#i genuinely just think youre anti indigenous

[nururu]

Don't do a thinkpiece on skypiea if you're going to completely ignore white christian settler colonization and indigenous genocide. Just don't talk about it.

[termagax]

seeing some people's reaction to weird gamer men oversexualizing kiriko is "mauga is right there, half naked, with serveral pin-up sprays" and while i do agree to an extent, i do feel like alot of people are kind of ignoring like. the racial element of mauga's sexualization, like i like mauga, he's hot, but the second i saw him in the short story, i wasn't a big fan of the whole "big savage brown indigenious guy" and it feels like very few people are pointing that out.

RIGHT LIKE. we cannot fix "gamer men fixate on fictional asian girls to a violent degree, usually in a racist way or enabling racist tropes already present in the character" with "gamer girls fixate on fictional brown men to a violent degree in a racist way or enabling racist tropes present in the character" like you guys are part of the same problemmmmmmm youre doing the same thinggg its not better because youre doing it to men like.

i think some people only want to see the kiriko problem as misogyny and while im not going to even pretend that ISNT a massive part of it, theres still like. a reason kiriko and d.va and mei are fascinations for these dudes. there is a pointed difference between the way these three get spoken about compared to their white counterparts (and their dark-skinned counterparts too - look at the responses to illari for a really easy comparison to how kiriko is treated). their ~exoticism~ as asian women is part of the appeal. even if you dont just wanna take the way dudes online treat them (like making a joke that shes "obvious pornbait" for speaking japanese and using JSL) as evidence of that, look at their marketing. kirikos whole thing is atheleisure traditional, shes got her Mystical Japanese Spiritualism Ninja Powers and her magic doggy and they constantly put her in japanese and korean fashion, and dva has been constantly crossing over with korean merch companies. i cant help but notice theres no brazilian IP crossovers or merch launches for lucio, or any attempt to Sell Peru To Gamers for illari. they couldnt even pick a town in Samoa to name maugas map after. these people wouldn't buy that stuff because it's not fetishized in the same way asia is.

but like. a lot of the people trying to Gotcha these racist dudes with an asian fetish just whip out their favourite racist tropes instead and its a really bad look. like you guys dont wanna examine how your examples of The Characters Its Okay To Hypersexualize are all brown? even the people who wanna fuck cassidy dont talk about him like this. or like. fuck if you want a good comparison for mauga lets look at roadhog. big half-naked tank who theyve been playing up a sexual energy/comic relief duology on since day one with racially insensitive cosmetic options. nobody treats it like its completely normal to talk about him that way. the dev team isnt pushing pinups of him out. he isnt flexing his boobs in trailers. hes a white dude*, so he gets the bare minimum dignity of being treated normally. incidentially hot, maybe, but for the most part his character is sold on being cool , funny and scary. mauga is being sold 50% on being a Sexy Rogue Love Interest and 50% on. releasing late. they put in so little effort for him to be anything else despite hyping him up as suuuper significant to the lore and a major gamechanger its almost embarrassing to watch. (this is why that short annoyed me so much for anyone keeping track).

[captainjonnitkessler]

also. hate discourse around indigenous knowledge because it's like Yes the indigenous people have knowledge based on historical uses that should be adopted into the mainstream. But then somewhere down the line it becomes "white people can NEVER truly understand indigenous lands, their ancestors came from EUROPE" and its like ok that is anti-immigration & blood quantum rhetoric. people's knowledge do not come from their genetics Nor do they come from ancestor spirits. Why is this a left position

Oh yeah supposedly-left people on tumblr are fucking weird about bloodlines and heritage. I genuinely can't stand it.

In this case it's perpetuating Noble Savage stereotypes about how indigenous people are inherently good and pure and magically connected to the land, instead of literally just being regular people.

A lot of times people insist you need to Find Your Heritage in order to "heal yourself spiritually", which I think is insulting nonsense. And as a mutt with no real intention of finding out my family history, it's really disconcerting to be told that I can't ever really love or understand the place I live, because my great-great grandparents didn't live here. It's extremely anti-immigrant, it reeks of blood and soil nationalism, and I will be ranting against it until the day this website dies.

[princess-nobody]

Avatar Rant: Snowy Region Na'vi

Am I the only one who doesn't like the fanon snow navi designs? Specifically this (I used shitty AI images I found off of pinterest to illustrate the point and to avoid using actual artwork from people 🩷):

(Before I continue my God these are creepy 😭 AI genuinely cannot create Na'vi without them looking uncanny, disturbing and far too human)

I can understand why people choose the more predictable design philosophy – blonde hair, blue eyes, pale/white skin, pretty two pieces – because that's relatively how this sort of lifestyle has been portrayed to us in the media. Every movie or show set in a snowy region always features mostly eastern European characters, so naturally people decide that their snow na'vi must resemble eastern European people to a degree, and this bothers me.

Not because they look like white people (though that is like 25% why ngl) but because it just isn't realistic? Na'vi may be inspired by humans but they are still a different species living on a harsh and deadly planet that humans can't survive in, na'vi winter and snow would be excruciatingly difficult for them, and they would need to adapt to it.

I just don't see how they would be so thin and petite and pale, people say to blend in, but why? Only a handful of animals in arctic regions are actually white to blend in (polar bears, arctic foxes etc.) so wouldn't it make more sense to base them off of arctic animals from the ice age? Back then, animals were bigger, bulkier, with thicker skin and hair all over to protect themselves from the crippling cold – with that in mind, wouldn't snow na'vi be bigger than average na'vi, and bulkier too? Unlike regular na'vi, it would make sense that the snow ones actually have body hair all over, maybe even fur if you want to take it that far.

And if you're basing them off of INDIGENOUS people, then appearance, features and fashion wise, wouldn't it make more sense to base them off of the actual Inuit people of the arctic instead of Elsa from frozen 😭

Because realistically why would they wear flowey dresses and two pieces in weather that is probably 80% worse than any winter humanity has ever faced... especially since na'vi are all inspired by different non-white/european indigenous communities, and yes... non-white/European indigenous people do in fact live in cold, snowy, arctic regions...

To add a little bit of pseudo-psychology to it, it may be done in an attempt from white avatar fans for the most part to feel closer to the na'vi by adding a white adjacent sub-species, as the closer to europeans the na'vi look, the more they see themselves within the na'vi. However, that is purely speculation lol.

Also, I do NOT think you are racist or anti-indigenous or anything of the sort if your headcanon for snow na'vi looks anything like the examples! You're allowed to draw and design what you want, and just because tumblr user princess-nobody doesn't like it, doesn't mean it's bad.

TLDR: Fanon snow na'vi don't make sense and confuse me lol. Imo snow na'vi would be big and bulky behemoths that are covered in thick body hair and wear large, figure covering warm clothing, not skinny little russian girls in ballet outfits LMAOOOO.

[rudjedet]

this might be incoherent but i have two thoughts on peoples anti archeology thoughts:

-a Lot of these people give me the impression that their only concept of archeology is based soley and wholly off of indiana jones

-archeology is actively anti-racist bc it fosters better education abt indigenous people, like we are better able to understand and talk abt a culture were educated abt

idk i really appreciate you being a voice of reason bc like archeology is so fundemental and like it really takes like guts to put yourself in a public space to defend what youre passionate about

A lot of people do operate on the outdated idea that archaeology is a white male* field and while that used to be so to some degree (but even then not fully), it certainly no longer is now, and acting as though it continues to be the state of affairs is erasing the efforts of BIPOC/queer/non-male/etc. experts. Whether that's deliberate or not, it's not something I'll just let happen.

*there are plenty of white males currently in this field who are aware of e.g. the importance of decolonisation, of ethics, of respect. Like it genuinely isn't as simple as people want to think it is. And I think that's part of the problem: the people who interact with this concept in this way want to be able to pinpoint perfectly that X is the problem and Y is the single solution that leads to a new, perfect state of affairs. But the world doesn't function that way. Yes, decolonisation is one of the best answers we have, but we are already working towards that.

Idk man people want this to have happened yesterday and because it hasn't, somehow we're the devils for even trying lmao

[writingquestionsanswered]

Hey! I was wondering. Does it still counts as plagiarism if one of your ideas gets tweaked, but the premise and even the character's motivation and personality remains the same in the story, although is with another name? (Not even the name if honest.)

How could I protect my work from this? More important, is there any way or it is possible to protect ideas? Or the protection only applies for the work itself?

Thanks in advance!

Tweaked Ideas and Plagiarism

Premises and ideas can't be protected. It's how the premise and ideas are executed that matters. One of my favorite examples of this is The Vampire Diaries vs Twilight. Premise-wise, they're almost identical...

🗸 17-year old "non-magical" girl protagonist 🗸 (she's actually secretly magical... sort of...) 🗸 Protagonist has parental issues 🗸 Mystical small town setting 🗸 Protagonist unaware of town's supernatural undercurrent 🗸 Protagonist meets hot "born-in-a-prior-century" vampire at school 🗸 His senses allow him to identify her among all other students 🗸 They fall in love 🗸 She gets sucked into supernatural shenanigans 🗸 She finds out she has friends who are secretly supernatural 🗸 Dangerous ancient council creates more shenanigans 🗸 Eventually she becomes a vampire

It looks bad on paper, but it's the myriad differences that make these stories completely unique. First, Bella is the polar opposite of Elena in terms of personality and situation. Bella's parents are alive but immature, Elena's parents died in a tragic accident. Bella moved to Forks to live with her father, Elena grew up in Mystic Falls. Edward was born in 1901, Stefan was born in 1846 (TV, 1490 books.) Edward has a big adoptive family. Stefan has his brother. Edward can't read Bella's mind, Stefan can read Elena's mind. Bella's supernatural friends are wolf shifters who are part of the local Indigenous tribe; Elena's supernatural friends include a werewolf, witch, and a vampire hunter. Bella can shield her mind from mind readers, Elena is a doppelgänger. Bella and friends fight an ancient council of vampires who micromanage the vampire world, Elena and friends fight a town council made up of anti-vampire humans.

The point is, the actual stories are very, very different despite the similarities in premise.

Now, I will say that if the premise is genuinely the same, and the character has the same appearance, personality, and even a similar name, that's a bit concerning. If you take a brutally honest look at the two works and find more similarities than differences, it's possible this person did over borrow. The problem is there may not be much you can do about it, but it depends on the situation. If you're both published but you published first, it's something you can take up with your agent or publisher, or if you don't have one, you can contact a copyright lawyer to explore your options. It's costly, however. If you can't afford this option, you can contact them and ask them to take it down, but they're not obligated to. Outside of that, there isn't much you can do.

There honestly isn't much you can do to protect yourself from plagiarism. It's part of the risk we take in putting our work out there. Again, if you're agented, have a publisher, or can hire a copyright attorney, you may find you have some legal recourse, especially if the plagiarism is glaring and they're making money off what they stole. Otherwise, you just have to grin and bear it. But the truth is, given the wealth of stories being published every day, plagiarism isn't that common of an occurrence. (Although, it's increasing now somewhat with the advent of AI...)

And I'll tell you, the harsh reality is you may feel like a work is so similar to yours it must be an intentional rip-off, but our brains have a way of making mountains out of molehills when it comes to spotting similarities. Nine out of ten times it's just not as similar as you think it is.

Other relevant posts:

Similarities vs Plagiarism Plagiarism vs Reference vs Inspiration Beta Reader Sees Similarity with Existing Character Does My Book/Story Already Exist Taking Inspiration from Another Story’s Premise Afraid of Ideas Being Stolen or Copied Once Shared Afraid of Plagiarism Accusation

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

I’ve been writing seriously for over 30 years and love to share what I’ve learned. Have a writing question? My inbox is always open!

♦ Questions that violate my ask policies will be deleted! ♦ Please see my master list of top posts before asking ♦ Learn more about WQA here

[fairuzfan]

Hey, do you think we should keep replying to zionist bots/comments or should we just report and/or block? I've heard that they're paid by the israeli occupation per posts and per responses, but doesn't that also mean the israeli occupation will empty its pockets with every response? Since apparently they're barely even paying their IDF SOLDIERS. But on the other hand, I've seen this devout zionist bot with an ego complex say they're replying to all palestine posts to generate revenue to the israeli occupation - though that could also be a lie to discourage palestine voices, may he be punished for his words soon. What are your thoughts?

i'm of the opinion that we dont engage with any zionist and make it so they're socially unacceptable part of our online ecosystem and hopefully eventually in person as well.

what does happen when you reply to bots and just regular old zionists/sympathizers is that you're platforming them and making it seem like they have a point. sometimes its necessary to debunk lies so that people who are prone to them can realize they're false, but the whole, for example, indigenous argument is just so overdone and talked about that i'm just like "ok this is a waste of time."

something else i just dont respond to are people who do the 'x amount of arab ethnostates' claim because its stupid and like genuinely pretty racist. im not going to pretend you have any point to that argument, if people agree with you then whatever, they probably weren't going to be allies either way.

i do say outright "block this person" as a response to other people to show that i saw them and i think their arguments are stupid and i won't even interact with them.

you can bleed their pockets dry but to a certain point its a distraction and annoying and not really fostering the environment you want to have in the world. i do respond vaguely to some points/vaguepost about things or people but thats mostly a vent.

some people do need to have the lies debunked, i'm not gonna pretend thats not necessary. but sometimes its just easier to link a response from another palestinian's post from a different time and say "here you go for everyone that thinks that this person is making sense. this is anti-palestinian and racist."

[weaselbeaselpants]

Lindsay Ellis plagiarized a ndn author

This post isn't a callout and it's only my own post because the OP source I just learned it from, @neechees, doesn't allow rbgs at a certain point on that post.

After Hmbomberguy's expose on Illuminaughtii and James Somerton some people are giving a well deserved eye back to the leftube sphere that was kind of schism-d and held under scrutiny in what I feel was, a lot of the time, misinformed hate campaigns in response to genuine criticism; especially towards Lindsay Ellis who up left after she was canceled and hasn't returned to continuous video making publicly even after people have mostly agreed the hatedom directed for her Raya and the Last Dragon takes was stupid and was erasing actual SEA people's discussions of the culture. To hear and see a decent breakdown of that film's representation problems BEYOND the Ellis-parts because it's worth your wild regardless of if you've seen the movie, please watch the three part video series hosted by Xiran Jay Zhao.

To tl;dr the 2021 drama: people have held an ire towards Ellis for a long time feeling like her and her white-woman base talk over, steal, or just straight up don't apologize for their own racism towards women and ppl of color, and after Lindsay did a problematic by pointing out that Raya and the Last Dragon was like ATLA, people jumped on her.

Being both a longtime fan of Ellis and white as fucc, I personally feel like Lindsay kind of forgave herself and threw out the actual criticisms held against her every bit as much as people just kind of treated her like a punching bag. Or, to paraphrase @padawan-historian's old takes from then, they treated Lindsay like she was trying to be the ENTIRE conversation, not the start of one, and like every possible outcome that could happen over her videos was her fault personally. Some of Lindsay's loudest and nastiest 'critics' were, in fact, other white people or just people who have no good faith in addressing her fuck ups, like Lily Orchard, fe.

One 'Lindsay did a racism'point tho that I felt wasn't truly addressed in full though were claims by indigenous people that she was anti-native, especially in her videos about Twilight and Pocahontas, which yeah at the time I was very passive of you can 100% find post abt that. But then Neechees linked me to an article I, and I think a lot of other video essay-fans had never seen before. This article accused Lindsay of stealing half of her talking points on Disney's Pocahontas from theirs.

When people on the breadtube spectrum talk of Lindsay, even people who criticized her at the time. all kind of agree that the intensity of the backlash was uncalled for and, while not everyone agrees if her public silence is a 'canceling' or not, agree with her need to just take care of herself these days. For those curious, this is the article making this claim:

I am not saying you need to all unfollow and hate everything Lindsay ever touched, mkay? But I also genuinely hope that Lindsay addresses this+comes clean because holy fuck. Unlike Somerton, all I can tell you is I don't just 'believe Windsey wouldn't hurt nobody uwu~'. I am pretty certain that Lindsay care about the topics she covers, for whatever that's worth to say as another whiteperson. It's just that, like Contrapoints, I ALSO think she has a tendency to deflect criticism within that sphere and lump all her negative bagage together. This really sucks cuz not all of us are Lily Orchards or Vaush clones.

Most of us are/were casual watchers of Lindsay like we are Hbomber, Contra, Lady Emily, Folding Ideas, and ToddintheShadows (does he count as leftube idk?) and we really, genuinely don't want to believe that Lindsay stole from + refuses to listen to women of color when they call her out.

Where I like almost everyone in the leftoob analyst sphere that's ever growing and hopefully now weeding out Illumanaughtii-s and Sommerton-s of the world, there ARE controversies within the space that I don't agree with creators on. Some are dumb things like the exact takes Lindsay has about movies n shows that I just up and disagree with her on, Princess Weekes' proshipping apologia that I have LOTS of thoughts on. However, some matters are clearly personal and about maters that just don't involve me. Earlier this year, Folding Ideas and Lady Emily ctrl+alt+deleted some replies they made to Quinton Reviews, making clear that they very much still dislike him based on something that happened between Quinton, Lindsay and I think SarahZ. And by "dislike", I mean also still believeing his former editor over him on who was boundary pushing about who in their relationship. On the offchance any of those creators or their stans somehow see this, know that I'm not going to tell any of you guys how to feel about whatever Quinton did in private I'm not aware of; it's just that I also happen to believe Quinton on this issue and I don't like the guiltybyassociation mantra.

>>>>side note: I hate that every time someone says "I believe so and so after hearing their side now" ppl jump on the "you were just a stan from the beginning and never actually able to listen"-bs. Yeah, being more familiar with one creator over the other means there's bias, sure, but I kinda hate that that once held bias means you can't be held as any kind of source or form your own opinions. <<<

Big introvert vibes ahead: the thing about any big social circle of better-spoken people than you is they ALL seem like a scary meangirl's table from outside looking in. The kind that'll send goons after you with passive-aggressive "this is slander against me and I have the right to be upset abt it sorry if the stans eat you alive". They can also be made out by their fans to be harmless internet nobody's who YOU are at fault for getting mad and staying mad at cuz it's not like it matters on the internet and are clearly just out for drama and 'twofaced' yourself. I think the reality is the same thing that drives every community forward as well as drives them apart: these people are legitimate friends. They stick up for each other the same way we stick up for our personal internet friends whenever there's shit coming their way. The breadtube circle, whoever that is at this point, clearly know some shit we don't about themselves as much as they don't know shit about us and our true intentions. One of them has a platform and responsibility, where the other has power in masses and following them or not. We gotta all make the choices best for us.

Anyway. I guess, if any of the stuff about Lindsay ripping off that writer IS true, I really hope that she admits and apologizes for it. That's not cool to do to her indigenous audience, or even me, one of her white fans who expects actually allyship.

[blubushie]

i apologize if you've already answered this but i'm interested to know the reasoning for your gripe with vegans (genuine question)

Yeah I went on some long bloody rant about it before but here's the short of it in one post:

Veganism is stupid, ruining the environment, is a waste of freshwater resources, and vegans are always up themselves.

I'm fine with vegetarians. Vegans are doing it as a political statement. "Waaah save the animals" bleeding hearts while ignoring the child slaves in impoverished countries what grow their quinoa but are too poor to even buy the food THEY harvest. Not to mention the amount of animals what are killed for and during those harvests, between poisons which rarely hit their intended target and bleed into the rest of the ecosystem, and killing birds, and combine machines. That salad was watered in blood.

Also LOUD vegans (see: ARAs) often push for the complete abolishment of hunting in its entirety, ignoring how over thousands of years animals have adapted to be hunted by humans (see deer and kangaroo birth rates) and we've largely exterminated their natural predators from the environment or worse driven them to extinction entirely. This means that hunting is the only ethical means of population control, because otherwise they'll eat everything in sight, cause widespread ecosystem desolation and destruction, and then all immediately starve to death when they run out of food.

This isn't even approaching how anti-hunting mentalities are rooted in genocide (many people in the southern US hunt because just a few deer will fill their freezers for a year, ensuring food security) and CULTURAL genocide (good luck telling Indigenous people not to hunt—our cultures and traditions CANNOT be separated from hunting).

This isn't to say I think factory farming is any better. I think cattle, and sheep, and goats, and chooks, and what have you deserve to be free-range and given some good land where they can go about practising their natural behaviours.

But in all my experiences with them so far, vegans are hypocritical, whinging bleeding-heart idiots with no idea of how the real world—or ecosystems—work. I'll die on this hill.

[albonoooo]

wait you hate jewish people? 😰

i'm going to assume genuine ignorance from your side.

of course i don't hate jewish people, i never said i do and i never would because it's just untrue. anti-zionism is not automatically anti-semitism. there are unfortunately people who use the former as an excuse for the latter, but i neither agree with nor encourage that.

i say i don't want zionists interacting with me because people who are of the opinion that a state founded and maintained via the expulsion and murder of the indigenous population of its land, a state which has been violating the human rights of palestinians since said founding and has been committing crimes so horrendous that numerous major international human rights bodies classify its actions as apartheid, not only has a right to exist in its current form, but is also in the right to commit a well-documented genocide and claim it as self-defense, are people completely void of empathy, critical thinking skills and any understanding of history and its consequences and so on and so forth.

due to my country's absolute disgrace of a government's foreign policy clown show, i've found myself time and time again in the past half year explaining to people that anti-zionism does not equal anti-semitism and genocide is not self-defense, which is shocking. i strongly encourage anybody to put in a little bit of effort to learn what they're actually talking about before they go around accusing random strangers of being antisemitic.

i hope this was understandable. i will not be answering any other asks regarding this and i will also continue to block zionists (as well as anti-semists, racists and all sorts of -phobes, which i naively assumed was obvious) on here.

[lexivass]

what changed your mind about the Israel/Palestine conflict?

Hello, anon! I got this ask this morning, and it took me some time to respond to it because this is a delicate issue and I wanted to measure my words the best I could. As I was writing this I realized many of my beliefs were rooted in antisemitism, so I apologize in advance. If any Jewish person reads this, please feel free to correct me, and again, I’m sorry. Some of the things below really make me feel ashamed.

I wouldn't say I "changed" my mind about the conflict, but that I've begun to see things in a wider perspective, especially when it comes to the October 7 attack and the veiled (but not really) antisemitism that’s been growing lately (I don’t mean to say it didn’t happen before, but that people are getting more comfortable doing it now under the guise of being pro-Palestine. Many people aren’t even trying to sugarcoat it anymore, they’re straight up saying “the jews are to blame for everything and they control everything”).

It’s clear that the government of Israel has been conducting brutal attacks in many parts of Gaza and killing innocent civilians since October 7 - no one can convince me the 20.000+ people who died were Hamas terrorists and that every single building bombed was a Hamas hideout, and that a ceasefire is not the best solution.

But at the same time there has been a lot of misinformation (and insensibility)  going around, and the way people react to it shows that antisemitism is still very present, it is still very easy to look at jewish people with distrust or to ignore what they say because we think that after the Holocaust their troubles ended forever, and they shouldn’t complain about anything. Basically, that they are not a minority, therefore what they say shouldn’t be taken into consideration. But that is not the case.

The government of Israel has done terrible things in the past decades, no one is denying that.  But a government doesn't always represent its people. It’s a very old saying, one that we preach so loudly but when it comes to the people of Israel we tend to forget about it. Like many others, when October 7 happened I thought Hamas was a resistance group, and that the hostages were not being hurt or murdered. I believed it without even running a background check on them. And whenever I saw Jewish people saying that a new wave of antisemitism was growing I simply didn’t believe it. It’s not something I’m proud of but I genuinely believed that they were only saying this because they didn’t want people to criticize the government of Israel. 

It was only after I swallowed my own arrogance that I realized this was not an exaggeration. There are people who frankly think jews are subhuman, that Hitler was right, that the Hamas hostages deserved everything they went through. I saw a post with a link to an article about the victims who were violated by Hamas terrorists. I did not read it because I heard it was extremely brutal, but I saw the comments and the insensitivity in those comments was disturbing. I saw people saying it was pure propaganda, that nothing happened to them because they were just “lying jewish women”, that even if it happened it was “resistance against oppression”. I cannot say if it happened or not, but it’s not normal to look at someone who was kidnapped, kept away from their families for months and put through God knows what and claim publicly and out loud, with 100% conviction, that everything that comes out their mouths is a lie.

Why is it “believe the victims” until they’re jewish? Or “listen to minorities” until the minority in question are jewish people? Why is it that we wave an anti-nazi flag over our heads but still treat jewish people like shit? We, and by we I mean people who believe in social activism, don't do this to black, queer, indigenous people, so why do it to jews?

As I began to read more about nazi rhetoric and antisemitism I came across a reblog from one of my (now former) favorite poets, in which the OP was basically preaching for the “ruin” of Israel. They didn’t say “I hope Netanyahu leaves office”, “I hope the army soldiers who were filmed practicing brutality towards civilians are punished”. They said Israel as a whole, forgetting that there are people there. Civilians who are against violence, protesting in the sake of Palestine, people who do want Netanyahu out of the office, and people who have nowhere else to go. How do you expect to move millions of people to another country? What guarantee that this country even wants them? We see it every two months tragedies that occur involving mass immigration. “Oh, but the US can help them!” Do you think the US gives a shit about jewish people? Do you think the UK put Israel in the middle east because they wanted jews to have a home? Look me in the eye and tell me you believe that.

Palestians have the right to recover their seized territories and to live dignified lives. Israelis have a right to have a Jewish state. Both peoples deserve better, it’s not a competition about who suffers more. I’m not a diplomat, expert or judge of an international court of justice, but it’s clear that the minute people start to take sides one of the sides will be seen as the victim and the other as the villain. When people preach for the “ruin” of Israel they are no better than the people who say Palestinians deserve to die.

[doberbutts]

he's already pointed out the post himself, where he said that it wouldn't be right for israelis to move to america because it's also colonised land- but the way he phrased it was as if it was an afterthought, a footnote, to the more important fact that america is an antisemitic country, and also as though the colonisation of america has already been "completed" and is not also still being actively fought against. personally i felt like it was a little tokenising and insensitive, NOT purposeful or deserving of bigotry in response, but like, that's the thing with microaggressions? they're very small and it's easy to dismiss them as unimportant when you're not on the receiving end. and a lot of indigenous people are on edge right now, for reasons he should understand- because there's just as much anti-native sentiment flying around as antisemitism right now, and i wish there was some care taken in these conversations for our sake, even if it is just small things

While as a black and indigenous person myself I understand that those microaggressions are incredibly frustrating, I also want you to consider that you're upset at an autistic person about phrasing of all things and you're trying to tell me the correct response to an autistic person having maybe clumsy phrasing (a common problem with autism!) is to go on a multi-post rant about how terrible of a person they are instead of just being like. "Hey. I get it. I also think your phrasing sucks btw." And then being mad when said person goes "HEY" in response to the multi-post rant.

And I understand that maybe you don't have the relationship with him to feel comfortable doing that but like. I have absolutely poked various blogs that I genuinely like and enjoy and want to read their posts about their phrasing, and they have all gone "oh shit I didn't know" and fixed their phrasing. Not everyone is out to get you. We can always block those who go "no fuck you I MEANT IT" after all.

As I just said to someone else, we are all traumatized by bigotry and oppression. None of us are unharmed by it. Let us show a little solidarity among us and fix our issues with grace, because, as you said, it probably wasn't intentional, and he probably didn't realize it because for him the more pressing issue is antisemitism. Of course it is, he's literally Jewish? I think the most pressing issue in my life is antiblackness because it's mainly only other Natives who recognize me as Native without me having to bring it up. That means I might not realize if I've said something or phrased something in a way that is insensitive to someone who has lived a more Native experience than me. That's okay. I'm allowed to be wrong. As long as I strive to fix it and do better when it's pointed out to me.

I think that's worlds apart from a, ahem, racist sycophant.

[matan4il]

Just wanted to send some love your way 🩵 Im a left-ish diaspora Jew who had, up until really recently, taken the stance that the conflict between Israel and Palestine was too complex for me to fully understand. I appreciate blogs like yours because they have genuinely helped me understand and see through the narratives that both sides are equally at fault, or that Israel is some colonialist war machine bent on gobbling up all available territory at the expense of everyone else’s lives.

It’s kind of frightening for me to have a stance at all, when the people around me were all silent on October 7th but have no issue hanging Palestinian flags outside their homes and filling their social media with slogans that they claim are simply “anti Zionist” but are absolutely anti-Semitic.

I don’t know how to explain to them that YES my heart bleeds for every average human in Gaza who genuinely does want to just exist, but that doesn’t meant that I think the onus for peace lays exclusively on Israel’s shoulders, and I don’t support disbanding Israel as a country. I worry a lot about being too one-sided or simplifying things too much; I still feel very much like I’m sitting in a middle position, due to those concerns. And it’s scary that it still wouldn’t be enough for people — FRIENDS, even — around me.

Sorry for the ramble. Thank you for your informative posts. Speaking as someone who finds a lot of joy in fandom stuff, I really hope the tides turn so that kind of thing can occupy more space in your mind than worrying does 🩵

Awww, Nonnie! I am hugging you SO MUCH!

My heart aches, because you're absolutely right. It doesn't matter how much we'll denounce racism, they will still call us racist. It doesn't matter how often we state that we want life and dignity for both Jews AND Palestinians, they'll still accuse us of supporting genocide. It doesn't matter if we'll criticize the government, they'll still claim we're brainwashed to silence our voices.

So if it's not about our actual beliefs and positions, what's it about?

It's about the fact that we're Jews. And we're told that we can only be "good" Jews if we throw our fellow Jewish people under the bus, even though for every other minority, solidarity is encouraged and celebrated. We're only "good" Jews if we give up our native rights by adhering to a narrative that paints us as colonizers of our own ancestral land, even as native rights are upheld as vital for every other indigenous group. We're only "good" Jews by doubting the multiple testimonies of rape and baby beheadings, even though every victim is supposed to be heard and believed. We're only "good" Jews if we agree to give up the right to self defense, which means we give up the right to live safely, to live peacefully... really, if we give up the right to live, period. All while telling us this is due to the value of all human life. They're literally gaslighting us with "All Lives Matter," and it's the same crowd who could recognize the issue with that slogan, when it was used to silence black people demanding that very same right.

We do not have to go along with this modern "witch test," where they try us by dunking us into water, and the only way to be "innocent" is to die drowning, so if we didn't, then we're witches, and we die still, because they burn us at the stake. I refuse to collaborate with the erasure of Jewish identity, history and rights, which leaves all Jews stripped of protection, vulnerable to abuse, and I will keep speaking, even if they call me every dirty name they can think of for recognizing the Jewish right to live, and to live in our historic homeland, especially as we have always been willing to live here side by side with others. Whatever they say about me, at least I won't be a tokenized Jew, that they can use to bully other Jews into silence.

We absolutely can be pro-Israeli AND pro-Palestinian, rather than turning anti-Israeli to "prove" we're good, pro-Palestinian Jews.

I'm sorry, IDK if I'm actually helping here! Just know that you're not alone in feeling this way. Actually, the fantastic Mayim Bialik also talked about this recently, so I'll give you her eloquent words:

(this is just a part of the vid, you can find the whole thing here)

Thank YOU for the kind words! And may we all get back to just being able to enjoy fandom as the fun, escapist hobby it should be. Sending you lots of hugs and love! xoxox

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[katherinakaina]

Being bullied for knowing another language is a real thing. Think of all the animosity people feel towards the Bachelor for saying, what, 3-4 phrases in Latin.

Storytime.

Every Russian feminist remembers how Nixelpixel was bullied and I presume is still being bullied. It really was Russian gamer gate and Nixelpixel is Russian Anita Sarkeesian. Both were tormented for being feminists, that's the base of it. But Anita was also a target of antisemitism and anti Armenian rhetoric. Nixelpixel is a skinny white Russian, very little to add on top. So she was bullied for speaking English.

She is bilingual and as many of us bilinguals do, she mixed languages in her speech in the way that I do and feels natural to me and all my friends.

The Russian Internet was not having it, not even a little bit. Unanimous consensus was that she is doing it only to appear smarter.

For English speaking people in the first world it maybe hard to comprehend. English is just the default language. But remember how conservatives react when some nonbinary teenager makes a video about cultural appropriation or any other academic topic and suddenly they all feel like they don't know certain words?! And they have to google words to understand someone's complex speech?! This is unheard of! And what right does this "beneath me in social hierarchy" have to know something that I don't?!! Outrageous!

The core of this emotion is envy. Knowing English good enough so you become legitimately bilingual is a privilege in Russia. Knowing a lot of stuff about society and understanding complex topics is a privilege. You have time and money for education. Or you got lucky and had educated parents. Envy becomes even more venomous when the person you envy is supposed to be beneath you.

Like, I don't really get it. But that's how I make sense of other people hating me all my life for being... eloquent. As if they anticipate me being hostile because they are less eloquent than me and attack me preventively.

This is made worse by me being autistic and forgetting all the time that you must make all humble song and dance around your every achievement so not to trigger neurotypical rage. I genuinely forget which words are too smart and which are fine. The idea that I'm trying to sound smarter on purpose is so laughable to me.

Returning to the Bachelor. He's a doctor, he studied at university. Do you hate him when he uses medical jargon? What's the deal with Latin then? They study Latin in med school. It is a mandatory course. For me this trait of his always meant to signify that he took his education very seriously and knows everything that he studied very well.

When people just assume that someone, a character or a person, does anything just to look smart I'm a little triggered. I know I'm not safe in that company.

And I know that all of it is incredibly whiny. Knowledge is a privilege, as I said. Dankovsky is a privileged man. I'm not blaming those who feel uncomfortable around learned people. I'm not blaming those who are not into such characters.

But Dankovsky is not gatekeeping knowledge though! He looks like a man who would nerd out about Latin to you, if you only asked. He gives his degree away for free! It's not the same as rich people hoarding wealth. He's eager to share his knowledge! But now he is a coloniser imposing his western ideas onto indigenous society.

Oh well, damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Maybe it's not envy then? Maybe they want a smart sounding person but the one who would agree with them all the time? Like, Peterson uses a lot of long words and they love him. Hm...

[pro-anomalocaris]

Pinned Post Time

He/him Seth or Set or Setka or Jean-Set. I have a lot of nicknames ADHD haver/survivor (depending on your POV) Over 18 Jewish (Bukharan) Linguistics + Religious Studies double major, on accident In order to answer the "are you white or not" question we need to discuss the construct of whiteness as it applies to Central Asia in your country of origin and frankly neither of us has time for that.

Fandom stuff would normally go here but I bounce from fandom to fandom. I don't believe in shipping only one thing and I think calling yourself "a Zutara" or "a Reyfinn" or whatever is ridiculous. It's internet Barbies, not a religion. It's not that serious.

DNIs get ignored but for the record, I'm pro-MOGAI, pro-endo, pro-trans, pro-intersex rights, pro-self diagnosis (even if you don't get it right, turning to your provider and going 'I have the following symptoms' is useful), pro-whatever group of lesbians is getting dragged on tumblr today be they split attraction model users or ace or bi lesbians or what have you, radical inclusionist, anti intersexism and medical abuse, anti biological essentialism, you don't need dysphoria to be trans, respectability politics are worthless, men aren't inherently evil actually, pro-interracial couples because no matter what antis say people are equals actually, and pro-kink.

If you think legal = moral and illegal = immoral, you are wrong. There are four states in the US where you can marry a minor at any age as an adult and have sex with them. That is legal. That is immoral. There are many countries where being queer is illegal. It is illegal and moral. Appeal To Legality is a logical fallacy that refuses to acknowledge anything could be wrong in the legal system. I should not have to explain to you why that's an incorrect statement.

Black Lives Matter. Stop Asian Hate. Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women deserves more attention than we're giving them. ACAB. Never Again Is Right Now. Hamas is a terrorist organization and Palestine deserves to be free from them as much as it deserves to be independent, and if you excuse Hamas committing rape, child rape, and murder, you are not pro-Palestine, because Palestinians have condemned those acts and frankly, everyone should.

Death threats, rape threats and suicide bait are always bad. They further drive people into extremism when you do it to extremists, they harm people in any scenario, and they reveal to me that you never wanted to be a good person, you just wanted to be cruel in a way that you can excuse as being 'good'. You're not good. A good person does not do these things.

If your discussions around mental health involve demonizing people who are low/no empathy or treating people with psychosis as evil, please know you are displaying no empathy and being evil. And I find that genuinely sad, but I am also going to block you.

Sometimes I'm ignoring you. Sometimes tumblr genuinely eats asks. I have asks on my main that have been there, hovering, invisible, for a year. I don't know why. But also sometimes ADHD kicks in and I mean to reply and for that, I apologize.

If you start a conversation, you do not get to cry about people replying to what you posted publicly where anyone could reblog and reply. Pretending people are "harassing" you for replying is either an attempt at using language to manipulate the situation or a sign that you are highly immature even for a minor.

If you use the "haha me no read reading iz bad lmao" excuse, you have forfeited all right to being taken seriously, not just by adults, but by children. You are also going to be incredibly easy to manipulate by everyone around you due to your inability to read with comprehension. I pray no one uses this to abuse you, but I'm also going to block you, because frankly, I don't know how to help in this situation.

I have had an anti send me CSEM in the past to "punish" me for writing a romance between a 50 year old and a 56 year old. I reported them to the police. They are now serving 30 years for possession of CSEM and if you try anything similar, I have no problem doing the same to you. (If you're wondering why I don't believe antis when they say they're protecting kids, this is why.)

Depiction isn't synonymous with endorsement. Shipping isn't activism. Fandom isn't activism. One real person is worth the death of every blorbo you and I hold dear put together.

[vtuberconfessions]

As Uki Violeta “is racism against white people real racism” is the trending topic right now, I want to put in my two cents as a half-white person living in a predominantly non-white country.

White people receive tend to receive racism in the same way French people and English people are racist towards each other. It can be real! There can be real animosity! It can be genuinely isolating and uncomfortable to try and interact with someone who will automatically think of you as less worthy of respect and take you less seriously.

When you’re in an Asian or other non-majority white country, worse stuff can happen too. People won’t take you seriously as a candidate for job offers, possibly leaving you unemployed. When you try to date, people who thought liked you as a person may only be dating you as the “exotic option”. You’re isolated because nobody really wants to mark themselves as the first person to be a friend with the new white-adjacent guy in town.

(These all happen to black people too btw.)

That is all racism. To see the world and treat people different according to their race. Uki Violeta is in that sense racist. However, you may note, that none of the people who have ever made fun of me or excluded me in this country have ever, and this is key: been descended from someone who kept one of my ancestors in a concentration camp, or as a slave.

I am descended from Korea and Latvia. Korean women were historically kept as sex slaves by Imperial Japan during WWII. One of my great grandfathers was arrested and put in a Nazi concentration camp. Both sides experienced racially motivated, horrific war crimes. I feel very attached to both parts of my history, and if I ever saw a Neo-Nazi or Russian Imperialist say “oh, the Baltics aren’t real countries”, or a Japanese Imperialist said “those women probably liked it”, I would fucking throw hands so, so fast.

I have now listed three types of fairly serious racism, that many cultures, even white people, face:

A) Reminder of Atrocity that members of one ethnic group committed against another, with an implied threat to do it again. (Read: Anti-semitism, “Indigenous people are savage and should be Civilised”, “The confederates won/should have won the American civil war”)

B) Rejection from being part of the natural fabric of society. (Read: When you speak French in France and nobody is willing to speak to you in French and subtly belittle you for not sounding native. When people double take when you walk into a room because you don’t look like the average person. When none of your classmates are willing to take the first step to be friends with you and so you spend each lesson alone.)

C) Hostility between semi-equals. (Those annoying ass [neighboring country people], they eat [insulting food] and all talk like this [offensive accent].)

Uki Violeta is American. Unlike other places, say Ireland or Eastern Europe, White people in America have not been the victims of mass atrocities and the mass eradication of culture. Unlike China, Japan, or India, non-white people do not hold the keys to the gates of community and most social groups. The things Uki Violeta says, in the grand scheme of things, is most equivalent to those memes about how Italian people all talk like “a Mama Mia, a Pizza Pie ina my Stomacharoni!”

So yeah, Uki Violeta is racist. But because of just how much goddamn racism black people deal with in America, a lot of people seem to think that racism means “that thing when people are mean to Black People, and it’s really really bad and awful”. But like… it’s not just that. It’s just a way of being an asshole without thinking, of treating someone as a representation of the stereotypes about their race. And White Americans are pretty lucky to have their stereotypes be “kinda annoying” and “too friendly” and not “rapist”, “greedy rat”, “violent terrorist” or “inferior, disobedient slave”.

TL;DR: “Oh, what Uki Violeta is saying is racist, imagine if you replaced “White” with “Black”, then you’d see it!” I mean sure. But also, what if you replaced “White” with “The French”? It’d still be kinda racist but you can see how it’s also not that big of a deal right? Uki is an asshole and you can choose not to watch him, but if you’re not already watching him you don’t have to go on about it. Move to Japan or something and then you can complete about racist people you actually have to deal with on a day-to-day basis.

.