       Know that Toxic Femininity Affects Us More than Neurotypical Women

To preface this, I want to say that there’s nothing wrong with being feminine. I myself identify as a femme woman, out of my own personal fashion sense and aesthetic. I like being a feminine woman and wearing dresses and having long hair, though these also aren’t the only ways to be feminine, of course. Embracing femmeness does not mean that someone is servicing the patriarchy, and embracing androgyny and/or butchness also doesn’t mean said person has internalized misogyny. Everyone is entitled to the way they want to present, and feminism should be about uplifting how people choose to present themselves instead of putting down women they don’t think look “liberated” or “feminist” enough.

That being said, the patriarchy tends to enforce feminine roles on cis women and police the feminine expression of transwomen to make them “prove” they’re really trans and “sure” about being women. I like to call this “Toxic Femininity,” the way that women are pressured to conform to Eurocentric femininity regardless of how they actually want to present, but then oppressed for both their femmeness or their alternate presentation if they disregard the aforementioned. Either way, women can’t win.

Abiding by gender roles is exhausting for anyone, but for Autistic women who have limited energy to go into their daily activities and deal with sensory issues and neurotypicals. As such, gender presentation is often pretty low on our list of priorities. Autistic women are often unable to conform to society as our hindered social skills prevent us from perceiving these norms. It’s hard for us to fully conceptualize what’s acceptable and what’s not. As such, it takes extra effort for us to live up to Toxic Femininity.

With our sensory perception, certain clothes are uncomfortable for us and it’s sometimes a necessity to wear certain textures. Men’s clothing or androgynous clothing are often more comfortable, so it’s not uncommon to find us wearing those. As such, we are often labeled butch or non-femme regardless of how we actually identify our presentation. We are cast aside by Toxic Femininity.

This is of course, even more true for fat women, trans women, and physically disabled Autistic women, who’s bodies already don’t abide by the unattainability that Toxic Femininity forces us to live up to.

4.       Downplay the Voice of Neurotypicals in Autistic Women’s Issues

Despite their position of being privileged oppressors of the Autistic community, most of our advocacy is done by parents and relatives of Autistic people who believe that they are more entitled to our community and voices. They are the “Autism moms” and those with blue puzzle piece signs in their backyards, constantly yelling over us.

Most of the Autism organizations are run by these people, who often don’t consult with Autistic people about the needs of our community. Even though most of them don’t think they hate Autistic people and may even share common goals with the community, they still oppress us because they’re centering the voices of the privileges instead of the voices that are affected no matter how supportive they are.

An Autistic inclusive feminist space means downplaying Neurotypical rhetoric, meaning stopping the use of hate symbols like puzzle pieces and functioning labels. Cut out the influence of ableist organizations and monitor the use of words like “retarded” in your space. This will be difficult in a pervasively ableist society, but it will be worth it in making a more united social justice movement.

It also means allowing Autistic people to have input in their own issues, and allowing them to reclaim their agency. Know that no matter how many Autistic people you know, if you’re Neurotypical, you will never truly experience being Autistic even if you know more about the condition.

5.       Autistic Women Can Still be Racist, Homophobic, or Transphobic – Don’t Be Afraid to Let Them Know

There are usually 2 stereotypes Neurotypicals believe about us, and strangely enough, they’re complete opposites. We’re either hyperviolent, unfeeling school shooters to them or perfect innocent angels who never do anything wrong. Obviously, these are ableist because they assume that all Autistic people are the same, but most people tend to look at us as the latter stereotype because it’s more “politically correct” even though both viewpoints are hurtful in different ways.

As such, when Autistic people are genuinely oppressive, they aren’t held accountable. I’ve had interactions with homophobic Autistic people who accepted me for my Autism but not the fact that I was a girl who loved girls. I’ve met misogynist Autistic men who viewed me as an object and wouldn’t respect my boundaries and right to say ‘no’ to a relationship. As an Autistic white person, I myself hold institutional power over Autistic people of color and as such, am able to be racist.

Autistic people shouldn’t be given a free pass for their bigotry, and assuming that they should denies them their agency and oppresses others in that space.

Autistic women have a lot to contribute to feminism, and neurotypical women should allow them the opportunity to rise against their own oppression. Thanks for reading and for making your feminism inclusive –

Trust me, it means the world to us.

[battlestar-royco]

updated faq

Round 2! I tried to shorten the answers so as not to be repetitive, and I also added new FAQs for your convenience. My past self who wrote my first FAQ annoys me, and this one is more thorough anyway, so here you go. I still can’t believe you all actually interact with me enough that I have to make one of these.

Questions up here, answers under the cut.

anti sjm basics

1. why are you an anti?

2. why are you specifically anti SJM?

3. do you like anything about SJM’s books?

4. terminology and practices

5. why do you hold SJM to a higher standard than other authors?/why do you focus on criticizing this one woman more harshly than you do men?

6. did you see what xyz stan did?

7. are you an anti for non-SJM stuff?

best of (in my humble opinion)

diversity and sensitivity

8. I have a question about writing and/or how to portray xyz identity...

9. can you please tag...?

10. is it okay if I like [x author]/[y series] even if I know they’re problematic?

11. what are your suggestions for aspiring authors who want to write diversely?

personal

12. is it okay if I message you?

13. why don’t you post about books/shows/movies you actually like?

14. favorites?

15. book suggestions?

16. are you a writer/what are you writing/do you plan on publishing?

17. is it okay if I follow you on other social media?

18. fandom research

19. when did you start your blog?

20. how did you decide your url?

anti SJM basics

1. why are you an anti?

I love thinking critically about the media I consume. Though I wouldn’t say I’m particularly “anti” any text or author, some people classify any criticism as “anti.” To respect people in the main tags, I post in anti tags so they don’t have to see critical posts. Otherwise, I love talking about positive, neutral, and negative aspects of books.

2. why are you specifically anti SJM?

The Anti SJM Manifesto

What made you turn into an anti? x x

Rowan/Rowaelin: x x x

The fandom: x x x x x x

3. do you like anything about SJM’s books?

Yes. I like a lot of SJM’s ideas, but I don’t like how they’re executed at all. I highly enjoyed TAB, TOG-HOF, and the witch storyline of QOS. My favorite TOG characters are Manon, Chaol, Nehemia, and Sorscha. Honorable mention for Lysandra, Kaltain, and Asterin. My favorite ACOTAR characters are Nesta, Lucien, and Tarquin. Additional links: x x x x

If you want my positive thoughts on certain SJM characters, look up: “anti sjm: [character name]” and you’ll find them.

4. terminology and practices:

Anti SJM Glossary. Seeing as many of us have had bad experiences with stans and in one case, authors, we censor names so our posts stay in our own tags.

What is soap dick? From August 2018 x x.

Manongate? when KOA came out, Charlie Bowater’s promotional art (x) depicted Manon as Asian. Here’s more on why that’s a problematic and lazy decision on SJM and Bloomsbury’s part: x x.

5. why do you hold SJM to a higher standard than other authors?/why do you focus on criticizing this one woman more harshly than you do men?

SJM alone out of all the biggest YA authors has yet to make craft improvements or display a social awareness similar to what I’ve seen from her colleagues. I give all authors an equal chance, but SJM’s writing and behavior has significantly decreased in quality compared to other fantasy authors despite her books being lauded as complex and feminist works. However, I’m not perfect, so do feel welcome to send me an ask if you think I’m being unfair.

The anti SJM community is focused on women because we all mainly read women. Critiquing women doesn’t mean we are unaware, dismissive of, or silent about the issues in men’s work. The “anti” movements for the likes of GRRM do exist, but under a different name than “anti”–there are thousands of critical meta blogs, book/TV critics and reviewers, Youtubers, etc out there who discuss his flaws in depth. I also have lengthy anti GRRM, anti GOT, and anti ASOIAF tags. Finally, I personally find critiquing and discussing women’s work a lot more interesting, productive, and empowering than doing the same for men, especially because my blog’s focus is on the YA author/transformative fan community at large.

About Leigh Bardugo: x x x x x x x

About GRRM (and GOT): x x x x x x x

About Tolkien: I've only read The Hobbit and a third of Fellowship of the Ring, and I’ve only watched FotR, so I don’t say much about him at all.

6. did you see what xyz stan did?

Probably not, especially if what they did was off Tumblr. I don’t look at stan accounts unless someone informs me that my posts or I have come up in conversation on their blog. Any specific stan urls in asks will be redacted both for their privacy and my own well-being. Stans have doxxed, harassed, and discriminated against antis, including myself, so I’d rather save us all the trouble.

7. are you an anti for non-SJM stuff?

I most often talk about SJM’s books, but I’ve also been very critical of GOT/ASOIAF. Following GRRM, several other YA authors have appeared in positive, neutral, and critical lights. On the more critical side we have Cassandra Clare and JK Rowling, and a very little bit about Victoria Aveyard, John Green, Maggie Stiefvater, Stephenie Meyer, and Veronica Roth. Otherwise, I’ve talked about Susan Dennard, Rick Riordan, Leigh Bardugo, and Marie Rutkoski. Check out my YA critical tag for more. I’m also down to discuss franchises like Star Wars, Fantastic Beasts, MCU, etc, as well as TV shows. Basically anything big in genre fiction media, there’s a good chance I’ve read/watched it and I have opinions!

best of

anti SJM

Are the Illyrians MOC?

Moral Ambiguity Series

Anti Nessian

Lucien or Rhysand?

Chaol or Rowan?

misc.

why are period dramas like... that

White Feminism

a beginner’s guide to fandom racism

diversity and sensitivity

8. I have a question about writing and/or how to portray xyz identity...

First and foremost, check my “writing advice” and “writing advice: poc” tags to see if the question has already been answered.

I am black cis girl with a dual degree in women’s/gender studies and creative writing. I will best be able to answer questions regarding black characters, women, racial oppression and identity as a whole, and most questions about queer characters. There’s a chance I can provide a basic answer to questions about demographics outside of these, but I’ll most likely advise you to ask another blogger or seek out sensitivity readers.

9. can you please tag...?

Yes. Just send an ask and I’ll tag anything. I’ve turned off all Tumblr notifications for this account so I probably won’t see tag requests in comments unless you comment within a day or so of the post.

10. is it okay if I like [x author]/[y series] even if I know they’re problematic?

Absolutely. I’m not the liking-things police and I can’t control whether you like something or not. There’s no such thing as an unproblematic author or unproblematic series, so you just have to like what you like at your own discretion and with a critical eye. As long as you’re aware of the issues and not denying or ignoring them, maybe even seeking out other people whose opinions add to the conversation, you’re good. It’s exhausting to be 100% critical but harmful to be 100% uncritical, so you have to seek out critics you like and figure out how to maintain a dialogue with the text and/or the author. The balance is different for everyone but once you find it, it gets easier to keep up!

11. what are your suggestions for aspiring authors who want to write diversely?

Concepts to be aware of and tropes to avoid: male gaze, the Bechdel test, the Mako Mori test, the sexy lamp test, fridging, Orientalism, xenoface (called “the Gamora Phenomenon” on my blog), black best friend, Spicy Latina, Dragon Lady, bury your gays, disability narratives, queerbaiting.

What not to do when creating a culture.

My advice about writing POC.

Check out these blogs if you like: x x x.

Follow as diversely as possible. Follow multiple blogs, especially writing- or fandom-themed blogs, run by POC (especially women and LGBTQ+), bloggers from religiously marginalized groups, bloggers with disabilities, older bloggers, younger bloggers, international bloggers, plus size bloggers, etc. Everyone has different perspectives and opinions, so it’s best to read from multiple sources.

Magnify marginalized voices in conversations about diversity, and LISTEN to what they are telling you.

Read diversely! Read genre fiction written by marginalized people. Maybe even read some gender, queer, race, or disability theory if you like. I’m personally a fan of Audre Lorde, Anne McClintock, and Sara Ahmed, but I like a lot more.

Seek out multiple sensitivity readers for the specific identity you are trying to represent (ie if you are trying to write a Muslim woman, ask a Muslim woman to sensitivity read for you. Experiences are not interchangeable so don’t treat them as such).

Don’t let the research stop here. This is just the beginning. There are plenty of awesome and accessible resources out there if you want to know more. I started learning about this stuff on sites like Tumblr, Goodreads, and Youtube. The Goodreads review sections, especially for YA books, are so entertaining and full of commentators coming at texts with feminist, queer, and POC lenses if you look in the right spots. There are also podcasts and Youtube videos about feminism, history of queerbaiting, and such. Happy reading/listening/writing!

personal

12. is it okay if I message you?

If we’ve been mutuals and/or we’ve interacted for a while (at least a few weeks or so), absolutely. When it comes to questions about writing or diversity advice in WIPs, I prefer asks (off or on anon is fine; if you’d like to be off anon but answered privately, you can indicate that in the ask). That way, other people with similar questions can join the discussion and I’m less likely to repeat myself. That said, I’m not opposed to messages; I just get shy around people I don’t know :). Regardless of ask or message, please try to ask the full question as clearly as possible so I can answer it to my best ability. Generally, you can expect an answer to your message or ask within a few days to a week of sending.

If you’re looking for a fight and/or if you start using condescending, rude, or discriminatory language, you will be ignored.

13. why don’t you post about books/shows/movies you actually like?

I do! :)

14. favorites?

books: Harry Potter; The Hunger Games; Six of Crows; Percy Jackson; The Winner’s Trilogy; Angelfall; The Secret History; Othello; Jane Eyre; The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe/The Magician’s Nephew; A Storm of Swords.

movies: Alien, Blade Runner 2049, Harry Potter, Wonder Woman, Black Panther, Annihilation, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Terminator 2, The Breakfast Club, The Lion King, Moonlight dir. Barry Jenkins, Sleeping Beauty, Mulan, Tangled.

tv series: Sense8, Battlestar Galactica (2004-2008), Black Mirror, The X Files, The 100, Westworld (season 1 only), Watchmen, Homeland (seasons 1-4 only), Orphan Black, Breaking Bad, The Office, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, New Girl, Fleabag.

15. book suggestions?

Book recs!

Maxine, did you read/watch...?

16. are you a writer/what are you writing/do you plan on publishing?

I hope to publish, yes! I write mostly YA fantasy, but I also love sci fi, crime drama, and certain elements of horror so I have works in or influenced by all of those genres. I want to get my foot in the YA fantasy door first and foremost :). Check out “polysorscha writes things” if you want to know more specifics.

17. is it okay if I follow you on other social media?

As of now I keep my blog disconnected from my personal life, so I don’t share my other socials but feel free to follow me over on my main blog @ripley-stark if you like! It’s just pretty gifs and photos of my favorite movies and shows, social justice, meta reblogs here and there, and rambling in the tags. Don’t feel like you have to follow if you don’t want to; I say a lot more on here.

That being said, I have given my Goodreads to a handful of people who ask, so if you want to track what I’m reading, private message me and I’ll send you the link. In the case that I share the link with you, please respect my privacy and do not repost or share the link anywhere else unless you see me share it on my blog publicly.

18. fandom research:

In March to May 2019, I conducted a survey on my blog in an attempt to gather information about fandom through a social justice–specifically, intersectional feminist–lens. Here are the results and my analysis of the survey x. The purpose for this data collection was to write my final undergraduate research paper in one of my two majors, women’s and gender studies (the other is creative writing!), which focused on diversity and inclusion in genre fiction media and fandom. The final paper is about 11k words. I haven’t publicly published it, but message me if you’re interested in reading it! I also plan on doing more similar surveys to gather information about what audiences want to see in future media, so if anyone is interested, please send messages, asks, comments etc about what YOU want to see and/or ideas about how we can spread the info to creators. This is much bigger than just me and I can’t do it without your help. I love hearing from diverse voices and amplifying them as much as I can. Everyone’s perspective is meaningful!

19. when did you start your blog?

No earlier than the end of April or beginning of May 2018.

20. how did you decide your url?

I wish the Celaena/Dorian/Chaol love triangle resolved in a polyamorous relationship, and that Nehemia and Sorscha were thriving. Seeing as I am black, Sorscha is one of two characters in T0G who represents me. Thus, polyamorous + Sorscha. :)

[parentsnevertoldus]

little-t trauma

CW// health issues, death, suicide, homophobia, racism

When I was little, I thought that “drama” and “trauma” were the same thing. Middle school drama consisted of which popular long-haired sk8er boy was scooping the boobs of which popular pubescent girl; whose secrets were exposed when someone was ousted from their friend group; which 8th graders were dating high school seniors. While, in my experience, these words can often describe each other--drama can be traumatic and vice versa--they mean two different things. However, looking back on my childhood as I got older, I realized the way I had used them interchangeably was, well, correct. 

Whether it’s “Big-T Trauma” or “little-t trauma,” the psychological and physiological responses are the same. Big-T Trauma is an event that happens once but is extremely impactful all at one time, for example, death, assault, and attack, or witnessing an attack. These instances are often more accepted by wider society as stressful. Little-t trauma is by no means less traumatic. However, these recurring events are often invalidated and normalized by society; the burden is often shifted to the victim with the expectation that one should just “get over it.”  Examples of these include chronic bullying, racism, body-shaming, sexism, and other forms of everyday violence and discrimination. What determines whether we call it trauma in the first place is how we feel after the experience. The more frightened or helpless you feel, the more likely that this is trauma. 

Having to let boys playfully “scoop” your boobs every day at school or risk social ostracization? Trauma. Having your deepest darkest secrets exposed at school? Trauma. Being ousted from your friend group? Trauma. Dating someone way too old for you? Trauma. Being the only Black kid at your school? Trauma. Trying to pass for straight? Trauma. Hiding your gender identity from everyone you know? Trauma. No one deserves that.

Minority Stress is a little-t trauma (in contrast to the big-T Trauma of a hate crime).  The term minority stress refers to the excess recurring stress to which individuals from stigmatized social categories are exposed as a result of their position as a social minority. This stress from alienation accumulates over time and results in both physiological and mental health issues.

How Trauma Affects the Body

Increased blood pressure: have you ever heard the expression “higher than a Black man’s blood pressure?” Some epidemiological studies have found that exposure to racial discrimination was positively related to elevated levels of blood pressure in Black people (1). Experiencing discrimination in a broad range of contexts can induce considerable stress. 

Higher rates of chronic disease: Everyday discrimination is positively associated with coronary artery calcification (9),  diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, depression, cancer, and early death (12). Because of this, not only do POC (specifically Black people) experience worse health earlier, but this deterioration accumulates giving rise to higher cortisol levels and inflammation in racial, sexual, and gender minorities alike (13).

Poor sleep:  Black people are less likely than white people to have a decline in blood pressure during sleep, which is associated with increased risk for mortality and traumatic cardiovascular events like heart attacks (11).

Birthing mortality: The weathering hypothesis proposes that the health of Black women may begin to deteriorate in early adulthood as a physical consequence of cumulative socioeconomic disadvantage. This age the body via an increase in allostatic load, the physiological burden imposed by stress: norepinephrine, epinephrine, cortisol, and DHEA-S which gives rise to elevated blood pressure & cholesterol (14). During childbirth, these problems are correlated with higher rates of fetal/neonatal death and death of the birthing person as well as low birth weights and prematurely born babies.

Mental health and physical health are inextricably linked. 

How Trauma Affects Us Socially & Emotionally

Psychological distress: Perceptions of discrimination are related to high levels of psychological distress, low levels of life satisfaction & happiness, depressive symptoms, poorer physical health (2), & cognitive impairment (10). Internalized racism is correlated with higher levels of alcohol use (3) while internalized homophobia correlates to higher levels of illicit drug use.

Fatalism:  Understanding one's position as a victim of oppression, rather than lessening the degree of personal responsibility, diminishes feelings of self-efficacy. This leads to a fatalistic attitude that reduces coping effort in the face of adversity (4,5) and, in gay men, is correlated to increased risk of death by suicide. 

Stereotype threat:  When someone is aware of the negative stereotypes that are applied to them, this creates expectations, anxieties, and reactions that can adversely affect social & psychological functioning (6). When a stigma of inferiority is activated for Black people in experimental conditions, exam performance worsens. Similarly, women who were told that they perform worse than men had lower exam scores than control groups (7). Stereotype threat can increase anxiety, reduce self-regulation, & impair decision-making processes and communication abilities (8).

Trauma makes it hard to trust others; it makes us want to self-isolate from friends and family, snap at loved ones more frequently, makes us more susceptible to disease and chronic flare-ups, and startle more easily. Traumatic experiences, especially ones we face daily and have little control over (microaggressions, anyone?), can lead to hopelessness and chronic mental illness. And while white cisgender heterosexuals have problems too, the problems that oppressed minority groups face have a much larger effect on their cardiovascular systems and overall health.

Discrimination and oppression are literally killing people. In a capitalist society where you are only as valuable as your economic or reproductive output (#tbt to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade), where women and minorities are barred access to equal healthcare, thus decreasing their values as workers, the cycle of poverty continues.

Ever wonder where the Angry Black Woman stereotype came from? Ever think that maybe her anger was justified?

While this article focuses on Black people and cishet white gay men, let's remember the overall message: experiencing oppression (external and internalized) causes mental and physical health problems that are NOT YOUR FAULT. These experiences are compounded at the intersections of our marginalized identities which further aggravates the tangible effects of systemic oppression. And guess what? You deserve fucking better.

Click here for some self-care ideas and techniques!

Sources

1.  Krieger N. & Sidney S. Racial and discrimination: risk factors for high blood pressure? Social Science & Medicine. 1990; 30 (12): 1273-81.

2. Williams & Chung, in press (NSBA)

3. Taylor, R. J., & Chatters, L. M. (1991). Nonorganizational religious participation among elderly black adults. Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences, 46(2), S103-111.

4. Jones, E., & Matsumoto, D. (1982). Psychotherapy with the underserved: Recent developments. In L. Snowden (Ed.), Reaching the underserved: Mental health needs of neglected populations. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications.

5. Neighbors, H. W., Jackson, J. S., Broman, C. L., & Thompson, E. (1996). Racism and the mental health of African Americans: The role of self and system blame. Ethnicity and Disease, 6(1-2), 167-175.

6. Fischer, C. S., Hout, M., Jankowski, M. S., Lucas, S. R., Swidler, A., Voss, K. (1996). Inequality by design: Cracking the bell curve myth Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press

7. Steele, C. M. (1997). A threat in the air: How stereotypes shape intellectual identity and performance. American Psychologist, 52(6), 613-629.

8. Inzlicht, M., Kang, S. K. (2010). Stereotype threat spillover: How coping with threats to social identity affects aggression, eating, decision making, and attention. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99(3), 467-481.

9. Lewis, T. T., Barnes, L. L., Bienias, J. L., Lackland, D. T., Evans, D. A., Mendes de Leon, C. F.(2009). Perceived discrimination and blood pressure in older African American and White adults. Journals of Gerontology Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences, 64A(9), 1002-1008.

10. Barnes, L. L., Lewis, T. T., Begeny, C. T., Yu, L., Bennett, D. A., Wilson, R. S. (2012). Perceived discrimination and cognition in older African Americans. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 18(5), 856-865.

11. Profant, J., Dimsdale, J. E. (1999). Race and diurnal blood pressure patterns: A review and meta-analysis. Hypertension, 33(5), 1099-1104.

12. National Research Council (US) Panel on Race, Ethnicity, and Health in Later Life; Anderson NB, Bulatao RA, Cohen B, editors. Critical Perspectives on Racial and Ethnic Differences in Health in Late Life. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 2004. 14, Significance of Perceived Racism: Toward Understanding Ethnic Group Disparities in Health, the Later Years. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK25531/

13. Gender differences in age-related changes in HPA axis reactivity.

Seeman TE, Singer B, Wilkinson CW, McEwen B

Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2001 Apr; 26(3):225-40.

14. Price of adaptation--allostatic load and its health consequences. MacArthur studies of successful aging.

Seeman TE, Singer BH, Rowe JW, Horwitz RI, McEwen BS

Arch Intern Med. 1997 Oct 27; 157(19):2259-68.

[hautecast]

Ohio Fairness Act: A Policy Analysis

The following text outlines my research and analysis of the State of Ohio’s Senate Bill No. 11, more commonly known as the Ohio Fairness Act. In the text, I provide a brief summary and history of the bill, and analysis of how this bill, if enacted, would impact the LGBTQIA+ community in the State of Ohio and potentially beyond.

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The Ohio Fairness Act was formally introduced by Senator Nickie J. Antonio to the 133rd Ohio Senate General Assembly as Senate Bill No. 11, and previously House Bill 160. In summary, the Ohio Fairness Act aims to expand Ohio’s anti-discrimination laws to include sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression as protected classes. This would allow legal expanded access for housing, employment, and public services (House Bill 160). As of this moment in Ohio’s history, it is one of 30 states in the U.S. where it is still legal to discriminate against folks based on their sexual orientation, gender identity, and/or gender expression (Equality Ohio, Ohio.gov, ACLU Ohio).

As mentioned in the above summary, the target group of this policy is the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Asexual, (LGBTQIA+) community, as this policy directly influences their basic human rights. It affects their ability to freely choose where to live, where to work, and how to engage in their everyday activities without fear of persecution or discrimination, both passive and active. Therefore, the success of this policy is ensuring the expansion of human rights to every citizen regardless of how they identify with gender expression and orientation. The specific behaviors that are being targeted are explicit and implicit discrimination of individuals based on these factors of identity expression and orientation in spaces where others would not be discriminated against otherwise.

If the Ohio Fairness Act was enacted, the policy would be considered effective when there would not be proof or suspicion of discrimination based on gender identity or expression (Equality Ohio, 2019). The only way to effectively ensure this is carried out is including this language in an anti-discriminatory law where it is illegal to discriminate based on any non-changeable factor of an individual. The indicators of effectiveness for this program are places of employment, housing, and public services abiding by this policy by making it publically known that they are upholding an inclusive practice for all citizens. Additionally, when the target population has increased representation in every public space, especially those that have previously enacted a discriminatory practice, this would be a public indicator that space has made a demonstrated effort to include these populations.

If the policy were to be implemented, there would be an increase in target group satisfaction as well as a generally positive change in the implementation system. The Ohio Fairness Act aims to empower all people by providing equal opportunity to some of the most marginalized groups, so the outcome of the policy would be effective in qualifying a previously underrepresented and disregarded group, allowing them more access to society than provided previously. The more players that are available to interact in society, the more economic stimulation and social growth there will be.

Regarding this policy, the actors in the Ohio Fairness Act are the legislators who would vote on this policy, the organizations or companies that would be affected by enacting this policy, and the LGBTQIA citizens affected as well as those directly connected to them. The effectiveness of the policy would not have a great span or amount of variance depending on the actors in the policy field, as the population of interest would not necessarily change over time. The only change I could foresee happening would be if the population increases, or, if those who identify in this population outwardly and publically express that they are a part of this community. If this population increases over time, there may be a need for this policy to be more readily implemented for economic purposes. Right now, the only reason the policy is not viewed as being vital is because the majority in power (legislatively) does not feel that it would affect enough people to create a negative impact in our society, economically, or socially. However, as this population, currently seen as a minority, grows or gains traction, allies, or support, the policy may increase in effectiveness because there would be more at stake to lose if it were not implemented.

Since this particular policy aims to augment human rights of very specific individuals within an already marginalized community, and because there is supposed to be the same intended outcome regardless of where the policy is implemented, I believe the outcomes would remain relatively uniform for the most part. With that said, I believe the negative outcomes that may arise from introducing this policy would be uniform across all states, specifically in areas that previously showed resistance to such a policy. Likewise would happen for the positive outcomes across the board.  For example, according to Equality Ohio, this Ohio Fairness Act or legislation that mirrors the act, is only implemented in the following areas of Ohio:

“IN 20 CITIES AND 1 COUNTY IN OHIO, DISCRIMINATION IN THOSE THREE AREAS AGAINST LGBTQ PEOPLE IS ILLEGAL. They are: Akron, Athens, Bexley, Bowling Green, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Cleveland Heights, Columbus, Coshocton, Cuyahoga County, Dayton, East Cleveland, Lakewood, Kent, Newark, Olmsted Falls, Oxford, South Euclid, Toledo, Yellow Springs, and Youngstown” (Equality Ohio, 2019).

These cities for the most part have demonstrated liberal tendencies in voting and support of a more left-leaning political party. Therefore, even before they included legislation that explicitly protected all LGBTQ people, they were already demonstrating an inclusive environment towards them. Therefore, the outcomes when the bill was introduced to these towns did not incite much upset or discord from an opposing party. However, I could foresee that any county or city that has not had a history of inclusivity of the LGBTQ community would likely produce an uproar and push back against the legislation even after it would be put in place. And while this act is only pertaining to Ohio, I believe any policy that reflects the same intentions and outcomes would receive the same pushback from areas that have historically been against the policy (mostly right-winged conservatives and those fighting for religious freedom and expression), and they would simultaneously receive the same support from areas that have historically been inclusive of every individual (mostly left-leaning, liberal areas) (WOSU Public Media).

Looking wider, there are similar trends going on nationwide. Ohio is one of 26 states that does not have a state law explicitly prohibiting discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation (LGBTQ Maps, 2019). This means that roughly half our country is still allowing legal discriminatory practices in the workplace, housing, and public goods or services. If the Ohio Fairness Act were to be implemented, one outcome could be adding to the wave of states that are becoming more inclusive of all individuals.

The frontlines would be an area of the highest variance in outcomes, as this would be the instance where many people from different backgrounds, perspectives, and influences would interact with one another while all being affected by the system in place. Since the LGBTQIA population is already a marginalized group, they’re interactions with systems of power have not been the most fortunate, historically speaking. The fact that these groups have to fight to have their identities included in basic protections and anti-discriminatory laws is a taxing effort that populations in the majority never had to go through. The system, meaning, any legislation that has been created to affect change on a large scale, has historically served those who have identified as cis-gendered, heterosexual Caucasian folks who are predominantly not of low socioeconomic status or a racial/ethnic minority.

For any policy, every level of the implementation system has some type of influence on the outcomes. When looking at most policies, the policy field would have the largest impact knowing that that is the area that is responsible for supplying a doctrine or law that citizens must abide by unless they will face consequences. However, with policies pertaining to human rights, I do believe the frontlines and the organizations are the levels that have the most potential for an impact, even though it will ultimately be the players in the top line of the policy field that again are responsible for actually implementing the final say on a policy or regulation or law.

The frontlines have the most potential for change, thought, as they are the bodies and populations that are the physical face of the target population. The frontlines are the ones who have the ability to relate to the general public by sharing personal stories and publicize injustices that are occurring on a daily basis and how that impacts the rest of the community. It is the frontlines who have the most social agency to create a social movement, which is where most human rights campaigns begin and are seen through. This has been the care for the women’s suffrage movement, anti-discriminatory race laws, and even immigration laws. Organizations are also very powerful, as they have the ability to organize those on the frontlines, and empower them with publicity and most importantly, financial support. In this particular example with the Ohio Fairness Act, the target population are the marginalized persons within the LGBTQIA community who are also identified as the frontlines.

While human rights should never be a partisan issue, time has shown that most human rights issues are typically a left vs. right issue when involving political parties. Typically, the parties will have differing outlooks on aspects like legitimizing certain practices and norms, or finding disagreement with certain beliefs and values. It is usually not until the law and the outcomes of that law are proven to positively impact the economy or workforce that the policy is actually put into practice. As I previously mentioned, the frontlines have the ability to begin a movement by influencing social change in a community, speaking to those who share similar beliefs and values. But, ultimately, the main reason why slaves were freed was because of the economic relief it would bring to the country during that time. Similarly, black people and women were seen as pawns for a certain presidential candidate’s campaign or party; if the person in power could speak to those marginalized communities, they could promise change for those populations, gain their votes, and win the election. This has happened repeatedly in history, where the frontlines create a movement, and the legislators capitalize on that energy for economic gain or administrative power (ACLU Ohio, 2019).  

The same cycle would and will occur with the Ohio Fairness Act, as this is an act that pertains to a particular group that has rallied and rioted peacefully protested frustrations regarding unfair treatment due to their identities. In a lot of cases, hostile discrimination that ends in physical harm or psychological damage. But it would not be until this group can demonstrate how this policy’s outcomes would benefit the greater good (outside of acknowledging that every human deserves equality) where the policy would pick up more ground (ACLU Ohio, 2019).

Some of the goals with the intended outcomes of the Ohio Fairness Act include creating equal opportunity for all citizens, regardless of any identity they withhold. This allows, specifically, those in the LGBTQIA community, the opportunity to freely live, work, and engage in every part of our society regardless of their gender identity and expression just as anyone else. However, some of the challenges that could hinder these outcomes are the religious communities that are vying to uphold their religious freedoms, which may directly oppose this policy. While there is a way to uphold religious freedom without persecution or discrimination, it appears that religious groups have won their policy battle over equality policies time and time again, and in the last year of this Senate Bill No. 11, this was one of the reasons the bill was not passed as well (WOSU Public Media).

Additionally, even if the policy does pass, there would need to be an underlying movement of change, where the culture of a community is actively inclusive of all people; this is to say that if this law were to be written out, the culture of that space would still be inclusive and provide protection for all people, regardless of their identity, and regardless of a law. The list of the cities that have already enacted their own Fairness Acts have proven this cultural change, as their cities were already practicing this inclusivity, and then made it permanent and subject to consequence through a law if broken.

Since human rights issues need to have a tangible gain (again, historically economic benefits), the Ohio Fairness Act would need to combine all of the strengths of the movement paired with these tangible, quantitative outcomes. While the LGBTQIA community should not ever have to vocalize and defend their value as humans, and to be provided the same rights as anyone else, to see this policy through, there would have to be an appeal to social and cultural change agents, in addition to an economic factor. I believe the only reason economic gains are always relevant in human rights issues, is because the economy is something that effects everyone in a system in one way or another. While many liberal folx believe human rights issues, even those pertaining to a specific marginalized group, should also be every citizen’s issue, there is usually a divide that they will have to overcome using numbers, trajectory, and a timeline showing economic growth or influence.

[pearlinthemaking]

01 The Moment of Lift

The Moment of Lift

How Empowering  Women Changes the World

Introduction

I recently came across the phrase “moment of lift” in a book by Mark Nepo, one of my favorite spiritual writers. He uses the words to capture a moment of grace. Something was “lifted like a scarf on the wind,” he writes, and his grief went silent and he felt whole. (2)

Mark’s image of lift is filled with wonder. And wonder has two meanings for me. It can mean awe, and it can mean curiosity. I have loads of awe - but just as much curiosity. I want to know how lift happens!

How can we summon a moment of lift for human beings — and especially for women? Because when you lift up women,  you lift up humanity. And how can we create a moment of lift in human hearts so that we all want to lift up women? Because sometimes all that’s needed to lift women up is to stop pulling them down. (2-3)

They have shown me the difference it makes when women are lifted up, and I want everyone to see it They have shown me what people can do to make an impact, and I want everyone to know it. …No one should be left out. Everyone should be brought in. OUr call is lift women up — and when we come together in this cause, we are the lift. (4)

The Lift of a great idea

Frankly, I think it is great if women want to stay home. But it should be a choice, not something we do because we think we have no choice. I don’t regret my decision. I would make it again. At the time, though, i just assumed that is what women do. (7)

22 years later, I am an ardent feminist. To me, it is very simple. Being a feminist means that every woman should be able to use her voice and pursue her potential, and that women and men should all work together to take down the barriers and end the biases that still hold women back. (7)

And my own mother had a powerful influence on my choice, though she might not have known it. She always said to me as I was growing up. “If you don’t see your own agenda, somebody esle will.” If I didn’t fill my schedule with things I felt were important, other people would fill my schedule with things they felt were important. (21)

I was seeing women lifting each other up. And I saw that it all begins when women start talking to each other. (25)

“What do you know now in a deeper way than you know before?” I love this question because it honors how we learn and grow. Wisdom is not about accumulating more facts; it is about understanding big truths in a deeper way. Year by year, with the support and insight of freidns and partners and people who have gone before me, I see more clearly that the primary causes of poverty and illness are the culture, financial, and legal restrictions that block what women can do — and think they can do for themselves and their children. (27)

We can look at each of these issues as a wall or a door. I think I already know which way we see it. In the hearts and minds of empowered women today, “every wall is a door.” (28)

Empowering Mothers

Often in life, it is the older males who get credit for the work that young people and women do. It isn’t right, but that is how it works.” (27)

You don’t get behavior change unless a new practice is transparent, works well, and gets people talking — and Ruchi’s revival of this one-day-old-baby had everybody talking. (42)

“Their cup is not empty: you can’t just pour your ideas into it. Their cup is already full, so you have to understand what is in their cup.” If you don’t understand the meaning and beliefs behind a community’s practice, you won’t represent your idea in the context of their values and concerns, and people won’t hear you. (43)

But the way you deliver the science is just as important as the science itself. (44)

This underscores the value of Hans Rosling’s stories about extreme poverty: When you begin to understand the daily lives of the poor, it does more than give you the desire to help it; it can often show you how. (49)

It is unglamorous from a technological standpoint, but deeply satisfying from a human viewpoint — innovation driven by the feeling that science should serve everyone. No one should be excluded. (49)

All of us have seen something like this. And we had a role in it. Either we were bullies, or we were victims, or we saw bullying and didn’t stop it. … As I grew up, I thought abuse like that would happen less and less. But I was wrong. Adults try to create outsiders, too. In fact, we get better at it. And most of us fall into one of the same three groups : the people who try to create outsiders, the people who were made to feel like outsiders, and the people who stand by and don’t stop it. Anyone can be made to feel like an outsider. It is up to the people who have the power to exclude. Often it is on the basis of race. (51)

Overcoming the need to create outsiders is our greatest challenge as human beings. It is the key to ending deep inequality. We stigmatize and send to the margins people who trigger in us the feelings we want to avoid. This is why there are so many old and weak and sick an dpoor people on the margins of the society. We tend to push out the people who have the qualities we are most afraid we will find in ourselves — and sometimes we falsely ascribe qualities we disown to certain groups, then push those groups out as a way of denying those traits in ourselves. This is what drives dominating groups to push different racial and religious group s to the margins. (52)

And we are often not honest about what is happening. If we are one the inside and see someone on the outside, we often say to ourselves, “I am not in that situation because I am different.” But that is just pride talking. We could easily be that person. We have all things inside us. We just don’t like to confess what we have in common with outsiders because it is too humbling. It suggest that maybe success and failures aren’t entirely fair. And if you know you got the better deal, then you have to humble, and it hurts to give up your sense of superiority and say, “I am no better than others.” So instead we invent excuses for our need to exclude. We say it is about merit or tradition when it is really just protecting our privilege and pride. (52)

We have to wake up to the ways we exclude. We have to open our arms and heats to the people we have pushed to the margins. It is not enough to help outsider fights their way in - the real triumph will come when we no longer push anyone out. (53)

Lifting Their Eyes

Education is a vital step on the path to empowerment for women — a path that starts with good health, nutrition, and family an organization, ….and lead.

The Moment of Lift

Agents of Development

Some of the best ideas in development are simple ideas - after you have heard them. But it takes a visionary to dream them up, and make them work. (103)

Kakenya had the courage to defy tradition, but she also had the wisdom to make it work in her favor. (107)

I don’t have any idea how people find the guts to speak up against waves of tradition, but when they do, they always end up with followers who have the same conviction but not quite the same courage. That is how leaders are born. They say what others want to say, and the others then join them. That’s how a young woman can change not only her life, but her culture. (108)

That is the secret of an empowering education ; A girl learns she is not who she’s been told she is. She is the equal of anyone, and she has rights she needs to assert and defend. This is how the great movements of social change get traction : when outsiders reject the low self-image society has imposed on them and begin to author a self-image of their own. (108)

Defending yourself is not just an abstract action. (111)

A low elf-image and oppressive social customs are inner and outer versions of the same force. But the link between the two gives outsiders the key to change. If a girl can lift up her view of herself, she can start to change the culture that keeps her down. But this is n’t something most girls can do on their own. They need support. The first defense against a culture that hates you is a person who loves you. (112)

Love is the most powerful and underused force for change in the world. You don’t hear about in policy discussions or political debates. ..all did hard headed, tough-minded work for social justice and they all put the emphasis on love. (113)

It is a mark of our culture’s uneasiness with love that political candidates never talk about it as a qualification for holding public office. In my view, love is one of the highest qualifications one can have. “Only love can safely handle power.” For me, love is the effort to help others flourish — and it often begins with lifting up a person’s self-image.

If I had not been surrounded by people who lifted me up I might have taken her advice and sold myself short. Instead I stormed out of that talk furious with her and twice as determined to reach my goals. That was not my power ; it was the power of people who had shown me my gifts and wanted to me to flourish. That is why I am so passionate about teachers who can embrace girls and lift them up — they change the course of their students’ lives.

A girl who is given love and support can start to break the self-image that keeps her down. As she gains self-confidence, she sees she can learn. As she learns, she sees her own gifts. As she develops her gifts, she sees her own power; she can defend her own rights. That is what happens when you offer girls love, not hate. You lift up their gaze. They gain their voice.  (113)

The Silent Inequality

Every family has its own way of coping, and all families can use help managing the tasks of raising kids and running the home. (126)

The way the researchers talked about their work was very moving to me. To care is human — and caring for children or aging parents should be an expression of love. It can offer us some of the most meaningful moments of our lives. But if it is assumed that women will do all these tasks, then caring that should be joyful becomes a burden, and work that should be shared becomes isolating. (127)

Balancing Unpaid Work: balancing Relationships

Breaking that hierarchy actually leads to men’s empowerment, because it allows to discover the power of partnership them develop their caring side. (130-131)

This dynamic is what allows some partners to ignore things that they actually do care about, because they know their partner will do the work for both of them. But leaving to your partner something that you also care about leads to separation. When one partner leaves the care of the children to the other, or one partner leaves the role of earning income to the other, they are cutting themselves off from their children. Perhaps the biggest cost is that the two are cutting themselves from each other. (131)

There is a much better approach. Instead of one partner ignoring a need and the other emphasizing it, we share it. We don’t insist that the time spent on the work is mathematically equal,  but we acknowledge what the family needs, and we make plans to take care of it. It is not longer “this is my job, that is yours.” It becomes ours. (131)

You develop a partnership that is whole and complementary with a natural hierarchy based on

talent and experience, where each other can learn, lead and follow, and two can become one. ..”It is the heat and friction of two people’s differences that propel them to explore new ways of being.” (132)

The gender imbalance in unpaid work is such a compelling subject form e in part because it is a common burden that binds many women together, but also because the causes of the imbalance run so deep that you cannot solve them with a technical fix. You have to renegotiate the relationship. To me, no question is more important than this one: Does your primary relationship have love and respect and reciprocity and a sense of teamwork and belonging and mutual growth? I believe all of us ask ourselves this question in one way or another — because I think it is one of the greatest longings of our life. (132)

(Working in separate worlds) might have been equal, but it wounldn’t have been an equal partnership. It would have been more like a parallel play: I won’t mess with your stuff and you don’t mess with mine. This was another decision that supported our move towards an equal partnership. (136)

The moral of the story to me was that a man can call another man and share advice about how to improve their marriages — that men can play a role as guardians and supporters of the union. (137)

When two people challenge each other and learn from each other, it has an equalizing effect. (139)

Early in our work together, we realized that there was an underlying ethos to our philanthropy: the premise that all lives have equal value. It animates everything. And one of the things that has made this principle real to me — not as an abstract idea but as an honest mark of the way we see the world — has been seeing how the suffering of others can bring Bill to tears. (140)

Great wealth can be very confusing. It can inflate and distort your sense of self — especially if you believe that money measures merit. Yet Bill is one of the most grounded people I know, and it comes from a clear perspective about how he came to be where he is. (140)

Bill has a sense of humility. Not all the time — I can give you counterexamples. But this is the path of his growth. When he reflects on life and connects with his deepest self, he knows he is not special : he knows his circumstances were special — and a man who can see through hierarchy, honor equality and express his tender heart. (141)

You can’t dedicate your life to the principle that all lives have equal value if you think you are better than others. Bill, at his core, doesn’t think that way at all, and that is one of the qualities I love most in him. (141)

We try to hare roles, especially the disagreeable ones. We try to make sure we don’t make one person do the dirty work. One of the defining features of hierarchy is that you take the powerful and exciting jobs for yourself and impose the crummy tasks on others. That’s a purpose of hierarchy.

I take it personally

First I believe that women gain equality not couple by couple but by changing the culture, and we can change the culture by sharing our stories. That is why I’m sharing mine. (148)

“To be known without being loved is terrifying. To be loved without being known has no power to change us. But to be deeply known and deeply loved transforms us.” ..Trying to help others while keeping them at a safe distance cannot truly help them or heal us. We have to open up to others. We have to give up the need to be separate and superior. Then we can help. Working on ourselves while working for others is the inner and outer work — where the effort to change the world and the effort to change ourselves come together. (149)

When a culture of dominance is broken, it activates power in all of us.So the goal for me is not the rise of women and the fall of man. It is the rise of both women and men from a struggle for dominance to a state of partnership. (149)

Change comes when men see the benefits of women’s power — not just what women can do that men cannot, but a quality of relationship that comes in an equal partnership that cannot come in a hierarchical relationship : a sense of bonding, of belonging, of community, solidarity and wholeness born of a promise that I will help you when your burdens are high, and you will help me when your burdens are low. These forces create the most rewarding feelings in life — and experience of love and union that is not possible or available to partners who struggle alone. It can turn a hierarchical relationship into an equal one, and it comes from women asserting themselves. (150)

Seeing Gender Bias

Empowerment never confines itself to categories. (191)

The way the women carried themselves. … It’s not easdy to unlearn a lifetime of being meek. The posture of these women was different. They stood tall. They spoke up. They were not afraid to ask questions, to tell me what they knew, what they thought, what they wanted. They were activists. They had that look. They had been lifted up (191)

[samfountaine]

Intersectionality in Sense8

Intersectionality which is depicted in popular aspects of culture, like the Netflix series Sense8, is not only necessary but overtly appreciated from audience members. Intersectionality refers to those who obtain multiple marginalized identifications, such as being Black and being a woman. Representation of these variations of often misunderstood characteristics provides an outlet for audience members who can relate to the characters portrayed on the screen. Unfortunately, many people who obtain multiple stigmatized identifications are not represented on screen as often as white, straight characters, or those with one identity which does not align with characteristics normalized in society. Underrepresentation of these existing combinations of identifications is problematic when considering the prevalence of these characteristics off screen, and is instead making the assumption these combinations of characteristics do not exist by choosing to ignore their existence. Excluding combinations of marginalized identifications supports the inaccurate stereotypes by falsely guiding audience members into complete ignorance of the existence of someone with a variety of stigmatized characteristics, along with the unique experience of discrimination which follows. These people who identify as such are often persuaded to believe people who look like them, or obtain the same characteristics are either not as significant as the people usually on screen or believe they simply do not exist. However, Sense8 portrays a majority of the characters as obtaining a variety of marginalized identifications and utilizes such diverse storylines in a genuine and accurate way.  

Netflix’s Sense8 portrays a variety of unique characters: including a Black man named Capheus who lives in Kenya; Lito, a gay, Spanish actor; a Korean woman named Sun; Will, a White Chicago police officer; Kala, a religious Indian pharmacist; Wolfgang, a German thief; Nomi, a trans-woman who lives in San Fransisco and is in an openly gay relationship with a Black woman named Amanita; and an Icelandic D.J. named Riley. 

Sense8 is a combination of genres in itself, including aspects of sci-fi and mystery, drama, romance, action, and melancholy. “Sense8 follows eight people from vastly different backgrounds all across the world whose lives begin to gradually intertwine when they discover that they can share a mental link with one another” (Seligson). The group of eight characters are able to share their thoughts, experiences, and skills with one another. Below is the official Netflix trailer of the third season, which was shortened into a movie after Netflix’s abrupt and controversial cancellation of the series;

The condensed movie was released on June 8th, 2018, and is almost three hours long. 

The characters depicted in Sense8 are unique from one another and vary from the usual main characters presented in series. The diverse characteristics between the characters allows for a diverse audience to relate to the specific characters they believe best represent them. The show not only provides physical representation of their unique characteristics, but also shares a personalized and genuine background of each of the characters. “I don’t want to reduce Sense8 to a single message, but I also want to applaud it for it’s progressivism. No other show on television comes close to the level of inclusion and representation it has, and it doesn’t get nearly enough credit for that” (Seligson). For instance, Nomi Marks is a political blogger who has a great amount of experience with online hacking. She is from San Francisco and is in an openly gay relationship with a woman named Amanita (Orley). “However, Nomi’s life is not as simple as we believe, but that she was born in the body of Michael” (Kevin). Nomi is a trans-woman and is played by Jamie Clayton, a trans-woman actor. The series provides the audience with the upsetting storyline of Nomi’s unaccepting mother who continues to call Nomi, Michael. 

The next character, Lito, is a closeted gay Spanish actor in Mexico. He constantly pressures himself to appear straight to the public, although Lito is in love with a man Hernando who secretly lives with Lito. Lito is a determined actor who is continuously attempting to create a successful career. With support from Hernando and others, Lito decides to come out as gay to the audience (Orley). 

Will Gorski is a Chicago police officer who obtains a major role in Sense8. Will and Riley meet in the beginning and discover they are falling in love with one another. The series shares a fight between Will and his dad who struggles with alcohol addiction and unfortunately dies after falling down a flight of stairs (Orley).

RIley is originally from Iceland but ran away when she was younger and D.J.s in England. She had a troubled past and as a result is involved in the drug trade. She is in a relationship with Will (Orley).

Wolfgang is from Germany and is a professional safe-cracker. He is constantly involved in world-class jewel heists with a close friend, as well as organized crime (Orley).

Kala lives in India and is praised for studying medicine and pharmacy. Sense8 shares Kala’s life as religious and structured. During the beginning of season one, Kala struggles with the reality she is about to marry someone she does not love due to Kala’s dad’s arrangement. Kala and Wolfgang begin seeing each other often and consider being in a romantic relationship (Orley).

Capheus is a bus driver and care-taker in Kenya. His mom is sick throughout the series, and Capheus is determined to receive the money needed to purchase medication. Capheus is a passionate, knowledgable character (Orley).

The last main character of the eight is Sun, who is a Financial Officer in South Korea. Sun enjoys kickboxing, and is often helping the other seven use the strength and talent she obtains to get out of dangerous situations when needed. Additionally, Sun’s younger brother is caught in a work-related crime and Sun is challenged with the choices of listening to her diseased mother’s advice of always protecting family, or choosing not to make the ultimate sacrifice and instead allow herself to succeed (Orley).

These diverse characters, “were born at the exact same moment on the exact same day, are physically connected, even as they live radically different lives” (Xiao). However, their unique experiences and intersecting, or not intersecting, identifications allow them to still exist as separate beings. As the audience is able to see throughout the series, these characters experience a variety of disadvantages or privileges solely because of their identifications. For instance, Nomi, the gay, trans-woman, is constantly verbally abused and maliciously misgendered by her own mother because Nomi is a trans-woman. Additionally, she is dating another woman, which Nomi’s mother disapproves of as well. The disadvantages of being both a trans-woman and identifying as gay are significantly different than another white woman identifying as gay, or solely being a trans-woman but being exclusively attracted to men. There are plenty of examples within Sense8 about intersectional experiences; including, Sun who is Korean and a woman who enjoys kickboxing. Sun lives in Korea, so she is not visibly discriminated against for being Korean, but she is often doubted for being a woman in a high-profile work setting in which the stereotypes are influenced by Korean culture. Additionally, Sun is strong and can arguably win in a majority of the kickboxing fights she participates in. When considering the expectations for women within Korea, being an outstanding kickboxer is definitely not considered “womanly.” Sun is often doubted while in the kickboxing range, and when she is at work she is seen as passive when considering Sun’s relationship with her younger brother.

The representation of diverse identifications within Sense8 only increases a range of audience members by allowing more people to relate to unique experiences which commonly occur within marginalized communities. Though the series may have cancelled due to diversity and specific experiences not everyone is able to relate to, the show resonated and continues to empower particular groups of people (Aguado-Peláez). “The series has found a firm niche among primarily queer audiences largely due to its highly visible and progressive representations of gay, lesbian, trans, and otherwise-queer bodies, sexualities, and subjectivities. This might be one of the its most redeeming, or perhaps the most redeeming, aspects...Sense8 resonates with queer folx and people of colour...The representation of queerness in Sense8 is normalized, it never seeks to be assimilationist or heteronormative. Instead, it presents the queerness of its cluster in opposition to hetero-patriarchal and corporate agendas” (Elrod). The representation of stigmatized characteristics is significant when considering viewers who are searching for authentic, accurate experiences to relate to, especially younger audience members who may be desperate for a role model. 

Though Sense8 is obviously inclusive, critics discuss the problematic approach of understanding stigmatized characteristics to be true by stereotyping the characters within the show, and then attempting to argue these same stereotypes do not exist. “This kind of anti-stereotype criticism, though still important to undertake, often derives from and reaffirms the prevailing paradigm” (HSU). Therefore, critiques suggest Sense8 creators essentially believe the stereotypes as true. Additionally, some audience members believe the screen time of racially stigmatized groups in the show did not equate to the screen time given to white characters like Will or RIley. “The notion that having more diversity runs afoul of some sort of narrative economics is predicated on the idea that all characters need equal screen time” (Menken). Any piece of media can be improved in order to achieve a more inclusive character base, but Sense8 is arguably one of the most inclusive series on Netflix. 

Works Cited;

Aguado-Peláez, D. “Bodies as Mapping of Resistances: Intersectional Analysis of Sense8.” CAB Direct, 2016, https://www.cabdirect.org/cabdirect/abstract/20173244288.

Elrod, James. ‘“I am also a we”’ The Interconnected, Intersectional Superheroes of Netflix’s Sense8.” Panic at the Discourse: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 2019, https://www.panicdiscourse.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/47-57-I-am-also-a-we%E2%80%99-.pdf

HSU, Ruth. “Collective Individuation and Radical Identity in Netflix’s Orange is the New Black and Sense8.” Race and Cultural Practice in Popular Culture, 2019, https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=iPy9DwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PT24&dq=intersectionality+and+sense8+academic+source&ots=mrVmBOvnFq&sig=g67XPBY1R8wJOlezP4zi7bWv_As#v=onepage&q&f=false

Kevin. “The Importance of Sense8.” Kevin’s Thoughts, Ramblings and Everything In Between, 1 June 2017, https://abnerkd.wordpress.com/2017/06/01/sense8-2/

Menken, Sean. “Intersectionality and Sense8.” Another Gamer Guy, 29 July 2015, https://anothergamerguy.wordpress.com/2015/06/26/intersectionality-and-sense8/.

Orley, Emily. “Everything You Need To Know About The Eight Main Characters In ‘Sense8.’” BuzzFeed News, 28 May 2015, https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emilyorley/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-eight-main-characters

Seligson, Jason. “SENSE8 Is The Show We Need Now More Than Ever.” Birth.Movies.Death, 27 Apr. 2017, https://birthmoviesdeath.com/2017/04/27/sense8-is-the-show-we-need-now-more-than-ever

Xiao, et al. “Celebrating Intersectionality in the Futuristic Netflix Series 'Sense8.’” Hyperallergic, 20 Feb. 2017, https://hyperallergic.com/349182/celebrating-intersectionality-in-the-futuristic-netflix-series-sense8/.

[violenceinintersectionality]

Throughout this semester, a topic that stood out to me was intersectionality. This especially caught my attention when we read Chinelo Okparanta’s novel, “Under the Udala trees”. With this in mind, I will be discussing violence in intersectionality, discrimination, and my personal experience with witnessing violence in intersectionality.

Intersectionality is defined by Merriam-Webster as, “The complex, cumulative way in which the effects of multiple forms of discrimination (such as racism, sexism, and classism) combine, overlap, or intersect especially in the experiences of marginalized individuals or groups”. In other words, the effect that discrimination has on certain groups that are especially discriminated against. As a white female, I find myself being discriminated against often. Whether it be because of my looks, age, race, and even financial status. As women, I feel that this is something we all have to deal with at least once in our life. What frustrates me, personally, is that in my opinion, sex and race are two of the most prominent factors in intersectionality and I believe that women of color are the most affected by violence in intersectionality. I read an article during this class that explained how race is a social construct. Reading this article really made me wonder why women of color are treated so differently, especially when I was reading these wonderful works that the women had written. The author of the article, Angela Onwuachi-Willig wrote, “Race is not biological. It is a social construct. There is no gene or cluster of genes common to all blacks or all whites. Were race “real” in the genetic sense, racial classifications for individuals would remain constant across boundaries. Yet, a person who could be categorized as black in the United States might be considered white in Brazil or colored in South Africa”. Therefore, in my eyes I see a world that has created a prejudice to certain people because it’s just what they felt they had to do. On top of that, women are also seen as a minority to some. In the Neolithic era, all women were caretakers of the children who also farmed and protected their home while their husbands were out hunting. Women are the reason that we’re all prospering and obviously alive. So I cant help but wonder when this idea that they are somehow less of a person than men came about. Between the idea that women of color are somehow different in their humanity and that women are less important than man, it’s easy to see how ignorant people can be so careless when it comes to equality.

When I wrote my paper analyzing “Under the Udala Trees” I found myself unable to stop my brain from getting my hands to stop typing. The story truly spoke to me in a way that lifted me up but also broke my heart. In the story, the main character must deal with homophobia, religious differences, domestic abuse, and more. This class has truly opened my eyes when I thought they were already open, learning stories about these strong, amazing women who have been to hell and back make’s issues in today’s society all more real. Specifically, the main character, Ijeoma, was forced to suppress her sexuality and when it was discovered that she was in love with a member of the same sex, religion was forced upon her, her friends were killed, and the man who became her husband inflicted physical, mental, and emotional violence in her. While this story may be some words in a book to some people, things like this are happening in real life every day. If I could convince every human on the planet to at least take this class and educate themselves on what women who have dealt with these things in history have been through, I would and there is no doubt in my mind that it would make a huge change in this world. This is where violence in intersectionality comes in. If you take these ideas about women of color being unequal and factor in people who feel they are better than these women, you get the notion that those people feel they can push the women around. When Ijeoma’s husband threatened her with violence, he must have truly thought in that moment that he was so much better than her because of his “status” as a human. When people with violent tendencies get into this mindset, there is absolutely no limit to what they can do. The Institute For Women’s Policy Research stated, “More than four in ten Black women experience physical violence from an intimate partner during their lifetimes. White women, Latinas, and Asian/Pacific Islander women report lower rates. Black women also experience significantly higher rates of psychological abuse—including humiliation, insults, name-calling, and coercive control—than do women overall. Sexual violence affects Black women at high rates. More than 20 percent of Black women are raped during their lifetimes—a higher share than among women overall. Black women face a particularly high risk of being killed at the hands of a man. A 2015 Violence Policy Center study finds that Black women were two and a half times more likely to be murdered by men than their White counterparts. More than nine in ten Black female victims knew their killers”. I made sure to include all of these statistics in length because they need to be acknowledged. Almost everything we’ve read from female authors this semester includes a portion where they mentioned the trials and tribulations they went through to get to the place where they are, regardless of race but still so unbelievably appalling. I can only pray that these statistics are better recognized and improved.

I live in a rural, conservative, small town area filled with closed minded people. I often take a lot of heat for attending High Point, with people calling it a “rich kid liberal school” among other things. However, I couldn’t be happier to announce that I go to High Point because I have the ability to learn from and among some of the most welcoming people I’ve ever met. It’s a different story where I live though. Racism is so prominent and absolutely horrifying. A few years ago, I was dating a guy who most would consider “redneck”. On top of that, I was also in his friend group. We would go for bonfires, mudding, truck shows, the classic country boy stuff. During all of this however, any time we would pass a person of color, the men in that group would quietly refer to them with a derogatory, horrifying name that shocked me every time. At first, I kept quiet and didn’t say anything, which was obviously the wrong thing to do and a big factor in this societal issue. After some time though, I began to speak up and explain why those words were wrong and hurtful, to which they often responded with “When did you become a snowflake libtard?” I hear this question in my head on a daily basis. The group refused to acknowledge people of color and eventually I became aware of an incident where a few boys were cut off by a black woman on the road and followed her home, waited until she was inside, and smashed the woman’s car windows, doors, and ripped up the seats. The boys were laughing when they told me this story and that instance changed my life forever. I broke up with my boyfriend, left the friend group, and called the police immediately and two of the men in that incident served 6 months in jail which personally I think is not enough. To this day I still receive hate messages about it, and I can’t imagine it’s helped their moral values at all. I tell this story because it’s one instance that I’ve witnessed as a white woman, someone who doesn’t experience severe discrimination everyday in much worse ways and it still changed my life. When listening to Chimamanda Ngozi Ndichi’s Ted Talk, she mentioned that many of her peers were shocked by her experiences. They had formulated these ideas in their heads about what her home, Nigeria, was actually like based on things they had seen through the media. The boys I dealt with all those years ago would have looked at her the exact same and most likely in a more negative manner. What she dealt with was an instance of intersectionality being played out and hopefully her peers were able to learn from her as a human not to expect less of someone because of where they come from.

In conclusion, this class has truly opened my eyes to so many issues present in our world. I fully believe that along with me, many others who have taken this class have an entirely different view on women of all genders, races, shapes and sizes. The author’s we’ve learned from this semester have definitely had people question, if not change their actions after hearing their stories, inspiring all of us to make this world a better place.

[ara-la]

To Intersectionality -- And Beyond!

To Intersectionality -- And Beyond!!!

by Michael Novick, Anti-Racist Action-Los Angeles/People Against Racist Terror (ARA-LA/PART)

    Right off, I hope I can be forgiven for the parody of Buzz Lightyear’s cry in Toy Story in the title of this piece.

    The concept of inter-sectionality, rooted in the understandings of the Combahee River Collective and coined by Prof. Kimberlé W. Crenshaw, continues to be an important contribution to understanding social, political, economic and personal realities, and an antidote to mechanical materialist conceptions of class and exploitation as limited to workers at the point of production.

Barbara Smith, co-founder of Combahee River Collective and co-author of their germinal statement

    It’s used to describe how interlocking systems of power impact those who are most marginalized in society, and how factors such as class, race, sexual orientation, age, disability and gender, do not exist separately from each other but are interwoven. 

     Crenshaw’s original analysis focused on the reality of race and gender bias -- and how the two can combine to create even more harm, and was a call to listen to the voices and concerns of those facing such prejudices. It has been extended by various movements to incorporate issues of LGBTQIA people, disabilities, current or former incarceration, religious persecution, stigmatization of sex workers and other concerns.

    It is an important reminder that all exploitation and oppression cannot be boiled down to one dimension and factor (that is, all seen incorrectly merely as consequences or contingencies of the private ownership of the means of production and of the product of waged labor, that will be resolved more or less automatically by collective public ownership). 

   However, there are certain weaknesses within the conception. Because it focuses on prejudice or bias, it implies that solutions lie in the field of overcoming prejudice, in legislation or social practices that encourage understanding, fairness, and equality (of opportunity, or even of outcome). This leads towards efforts at integration or re-integration, rather than total social transformation.

    Even its more radical versions, reaching back to concepts like “triple oppression” or “triple jeopardy” that were put forward in the 1960s-70s by those with a  socialist feminist orientation, like Frances Beale, to describe the condition of Black working class women, it tends to be additive in nature.

   It begins to address the contradictions that may arise between Black and white women, or between Black women and men. It attempts to break out of the silos various social movements have created, with conceptions like “patriarchal racialized capitalism.” But in attempting to avoid “hierarchies of oppression,” it misses the messy contradictions this system generates within individuals and within, as well as among, identity-groupings.

    To craft a successful path forward, and overcome the material contradictions that divide us, we need a sense of the common enemy we face, despite those contradictions. And we must foster a self-critical awareness of the dialectical interpenetration of opposites -- the ways in which privilege and oppression co-exist. Without that, we can become our own worst enemies, undermining our own efforts to transform the system. Gender, race, class, nationality and other categories of oppression do not merely intersect and reinforce each other; they interpenetrate, undermine and contradict each other.

    In particular, all such categories are shaped by colonialism, especially settler colonialism -- historically determined by land theft, genocide, racial chattel slavery in which African people were not merely enslaved laborers but, in their own human bodies, also both capital subject to private ownership and commodities bought and sold on the market. This is categorically different from waged labor. 

   Control of physical reproduction in which the offspring are the property of a slave-owner is categorically different from simple patriarchal control of women’s bodies, and produced different familial and social structures, and different consequences on a personal and social level. We cannot overcome and transform this history and reality and all its current consequences without acknowledging it and specifically, consciously seeking to overthrow and transform it.

    “Whiteness” and white privilege are among the key manifestations of that system of settler colonialism, anti-Blackness and imperialism and can only be relegated to the “dustbin of history” by a process of real physical decolonization and liberation. The same is true for class and gender contradictions within racial or national groups, or racial, class and national contradictions within a gender identity.

    There is no purely, automatically  revolutionary class or identity. Oppression is not a virtue, nor does it make one virtuous. Privilege is not a vice, though protecting and enhancing privilege makes one vicious. The proletariat like the bourgeoisie was based on  pre-existing colonialism and slavery. Neither proclamations of unity, denunciations of identity politics, nor united front marches or strikes will overcome those real contradictions. Only acknowledging their reality and their roots in an enemy system that exists within us as well as against us, will give us the agency and capacity to overcome them through conscious and unremitting struggle, connected to the struggle to defeat the empire, destroy the imperial system of state violence and power, restore indigenous sovereignty, and build a new, sustainable, liberated, unalienated, collective consciousness and material way of life.