#i have also seen other people claim its going to be a mix of african and mesoamerican cultures and that sounds even worse considering the | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

trans-advice · 3 years

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Excerpt from “Transgender History” (2017) by Susan Stryker (“Chapter 3: Trans Liberation”)

[...]

Stonewall:

Meanwhile, across the continent [from San Francisco, California, USA], another important center of transgender activism was taking shape in New York City [New York, USA], where, not coincidentally, Harry Benjamin maintained his primary medical practice. In 1968, Mario Martino, a female-to-male transsexual, founded Labyrinth, the first organization in the United States devoted specifically to the needs of transgender men. Martino and his wife, who both worked in the health care field, helped other transsexual men navigate their way through the often-confusing maze of transgender-oriented medical services just then beginning to emerge, which (despite being funded primarily by Reed Erickson) were geared more toward the needs of transgenderwomen than transgender men. Labyrinth was not a political organization but rather one that aimed to help individuals make the often-difficult transition from one social gender to another.

Far overshadowing the quiet work of Martino’s Labyrinth Foundation, however, were the dramatic events of June 1969 at the Stonewall Inn, a bar in New York’s Greenwich Village. The “Stonewall Riots” have been mythologized as the origin of the gay liberation movement, and there is a great deal of truth in that characterization, but—as we have seen—gay, transgender, and gender-nonconforming people had been engaging in militant protest and collective actions against social oppression for at least a decade by that time. Stonewall stands out as the biggest and most consequential example of a kind of event that was becoming increasingly common, rather than as a unique occurrence. By 1969, as a result of many years of social upheaval and political agitation, large numbers of people who were socially marginalized because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, especially younger people who were part of the Baby Boomer generation, were drawn to the idea of “gay revolution” and were primed for any event that would set such a movement off. The Stonewall Riots provided that very spark, and they inspired the formation of Gay Liberation Front groups in big cities, progressive towns, and college campuses all across the United States. Ever since the summer of 1969, various groups of people who identify with the people who participated in the rioting have argued about what actually happened, what the riot’s underlying causes were, who participated in it, and what the movements that point back to Stonewall as an important part of their own history have in common with one another.

Although Greenwich Village was not as economically down-and-out as San Francisco’s Tenderloin, it was nevertheless a part of the city that appealed to the same sorts of people who resisted at Cooper Do-Nut, Dewey’s, and Compton’s Cafeteria: drag queens, hustlers, gender nonconformists of many varieties, gay men, lesbians, and countercultural types who simply “dug the scene.” The Stonewall Inn was a small, shabby, Mafia-run bar (as were many of the gay-oriented bars in New York back in the days when being gay or cross-dressing were crimes). It drew a racially mixed crowd and was popular mainly for its location on Christopher Street near Sheridan Square, where many gay men “cruised” for casual sex, and because it featured go-go boys, cheap beer, a good jukebox, and a crowded dance floor. Then as now, there was a lively street scene in the bar’s vicinity, one that drew young and racially mixed queer folk from through the region most weekend nights. Police raids were relatively frequent (usually when the bar was slow to make its payoffs to corrupt cops) and relatively routine and uneventful. Once the bribes were sorted out, the bar would reopen, often on the same night. But in the muggy, early morning hours of Saturday, June 28, 1969, events departed from the familiar script when the squad cars pulled up outside the Stonewall Inn.

[Source text Inserts “Sidebar: Radical Transsexual” here]

A large crowd of people gathered on the street as police began arresting workers and patrons and escorting them out of the bar and into the waiting police wagons. Some people in the crowd started throwing coins at the police officers, taunting them for taking “payola.” Eyewitness accounts of what happened next differ in their particulars, but some witnesses claim a transmasculine person resisted police attempts to put them in the police wagon, while others noted that African American and Puerto Rican members of the crowd—many of them street queens, feminine gay men, transgender women, or gender-nonconforming youth—grew increasingly angry as they watched their “sisters” being arrested and escalated the level of opposition to the police. Both stories might well be true. Sylvia Rivera, a transgender woman who came to play an important role in subsequent transgender political history, long maintained that, after she was jabbed by a police baton, she threw the beer bottle that tipped the crowd’s mood from mockery to collective resistance. In any case, the targeting of gender-nonconforming people, people of color, and poor people during a police action fits the usual patterns of police behavior in such situations.

Bottles, rocks, and other heavy objects were soon being hurled at the police, who, in retaliation, began grabbing people from the crowd and beating them.Weekend partiers and residents in the heavily gay neighborhood quickly swelledthe ranks of the crowd to more than two thousand people, and the outnumberedpolice barricaded themselves inside the Stonewall Inn and called for reinforcements. Outside, rioters used an uprooted parking meter as a batteringram to try to break down the bar’s door, while other members of the crowdattempted to throw a Molotov cocktail inside to drive the police back into the streets. Tactical Patrol Force officers arrived on the scene in an attempt to contain the growing disturbance, which nevertheless continued for hours until dissipating before dawn. That night, thousands of people regrouped at the Stonewall Inn to protest. When the police arrived to break up the assembled crowd, street fighting even more violent than that of the night before ensued. One particularly memorable sight amid the melee was a line of drag queens, arms linked, dancing a can-can and singing campy, improvised songs that mocked the police and their inability to regain control of the situation: “We are the Stonewall girls / We wear our hair in curls / We always dress with flair / We wear clean underwear / We wear our dungarees / Above our nellie knees.” Minor skirmishes and protest rallies continued throughout the next few days before finally dying down. By that time, however, untold thousands of people had been galvanized into political action.

Sidebar: Radical Transsexual

Suzy Cooke was a young hippie from upstate New York who lived in a commune in Berkeley, California, when she started transitioning from male to female in 1969. She came out as a bisexual transsexual in the context of the radical counterculture.

I was facing being called back up for the draft. I had already been called up once and had just gone in and played crazy with them the year before. But that was just an excuse. I had also been doing a lot of acid and really working things out. And then December 31, 1968, I took something—I don’t really know what it was—but everything just collapsed. I said, “This simply cannot go on.” To the people that I lived with, I said, “I don’t care if you hate me, but I’m just going to have to do something. I’m going to have to work it out over the next couple of months, and that it doesn’t matter if you reject me, I just have to do it.”

As it was, the people in my commune took it very well. I introduced the cross-dressing a few days later as a way of avoiding the draft. And they were just taken aback at how much just putting on the clothes made me into a girl. I mean, hardly any makeup. A little blush, a little shadow, some gloss, the right clothes, padding. I passed. I passed really easily in public. This is like a few months before Stonewall. And by this point I was dressing up often enough that people were used to seeing it.

I was wallowing in the happiness of having a lot of friends. Here I was being accepted, this kinda cool/sorta goofy hippie kid. I was being accepted by all these heavy radicals. I had been rejected by my parental family, and I had never found a family at college, and now here I was with this family of like eight people all surrounding me. And as it turned out, even some of the girls that I had slept with were thinking that this was really cool. All the girls would donate clothes to me. I really had not been expecting this. I had been expecting rejection, I really had been. And I was really very pleased and surprised. Because I thought that if I did this then I was going to have to go off and live with the queens. And I didn’t.

Stonewall’s Transgender Legacy:

Within a month of the Stonewall Riots, gay activists inspired by the events in Greenwich Village formed the Gay Liberation Front (GLF), which modeled itself on radical Third World liberation and anti-imperialist movements. The GLF spread quickly through activist networks in the student and antiwar movements, primarily among white young people of middle-class origin. Almost as quickly as it formed, however, divisions appeared within the GLF, primarily taking aim at the movement’s domination by white men and its perceived marginalization of women, working-class people, people of color, and trans people. People with more liberal, less radical politics soon organized as the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA), which aimed to reform laws rather than foment revolution. Many lesbians redirected their energy toward radical feminism and the women’s movement. And trans people, after early involvement in the GLF (and being explicitly excluded from the GAA’s agenda), quickly came to feel that they did not have a welcome place in the movement they had done much to inspire. As a consequence, they soon formed their own organizations.

In 1970, Sylvia Rivera and another Stonewall regular, Marsha P. Johnson, established STAR—Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries. Their primary goal was to help street kids stay out of jail, or get out of jail, and to find food, clothing, and a place to live. They opened STAR House, an overtly politicized version of the “house” culture that already characterized black and Latino queer kinship networks, where dozens of trans youth could count on a free and safe place to sleep. Rivera and Johnson, as “house mothers,” would hustle to pay the rent, while their “children” would scrounge for food. Their goal was to educate and protect the younger people who were coming into the kind of life they themselves led—they even dreamed of establishing a school for kids who’d never learned to read and write because their formal education was interrupted by discrimination and bullying. Some STAR members, particularly Rivera, were also active in the Young Lords, a revolutionary Puerto Rican youth organization. One of the first times the STAR banner was flown in public was at a mass demonstration against police repression organized by the Young Lords in East Harlem in 1970, in which STAR participated as a group. STAR House lasted for only two or three years and inspired a few short-lived imitators in other cities, but its legacy lives on even now.

A few other transgender groups formed in New York in the early 1970s. A trans woman named Judy Bowen organized two extremely short-lived groups: Transvestites and Transsexuals (TAT) in 1970 and Transsexuals Anonymous in 1971. More significant was the Queens’ Liberation Front (QLF), founded by drag queen Lee Brewster and heterosexual transvestite Bunny Eisenhower. The QLF formed in part to resist the erasure of drag and trans visibility in the first Christopher Street Liberation Day march, which commemorated the Stonewall Riots and is now an annual event held in New York on the last Sunday in June. In many other cities, this weekend has become the traditional date to celebrate LGBTQ Pride. The formation of the QLF demonstrates how quickly the gay liberation movement started to push aside some of the very people who had the greatest stake in militant resistance at Stonewall. QLF members participated in that first Christopher Street Liberation Day march and were involved in several other political campaigns through the next few years—including wearing drag while lobbying state legislators in Albany. QLF’s most lasting contribution, however, was the publication of Drag Queen magazine (later simply Drag), which had the best coverage of transgender news and politics in the United States, and which offered fascinating glimpses of trans life and activism outside the major coastal cities. In New York, QLF founder Lee Brewster’s private business, Lee’s Mardi Gras Boutique, was a gathering place for segments of the city’s transgender community well into the 1990s.

#pride was a riot #lgbt+ history #lgbtqia+ history #pride month #pride #marsha p johnson #sylvia rivera #stonewall riots #stonewall #susan stryker #usa centric

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growingstronglikeahighgardenrose · 3 years

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Anti-blackness in 19th century England, why Queen Charlotte wasn’t black, and why it doesn’t matter in Bridgerton

I’d like to start by saying Bridgerton is a very amusing piece of absolute fiction. From the dresses to the music to the fanfic tropes it uses and the books it’s based on. It doesn’t even start to pretend it’s realistic. And being a piece of modern historical fantasy made by a woman born in this age, it is alright for the showrunners to give it a modern vibe. If you want, you can trace the lineage of every duke of Hastings there has ever been and know exactly who they were and what they looked like. Everyone knows there was never a black duke of Hastings, meaning there is no harm nor a deliberate attempt at “changing history” by the showrunners. They’re not pretending they’re portraying real events and real people of 1813. Therefore I accept that in this “alternative reality regency” it is fine for people of all ranks, including Queen Charlotte, to be black. I loved Golda Rosheuvel’s portrayal, I loved her looks, her acting and I tolerate her half-ishly accurate outdated wardrobe (for those interested in fashion history: look up “regency era court gowns”, old styles were worn but Charlotte would wear normal dresses day-to-day). I’m thrilled to watch her in the second season as well.

However, I will screech if I see people claiming Charlotte was black in real life. There were black people in Europe during all periods of history. They could be very influential and wealthy, and yes, they could even be nobility in some rare cases. There is a growing field of research tracing the steps of black people in Europe throughout time, revealing the often overlooked presence of black people. However, Queen Charlotte isn’t one of them. And I say this because claiming her to be black, would mean the British Monarchy, way ahead of its time, was accepting of black people. it would also mean the British people, who were more than a bit racist, generally accepted a (partially) black woman. Rather than Charlotte being black leading to her being described as black, I believe the confusion about her being black stems from people back in the day using racially ambiguous terms to make clear Charlotte looked ugly (because in a racist colonial world the best way to insult someone is by saying they look like a slave).

Being a historian, I do believe I have to give evidence for my claim. I’ll be using her ancestry, written descriptions and paintings. However, buckle up because you’ll be getting a lot of side information on other POC in art and literature. So if you’re interested in learning a bit about the relationship between the concepts of race and beauty in the 18th and 19th century, here we go. (note: if I use any offensive terms without direct citing someone, do let me know I will change them as soon as possible)

1. When did these rumours start

During the Regency Era, when the world was still a very colonial one, Queen Charlotte was described by some as having a big nose, full lips and an ambiguous complexion. However, her race was never debated, until academic discussions picked up around the 1940s.

2. Queen Charlotte’s family tree.

The Portuguese royal family definitely has Moorish blood in it. No one can contest that. Muslims and Europeans lived together on the Iberian Peninsula for 800 years. The question is whether that means that royals with a Portuguese ancestor can be called “people of colour”, and how far down the line people can still claim to be people of colour. Almost all royal households of Europe married into the Portuguese royal family at some point, yet of few royals it is said that because of that heritage, they are people of colour. That argument is only made for Queen Charlotte (imo that probably has a lot to do with the fact that the world is dominated by the Anglosaxon countries and that because of their worldwide tentacles and their language being the most universally spoken, the British Royal Family receives the most interest from everyone all over the world. Other royal families don’t get as much attention).

Note that I used the word people of colour, that is because the root of Charlotte’s supposed African heritage is not necessarily black. Let’s take a look at her family tree.

According to historian Mario de Valdes y Cocom — who dug into the queen’s lineage for a 1996 Frontline documentary on PBS — Queen Charlotte could trace her lineage back to black members of the Portuguese royal family. Charlotte was related to Margarita de Castro y Sousa, a 15th-century Portuguese noblewoman nine (!) generations removed.

Margarita de Castro e Souza herself descended from King Alfonso III of Portugal and his concubine, Madragana, a Moor that Alfonso III took as his lover after conquering the town of Faro in southern Portugal.

This would make Queen Charlotte a whopping 15 generations removed from her closest black ancestor — if Madragana was even black, which historians don’t know. That’s a lot of generations back. de Valdes y Cocom argues that, due to centuries-long inbreeding, he could trace six lines between Queen Charlotte and Sousa, which would mean Madragana’s genes were a bit more influential, but still 15 generations ago. That’s her grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grandmother.

So, let’s pretend it is true and her ancestor was black, let me be very rude. An ancestor that appears once in a person's genealogy, fifteen generations removed, represents a 215-th fraction of its descendant's ancestry. Queen Charlotte’s black ancestry would be less than 1%. In fact it'd be 0.007% (rounded up) of Charlotte's ancestry, and that's IF Madragana could be proved to be Moorish. And if Moorish was only used to describe a black person. However, the use of “blackamoor” “moorish” and “mozaraab” are not an alternative word for black. Indeed, there is no definitive skin colour attached to these descriptors.

It is generally accepted that Spanish Moors were the Muslim Amazigh (formerly known as Berber) inhabitants of the Maghreb, a stretch of land in north-Africa including parts of the Sahara, but not Egypt. During the Middle Ages, they occupied the Iberian Peninsula and other parts of southern Europe, before being finally driven out in the 15th century. The greatest period of unity was probably during the period of the kingdom of Numidia. Over the centuries, the word came to acquire a plethora of other meanings, some of them derogatory. Importantly, it cannot be ascribed a single ethnicity. Moors are not always black, this is false. They remaining people in Africa can be anywhere from Arab, to black people. But I’m not delving into north-african migration patterns and population changes. In Europe, the moors could thus be Arab, black and often mixed ethnicity, the natural result of coexisting and intermarrying with white Europeans for centuries.

http://acaciatreebooks.com/blog/royalty-race-and-the-curious-case-of-queen-charlotte/

3. Gender, Race and beauty standards

The world of the 19th century was riddled with Anti-blackness. Part of this continued from the medieval belief that white was good, and dark was bad (see white knight, fair lady, black knight, dark magic notions that still persist today). It also does not help that during the Regency Era, Greek and Roman antiquity were very trendy. Although the old roman empire was a culturally and ethnically diverse society, regency people focussed on fashion, hairstyles and looks from the classical art period of Greece. People aspired to look like the statues: elegant, slim and dainty and wanted “noble” features (straight slim nose, even face, cheekbones, etc). That’s why in the regency era people were complimented for having “alabaster skin” or a “Grecian profile” and so on. These medieval notions of fairness and the grecian beauty ideal, were juxtaposed against the medieval notions of darkness combined with deeply colonial conceptions of womanhood and race. In a world in which white people controlled other ethnicities, race soon became a weapon, a tool to be used against someone. Just like… gender. And yes, you’ll soon see how these two go hand in hand.

Throughout the nineteenth century the domestic world and the public sphere became more and more separate, with women being given less space to move and work. All women had to be dainty housewives: refined, sensitive and docile, clever but not too well read. Of course, this was an unattainable standard for most women. Only women in the top layer of society were able to lounge around and do nothing all day. Many had to work. Many things of what women were supposed to be: pale, soft hands, were direct signs that they didn’t have to do manual labour (out in the sun, using their hands). Women who could not fit in that small domestic sphere were increasingly (especially later on in the Victorian era) seen as unfeminine and unworthy of husbands. Coarse, manly, unfeminine, unrefined they were often called. Welcome to 19th century “masculinity so fragile”. Just imagining a woman working or reading made men felt threatened. They hated the idea women weren’t just lounging around waiting to please them and provide for them. https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/gender-roles-in-the-19th-century# https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/pit-brow-lasses-women-miners-victorian-britain-pants

Now look at this sketch of a female mine worker, one of many. Although the argument can be made she’s dark from the dirt, I want to point out that she’s also portrayed as scantily clad, wearing more manly clothes, being broader, wide of face and her hair appearing… quite curly.She’s the opposite of the beauty ideals, the opposite of what society wants a woman to be... and she’s suspiciously black-coded.

Pervasive and passive stereotypes of black people have come into existence since colonialism. Cruel caricatures of black people were omnipresent. Going as far as to ascribe them animal-like features with big mouths, big ears, sloping foreheads and so on. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2712263?seq=4#metadata_info_tab_contents

I could write a million essays on how race and sex have been weaponized in the past. When the “exploration travels” first started, and even much later in art, faraway lands were portrayed as sultry lazy or untamed women, waiting to be conquered and domesticated. Transforming countries into women was done to make them “controllable”. Portraying them as lazy and wild was a way Europeans to give themselves license to colonize them. Just like women at home, these foreign lands needed the guiding hand of cultured civilized men showing them how to do things and ruling them. So either men could control women which was perceived as good, or they couldn’t in which case the woman was looked down upon and hated. I don’t have an exact reference for this one, but it was a very interesting topic in my class on “Global History” at University. But for now this one carries a good part of the load.

https://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/jezebel/

It is then no surprise the female black body became a site of seduction there for the white male’s taking. They literally became their property as slaves, just like a man’s wife was considered his property. White men sexualized black people, particularly black women, a stereotype that perpetuates to this day and age. See the link above for that as well. Black women became temptresses.

White women, of course, didn’t like that. They wanted their men to be theirs. So these 19th century Karens started hating them as well. These wild temptresses were out to catch their men with their “foreign looks”. Meanwhile white men hated the idea of white women being seduced by black men. And this, combined with the resentment for working class women, gave way to a kind of language people used to describe each other. All stereotypes (medieval+ working class women looks+ black looks) were stacked atop each other: dark, tempting, coarse, black, plump, uncivilized, wild, broad-faced, thick of lip… Hair didn’t much come into play in the 18th century since most people of high society wore wigs (which in paintings can look like type 4 hair but cannot be used as an indicator of race) but afterwards “tight coils” was also added to the list of features that weren’t deemed desirable. This physical robustness not only lies in the idea that people who work are “hardened” but by describing them with strong robust adjectives, upper class white people once again fuel the idea that these people were physiologically designed for hard work, like slave labour or mine work instead of life as a wife. See also present day notions common even in doctors how black people and black women don’t feel pain as much. A devastating prejudice that leads to black death, black mothers dying, black people’s health complaints not being taken seriously and so on.

4. Black, racially ambiguous and “foreign” coding in physical descriptions

So we all know the memes of “Historians say they were friends” and so on. It’s a fun meme, but this carefulness in naming things stems from the fact that A) sources are made by people and people are subjective as fuck B) it is deemed a big faux pas for a historian to look at history through a 21st century lens. The rabbit hole that is historical epistemology boils down to the claim that a thing cannot exist before there is a word for it. You need to be careful that you don’t apply a term to an event, person or society wherein that term didn’t exist, or the meaning of the term was different. We shouldn’t draw conclusions about the past with present day notions. When a person anno 2020 is described as dark, we know they’re probably south-east Asian or black. However, we may not believe that a person being described as dark in the 17th century means this person is black. I shall explain.

Back in a time when black equalled inferior, people found no better way than to ascribe black attributes to people they disliked. It is hard to find out whether these people were actually darkskinned, since portraits were commissioned and painted to the desires of the clients (they could ask to be painted with white skin). We have no photographs of the time period to verify whether people did really look the way people described. With few people able to move around the country by carriage, as this was expensive, most people relied on letters, books and papers to give them accounts of events and people, so if one person claimed a person looked like X, others oftentimes had no choice but to believe the account, as they lived too far away to verify. Thus I shall focus on the world of literature, where there were no real people we can compare descriptions to, to prove that the good guys were portrayed as fair, and bad guys were portrayed as… racially ambiguous without them having to be black, or any other ethnicity.

Fairytales: Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. There’s literally no argument to be made at all. But just take a look at fairytales from the Brothers Grimm. Nine times out of ten, the evil stepsisters and stepmothers are described as dark and ungainly while the heroine is fair. If there are transformations, the evil people get transformed into gross animals like toads, while the heroine is transformed into a fawn, a bird or a swan. I’m being unnuanced here, there are definitely heroines with dark hair (see snow white, but she’s still snow white of skin) and the reasons for ugly-animal-transformations has to do with the character traits that have been ascribed to those animals. These stories circuled orally since the middle ages, and most trace their roots back to even before that time. Though the world was not yet a colonnial one, it is a sign that darker looks were already linked to bad people. These notions of darkness have been absorbed into the notions about black people during colonialism. People already lived with concepts of fairness for good people and darkness for bad people in their heads, it became easy to continue these concepts when faced with black people.

Jane Eyre: Jane is described as green eyed (a very rare colour, most prevalent in white people), fairy-like, skinny and pale. Although Brönte tells us she is ugly (she indeed doesn’t confirm to beauty ideals at the time) she appeals to Mr. Rochester and fits more into the stereotype of beauty than her romantic rival: Berta Mason Rochester. Bertha’s laugh is “hysterical” and “demonic”, she is dangerous and injures her own brother. “What it was, whether beast or human being, one could not, at first sight, tell: it grovelled, seemingly, on all fours; it snatched and growled like some strange wild animal: but it was covered with clothing, and a quantity of dark, grizzled hair, wild as a mane, hid its head and face.”

Dear reader, Mr. Rochester is described as being tempted into a marriage, to a wild foreign animal-like madwoman with dark grizzled hair and red eyes. Although there is no description of her skin colour (Bertha could very well be any ethnicity) there are clear parallels in the way she is described and the way POC were described. In the context of the 1840s readers would instantly attach this picture to their preconceptions about others with a similar look. Jane doesn’t even need to describe Bertha’s personality, the readers have already decided what she’s like because they understand that the author means dark looks= bad personality. Dark looks= foreign looks. Additionally: Blanche Ingram, Jane’s other rival was described as a fine beauty with a stereotypically beautiful body but had an olive complexion, dark hair and dark eyes. These were desirable traits in England at the time, but the darker beauty of Blanche comes with a bad personality and in the end, she too is rejected in favour of our pale heroine Jane.

Wuthering Heights: Heathcliff has long confused readers. It is most probable, in my opinion, given the context of the time, that Heathcliff was of roma origin as roma were strongly disliked in England at the time, and he fits best in the stereotypes associated with them. It’s also much more probable that an English gentleman would take in an orphaned European child than a black child, especially given he raised him as a son (british people weren’t that kind, they wouldn’t raise a black child as their son). However, the author, still clearly relies on a certain set of dark characteristics to describe him. “I had a peep at a dirty, ragged, black-haired child; big enough both to walk and talk: indeed, its face looked older than Catherine's; yet when it was set on its feet, it only stared round, and repeated over and over again some gibberish that nobody could understand.” “He seemed a sullen, patient child; hardened, perhaps, to ill-treatment: he would stand Hindley's blows without winking or shedding a tear, and my pinches moved him only to draw in a breath and open his eyes.” “You are younger [than Edgar], and yet, I'll be bound, you are taller and twice as broad across the shoulders; you could knock him down in a twinkling; don't you feel that you could?” “Do you mark those two lines between your eyes; and those thick brows, that, instead of rising arched, sink in the middle; and that couple of black fiends, so deeply buried, who never open their windows boldly, but lurk glinting under them, like devil's spies?” “he had by that time lost the benefit of his early education: continual hard work, begun soon and concluded late, had extinguished any curiosity he once possessed in pursuit of knowledge, and any love for books or learning. His childhood's sense of superiority, instilled into him by the favours of old Mr. Earnshaw, was faded away … Then personal appearance sympathised with mental deterioration: he acquired a slouching gait and ignoble look; his naturally reserved disposition was exaggerated into an almost idiotic excess of unsociable moroseness;” “His countenance was much older in expression and decision of feature than Mr. Linton's; it looked intelligent, and retained no marks of former degradation. A half-civilised ferocity lurked yet in the depressed brows and eyes full of black fire, but it was subdued; and his manner was even dignified: quite divested of roughness, though stern for grace.” “He is a dark-skinned gypsy in aspect, in dress and manners a gentleman”

Once again: black eyes, heavy brows, black hair. He is rough, can stand a lot of heavy burdens, seemingly indifferent to pain. He has something devilish and uncivilized about him, and is oftentimes believed dumb. Admittedly, this portrayal is more nuanced, he has a knack for studying and he does look like a gentleman. But the author is clear that it is only superficial and he is still mad within. It thus becomes very clear, already only from literature, that if you want someone to look bad, you make them look manly, workmanlike and ascribe to them black features.

For more examples of racial ambiguity, casual racism and explicit racism in English 19th century books: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/victorian-literature-and-culture/article/casual-racism-in-victorian-literature/1B4B3B0538F8B7C6B58E6D839DCFEC92.

This technique was adapted by EVERYONE. Wanted to make your enemy look bad? Then write a very uncharming picture of them attributing them with stereotypical black features. The most common remarks were: broad noses, big lips, frizzy hair, swarthy and/or dark complexians, coarse looking and unrefined. If you wanted to be really rude you could start comparing people to animals and call them wild and unhinged because “madness” was and is a very common insult. Had an issue with your wife in the 19th century? Lock her up for “hysteria” and “madness”. Got a political opponent in the 2016 presidential elections? Call her mad and hysterical. Got an opponent in the 2020 presidential elections? Challenge his mental capacities. Psychological issues and disorders have often been used to make people look bad and invalidate them. Basically everyone who isn’t reacting in a neurotypical and stereotypical male way (i.e. show no emotions and so on) was classified as “unreasonable”, thus taking away their voice. So many interesting articles and books on this.So we have an intersection between race, womanhood and mental health that are used to control and reject women.

https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/chm/outreach/trade_in_lunacy/research/womenandmadness/

https://www.jstor.org/stable/4286909?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents

https://www.routledgehistoricalresources.com/feminism/sets/women-madness-and-spiritualism

https://www.amazon.com/Madness-Women-Myth-Experience-Psychology/dp/0415339286

TLDR: In literature bad characters were often described with physical attributes that were seen as ungainly. They were codified with animal-like, manly and mad. They also had black and dark attributes to signal to the reader that they were not the heroes of the story. Bonus: they often met a deathly or bad end. Writers did it, but so did real people when they wanted to accuse a rival (Karl Marx being one such asshole for example, http://hiaw.org/defcon6/works/1862/letters/62_07_30a.html ). This is why we can not always trust written accounts of contemporaries before the age of photography when a person is described with racially ambiguous looks.

5. Descriptions of Queen Charlotte:

Just like Beethoven, Queen Charlotte’s main claim to blackness boils down to one ancestor at least two centuries before her birth, combined with contemporary descriptions of a certain hair type, wide nose and bad complexion. Descriptions of Charlotte during her lifetime describe a plain and small woman, with a wide and long nose, and lips that were not the rosebud ideal. As the court became accustomed to her, however, more people started complimenting her brown hair, pretty eyes and good teeth. Much of the imagery that has fuelled claims of Charlotte’s possible African ancestry is from the first few years of her time in England. Royal brides have been ripped to pieces by tabloids, and the public also performs a horrible hazing-like ritual(see: Kate Middleton was mocked for being a party girl, lazy and from working class background. Meghan Markle was described as an opportunist husband-snatcher. Diana was a “chubby child”. The ladies also got plenty of critiques on their looks). Once the bride gets through years of being bullied, critiqued for every little part of her being, she then suddenly comes out on the other end after a few years, becoming a darling and an attribute to the royal family. Could it be that royal brides are always, especially in a gossip heavy environment like a court, under deep scrutiny? This foreign princess hobbled off a boat, seasick, unknown by the English… And she didn’t speak a word of the language! Why would the English love her? I am not saying the accounts lie but I am saying beware of the person making the comments. Are they close to the monarch and his wife? Do they like Queen Charlotte? When where these comments made and why? And why did they choose precisely these words that had by now become commonplace to use as descriptors for unpleasant people? If we know people used racially ambiguous terms to describe people they disliked, it isn’t such a stretch to imagine they might insult a new queen with such terms.

Let’s look at what was actually said about her.

Horace Walpole: “The date of my promise is now arrived, and I fulfill it — fulfill it with great satisfaction, for the Queen is come. In half an hour, one heard of nothing but proclamations of her beauty: everybody was content, everybody pleased.”

Baron Christian Friedrich Stockmar, the royal physician to her grandaughter: “small and crooked, with a true Mulatto face.”

Sir Walter Scott: “ill-colored.”

Colonel Disbrowe (her chamberlain): “I do think that the bloom of her ugliness is going off.”

Queen Charlotte herself in a diary: “The English people did not like me much, because I was not pretty; but the King was fond of driving a phaeton in those days, and once he overturned me in a turnip-field, and that fall broke my nose. I think I was not quite so ugly after dat [sic].”

What we can conclude from these remarks that Charlotte was not very pretty, she even admits to that herself. But what are her actual physical attributes? She has light brown hair (I didn’t include a description of this, but it was generally reported), she had pale eyes (as can be seen in all paintings), was small, and had good teeth.

Above I gave two accounts that reported on her skin tone. Ill-colored could be anything like bad skin, rosacea or perhaps tanned (which also wasn’t deemed becoming for ladies). There was only one person, Baron Christian himself, calling her face what he did. As mentioned above, there can be multiple reasons why anyone would ascribe her those features, she did not have to be a “mulatto” to be described as one.

Most importantly, in a society with slavery, in which black people were looked down upon, I’d say the absence of more people calling her things like: dark, swarthy, black, mixed, brown and any and all things associated with black looks, is more telling than a few accounts mildly referring to her colour.

If Charlotte were truly the first black queen, the first black person in such a powerful position, and one of the few black people in England (less than 30 000 at the time), would there not be more talk? More descriptions of her look? She was seen every day by many people. People would be shocked, enraged, surprised, fascinated and so on. In an era when many people kept diaries in which they wrote down all they witnessed, many people would have given descriptions of her black/brown skin colour. In an era with cartoons and press… Her being noticeably black would have been a very big thing and we would have seen journalists and cartoonists draw her as dark. Cartoonists and diary writers mostly write or draw their honest thoughts. They weren’t censured.

6. Paintings of Queen Charlotte:

Queen Charlotte’s most striking likenesses, or so it is believed, were painted by Allan Ramsay, a prominent artist and staunch abolitionist. In 1761, Allan Ramsay (1713-1784) was appointed Principal Painter in Ordinary to the King (1761-84). As well as being Principal Painter, his portraits have been singled out by many as depicting Queen Charlotte with distinctly African features. It’s believed this was his way of displaying his abolitionist tendencies. He was an abolitionist, that much is true, and he was also friends with the legal guardian of the very famous black Dido. However why would the royal couple approve blatant African features, knowing those would not be well liked in an English queen? They would not have allowed these images. Clearly, they saw in these images only a likeness to Charlotte, and yes, that could mean she had fuller lips and a wider nose. Anyone can have those features. Personally, I find that a slightly larger nose and larger lips in some paintings are not sufficient proof to call her black. But let’s run over some of the paintings.

Most paintings portray her as a typical light-skinned royal with nothing bad about her complexion.

In these pictures she does not look black in the slightest, indeed I’d say her eyes and eyebrows look very light even, nor do her nose and lips, so often critiqued, look big, as was claimed.

Here we can see her nose looks a bit wider, and her lips a bit bigger. But is that really a convincing argument? Although certain features are more common to a certain race, they are not monopolized by one. Black people can have light hair and light eyes. It is unlikely, but it is possible. It’s just as possible for white women to have bigger lips, a wider nose, a rounder face and even… though rarely, there are white people who have no black relative they know of, white 4a hair. I’ve met a few of them. What I also want to note is that Queen Charlotte’s natural hair could have been crimped and combed until it stood upright and was stiff with powder, as was the fashion back then. It would give her hair a more frizzy look. In the picture underneath it, you can see her hair in fashionable artificially made curls that wouldn’t work on natural type 3 or 4 hair.

However as I said before, I’m not fond of using paintings as proof since they were made-by-demand. Painters would starve if they painted their patrons unflatteringly. There are black people, indeed, even black nobles, ex-slaves, diplomatic ambassadors who had themselves painted with a dark skin colour since the Middle Ages. You can even see the distinction between people of darker-skinned sub-Saharans and North African descent in these pictures. And painters certainly knew how to paint black people for centuries (see: "The Image of the Black in Western Art" by Harvard University Press and “Revealing the African presence in Renaissance Europe”). One such example a noble who did have black heritage was Alessandro de Medici who was nicknamed “the Moor”. Moors referred to black Islamic people. His mother was Simonetta da Collevecchio, a servant of African descent. In this case the argument that many Italians are dark of complexion and have dark hair cannot be used to explain his appearance. If other Italians thought he looked like them, they wouldn’t have paid such attention to his looks because they would have deemed it normal. I’m using 3 paintings of him by 3 different artists. The first picture really is ambiguous, it is only by combining all three that we can say that yes, his looks do fit the bill. If we only had the first picture, would we really be confident to claim him? This goes to show that you can’t say someone has a certain ethnicity based on one painting.

This person was comfortable in his own skin but there were probably just as much, if not many more nobles and wealthy families with mixed blood that had themselves painted white when they were not. Who would disagree? Who would even know? Nine chances out of ten barely anyone who wasn’t from the direct neighbourhood didn’t know what they looked like, and never would. Once the POC died, all that would remain would be a very white looking painting, and no one would know the bloodline had become mixed.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/29/tudor-english-black-not-slave-in-sight-miranda-kaufmann-history

What is, then, a reliable source? An answer, for famous people, is cartoons. Just like we now attach more credibility to a paparazzi picture of Khloe Kardashian than to one of her heavily photoshopped pictures on Instagram, you can trust cartoonists to not try and make people look good. Note: cartoons are always over-exaggerations. Any physical attribute will be enlarged beyond belief for comedic purposes. King George and his wife were often pictured in cartoons. If there was anything very noticeably foreign about Charlotte’s looks, they would portray it. However, what we find is that these cartoons never portray Charlotte as darker than the other people. She wasn’t shown as being black.

Conclusion:

Queen Charlotte cannot be called black on the basis of her portraits, cartoons or bloodline. If ever there was a trace of black blood in her veins, it was so light it had become undetectable and could not have influenced her appearance. Just ask yourself this question: would you call yourself a certain ethnicity, or claim certain roots, based on one ancestor 200 years in your past? If no, then you also shouldn’t say that Charlotte had black roots or was mixed.

The case of Queen Charlotte does, however, reveal the deeply racist British society of the Georgian Era, which deemed all black physical features ugly, and deliberately used all physical traits associated to the black race as an insult. Keep this in mind, as well as rampant anti-Semitism and hatred for Roma people, every time you read a novel from the time period, or read a tasteless description of a real person from the era. People were cruelly treated based on their heritage, and even if their heritage was purely white, they could be ascribed certain racial features, just because people were racist pricks.

While that’s the unfortunate reality of the time period, I do believe we are allowed to enjoy an alternate reality as an escape, where just for once, race isn’t an issue. So continue on, Bridgerton!

Meanwhile, I’ll be here keeping my fingers crossed for the stories of real black people living in Europe, or black kings and queens in Africa, to be told in a movie or series. The entire world has always existed, it makes no sense for all period movies to keep being focussed on white people in England, Rome and the US.

#bridgerton #Queen Charlotte #Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz #british monarchy #racism in history

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seblaine-rph · 3 years

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While you're looking into rps can we talk about Devereux Academy for a minute? A basic look at their main and rules reveals Kristin Stewart as an FC but she's asked repeatedly not to be used in rp, people getting originally tested for being Dom Switch or sub at 17, the rp wording is almost an exact replica of another rp that ran for a while, and they are allowing the Motta family to be whitewashed with a white Robert Pattinson FC. I'm sure theres more i was just too disgusted to keep looking.

This isn’t the first time I’ve been told to take a look at @devereuxacademy or heard about it being problematic. I can’t tell you about the dash and I’m not going to troll through everyone’s blogs, so if there is something on the dash that anyone would like to share with me (problematic plots, not tagging triggers, admin behavior,etc) then feel free to send another ask.

More than one person came to me when this rp first hit the tags, asking if I thought they had stolen parts of their rp. I reported this by answering multiple different asks about it and they never responded, which is very telling. Honestly, I think they did. Intentionally or not, they do have a lot of parts of other, existing roleplays in their plot and there are so many copy and pasted things that it looks to be done on purpose. You can say, “but it’s a D/s academy rp and there’s only so many ways to rp in a school, so of course it looks similar to other rps of the same genre” except for the part where even academy rps have their own unique plot points, including the history of the world, social economics, and the school as well as the history of the administration. And that wasn’t the last time it was brought to my attention, or the only reason. I do see it, if we’re looking for my opinion on the matter of stolen plot content. I can see at least three different roleplays that were already in the tags for a long time, weaved together to make this group. I don’t really see anything that is original in the plot or worldview info, aside from maybe the intense details on IVF as the reason for there being so many triplets. Don’t quote me on that, though, it may have been used before. I just haven’t seen it.

It weirds me out that they have all of their characters being thrust into nsfw situations before 18, with what should be an 18+ concept like BDSM, and at the same time they’re a discord rp as well as a tumblr rp. It says on their application that the characters are tested to find out which mark they are at 17. That’s a minor, being tested in a nsfw way because however you slice it BDSM and D/s are nsfw and nobody under the age of 18 can legally or morally be allowed to even dip a single toe in and that includes taking a test to find out what kinks they like and whether they’re going to want to be catching or receiving when it comes to sex. It just makes me wonder what’s being hidden in the discord. I’d also like to mention that they do have the option to play teachers as well as students, which is just weird and gross to me in this instance. The content is nsfw, clearly some students are going to get with teachers. It’s weird enough when it’s a sfw college rp and students do not smut with teachers, but being a teacher is a respectable character choice so I can see why you’d want to do it. If you were going to focus on talking to other teachers and developing plots with other teachers. In this instance though... the power dynamic between teachers and students are way different and there is a sexual overtone automatically because this is a kinky smut rp. You can also play a character as young as 21, which just makes me hope there are no relationships being written out by naive 21 year olds with their 30-40-50+, way more mature, could be their parent teacher. That might sound like I’m making up something that would never happen, but I have seen someone try to play a 62 year old lesbian that was predatory towards 19 year olds and even claimed one in a D/s rp like this. We all know how Glee rps work, we all know this line has already been crossed. We all also know why that’s gross- it’s an abuse of power and there is no way that a teacher/student dynamic could be cute because there will always be a sense of one person being way more mature than the other and being in a seat of power. Another reason to wonder what’s being hidden on this discord.

There are incorrectly casted families. In particular, I’m seeing POC families with fcs that should not belong because they do not match. I’d really like to know how it is that two Filipino girls and a black girl are twins. As a general note to the admins, you can’t erase half of someone’s ethnicity either. There are other families where one or more character is half right but also half wrong in an offensive way. And some families that are just wrong. I do give them props on some of this being right, but that doesn’t erase the other problems. You can’t whitewash people. Not all Asians are the same. Not all Latinx people are the same. Brown people aren’t interchangeable. Let me just list these so they’re easier to fix:

In the Adams family, Alex Newell is African-American but the fc has a sister that’s British, Polish and Caribbean. That might be picking at straws but I always find it offensive when people pick and choose how to group ethnicities- like deciding all Asians are the same so they can be related. Either way, she’s over half white which doesn’t match up.

Laura Harrier is Rachel Berry, she is half black and half white with Jewish background so that’s a really nice choice but then she’s twins with two Haliee Steinfeld fcs? Hailee who is Filipino... She’s also been accused of using the N word and being racist so she’s on a lot of people’s banned lists for the same reasons as Lea Michele.

Brianna Tju is in a Chinese family but she’s half Indonesian. She’s also a Disney Channel star, so some people find that problematic from the start, because most of her resources are from kid’s shows at an age that is too young to be roleplaying. She’s only 22 now, which is old enough to rp, however the only real resources she has are from something that aired in 2015 and was likely filmed in 2014 or earlier. When she was definitely a minor.

Kaya Scoldelario is Brazilian. She’s whitewashed by being placed in the Clarington family.

Zoe Deutch is Jewish. Her siblings are Matthew Daddario (Slovak, Italian, Irish, Hungarian, and English) and Haley Lu Richardson, who has a white background that doesn’t include Jewish. This is the Corcoran family as well, which should be Jewish, since they’re all related to Idina Menzel.

Victoria Pedretti is Jewish and she’s in the very white Evans family.

None of the older Fabrays are Jewish, and Ashley Johnson is Native American but also somehow a twin of the white Frannie Fabray.

Principal Figgins is played by someone that is Pakistani but the Figgins on the masterlist is played by Dev Patel, who is Gujarati Indian.

Tyler Hoechlin is also partially Native American, but he is placed in the Flangan (Irish, like straight out of Ireland) family that has Rory recast as Thomas Dogherty (Scottish) with an Ariana Grande (Italian) twin as well.

Kristen Stewart is on the masterlist but she has asked numerous times not to be used in roleplay because it makes her uncomfortable. I just covered this for another roleplay, and I’ve seen other people mention it, so it’s common knowledge at this point. She has been saying this for a long time. She’s also placed as the twin of Danielle Campbell, who is Mexican and Cajun French while Kristen is just white and the canon family member (Gilbert, so Adam Lambert) is Jewish.

Zendaya is also placed as a twin to Samantha Ware. Zendaya is mixed race, half black and half white, while Samantha is black.

Yvette Monreal is the twin to Demi Lovato. Yvette is Chilean. Demi is Mexican and Portuguese.

Avan Jogia is a Hart, but he is Gujarati Indian and white. He would be a better family relation to Dev Patel than anyone else on the masterlist and vice versa. As a refresher, Samuel Larsen (the canon fc for the Hart family) is Mexican, Danish, Spanish and Persian.

Maddison Jaizani is Iranian, but she’s listed as a Holliday which makes her related to Gwyneth Paltrow... a blonde, white woman.

Jacob Elordia is Basque and his sibling on the masterlist is Marie Avgeropoulos, a Greek actress.

Rafael Silva is Brazilian, but he is a Lopez triplet, related to a Mexican-Irish sister (Lindsay Morgan) and a Mexican-Jewish sister (Alexa Demie).

Sugar Motta is played by Vanessa Lengies on Glee, an Egyptian actress. Her family is whitewashed with two white fcs, Kelli Berglung and Robert Pattinson.

Kaylee Byrant is Japanese but she is twin to Madison Beer (Jewish) and Daisy Ridley (white).

The Puckerman family has lost its Jewish heritage. The only two on Noah’s side are Adelaide Kane (white) and Luke Pasqualino (Italian). Jake Puckerman has been recast as Justice Smith, who is half black and half white but is not Jewish. His sister is Samantha Logan who is half Trinidadian and half white and Pauline Singer, who is full Fijian.

Antonia Gentry is cast as a Weston. She is Jamaican, her listed twin is half white and half African-American. The newest acceptance for a Weston is for an African American fc.

Lili Reinhart is on the masterlist, but she’s problematic. She’s defended the abusive behavior of her cast mate, Cole Sprouse, who was very publicly accused of sexual assault and abuse. She’s also been accused of blackface annnnnnnd she’s used queer baiting to get people to watch the show. (She teased a girl on girl relationship publicly, telling people to watch the show because they might finally get to see something between Betty and Veronica, knowing that the fans wanted it, but then when she was asked about it in a later interview she scoffed and acted like it was absolutely impossible and would never happen, some would say she even sounded offended by the thought-- which is what everyone got mad at Melissa Benoist for doing with Supergirl.)

David Corenswet is Jewish, cast with Emily Browning as a sister, who is not.

I applaud the Brazilian change for Lauren Zizes, but Ashley Fink was a welcome representation of plus size actresses and the new fc is less than half her size. She’s still plus size technically, but she’s “model plus size,” which is not at all the same as Lauren’s body type. I ran this by someone that this change would affect and they were not pleased. They were the one that pointed this out to me, because it bothered them as a plus size person to see one of the few plus size characters recasted with a skinnier fc.

Dove Cameron is also on the masterlist, but she’s on a bunch of people’s banned lists. She replied to a fan that said they wanted her to notice them that they were stupid and had no life if that was one of their goals. She’s been rude to cast and crew on set. Dove has also been accused of throwing a fit and making the writers change the Descendants script to take the relationship that was written out for a black actress. She’s being accused of yellow fishing, which I believe is the term for trying to look Asian. She wore a Native American headdress in a cultural appropriation type of way. She’s been accused of being fatphobic and hiding behind photoshop on her social media while saying she doesn’t photoshop, so she’s giving off a false sense of reality to her fans. She’s been talking badly about someone that is trying to get their sexual assault story out there. The latest thing that’s come out about her is a rant about how mental health isn’t real and that people just need to logic their way out of depression? Which would be coming from a seat of high privilege. She wrote a series of tweets on the topic, calling negative mental health and the feelings they cause “a choice.” There’s a whole hashtag on Tumblr for her.

I’m not at all surprised to see that all of the diverse characters are open. No Artie, no Unique- who could definitely be recast as an actual trans woman, now that we’re living in the age of recasting for reasons of problematic natures- if we can have a new Puck, new Finn, new Rachel, and new Santana why not an appropriate Unique? She is literally the only canon trans woman, why not treat her with respect? They recasted Cooper to better fit the proper ethnicity, so...

#glee rph #glee rp #glee twin rp #glee multiples rp #smut rp #ds rp #kink rp #rph #rpcw #rpcha #sebastian answers #devereuxacademy #Anonymous

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sukunussy · 4 years

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y’all i truly do not do drama but i’m tired of the rpc in many ways and last night i decided to speak up in a small capacity. i sent an ask, off anon, to an rp set in new orleans, louisiana asking them why there were so few black people (not poc, but specifically black people) in their graphics (referring to ads, aesthetics, and site previews posted during their site buzz).

this is the response i received from @uhxrp.

i will break it down bit by bit.

“recently, we got an ask that felt very hostile in wording and tone and it felt like the person who sent it in was actively trying to start discourse instead of have a discussion..” wow! i’m a white passing latina but this is 100% tone policing at work if i ever saw it. for anyone unfamiliar with tone policing, check out this medium article. it states that “By laser focusing on the emotions behind what the person of color is saying, the white person is able to move the conversation away from her own inappropriate conduct and back onto the POC. In this way, the problem ceases to be the racist comment and instead becomes the POC’s reaction to it.” another helpful post about why this is hurtful and misguided. mind you, the quote above was the very first reaction to my ask. i don’t have record of the ask because they didn’t answer it publicly, instead responding in a post, but if i’m not mistaken i said something very close to: is there a reason why you have so few black people in your graphics when your site is set in new orleans? for this to be considered hostile during the public and open site buzz for an rp is extremely defensive on the part of the staff and, later on in the post, assumes that i came to them with a “lack of respect.” i do not apologize if calling out racism is disrespectful. if that’s your perception of an ask like that, perhaps you need to take a step back and think about what you’re really saying: call out racism... nicely. (though i do not think that the ask, however it’s framed, can really be seen as mean, hostile, or disrespectful if taken at face value. i merely wanted to know the logic behind the lack of visible representation.) their response continued, “honestly, if the ask was simply misread and the hostility and, to be truthful, lack of respect was misinterpreted somehow, then that’s our mistake. but i very much do not think this to be the case. if you’d be willing to have a conversation instead of a confrontation, we’d be more than willing to discuss it and hear concerns and, as we’ve stated from the beginning, take suggestions.” if you wanted to have a conversation rather than go on the defensive, you could have directly reached out to me, as i asked off anon. you not only assumed my intentions but belittled my concerns by making them out to be a way to gratify myself by arguing. in fact, asking in the way that i did is a tactic to make people self-reflect rather than go on the offensive when engaging in difficult conversations. i did not call you racist. i did not say i was angry. i just wanted to know if there was a process in place to make sure the site wouldn’t whitewash its setting. let’s talk about why i asked about that! a simple google search of “new orleans demographics” pulls up, “According to the most recent ACS, the racial composition of New Orleans was: Black or African American: 59.74% White: 33.99% Asian: 2.90%...” 60% black! this was the first point of rebuttal in the statement: “truth be told, we have around 40 different ad images that were all queued at random to post once a day and go past the time our site buzz will end. these have a diverse range of models in them, something we looked for specifically. we also have a pretty diverse list of face claims, and we are making characters that are well researched and representative, to be inclusive of all diversities and differences.“ they added images to their post to demonstrate that they did have black people in their ad images. every black person in these photos was light-skinned and fit a eurocentric standard of beauty, so i wouldn’t claim that that’s very diverse, but at least there are some black people. as of today, there are two black people on the reserves list out of thirty-five faces. only one is dark skinned. (if i misidentified any of the faces on the reserves list, i apologize -- i googled names i was unfamiliar with but this is fallible.) i don’t expect the demographics of a site to be the same as the real life city, but you have to admit that is a HUGE disparity. how diverse is it when the models are all light-skinned? thin? abled? words like “diverse” lose their meaning when we rest on our laurels so easily. i know rp isn’t real life, and settings are flexible when it comes to how much they share in common with their real life inspirations. however, when you take a black city and do not prioritize Black stories, characters, and history -- african american and caribbean and african in the mix that exists in a place like new orleans -- that’s more than fantasy. it’s whitewashing. in this moment in history, i felt moved to speak up about that. if you “...also aren’t going to be a site that only features poc in our graphics to be performative either. our site is for all types, and we want to encourage diversity truly,” then my asking about black representation should strengthen your approach to that challenge, not threaten you. my ask was not about diversity. it wasn’t about wokeness. it was about lack of black representation that i could see for a site set in a predominantly black city with a huge and important role in black history and culture. your site is stunning. you’ve put a lot of work in! i don’t dispute that. you are clearly thinking about community and social justice, given your mission statement (which i read before i sent my message). in fact, seeing a message like that encouraged me to speak out where many sites honestly... don’t even look like they would spare a second glance. having this conversation publicly, i also hope other people see it and think more critically about how real world settings can’t exist in an rp bubble. that being said, how much can you claim to welcome “suggestions” or “conversation” when you can’t even handle a potential member questioning the racial breakdown of your site? (before you say i’m being aggressive, i really truly mean this in a productive way. think about it. live with the discomfort.) i would ask you to take a hard look before pointing fingers with statements like this: “however, when coming at someone with a closed mind via the way the message we received was sent, it is not conductive for anyone and we will not participate in it.”

#unhxlyrp #rpc #jcink rp #rp #jcink #supernatural rp #text #andy speaks #important

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mizgrownnonsense · 4 years

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On Cultural Appropriation

(copied from an email I sent to a student, who asked about this as part of our “office hours”--thought tumblr could find it interesting) Thank you also for your question--please forgive the extra time I've taken to give it proper attention.

The question of cultural appropriation is certainly a complex one.

Our general contemporary understanding boils down to: "do not take what isn't yours, and definitely do not use it disrespectfully," however, this simplification relies on certain absolutes (what does "yours" mean, what does "taking" mean?) that can feel confusing or impossibly, even unnaturally rigid.

On "Owning":

The fact is that no artwork or cultural product is going to be a purely "authentic" in an essential way, because no culture is static and unchanging. All cultures have histories, with various ancestors and influences from whom they've adapted and translated their traditions. As the members of that culture live into the present, those traditions will keep adapting in response to the new cultures, artworks, and ideas that they come in contact with. I frequently say in my classes (paraphrasing the art citic, Stuart Hall), "when you have found something purely authentic, what you have really found is the end of your memory." Especially as our world expands, most artists today have come in contact with thousands of different artistic and visual traditions, which we both consciously and sometimes unconsciously translate into our work.

Accepting that human cultures are essentially syncretic, and that almost all of the artwork or cultural products we encounter are fusions or translations of other artworks or traditions, how do we navigate the question of "owning" something or "stealing" something?

I think it is also important to recognize that a relationship between a people and their traditions (artistic and otherwise) can be profound without being "pure." Native Americans in this country have a profound relationship to their ancestral lands that is felt through the thousands of generations who have become part of that ground and through the spirituality that connects their original, and identity-forming, myths to specific features of the landscape--whether they initially migrated from across the Bering Strait or not. Although African American women did not invent quilting, the tradition of quilt-making in the American south and the way that quilts were used to preserve stories, hide messages, and express creativity despite significant barriers to this kind of self-expression makes these quilts an important part of black southern visual tradition (consider the Gee's Bend quilts and some examples of African-American story quilts).

In this sense, we can think of "owning" as the result of a profound relationship to a (visual, etc.) tradition or practice, based on an ancestral relationship to it; its contribution to one's sense of identity; its centrality to one's spiritual traditions, etc.

On "Stealing":

Ideas (traditions, artistic styles, materials, images, etc.) can move from one culture to another in various ways. Though gifts (travelers bringing their culture's treasures to their host, or teaching their practice where they go), through imitation (travelers recreating what they've seen elsewhere out of admiration or curiosity), through assimilation (moving to a new place and adapting the traditions that already exist there, sometimes mixing them with their own), through conquest (one culture taking over the other, and absorbing what was there into their own culture and/or forcing the original inhabitants of that culture to assimilate into the new dominant one), through theft/misappropriation (forcibly taking artwork from a place or person and thereby changing its meaning through a change of context), etc.

Being aware of how this contact happens is the most important question to ask when Identifying whether we are looking at syncretism or cultural appropriation/misappropriation. When you want to analyze a moment of cultural contact is to ask: who are the actors in this exchange? Who is in control of how, and whether, this exchange happened?

For example: In the case of Van Gogh's use of Japanese prints and brushwork technique to develop his own signature style (he translated their visible brushwork into thick oil paints and focused on the humble beauty of countryside and daily life in the same way Hiroshige did, actually copying some of Hiroshige's prints as practice: see here), We can see that Van Gogh did not have control over Japan's artistic production through political, economic, or other means. Japan was considered a relatively equal peer to France, and Van Gogh considered Hokusai and Hiroshige as artists equal to (if not superior to), even if he exotified them in the process. For their part, Hokusai and Hiroshige were freely sharing their artwork with the west, and had chosen to adapt western techniques of perspective in their own work as well. While Van Gogh was certainly "appropriating" Japanese technique, this should not be considered "theft."

By comparison, Picasso's "invention" of cubism was also influenced by another culture. Cubism is essentially the translation of three-dimensional African masks into two-dimensional paintings. However, Picasso encountered these masks in exhibitions of stolen artifacts (not given willingly, but forcibly removed from the palaces, altars, and homes of African people by European colonial forces, both out of curiosity and because the Europeans knew that separating African peoples from their sacred and royal objects would damage their sense of self and will to fight, aiding in their imperial conquest.) Although Picasso clearly admired the formal qualities of these objects, he did not see the people who created them as artists, famously saying in 1907: "African art? Never heard of it!" (”L’art negre? Connais Pas!”) At the time, France was exerting significant military, political, and economic power over African people, from which Picasso benefitted: he could claim African influences as his own without any africans contradicting him, because he had a privilege to be heard and respected that they didn't have. Furthermore, Picasso was exalted for his invention of a new form of art, making money and building his reputation, while the African people from whom he had appropriated these forms continued to be disrespected and in many places forbidden from making these for their original spiritual and political purposes. In this case, understanding this point of cultural contact as "cultural appropriation" and “theft” is clear.

As you navigate contemporary questions of cultural appropriation, ask yourself the following:

Who might have a profound, identity-based or ancestral relationship to this practice?

Who is in control of the exchange?

Does one person have political or economic privilege over the other? (I.e: white Americans over Native Americans, Black People, immigrants; academics over uneducated people; autonomous citizens over incarcerated, or institutionalized people?)

Does the culture from which the practice organization/that has a profound attachment to this practice have the power to refuse the exchange--what are the consequences to them of if they do refuse? (i.e: seriously impoverished nations may not be able to survive economically without the influx of tourism to their sacred spaces, ceremonies, and imagery)

Is someone benefiting--making money/building their reputation--from the practice they are borrowing? Is any of that money or acclaim being shared with the "owners" of the practice?

Are the "owners" of the practice recognized as peers by the person borrowing it? Are they named? Referred to as artists? compensated? credited? Treated with respect? Or are they treated as ignorant, "accidental" producers of something only the borrowing artist and elite culture can understand and appreciate?

Is the "borrower" of the practice considered the expert of that practice?

I'm happy to talk about this more if you have additional questions (as you can see, I have spent quite a bit of time with the subject). In the meantime, I hope this offers you some clarity, and some things to think about!

Best,

#cultural appropriation #Picasso #Van Gogh #Hiroshige #Hokusai #Office Hours

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ozarkhealingtraditions · 5 years

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From the Archives: Exorcism

To understand the place of spirit possession and exorcism within the context of Ozark folk beliefs, we first have to explore where this belief in the spirit world comes from. Now, before I continue I want to clarify some possible misunderstandings about folk traditions like this. These are not to be considered “pagan” or “witchcraft” traditions, because, from the context of the people who belong to this tradition these words would be considered heretical and directly against their orthodox religious beliefs. While it could be said that these folk beliefs represent remnants of much more ancient pagan practices, from the standpoint of studying a living folkloric tradition we must use the vocabulary given to us by the people who are from within this tradition.

Therefore, this worldview in relation to spirits and the spirit world is completely within the context of Christian, specifically Protestant Christian, values and doctrine. That’s to say that the “spirits” are divided into the categories of angels, demons (which includes the Devil, or “Old Scratch” as he’s sometimes called), or ghosts (also called “haints”, which often represent long dead relatives).

The settler families in the Ozark Mountains were mostly descendants from Appalachian Mountain folk who were descendants of Scots-Irish and German immigrants, with a few exceptions of families of immigrants who mixed with either the Native American populations or with Africans brought over in the slave trade, or some combination thereof. My own family is of mixed racial heritage. This means that for the Ozarks there is a uniquely rich folkloric heritage that can be claimed by several different traditions, that’s to say that there are many different sources for beliefs on the spirit world, all of which have added their own ingredients to the common folklore stock. For people in the Ozarks (at least for the old timers) the world of spirit and this world were uniquely intertwined with one another, so that in certain places, or at certain times of the day/year, the veil between the spirit world and this world is a little bit thinner. Much of this belief system was influenced by Irish and Scottish beliefs in the otherworld and the “Fair Folk” or “People of the Hills”. Still to this day, in many of the more rural places in the Ozarks, Halloween is seen as a time of the year when spirit activity is more active and certain precautions, such as leaving out food for passing ghosts, or lighting a candle in the front window, are taken as a way of not offending the spirits of the land. Remedies against this spirit work can be seen in the use of herb packets, charms, or other ingredients that are placed inside the sole of your shoe as a way of safeguarding against any tricks that are laid down. There’s also an important tradition of keeping a watchful eye on the landscape when walking or hiking. Certain trees or rocks that seem out of place or ominous might contain a spirit that if angered could cause harm to anyone near it. I’ve seen old timers wear various charms to safeguard from spirits like this, and on more than one occasion I’ve seen farmers refuse to cut a lone tree in their fields for fear of causing any harm to its spirit. But as we see, these are just preventatives of spirit work or spirit possession. What can we do when the harm has already been done to us? This is where exorcism or spirit healing would come into play. Now, I will reiterate what I said earlier on, that we must use the vocabulary of the people within this tradition. Here I am using the word exorcism, when in fact that word is very rarely used in this folkloric tradition, mostly because of its connection to Catholicism, which was often condemned by Protestant hillfolk. Many of the Ozark families still pass on stories of their Protestant ancestors who were arrested, killed, or driven out of their homelands by the established Church. I myself have ancestors who were Huguenots, Dunkards, Quakers, and Brethren, all of whom immigrated because of religious persecution. So, when talking about this subject it’s perhaps more appropriate to approach it from the standpoint of spirit healing or faith healing, rather than exorcism. In the Ozark folk magic tradition there are many categories of healers or folk magicians. Some of these are the “yarb doctors” who mostly work with plant based cures and charms, “power doctors” or “goomer doctors” who heal with the use of prayers, verbal charms, and physical talismans or amulets, and “witch doctors” who specifically focus on the healing of certain bewitched or “goomered” conditions. It should be noted that in no case do hillfolk themselves call these people witches, magicians, shamans, sorcerers, or any other term that may be wrongfully applied to them today. You may occasionally hear people refer to “white witches” in the case of healers, or “water witches” who are able to find water sources deep below the ground, and sometimes “conjurer” will be used, but these are rarities. The faith healer or local pastor and the power doctor were often one in the same, and it shouldn’t be thought that there was always a distinction between the two occupations. In the Ozarks the healer is usually always seen as a person of strong faith, and oftentimes the pastor or preacher is sought in cases of healing where herbal remedies are not working or there’s a powerful spiritual dimension to the sickness. There are a variety of ways that this spiritual healing might happen. I always like to say that the folk magic tradition has as many practices as there are healers, but one practice of particular interest to me is the use of animal products in spirit healing. Three examples of these animal products are: skulls, eggs, and chicken/bird feet. Skulls are used mostly in the case of mental illness or severe head pains/wounds. This form of sympathetic magic works on the principle that a magical animal skull is used to draw out a malicious spirit (sometimes referred to as poison) from a person’s head, and then the skull is cleansed in water or other liquids or sometimes set on fire as a way of destroying the sickness of the patient. Eggs (specifically eggs laid by black hens) are used much in the same way, where the egg is drawn along a patient’s body, drawing in all evil spirits or poisons, and then the egg is either buried or cracked open, thereby releasing the illness and healing the patient. There are variants of the egg cure in cultures all over the world, but one living tradition that still heals with eggs is Curanderismo. A black chicken’s foot (or black bird’s foot in general) can be used to scratch out an evil spirit from inside someone’s body. This is more sympathetic magic, the idea being that a bird that scratches out in the yard, is going to be good at scratching up evil from out of a person’s body. There’s an interesting folk disease that probably deserves its own article, called “live things” or sometimes just “things” and it can be seen in the Ozarks as well as in a lot of different traditions from around the world. It involves a person who feels like they have living reptiles, insects, or sometimes small mammals, inside their body. These critters were put there by a witch who fed the person some part of the animal, or made them step on it. The goomer or power doctors are able to exorcise these spirits through various different ways, most of which involve a strong purgative. The Ozark folklore tradition is rich with stories and practices relating to the spirit world. There’s no way that one article can fully explain the significance of these spirit beliefs to the people who hold this worldview. I can only hope to give a small glimpse of these beliefs to people who might not have otherwise known they existed, and in my own way I hope to change the view many people have of the Ozarks and its peoples.

#ozarks #traditional witchcraft #folk magic #ozark folk magic #Ozark Folklore #folklore #ozark folkways #ozark folk medicine #traditional healing #traditional medicine #exorcism #ozark healing traditions

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meta-squash · 4 years

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Journal For Plague Lovers part 6

Me And Stephen Hawking

“I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We have created life in our own image.” – stephen hawking –

1/ Underground car park born at Stonehenge Rivers Wyle, Bourne, [blacked out] destroying Queen mother stuffed for exhibition Three strikes yr out – execution – pizza 2/ Dante III, spider robot, Mount Spurrr Increased plastic surgery for pubic hair Sanitation police, crime of proportion. [blacked out] 3/ Paisleyism and ecumenism and cenotaph bombers [blacked out] wearing policing Soviet labour medals sold for Coca Cola [blacked out] 4/ [blacked out] 82 million watch Gorilla Meets Whale [blacked out] [blacked out]

BRIDGE

Herman the bull and Tracy the sheep Transgenic milk containing human protein Their bacteria cheaper than lab baby food Attention, today it’s a cow, tomorrow it’s you

CHORUS

African Punch and Judy shows only rice price 100,000 watch Giant Haystacks Bombay fight Oh the joy, me and Stephen Hawking we laugh Missed the sex revolution when we failed the physical

hahahaha (joke)

[The image on the facing page is a marble sculpture titled St. Teresa in Ecstasy, by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, finished in 1652. It is in the Roman church of Santa Maria della Vittoria. It features Theresa in a state of ecstasy as an angel descends to plunge his hands into her heart.]

Reference explanations:

Most of these references are based off of news articles Richey read in 1994, either general summary-like references or nearly direct quotes from articles, mostly from The Indepedent.*

The Stephen Hawking quote is from a speech he gave at Boston's Macworld Expo quoted in the 4th August 1994 issue of the Daily News. A similar quote is in his 1996 lecture Life In The Universe.

Stonehenge is a prehistoric ring of standing stones. It’s managed by English Heritage and owned by the Crown. It is associated with death and burial, and bodies have been excavated in the area around the site. It is aligned to the sunset of the winter solstice and the opposing sunrise of the summer solstice. The “underground car park” line is a reference to proposal made in 1994 to close the A303 and turn the road into an underground tunnel that will pass directly under the site of Stonehenge itself. (Apparently said proposal was approved November 2020.)

I think “Wyle” is a misspelling of “Wylye”, which is a river in south west England. River Bourne is nearby; both go through Wiltshire county. Said county contains the Salisbury Plain, which also contains Stonehenge. The Rivers Wylye and Bourne are both part of the Hampshire Avon catchment. In August ‘94 the county was granted a multi-million pound package to protect the catchment from pollution and monitor buildings developments and water flow rates.

The “queen mother” line may refer to the Queen Mother’s 90th birthday parade in 1990. The Queen mother celebrated her 94th birthday in 1994, and a few informal photos of her were released in The Mirror in an article about it.

“Three strikes yr out – execution – pizza” is a reference to the “three strikes rule” proposed in California. A rule was proposed 1994 and passed in 1995 that allowed someone to be sentenced to life in prison if it was their third repeat offense, and if they had a previous conviction for a violent offense. A man named Jerry Dewayne Williams was arrested July 30 1994 for stealing a slice of pizza and due to this law was later sentenced to 25 years to life.

Mount Spurr is an Alaskan mountain. Its last volcanic eruption was 1992. Dante II was a spider-like robot from NASA that explored Mt Spurr’s volcanic crater in order to gather information and entered the crater in July 1994. It managed to gather information but on the way out of the crater, got stuck in the mud and fell back into the crater. Not sure if “Dante III” is a mis-type.

Dante’s Inferno is about the main eponymous character entering Hell and traversing its rings in order to reach purgatory and then paradise to find his lover Beatrice.

“Increased plastic surgery for pubic hair” is a reference to an article in the The Independent on 27 August 1994 which talked about men getting plastic surgery and liposuction. (The article is titled “Men who want a perfect body,” which certainly hits upon one of Richey’s preoccupations.) It mentions that there are “more and more images for men to look at, in much the same way female images have been pushed for years.” In a paragraph about penis enlargement surgery, it mentions that a complication from said surgery can be ingrown pubic hairs.

“Sanitation police, crime of proportion.” is likely a reference to an article by Zoe Heller called “How I fell foul of New York’s sanitation police.” The Sanitation Police in NY are responsible for dealing with things like theft of recyclables, littering, illegal dumping, improper disposal of solid waste, etc. They can issue summonses for citizens who mix recyclable and non-recyclable materials (which, from what I can gather, is what the Heller article is about).

Ian Paisley was a loyalist politician and Protestant religious leader in Northern Ireland. He promoted a form of Biblical literalism and anti-Catholicism, which he described as “Bible Protestantism” In the mid-late 1960s, he led and instigated loyalist opposition to the Catholic civil rights movement in Northern Ireland. Throughout the Troubles, Paisley was seen as a firebrand and the face of hardline unionism. He opposed all attempts to resolve the conflict through power-sharing between unionists and Irish nationalists/republicans, and all attempts to involve the Republic of Ireland in Northern affairs. A retrospective article about him was published in The Independent in September 1994.

Ecumenism is any effort aimed at the unity of Christians throughout the world. Most often, it specifically means the visible unity of Christian churches in some form.

“Cenotaph bombers” is a reference to the Remembrance Day Bombing that took place 8 November 1987 in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland. An IRA bomb was detonated near a war memorial during a Remembrance Sunday ceremony. 11 people were killed and 63 injured. The IRA’s target had been soldiers parading to the memorial, not civilians. In August 1994, a ceasefire was announced by the Provisional IRA. In reaction to the ceasefire, Ian Paisley claimed that Northern Ireland would plummet into civil war.

“Soviet labour medals sold for Coca Cola.” The Soviet Union had medals for labour to honor workers for many years of hard work in the national economy, sciences, culture, education, manufacturing, healthcare, government agencies and public organizations. It was established in 1974 and stopped being awarded in 1991 after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. There was an article in The Independent on 5 April 1994 about a new British embassy being built in Berlin. It mentioned that the Russian embassy was next door, and that Russian traders would sit across the street from the embassy and sell post-war bric-a-brac like Lenin flags and Hero Of Socialist Labour medals.

“82 million watch Gorilla Meets Whale” is a reference to Godzilla, because the original Japanese name “Gojira” is a portmanteau of the words “gorira” (gorilla) and “kojira” (whale). By 1994, over 82 million people had seen the first 20 Godzilla films. Richey got that figure from an article in The Independent about the cultural history of the films and their critique of environmental and economic problems. The other thing I could find was a reference to the fact that Godzilla represented Japanese fear of nuclear testing etc: On March 1, 1954, the U.S. conducted a hydrogen bomb test called Bravo shot at Rongelap Atoll in the Marshall Islands. As a result of this nuclear test radioactive dust fell not only on many Marshall Islanders but famously on a Japanese tuna fishing boat called the 5th Lucky Dragon, irradiating all twenty-three fishermen. The effect of these nuclear tests on Japanese, a who had previously experienced the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the heels of the destruction by bombing of virtually all other major cities, was to strengthen anti-nuclear sentiments, giving rising to a powerful anti-nuclear movement that spread across Japan in the form of a citizens’ petition initiated by women opposing nuclear tests. The petition, the largest of its kind ever, was signed by 32 million Japanese. That August, the first Conference Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs was held in Hiroshima. The 5th Lucky Dragon became the model for the boat called “Eiko Maru” attacked by Godzilla.

Herman the bull was the first genetically modified bovine in the world. Scientists injected the embryo with human gene coding for lactoferrin. Eight calves were born from Herman in 1994. All calves inherited the lactoferrin production gene.

Tracy the sheep was a transgenically modified sheep in Scotland, made to produce alpha 1-antitrypsin, which is a substance that was regarded in the 1990s as a potential pharmaceutical for the treatments of emphysema and cystic fibrosis. Alpha 1-antitrypsin comprised 50% of the total protein in Tracy’s milk.

“Attention, today it’s a cow, tomorrow it’s you” is an almost direct copy of an anti-genetic modification poster from the Dutch society for prevention of cruelty of animals, which portrays a topless woman with udders in place of breasts over the caption: 'Today a cow, tomorrow you.”

Punch and Judy was a traditional puppet show. It was usually very violent, with the characters of Punch and Judy (or Punch and another character) fighting and hitting each other. It is handled by a single puppeteer, and audiences are encourage to participate a la panto. It comes from commedia dell’arte.

“Only rice price” may be a reference to a 1976 film called Network. I may be making connections where there aren’t any, though. “What’s that got to do with the price of [blank]?” is a well known phrase (usually it’s “the price of tea in China”). In Network, “the price of rice” is the phrase used. The main character is a new broadcaster whose channel is failing, and he threatens to commit suicide on air. This causes the channel viewing to go up, so the heads of the channel decide to exploit this and allow the character to say whatever he wants and generally spew angry tirades. Eventually he is killed. But the “rice price” line comes from a monologue in which the character berates those watching the show, and tells them that they never read books or newspapers and that television is not news, it’s entertainment and amusement parks. Television is described as being able to make or break people, and as “indifferent to suffering, insensitive to joy. All of life is reduced to the common rubble of banality.”

Giant Haystacks was a wrestler in the 70s. He was 6′11″ and weigh 638 pounds. There’s no info about him ever being in a fight in Bombay. The “Bombay fight” line could be a reference to the Bombay Riots that occurred in 92/93, but again there doesn’t seem to be any connection to Giant Haystacks.

Stephen Hawking is a theoretical physicist and cosmologist. He suffered from ALS or motor neuron disease, which left him paralyzed and necessitated the use of a speech-generating communication device. He worked with theories on relativity and black holes (which I do not understand and could not explain because I am not a scientist.) In 1988 he wrote A Brief History Of Time. He died in 2018.

The sexual revolution was a social movement started in the 60s and continued through 80s which challenged certain sexual and relationship norms/conventions. It argued for freedom to sex before marriage, right to abortions and the pill or other forms of contraception, normalization of pornography, homosexuality, other forms of sexuality, and public nudity.

*Many, many thanks to a reddit user who messaged me with all of this new information! They did a ton of research and found all these references in old newspaper archives and 80s/90s BBC documentaries, which I never would have thought to check.

#jfpl references #journal for plague lovers #jfpl #manic street preachers

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misspincushion · 4 years

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A Warm Welcome and some Starting Points

Hi, everyone! This is my very first post in a series I’ll be doing covering my experiences having and taking care of hedgehogs. I’ll be adding a breakdown of some things I’ve been asked over the years, from friends who’ve always wanted a hedgehog, but have never really known how to get started.

So, to start off with, let’s go through a few of the obvious questions people have always asked:

You can have a hedgehog for a pet?

Yes! You absolutely can! Most people tend to think that owning a hedgehog would be like owning a wild animal, and that is not the case. I believe this probably comes from a mistake in identity.

Here’s the breakdown. There are many different species of wild hedgehogs, like the common European hedgehog, see below (from wiki):

The domesticated hedgehog, the ones most commonly sold as pets, are African Pygmy Hedgehogs which are sometimes also called Four-toed Hedgehogs, see below (also from wiki).

These guys are actually pretty different from their larger cousins and wild counterparts, mostly due to breeding and the environment from which they first came from. We’ll be getting more into that in other posts.

Isn’t it illegal to keep hedgehogs as pets?

Now, this one’s a bit of a tough one to explain. The answer is both ‘Yes’ and ‘No’. For those of us who live in the USA, hedgehogs may or may not be legal in your state to keep as a pet. Sometimes, specific cities or towns have their own rules regarding hedgehog ownership. For example, it is illegal to have a domesticated hedgehog as a pet in NYC, but it is perfectly legal in the rest of the state.

By general rule of thumb, most species, aside from the African Pygmy Hedgehog, are illegal to keep. Always double check to make sure you know the law where you live.

For those of us elsewhere in the world, same rules apply. I had a friend who moved to England who was so upset to hear that you couldn’t keep hedgehogs as pets there, at least until she realized that this rule pertained only to keeping their native species as pets. Domesticated hedgehogs are, generally, also perfectly legal there.

Remember, if you’re not sure, always check first.

Where do you even get hedgehogs?

This answer has actually changed for me over the years. It used to be far more uncommon to see them, even in exotic pet stores. Now, I see them all the time.

However, I will stand by the claim that getting a hedgehog from a reputable breeder is always the best decision.

Hedgehogs can have genetic disorders that come from inbreeding. Exotic stores and other places don’t usually care too much about where the animal came from, or what conditions it was living in, only that it sells. It’s, unfortunately, a similar scenario to what you find with dog breeds and puppy mills.

Finding the right breeder might be a bit hard, but usually worth it in the end.

What is a hedgehog anyways? Aren’t they rodents?

Despite some similar features, similar stature, and the offhand remarks from a evil scientist with a very long mustache, hedgehogs are not actually rodents. Nor are they related to the porcupine, who is a rodent. Also, echidnas are also very much their own thing, and are more closely related to the platypus than they are to hedgehogs. So, no, Sonic and Knuckles are not related.

Hedgehogs actually belong to the Erinaceidea family, part of the order Eulipotyphla which includes creature like moles and shrews.

As such, they are actually very different from taking care of a guinea pig or hamster.

What do hedgehogs eat?

A good question I get all time is about diet. I’ll go into specifics in a different post but, in short, hedgehogs eat meat. They are mostly insectivores, but are opportunistic to other options. They don’t really eat all that much vegetation, and there are a lot of foods they simply cannot have.

Don’t hedgehogs hibernate?

Another good question I get is this one. Some wild hedgehogs hibernate. This is to help slow down their metabolism and allow them to get through harsh winters. Like other animals that hibernate, these hedgehog will go out of their way to make sure they fatten up from their winter sleep.

Domesticated hedgehogs do not hibernate, or should not. They do not behave like their wild cousins and will not survive hibernation. These are temperature sensitive creatures, and cannot be allowed to get too cold. This is really important and will be, again, covered in it’s own post.

What do you need to take care of a hedgehog?

To start, all animals require love, attention, and affection. You need to have the time to take care of your pet, before you even consider having one.

That said, there’s quite a bit to cover with care requirements, versus my personal preferences. I already briefly talked about food, but I’ll just say that cat food has always worked well with me, though I also have a supplement hedgehog mix and bugs for them as well. Stay tuned for more details to come.

In brief, hedgehogs need enough space to run around and dig. They are diggers and will hid under whatever bedding you decide to put down for them.

They’re not really messy, per say. In fact, a lot of my experience has been of hedgehogs who were very neat and had a place for everything. However, this is just a personality quirk, and every one will have it’s own preference. Always keep the cage clean, they’ll thank you for it.

Hedgehogs should have a variety of toys to play with, especially while you are away or asleep. Everyone’s seen the hedgehog with a toilet roll on its head but, not only do they destroy them right away, only the babies can really play with them. Bigger hedgehogs will just get stuck. Hamster toys are way too small for them, even the babies, so I always stick to toys specifically meant for them or cat toys. They love their little stuffed animals.

There’s a lot more to say on this subject, which is one of the reasons I started this blog.

Are hedgehogs nocturnal?

Yes! They are nocturnal, but, depending on how you interact with your little one, you can dictate when they get up and play. Naturally, they’ll want to sleep for most of the day and will hide in a nice shaded spot or under the bedding. If you make a daily routine of picking them up and playing with them during the daytime, however, they’ll quickly adapt to what you want. So, don’t worry about not being able to play with them when you want. They’re actually very accommodating, once they figure out your schedule.

Are hedgehogs spiky? And how do you play with them if they are?

They are spiky, but not the way you might think. A lot of people, and I do mean a lot, have worried about petting my hedgehogs because they didn’t want spikes in their hands, like porcupines are known to do.

Technically, hedgehog have spines, while porcupines have quills.

Unlike porcupines, hedgehog spines are not barbed. They do not easily come out, and are not meant to. If a hedgehog loses a large number of spines, then it is likely very ill. Babies will lose baby quills to replace with adult ones, but that’s about it.

So, when you pet a hedgehog, the spines will remain on the hedgehog. As for how spiky and what it feels like, that’s matter of opinion.

Personally, I liken them to a pine tree. You never notice how spiky it is so long as you pet in the right direction, and the hedgehog is not upset. When they get upset, the bristle their spines as a way to ward off predators. I pet my little ones all the time without any special protection or gloves, and I think it’s better that way. I know some who recommend soft gloves, and I have some for family members who are concerned, but I have never needed them.

Do they collect rings and fight off Eggmen?

I will neither confirm, nor deny this. The only thing I can speak for is that, at the very least, none of my hedgehogs have ever been blue.

(However, they have all been named after spiky characters from a particular gaming series so...)

Thanks to everyone whose made it this far! I plan on posting weekly, though if anyone has any particular questions I’ll do my best to answer!

#hedgehog #petcare #hedgehogcare #sonic the hedgehog #pets #little pets #hedgehogs #hedgehogtips #petblog #animalcare #animals

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bountyofbeads · 4 years

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Bernie Sanders Wins Nevada Caucuses, Strengthening His Primary Lead https://nyti.ms/2HJdnAW

This is not just a presidential election, it is a referendum of Corporations vs. People. I vote for the People. Sanders is the opposite side of the same coin(Trump). MY GREATEST FEAR IS THE RE-ELECTION OF DONALD TRUMP.

Also if there's going to be a REVOLUTION, we MUST FLIP the SENATE otherwise nothing CHANGES.

#VoteBlueNoMatterWho

Bernie Sanders Wins Nevada Caucuses, Strengthening His Primary Lead

His triumph will provide a burst of momentum that may make it difficult for the still-fractured moderate wing of the Democratic Party to slow his march to the nomination.

By Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns | Published Feb. 22, 2020 Updated Feb. 23, 2020, 1:34 a.m. ET | New York Times | Posted Feb 23, 2020 |

LAS VEGAS — Senator Bernie Sanders claimed a major victory in the Nevada caucuses on Saturday that demonstrated his broad appeal in the first racially diverse state in the presidential primary race and established him as the clear front-runner for the Democratic nomination.

In a significant show of force, Mr. Sanders, a liberal from Vermont, had a lead that was more than double his nearest rivals with 50 percent of the precincts reporting, and The Associated Press named him the winner on Saturday evening.

His triumph in Nevada, after strong performances in Iowa and New Hampshire, will propel him into next Saturday’s primary in South Carolina, and the Super Tuesday contests immediately thereafter, with a burst of momentum that may make it difficult for the still-fractured moderate wing of the party to slow his march.

Mr. Sanders, speaking to jubilant supporters in San Antonio, trumpeted what early results suggested would be a landslide victory.

“We have just put together a multigenerational, multiracial coalition, which is not only going to win in Nevada it’s going to sweep the country,” he said, predicting another victory in Texas next month.

[ NEWS ANALYSIS: How Bernie Sanders dominated in Nevada. SEE BELOW]

While Mr. Sanders boasted that “no campaign has a grass-roots movement like we do,” and was bathed in “Bernie, Bernie!” chants, he otherwise ignored his Democratic opponents.

Mr. Sanders’s success, and the continued uncertainty over who his strongest would-be rival is, makes it less clear than ever how centrist forces in the party can organize themselves for a potentially monthslong nomination fight. The moderate wing is still grappling with an unusually crowded field for this late in the race, the lack of an obvious single alternative to Mr. Sanders and no sign that any of those vying for that role will soon drop out to hasten a coalescence.

As results were being counted on Saturday night, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., former Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the billionaire investor Tom Steyer and Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota were all competing for what would clearly be a distant second-place finish.

With the full order of finish still in doubt, Mr. Buttigieg used his caucus-night speech to deliver a stern warning about the implications of nominating Mr. Sanders, urging Democrats not to “rush” into anointing him as their candidate. In his most pointed critique to date, Mr. Buttigieg said Mr. Sanders’s agenda lacked broad support and asserted that the senator did not give “a damn” about the swing-state Democrats in Congress who are scared of running with him on the same ticket.

“Senator Sanders believes in an inflexible, ideological revolution that leaves out most Democrats, not to mention most Americans,” Mr. Buttigieg said, adding that Mr. Sanders wanted to “reorder the economy in ways most Democrats, not to mention most Americans, don’t support.”

Mr. Biden appeared at a Las Vegas union hall while most votes were still uncounted to claim a comeback and vowed victory in South Carolina. “Y’all did it for me,” he told supporters, trying out a new line aimed at his rivals. “I ain’t a socialist, I ain’t a plutocrat, I’m a Democrat.”

Mr. Biden’s campaign asserted that he would finish in second place here, a claim challenged by Mr. Buttigieg’s aides.

The apparent scale of Mr. Sanders’s victory margin presented an immediate challenge to the rest of the candidates, many of whom had been counting on a drawn-out nomination fight to give them time to catch up. But time is plainly running short, and few of Mr. Sanders’s rivals have a clear path to closing his advantage. Among them, only Mr. Biden has a realistic chance of winning South Carolina next week, the sole remaining contest before Super Tuesday on March 3.

That may leave the other Nevada runners-up scrambling to accumulate delegates but with few opportunities to win whole states. Several candidates who were counting on a wave of national momentum coming out of the early states showed no sign of achieving that: Ms. Klobuchar, who claimed a third-place finish in New Hampshire as a major breakthrough, appeared to be near the back of the pack in Nevada. Mr. Buttigieg, who nearly deadlocked Mr. Sanders in Iowa and New Hampshire, did not come close to him on Saturday.

Should Mr. Biden prevail in South Carolina — an outcome that is no longer seen as a near-certainty — there could be enormous pressure on the other moderates in the race to stand down and give him a clean shot at Mr. Sanders.

Ms. Warren, meanwhile, did not appear to have received a significant bump in Nevada after a debate on Wednesday that was widely seen as her strongest of the campaign. The impact of her dramatic confrontation with the billionaire candidate Michael R. Bloomberg may have been muted here, because so many early votes were cast before it. She now faces the ungainly challenge of seeking to capitalize on the energy of that debate without having triumphed, or even fared especially well, in the contest immediately following it.

At a large rally in Seattle on Saturday, Ms. Warren declared there were “a lot of states to go, and right now I can feel the momentum.” Declining to follow other Democrats in taking aim at Mr. Sanders, she continued deriding Mr. Bloomberg and his self-funded candidacy.

The fragmentation of the vote among the other candidates, not only in Nevada but in the coming primaries, is likely to strengthen Mr. Sanders. After the split decision in Iowa, where he shared the lead with Mr. Buttigieg, and a modest victory in New Hampshire, he appeared to prove his ability to win convincingly in a more diverse state, an outcome that often eluded him in his 2016 bid for the Democratic nomination.

With its mix of Hispanic, African-American and Asian-American voters, Nevada offered Mr. Sanders a rejoinder to critics who claim he cannot broaden his appeal beyond his base of white liberals.

Mr. Sanders’s steady progress in the primary contest has come amid widespread grumbling and occasional howls of alarm from the Democratic establishment, which views Mr. Sanders — a 78-year-old democratic socialist who has never joined the party — and his movement with a combination of fear and distrust. The anxiety deepened this weekend in the aftermath of reports that government intelligence officials believe the Russian government is aiding his candidacy, and after Mr. Sanders acknowledged that he was briefed on the Russians’ apparent intervention a month ago.

Yet his coalition in Nevada — where 35 percent of the voters were not white, according to entrance polls — bodes well for his prospects in the 15 states and territories that will vote on the most important day of the race in just over a week. The Super Tuesday contests include large, diverse states such as California, Colorado and Texas, and the delegate lode is so hefty that if Mr. Sanders performs well, it will be difficult for one of his rivals to catch up given the unflagging dedication of his supporters.

Making that task more difficult is that the more moderate candidates continue to split votes and, more important, they all seem determined to forge ahead either by using their own fortunes or by raising enough money from donations to proceed. That was evident on Saturday, as candidates like Ms. Warren, Mr. Buttigieg and Ms. Klobuchar, as well as Mr. Sanders, traveled to rallies in states that will cast ballots soon.

Further complicating matters for those hoping to stop Mr. Sanders is the diminished standing of Mr. Bloomberg, the candidate some moderates hope can defeat Mr. Sanders. Mr. Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York, is reeling after a poor debate performance here, and some who were counting on him to become the moderate standard-bearer have been left to wonder whether he has what it takes.

Mr. Bloomberg’s campaign manager, Kevin Sheekey, warned in a statement on Saturday that “the Nevada results reinforce the reality that this fragmented field is putting Bernie Sanders on pace to amass an insurmountable delegate lead.” He added that nominating Mr. Sanders would be a “fatal error.”

Even as many of the candidates left the state on Saturday, Nevada retained the political spotlight as the caucuses appeared to run relatively smoothly after the debacle in Iowa this month.

Democrats in this state made drastic changes to their own caucus procedures after Iowa, scrapping the software they had been planning to use and intensively training thousands of people to pre-empt problems. There were scattered reports of volunteer shortfalls at some precincts, though not on a scale that seemed to alter the contest in any appreciable way, and some precincts had problems getting through on the telephone hotline to report caucus results, prompting the state party to add phone lines.

More revealing than the caucus process was who voted — and the coalition that Mr. Sanders built in a state that derailed his then-promising candidacy four years ago.

He performed well across a range of voters, winning men and women, union members and nonunion workers, and those who attended college and those who did not, according to entrance polls of caucusgoers.

Mr. Sanders not only won among self-described liberal voters, but also made inroads with moderates for the first time. Among self-described moderate or conservative caucusgoers, Mr. Sanders was the top vote-getter, albeit narrowly: He captured 25 percent of such voters, while Mr. Biden won 23 percent, according to entrance polls.

That was in part because many black and Hispanic voters described themselves as moderates, and because Mr. Sanders outpaced the field with Hispanics, taking 53 percent, and was second only to Mr. Biden among African-Americans. Mr. Biden captured 36 percent of black voters, while Mr. Sanders won 27 percent, the entrance polls showed.

Mr. Sanders made less progress with older voters, whom he has repeatedly struggled with, but claimed new evidence that his calls for “a political revolution” were motivating new voters. He won an extraordinary 66 percent of voters under 30, and dominated among the broader universe of voters who said they were attending their first caucuses, a demographic that made up just over half of the electorate.

Mr. Sanders’s performance will echo beyond Nevada and surely focus the minds of his rivals.

Asked before the results were announced how he would slow Mr. Sanders’s march should the Vermont senator triumph here, Mr. Biden, stopping at a caucus site in North Las Vegas, said: “I beat him by going to — just moving on. People want to know who’s the most likely to beat Donald Trump.”

Mr. Biden emphasized the importance of keeping the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives and taking back seats in the Republican-controlled Senate, and noted that he had raised “over a million bucks” since the debate on Wednesday.

Ms. Warren has raised considerably more than that since her standout performance, and on Saturday her campaign said it had taken in $21 million so far this month — a huge sum by any standard, and one likely to allow her to compete seriously at least through Super Tuesday. Her campaign manager, Roger Lau, said on Saturday that he believed the debate would ultimately “have more impact on the structure of the race than the Nevada result.”

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Reid J. Epstein and Shane Goldmacher contributed reporting.

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"I believe the Democratic party elites are underestimating the discontent with the moderate, centrist status quo. I think a huge slice of the electorate wants radical change, just as they did four years ago." CHARLES, ARIZONA

"Why is it so difficult for people (particularly the media) to believe that some of us actually like, support, and believe in Bernie? Am I some extreme left wing liberal? No. I'm a middle class, single, 40-something educated female that happens to believe our country has enough imagination left in itself that we can invest in education, the environment, health care, and equality. Do I believe Bernie can accomplish everything he promises? No, but I'm okay with that. He is fostering a vision of hope, and if he even accomplishes one-tenth of that vision, we'll be far better off than the current path we're on. Unfortunately the alternative democratic candidates (the "safe bets") do no inspire the same level of hope in our future."MOMO, COLORADO

"Hundreds of million of US voters are fed up with the unfairness built in to our political system and our economy. They are tired of financial manipulation, health insurance profiteering, military waste, high cost of education, and low wages. These people know that talk of a really great economy is blather because they know their own financial situations and how many hours they have to work to squeak by. And they know how close to the edge they are because they see friends and neighbors falling into bankruptcy. The difference now is that they are getting organized through the Sanders campaign structure. They are talking to relatives, friends, and acquaintances. This face-to-face organizing has more power than TV ads, political talking heads, or social media."

CHARLIE COOP, BALTIMORE

" NY Times,,,you just don't get it. You don't understand what it mean to have a $30 prescription jump to $1,000 per month! You don't understand what it means to have the purchasing power of your pension decline by 33%. Its all good for you. But for the rest of us.....we are DROWNING!!!!!!!!!!!" ANN, DENVER CO

"Sanders is genuine, dedicated, and has amazing grass roots support; but I like my health insurance, my 401k balance, my job, low taxes, and I am just about 4,000 dollars away from paying for my own college and have saved considerable amounts for my children's education. No way am I going to give that up and pay for someone else's college too - so hello to four more years of Trump." RONAN IS COMING FOR YOU, LOS ANGELES

"If you listened to Sanders Nevada victory speech, he covered it all, what he is for. It's a sea change from where we are, but we have gone so far off the rails; we are so out of balance. Corporations and GOP hollowed out corrupt government have forgotten the people who buy their goods and pay taxes. It's become all about their profits and their power. Sanders comes along as the Un-Trump at this moment and the fear-mongering gets louder. Not once did Sanders mention socialism last night. Nor was that was he was talking about. The work is to rebalance this country for the people, not to eliminate capitalism. The work is to save the planet. "We are in this together" he said ( not us vs. them,"America first"). If Sanders becomes president and spends his first 100 days undoing Trump's destruction via executive orders and hiring and firing, that will be momentous. The rest will of course be a push. I'm with him." POTTER, MA

"Trump or Sanders. Trump or Sanders. One wants to take from the rich and give to the poor. The other wants to take from the poor and give to the rich. Do we have third party candidates yet. Are there any." VINCENT PAPA,

BOCA RATON FL

"As a two-time voter for President Obama, I will proudly vote for Democratic nominee Bernie Sanders in the November election. I will also vote for Warren if it is her. Otherwise I will vote Green. My one issue is non-profit, universal healthcare. God Bless Bernie."

OBSERVER, WASHINGTON DC

"It's becoming quite confusing trying to understand all these voices saying "Bernie can't win" when the election results are showing that not only can Bernie win, but he's killing it in the field -- across age, race, income bracket, gender. What in the world is motivating all these people to say "Bernie can't win?" The data shows otherwise: 54% of the democratic vote in Nevada means Bernie is heading towards the nomination. The only people who are going to lose big time here are the old stick in the mud party centrists, who are on the way out to irrelevance. We are watching in real time, over half a dozen election cycles, the Democratic Party being taken over by the progressives. It doesn't matter if Bernie is elected in 2020 or not. The progressive movement is here to stay. If not Bernie in 2020 as president, then likely Elizabeth Warren in 2024. I don't see how any facts on the ground can change this. I'm registering young, first time voters in Pennsylvania. They're all going Bernie. If everyone who said "Bernie can't win" will just register one young voter, we will crush Trump in the national." KIP LEITNER, PHILADELPHIA

"This is the story of NOT ME, US. By building a diverse coalition based around policies to help the working class and poor, Sanders has tapped a segment of voters long overlooked by the Democratic Party. As we get closer to Super Tuesday it looks more likely Sanders will come out on top. There is no situation where the moderate candidates can come out on top through their own merits. The Democratic Party is finally being realigned to the working class coalition that propelled FDR to the White House and ushered in a new era in America."

COMMENTER, NORTHEAST

"Why did he win? Because Bernie is the OG. I supported him early in 2016 but voted for Hillary in the VA primary because I thought the only way to beat the GOP was with a safe centrist. We all see how that worked out. Bernie 2020!"

NATHAN HANSFORD, BUCHANAN VA

"Bernie is like a former PM we had in Aus. He tried for years to become PM, his party was out of power for decades as our version of the GOP ruled and then something miraculous happened, the unthinkable, the NO WAY!! I don't believe it happened. He won and our very first social democrat won and we got universal healthcare, we got free college education, we got Family Law Courts, we got laws for our indigenous population, we got environmental laws, the list is very long of the things that happened and were changed. Over the decades since that win in 1972 the Aus version of GOP and the Aus version of the DNC have slowly eaten into some of these reforms but some of them like our Medicare and our Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme that is recognised around the world as one of the best(we subsidise the prescription drugs your doctor gives to you) remain and they are sacrosanct now, no government would ever tamper with them. So Americans...if Bernie wins the nomination don't be afraid but get out there and vote Blue and usher in a new era, a new broom and send Trump to the dustbin of history." LEE H, AUSTRALIA

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How Bernie Sanders Dominated in Nevada

A multiracial coalition brought the senator’s long-promised political revolution to vivid life, for perhaps the first time in the 2020 race.

By Jennifer Medina and Astead W. Herndon | Published Feb. 22, 2020 | New York Times | Posted Feb 23, 2020 |

LAS VEGAS — They showed up to Desert Pines High School in Tío Bernie T-shirts to caucus on Saturday morning, motivated by the idea of free college tuition, “Medicare for all” and the man making those promises: a 78-year-old white senator from Vermont. To dozens of mostly working-class Latinos, Bernie Sanders seemed like one of their own, a child of immigrants who understands what it means to be seen as a perpetual outsider.

For at least one day, in one state, the long-promised political revolution of Mr. Sanders came to vivid life, a multiracial coalition of immigrants, college students, Latina mothers, younger black voters, white liberals and even some moderates who embraced his idea of radical change and lifted him to victory in the Nevada caucuses on Saturday.

By harnessing such a broad cross-section of voters, Mr. Sanders offered a preview of the path that he hopes to take to the Democratic presidential nomination: uniting an array of voting blocs in racially diverse states in the West and the South and in economically strapped parts of the Midwest and the Southwest, all behind the message of social and economic justice that he has preached for years.

His advisers argue that he has a singular ability to energize voters who have felt secondary in the Democratic Party, like Latinos and younger people, and that Nevada proved as much — and could set the stage for strong performances in the Super Tuesday contests on March 3. The Sanders campaign is looking in particular to the delegate-rich states of California and Texas, whose diverse Democratic electorates include a high percentage of voters from immigrant backgrounds.

Mr. Sanders’s chances also depend in part on the field of moderate candidates remaining crowded and divided, which is not a guarantee, especially if voters seeking an alternative to the right of Mr. Sanders align behind one candidate. To earn enough delegates to be the Democratic nominee, Mr. Sanders will also have to win big in other large states, including California and Texas, where his coalition remains untested. And his brand of democratic socialism could prove to be a hard sell, including among Latinos elsewhere in the country.

Mr. Sanders delivered his victory speech Saturday evening not in Nevada, but in Texas, one of the diverse powerhouses on the Super Tuesday calendar.

“They think they are going to win this election by dividing our people up based on the color of their skin or where they were born or their religion or their sexual orientation,” he said in San Antonio, speaking of President Trump and his allies. “We are going to win because we are doing exactly the opposite, we’re bringing our people together.”

In the entrance polls on Saturday, Mr. Sanders led the field across many demographic groups: men and women, whites and Latinos, union and nonunion households, and across education levels.

The breadth of his appeal amounts to a warning shot at those in the moderate Democratic establishment he often rails against, many of whom have staked their hopes for a “Stop Sanders” effort on the idea that he has a political ceiling within the party and could not grow his base of supporters.

Instead, as the primary shifted to Nevada from the racially homogeneous electorates of Iowa and New Hampshire, it was Mr. Sanders who grew more formidable, while other candidates have struggled.

Strong showings in the first two states have not significantly helped former Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Senator Amy Klobuchar break through with nonwhite voters. Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. has called himself the one candidate who can build a diverse coalition, but he finished in second place in Nevada, the most diverse nominating contest so far.

Only Mr. Sanders, with his uncompromising message that working-class Americans affected by injustice can unite across ethnic identity, has shown traction in both predominantly white Iowa and New Hampshire and the more black and brown Nevada.

“He’s been saying the same thing for 40 years — I trust him,” said Cristhian Ramirez, a 31-year-old technology support specialist who began volunteering for the Sanders campaign in November. Mr. Ramirez brought several friends with him Saturday and scoffed at the idea that Mr. Sanders would face challenges in the general election. Like many supporters, Mr. Ramirez was first drawn to Mr. Sanders during the senator’s 2016 presidential bid. “Why should we vote for a moderate? We already tried that last time and we lost.”

The strong showing in the first-in-the-West caucus state seemed to be a payoff for Mr. Sanders’s unique political philosophy and his campaign team’s electoral strategy, which bet big on grass-roots outreach to Latinos and immigrant populations. It’s a model the campaign is looking to take across the country, working to reach people across racial and ethnic groups who have traditionally been less likely to vote.

“We’ve been saying for a while, candidates and the Democratic Party need to engage Latino communities sooner and substantively,” said Marisa Franco, the executive director of Mijente, a community organization that has backed Mr. Sanders. “If you do that, they respond accordingly.”

While ideologically liberal voters and young people powered Mr. Sanders toward popular vote victories in Iowa and New Hampshire, Nevada showed the candidate’s brand of authenticity could have cross-cultural appeal, even as the campaign sparred over “Medicare for all” with the culinary workers’ union, the state’s largest union and one of the most powerful organizations in Nevada Democratic politics.

Activists and leaders who have endorsed Mr. Sanders, particularly people who work with immigrant populations, argue that a focus on “Bernie Bros” — a caricature of his supporters as predominantly white and male — misses the scope of the campaign’s outreach to historically marginalized groups.

They praised Mr. Sanders for articulating a global frame of injustice that has led him to uncharted places among the Democratic field: He was the first to support a moratorium on deportations, has consistently spoken of the plight of the Palestinian people during debates, and has talked about his own family’s immigrant experience as a way to connect with voters, something he rarely did during his 2016 run.

No demographic is a monolith, of course, and Mr. Sanders’s support comes with fissures along fault lines of age and educational attainment. But, if Nevada is any measure, he is well positioned to galvanize a cross-section of Latino voters in a way that earlier candidates have done with black voters in the Democratic Party, amassing an advantage that could help create a path to the nomination.

“If you have focused intention and ongoing support for Latinos and other voters of color you can win,” said Sonja Diaz, the executive director of the Latino Policy & Politics Initiative at the University of California, Los Angeles. “They did not take the Latino vote for granted.”

When early voting began last week, the Sanders campaign sent a neon truck blasting local Spanish radio out onto the Las Vegas streets, urging people to show up at dozens of early caucus sites. They attracted hundreds of people to a soccer tournament, then offered rides to caucus sites to anyone who showed up.

After months of knocking on doors in largely Latino neighborhoods in Las Vegas, on Saturday morning, the Sanders campaign said it sent text messages and phone calls to every Latino registered as a Democrat or independent in the state.

For months, the Sanders campaign has boasted that it was the first to organize and advertise in largely Latino neighborhoods, not just in Las Vegas, but in Des Moines and east Los Angeles. Many people who showed up at the caucuses wearing Sanders buttons and stickers said his campaign was the only one they ever heard from. Latino political activists — including those backing other candidates — routinely applaud the Sanders campaign for doing the kind of expensive, labor intensive outreach they have been trying to convince other candidates to do for years.

Former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who has virtually unlimited resources, is also investing in Latino outreach and competing aggressively in Super Tuesday states, which could cut into support for Mr. Sanders. He has already spent more than $10 million on Spanish-language advertising.

Mr. Sanders’s appeal seems particularly strong in the West, where his ability to harness not just Latinos, but also liberal black and Asian-American voters could portend a strong showing in California, which will award more delegates than the four early voting states combined.

The Sanders team has long said that California, where early voting is already underway, is a cornerstone of its campaign. It has invested roughly $6.5 million in advertising there so far, including more than $1 million for Spanish language advertising. A poll from the Public Policy Institute of California released last week showed Mr. Sanders with 30 percent of the vote, and Mr. Biden in second, trailing by nearly 20 percentage points.

The support for Mr. Sanders in Nevada was particularly notable given the intense fight with the Culinary Union, which represents 60,000 housekeepers, bartenders, cooks and others who work in casinos here. Leadership for the union, whose membership is more than 50 percent Latino, declined to back any one candidate, but spent the weeks leading up to the caucus criticizing Mr. Sanders’s “Medicare for all” plan, because it would effectively eliminate the union’s prized private health insurance.

But in interviews in recent days, many rank-and-file union members said they supported Mr. Sanders precisely because of his health care proposal, explaining that they wanted their friends and relatives to have the same kind of access to care that they have.

On Saturday, Mr. Sanders won at five of the seven caucus sites on the Strip, losing one to Mr. Biden and tying with him at another — a clear sign that the messages from union leadership had largely been ignored.

Ana Maria Archila, co-executive director of Center for Popular Democracy, a national collective of progressive groups, said she heard all day about people voting for the first time. She also said that she expected states like California and Texas could turn out even better.

At a recent event in Las Vegas geared toward Latino voters, Ms. Archila said she asked the audience to “close your eyes and imagine a country where we are not a target,” citing Mr. Sanders’s support for a moratorium on deportations.

“People started to cry,” she said. “We have never known what it feels like to be in this country and not be under threat.”

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Jennifer Medina reported from Las Vegas and Astead W. Herndon from Charleston, S.C. Nick Corasaniti contributed reporting from Minneapolis.

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5 Takeaways From the Nevada Caucuses (The Big One: Sanders Takes Control)

Mr. Sanders has now won the most votes in each of the first three states and has more momentum than all his rivals and more money than everyone besides two self-funding billionaires.

By Shane Goldmacher | Published Feb. 23, 2020 Updated 8:41 a.m. ET | New York Times | Posted February 23, 2020 |

LAS VEGAS — Senator Bernie Sanders won big on Saturday and is now the clear front-runner. Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. saved enough face to march on to his must-win in South Carolina a week from now. Pete Buttigieg finished in the top tier again and embraced the urgency of knocking down a rising Mr. Sanders, though it is not clear where he wins next. And Senator Elizabeth Warren is awash in cash after her debate dismantling of Michael R. Bloomberg — $9 million in three days — but the performance did not nudge her up in the standings in Nevada.

Here are five takeaways of what Saturday’s results mean for the rest of the Democratic primary:

BERNIE SANDERS HAS TAKEN COMMAND OF THE RACE

Mr. Sanders did not just win Nevada. Entrance polls show that he dominated.

Those polls showed Mr. Sanders winning men and women; whites and Latinos; voters in all but the oldest age group (17-29, 30-44 and 45-64); those with college degrees and those without. He was carrying union households and nonunion households, self-identified liberal Democrats (by a wide margin) and moderate and conservative ones (narrowly).

“Welcome to the revolution,” said Waleed Shahid, a spokesman for Justice Democrats, a progressive group.

The Sanders victory was built upon three distinct and yet overlapping bases of support: young people (56 percent support among those 44 and under), very liberal voters (49 percent) and a majority of Hispanic voters. The latter was a new factor in Nevada after two heavily white opening states, Iowa and New Hampshire, and particularly important as the race expands to big and diverse states on Super Tuesday with large Latino populations, none more significant than California and Texas.

Mr. Sanders has now won the most votes in each of the first three states (Mr. Buttigieg appears to have edged him in delegates in the still-disputed Iowa results) and has more momentum than all his rivals and more money than everyone besides the two self-funding billionaires, Tom Steyer and Mr. Bloomberg.

It was no accident that Mr. Sanders spent much of the day before the Nevada caucuses in California and had two rallies in Texas on Saturday: He campaign is looking ahead to Super Tuesday March 3 as the day he breaks away from the rest of the Democratic field.

Speaking of which …

THE REST OF THE FIELD ISN’T SHRINKING

Not long after the first results began rolling in, a super PAC supporting Mr. Buttigieg announced it was buying TV ads on Super Tuesday states. Mr. Biden’s campaign manager declared that “the Biden comeback” had just begun. Senator Amy Klobuchar dropped from her New Hampshire showing yet claimed to have “exceeded expectations.” And Ms. Warren’s campaign manager said her performance at last week’s debate would prove more important than the actual election.

Translation: No one is about to quit this race.

And the longer all the alternative candidates remain, the longer Mr. Sanders can keep carrying states and consolidating his own coalition without a singular rival.

“The Nevada results reinforce the reality that this fragmented field is putting Bernie Sanders on pace to amass an insurmountable delegate lead,” said Kevin Sheekey, the campaign manager for Mr. Bloomberg.

Each has their own arguments for staying.

Mr. Biden, who carried black voters in Nevada, is the best positioned to beat Mr. Sanders in an upcoming state (South Carolina). Mr. Buttigieg has had the strongest showings overall besides Mr. Sanders. Ms. Warren, whose campaign announced a $21 million haul for February, argues she has the money and organization to compete. Mr. Bloomberg has his billions. Ms. Klobuchar’s path — which is taking her to Fargo, North Dakota, on Sunday — seems less clear and may be more about grabbing spare delegates than the nomination.

The collective impact is clear. A remarkable six candidates all had at least 12 percent of the vote among voters over 45 in Nevada, an almost impossibly even level of fracture.

JOE BIDEN’S BEST FINISH YET IS STILL SECOND PLACE

The Biden case for the nomination has been straightforward: He’s the guy to beat President Trump. Yet for the third time in three races, Mr. Biden did not win. He did improve from his bad fourth-place finish in Iowa and his disastrous fifth place in New Hampshire (as of late Saturday both Mr. Buttigieg and Mr. Biden were claiming second as Nevada sloooowly processed results).

But throughout February, Mr. Biden had said that his fortunes would be reversed now that more diverse states were voting. Except it was Mr. Sanders who soundly defeated Mr. Biden among Latino voters, according to entrance polls, while Mr. Biden’s lead among African Americans — his strongest base — continued to shrink to 12 percentage points.

“Y’all did it for me. Y’all did it,” Mr. Biden nonetheless told his supporter in Las Vegas.

He notably sharpened his contrast with Mr. Sanders and Mr. Bloomberg, who has vied to take over the moderate lane the former vice president occupied for virtually all of 2019.

“I ain’t a socialist. I ain’t a plutocrat. I’m a Democrat,” he said. “And proud of it!”

Mr. Biden could well still win in South Carolina where he has consistently led in the polls, and that could be a springboard to Super Tuesday. But his schedule has him locked down in the must-win state for much of the week as rivals cross the nation.

And don’t forget: Mr. Biden led in the Nevada polling averages for much of the last year.

Until he didn’t.

BUTTIGIEG WANTS TO BE THE ANTI-BERNIE

Of all the victory and concession speeches on Saturday, Mr. Buttigieg’s was the most revealing. He used the big platform not just to make the case for himself but to slash at Mr. Sanders, whom he accused of pushing an “inflexible, ideological revolution that leaves out most Democrats, not to mention most Americans.”

He talked about the urgency of beating Mr. Trump and the importance of nominating a Democrat who “actually gives a damn” about down-ballot races. Speaking on MSNBC, one of the campaign’s national chairs, Representative Anthony Brown, called Mr. Buttigieg the leader in the “non-revolutionary lane” of the primary, though the extent to which such a lane exists, it is more a tangled mess.

Going forward, the problem is that all of Mr. Buttigieg’s early successes in Iowa, New Hampshire and, to a lesser extent, Nevada has not yet lifted him nationally.

Among black voters, the Nevada entrance polls had him carrying a meager 2 percent. Advisers to his rivals and Democratic strategists who want to see Mr. Sanders stopped have been frustrated with Mr. Buttigieg’s campaign, arguing that while he has been relatively successful so far, he is now in a demographic cul-de-sac.

But Mr. Buttigieg has a compelling counterpoint, as he said pointedly in his speech: “Ours is the only campaign that has beaten Senator Sanders anywhere in the country this whole campaign cycle.”

AFTER SIZZLING DEBATE, Warren doesn’t GET NEVADA BUMP

If Wednesday’s debate performance was going to turn Ms. Warren’s political fortunes, it did not do so fast enough for the Nevada caucuses.

The results trickling in delivered another round of frustration for a candidate who fell below expectations in both Iowa and New Hampshire and had her campaign manager, Roger Lau, arguing on Saturday that the days-old debate would prove more significant than the actual election.

“We believe the Nevada debate will have more impact on the structure of the race,” Mr. Lau wrote on Twitter. He called the actual results a “lagging indicator” because so many votes — true — were cast before the debate.

The problem is that election results create their own new gravitational reality in politics and the race itself will be reset with the next debate on Tuesday. Then comes South Carolina, which was long seen as her weakest of the four early states. Then, suddenly, Super Tuesday, where Mr. Sanders seems to be making a play for Ms. Warren’s home state of Massachusetts.

Ms. Warren still has fans. Before one of the largest crowds of her campaign in Seattle on Saturday, she told supporters that she had raised $9 million in the last three days, a huge sum. That gives a financial cushion to a campaign that was so close to running out of money in January it took out a $3 million line of credit.

But on a day that Mr. Sanders won and was building momentum, Ms. Warren was still focused on her preferred target: Mr. Bloomberg, reliving some of the greatest hits from the debate.

And she added some new, off-brand material for a candidate who rose in the polls last year on the strength of her myriad plans and reputation as a wonkish fighter.

She cracked a height joke.

Mr. Bloomberg, she said, posed “a big threat, not a tall threat, but a big one.”

Her rivals had not even mentioned her in their assessments.

*********

#trump scandals #trumpism #trump administration #president donald trump #against trump #news today trump #2020 candidates #2020 election #2020 presidential election #democratic party #democracy #democrats #nevada caucuses #bernie sanders #bernie sander for president #bernie 2020

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string-cheese-cake · 5 years

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You know what, I'm kinda tired of people misunderstanding what it means to be latinx so I'm just gonna throw my two cents in as Your Local Mexican-American who can't speak for all Latinos (cause all Mexicans are latinos but not all latinos are mexican) but has some decent perspective

First off, I want to acknowledge that while latinos experience oppression (especially as of late) it is different and in many ways less severe than the oppression faced by the black community

Wanna know why? Cause white Latinos are the result of the pairings of south and central native americans and Spanish colonists! However, not all latinos are white latinos, they may be afrolatinx! But my experience is that of a white latino so I'm going to be focusing on that

For some background, the Spanish were not interested in colonizing the Americas (North, central, and south. The rest of Europe was late to the game) as much as it was interested in exploiting it. It was the violent conquistador campaigns and exploitative mining operations that brought the Spanish to the Americas, a new and dangerous world that was seen as unfit for women. With so many Spanish men in the new world and virtually no Spanish women, the colonists took partners from the existing Native populations, with varying degrees of willingness from the natives. From this came a class system based on how Spanish and how wealthy an individual was

After the colonial era which saw exploited labor from both Native American groups and African slaves, the class system slowly began to be based more on an individual's wealth and power rather than their race, but let's not pretend that those with strong Spanish lineages didn't have a huge leg up there.

What really started to change life for Latinos in the modern day United States was the opening up of Texas to Anglos, due to Mexico's difficulty in keeping the territory stable because of its size, distance from Mexico City, and the resistance of Native American groups. The result was the Mexican-American war which resulted in Mexico losing half its territory and the addition of almost the entirety of the American Southwest. As a result, the Mexicans already living in those areas became Americans. Their new government rarely allowed them to keep the land that their families had owned for generations, and at times had grown fairly wealthy from. Their deeds were tossed out and their land split up for white settlers

The Mexican Revolution in the early 1900s saw warfare between Mexican citizens that at times bled into the United States. Certain revolutionaries like Pancho Villa visited terror amd cruelty upon small border towns. This is why many white Americans associate Mexicans with violence and cruelty, even leading some to say that we had a propensity for it due to our race (ok colonizers) . This was also the justification for the indiscriminate murder of hundreds of Mexicans by vigilante citizens, robbers, and sanctioned authorities like the Texas Rangers in the early 1900s

The border between Mexico and America remained open into the nineteenth century, and even into the eighties only a small fee was required to cross, I'm talking dimes and quarters here

However, Latinos were still greatly discriminated against. Segregation era restrictions called out Mexicans by name but lbr, it applied to all latinos. Segregation restricted Latinos in similar ways it restricted Black people. It dictated access to facilities, restaurants, theatres, scools, and even juror seats

During the world wars, latinos along with other poc were sent to the front lines to die over their white counterparts. Even in death, some were denied burial in white graveyards, leading to organizations like the American GI forum

And that was for citizens. Trying to work or live in the us as an immigrant was a long and degrading process. Immigrants were subjected to physical examinations, public bathing, and many were sprayed with carcinogenic pesticides. My grandmother was given an x-ray as part of the immigration process while she was pregnant. She didn't know it could be harmful to the fetus and no one asked if she was pregnant. It resulted in a stillbirth.

Migrant workers were relegated to "low skill" jobs, often as farm workers. They worked long hours for little pay, and were exposed to pesticides that resulted in cancer, birth defects, and in the worst cases, death soon after exposure. Without access to education or childcare, parents brought their children to the feilds, and the cycle of exploitation continued. Thanks to the NFWA, conditions have improved but still aren't ideal, especially for undocumented workers who are at the greatest risk of exploitation

Even through ALL THIS SHIT, Latinos were STILL at risk of deportation, regardless of their citizenship. The American government rounded up Latinos, some of whom had lived in the United States for generations, and deported them to Mexico or South America, places some had never been.

Being a race of mixed people for over five hundred years means that some people have a lot more spanish blood, so much so that they may be blonde, pale, and blue-eyed, and some people have a lot more native blood, so they have broad or prominent noses, dark hair and dark brown skin. And as unpredictable genetics are, appearances may vary wildly even among siblings

In my family alone, which is to my knowledge exclusively descended from Native Americans and Spanish immigrants (with some german in there), we have curly hair, straight hair, auburn and black hair, thin bodies, fat bodies, heights ranging from 6"2' to 5"1', flat and broad noses, hooked noses, arched noses, flat faces, high cheekbones, shades of skin ranging from off-white to cocoa brown, thin lips, full lips, and a wide array of facial and body hair.

And all of these people are equally Latino! Lineages of Spanish colonialists and of Native groups can both validly claim latino heritage, even if they are not mixed

This is why the oppression faced by latinos can be very different depending on the individual. The more non-white you look, the more this history is attached to you. The darker your skin is, the more likely that you will be profiled, deported, arrested, disregarded, assulted, or exploited.

This is why it's inaccurate to say that Latinos are "honorary whites" or "basically white" (this was also an argument used by Anglos to deny that they were oppressing Latinos lmao) Yes, some latinos may be white passing and get preferential treatment over other more visibly non-white minorities, and some even act as oppressors, but there are also many others that are not afforded that luxury. We have a storied past, we have been subjected to A Lot Of Shit, and to loop me in with my oppressors makes me sick to my stomach.

Tldr: some latinos are white passing, but many aren't. We come in all shapes and shades because of our mixed heritage and those who are visibly nonwhite are still subjected to racism so don't equate us to our oppressors because not long ago having a spanish surname meant you couldn't be a cop

#immigration #racisim #mexican #latino #politics #why am i talking #i spent over two hours typing this out please clap and maybe reconsider calling latinos white #OH YEAH AND THIS IS THE ABBREVIATED VERSION i think its fairly comprehensive but i didnt go into detail on ANYTHING

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lay4decolonisation-blog · 5 years

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She-Ra: Princesses of Power (2018) and the Representation that I Want

**CONTENT WARNING: ABUSE, VIOLENCE**

When I heard She-Ra was back and GAY, I had to jump straight or not so straight into it. The amazing characterisation and themes of the show fit the modern audience perfectly. She-Ra: Princesses of Power (SPOP) did what Voltron: Legendary Defender wish it did. RIP.

The SPOP series was written by Noelle Stevenson, and produced by Dreamworks. Season 1 aired on the 13th November 2018 via Netflix.

There’s two things I want to discuss, so I’ll split this up into sections: visual character design & complex characterisation.

Visual Character Design

80’s She-Ra

2018 She-Ra

She-Ra is the hero alter ego of Princess Adora, who transforms when she calls forth “For the Honour of Grayskull!” with The Sword of Protection.

When I saw the visuals for the series and the new outfit for She-Ra I nearly screamed. It was perfect. I will always prefer Marvel cinematic movie adaptations on the basis that women wear full body armour, and not a skirt. So it was natural for me to fall in love with the shorts, flowy skirt, useful boots and 80’s influenced shoulder flares on She-Ra’s new threads.

She looked PRACTICAL, and totally badass. I see no male gaze in the update. She-Ra isn’t wearing heels, or red lipstick, her dress doesn’t look like it’s about to give her a nip slip, and her hair still flows like golden threads in the wind!

Notice how I just used the ‘Male Gaze’. The Male Gaze is essentially a patriarchal control of representation of women and/or other genders in media, and can be applicable to historical documentation (Mulvey 1989). Ponterotto (2016) describes it expands on the media’s control of feminine bodies as:

“The invisibility of women has been accompanied in an extraordinarily inversely proportionate manner by the visual display of her physical appearance, of her body as material object, to be observed, judged, valued, appreciated, rejected, modified and essentially commodified, for socially-constructed purposes. From a feminist point of view, this purpose can be claimed to be essentially male pleasure, concomitant social benchmarking and commercial profit.” (134)

From the ‘controversy’ from predominantly male audiences on the release of She-Ra’s costume it’s obvious that it’s doing its job (Lenton 2018); with men reacting with things like:

“The character designs for this show are god awful. She-Ra looks too much like a man.” MECCA_Studios @ twitter

“if you're trying to make your girls look like boys for your show then you are not actually fighting for equality you're proving that men is the superior gender and taken more seriously than a beautiful women, you're only helping sexism not fighting it” - iamconsumer @ twitter

I wanna acknowledge this was mainly white, cishet males reacting to a show that is predominantly AIMED AT YOUNG GIRLS. SPOP’s visual design of She-Ra was so key in getting this show right. She is a woman icon for young girls growing up and seeing her on screen wearing a non-sexual costume whilst being feminine, strong and beautiful will mean something for them growing up. Women/Feminine peoples can look at the screen and say “I’m She-Ra!” and not have to feel like they have to look good for male gaze to do that.

People Of Colour (POC) Representation

Bow, Mermista, Frosta, Netossa and Catra’s - along with ethnically ambiguous characters - redesign was kind of glossed over with the amount of objections about the Queer and Feminist arguments going around.

So here’s some of my babies:

Bow 80s

Bow 2018

Mermista 80s

Mermista 2018

Catra 80s

Catra 2018

Frosta 80s

Frosta 2018

Bow stood out to me alot because I empathize alot for my dark skinned brother’s who don’t have any or many examples of good representation on screen that explores queer identity, gender performativity, body image and positive masculinity that is casual and fun. (I speak of course from an Indigenous background, but a lot of my community look at the African-American community on TV for dark bodies representation.) Imagine a young dark skinned boy watching Bow being fun loving, supportive, gentle, obsessed with crop tops, hanging out with girls and embodying positive masculinity, then using as a mold to treat their sisters, mums and cousins. Incredible.

SPOP centers ethnic looking characters amazingly with their characterisation. Having POC on screens breaks out of normalizing whiteness, and de-centers it as the default way of being (Scharrer & Ramasubramanian 2015). People might argue that fantasy worlds don’t overlap with real worlds because race mightn’t exist in the fantasy world, but when you’re a ethnic kid growing up watching/ reading white bodies being superheroes and warriors and People of Colour don’t exist you have no representation, or worse POC are negatively stereotyped. Representation is IMPORTANT. Representation is the ability to control the way the world perceives a group of people, or yourself - white people often struggle understanding this because whiteness as an identity is invisible by normalization (hooks 1992, Dyer 1997). It can be compared to men as ungendered compared to women, or non-cis and queer people with heteronormativity. So it can only be visible when colour is involved, and depending on whether it’s good or bad POC representation it can create racial stereotypes (Brigham 1971, Nosek 2007).

LGBTQIA+ Visual Representation

I feel like you can find a lot of this, but not any by me!

I will start with Scorpia cause she’s such a dear.

JUST LOOK AT HER.

Everyone is screaming ‘butch lesbian’ little to know that she is a total femme (anyone can fight me on this). Her open attraction towards Catra was loud, unapologetic and was super ultra normal. Despite her giant crab claws, I just want her to hold me gently. I think it’s another good example of different body types. Like it’s not just an exterior what makes a woman a woman or a good person a good person. Before I die of thirst, let’s move on to my Bow’s dads.

OH MY GAWD. Bow resembles Lance and George so much. Like the perfect little mix between their two personalities UGH. Both very different individuals who share a common obsession with history. Two gay Black dudes just be out here owning the biggest collection of ancient artifacts, studying the classics and raising 13 kids like wojefdikewajfaij

Lance out here rocking dreads and the glasses with sandals *bathump* and George with his little moustache and fancy hair. They go on like a normal couple picking on one another and knowing each other’s personalities, caring about their son and reflecting on their parenting when they realize they messed up instead of blaming their kid for not understanding them okmfoerngfa

Sorry, my heart nearly went into cardiac arrest thinking about them.

I won’t miss the exceptional drop of them telling Bow their disappointed that he had to hide a part of himself because he was afraid of what they’d think of him or do. I remember that feeling….*glances at my physical wooden closet*

SPINNERELLA AND NETOSSA.

Netossa is the only character (I’m pretty sure) who was originally dark skinned in the 80s She Ra - she also had no powers.

Now rocking up with powers and gf, she is out here living her best life. Look at them. Just look at my babies. They swapped chokers, like wow, what a lesbian power move. Plus sized, buff queer women rocking their femininity being loyal and totally badass. Their actual appearances on screen are limited but impactful as they are seen as people seem to question more what the heck they do in the Rebellion rather than their queer relationship.

Complex Characterisation

Let’s start with Shadow Weaver’s relationship with Catra and Adora.

Starting off at Mystacor as Light Spinner, she a teacher and getting one of her students, Micah, to perform a spell that conjured evil magic - The Spell of Obtainment - ultimately decided her path as Shadow Weaver. She became an abusive, manipulative and self righteous authoritative figure to Catra and Adora.

Shadow Weaver is an abuser. Abuse works differently in each situation but is defined by White Ribbon Australia in categories of: Physical, Financial, Emotional, Verbal, Social, Sexual, Stalking, Spiritual, Image based, Dowry and Elderly Abuse.

The emotional, verbal, social and I’m going to add economical (instead for Financial) abuse she inflicted on Adora and Catra made them stick together as companions through the hardships. Adora upon realizing the Horde’s actions and motives rejects and calls out Shadow Weaver’s abuse. Catra, on the other hand, looks for something like approval from Shadow Weaver. Catra grew up neglected and constantly compared to Adora in her duties to the Horde by Shadow Weaver, so when Adora left a shift happened in Catra. Adora was her main source of comfort and sense of safety in Shadow Weaver’s irract attitude towards her. Adora was her constant feeling of affection and comfort, when she went against the very codes that kept them together their entire lives - Catra was betrayed. Finally, maybe she could get the parental approval she was seeking from Shadow Weaver she never got when Adora was around. Also looking for validation of her moral that has been cause her actions other than rage and sadness that Adora had left her alone. Catra sort out her Abuser’s approval because that’s the only way she knew how to get validity and self assurance of her identity as a member of the Horde - all she ever knew.

Catra feels alone and like she can’t depend on anyone, and because she knows how that feels she was also able to emotionally manipulate Entrapta into join the Horde. It’s a consistent cycle of isolation that stemmed from one person’s influence.

The thing that differs Adora and Catra, was more Adora being given opportunities to lead and step up where Catra was always on the side. Adora gained leadership skills and an emotional capacity where she was able to trust others and trust herself. This ultimately allowed her to do the right thing and join the Rebellion. Catra on the other hand had to quickly use her head and be more aware of things other than herself which made her falter in the leadership role of Shadow Weaver, but that is her coping mechanism of isolating herself and having to immerse herself with other people and the world to take action.

Adora’s culture shock between the way the Princesses live and the way it was in the Horde only shows how she’s been manipulated through learning the knowledge and behaviours that were enforced on her in the Horde. Princesses aren’t evil. The Horde is evil.

Adora’s role of She Ra has put a lot of pressure on her, and she is fighting her own self.

What happened with Adora was she was specifically chosen because she’s had the experiences she’s had. She knows what it's like in the Horde. How their systems work. What type of people and kids are there. She knows all of that to use to win the war. She’s not gonna break into it, but out of it.

When Adora breaks out of the Horde’s learning, and the truth telling begins the walls will crumble and there will be internal upset. There’s a good and evil battle going on inside of each character. Adora wants to protect her friends and do the right thing, but sometimes those two things aren’t the same thing.

Another character I wanna bring up is Glimmer. Glimmer has been fighting to fight. She’s having to fight a struggle in her internal kingdoms. She’s been trying to tell the truth to the other Kingdoms and unite the Kingdoms so they can beat the Horde and save everything they love. She needed to stand up to her mother, the other Princesses, and herself. She is so damn strong and I love her so much omg.

When Bow went to the ball with Perfuma and she was upset, this was because she was afraid Bow would leave her. She’s been isolated also by her mother into doing Princess things that don’t actually have a big impact, but Bow has been consistent in her life and training to be a leader. When he left her side, she was scared that she was going to be isolated again. She knew it was irrational, but that kind of stuff just happens. Sometimes our feelings don’t always make sense to us at first, and we have to look somewhere else to understand what we’re feeling right then and there. But the besties will prevail.

The other thing I didn’t touch on earlier, but will now is age. The Princesses age from around 11-18 (?). The thing about having young people saving the world is really where we’re at. Kids are rioting in the streets trying to get big corporations led by greedy bastards who want resources and exploit people to stop, and save their entire world - yeah, you know I’m talking about situations like the climate strike. We will learn from our elders mistakes and do it right.

We shouldn’t give up because our parents did. We will be the ones to win, just like Glimmer, Adora, Bow and the gang.

Representation isn’t a debate - it’s a necessity.

Thanks for reading babes.

Reference List

Dyer, Richard. (1997) ‘The Matter of Whiteness’ in White, London: Routledge.

Brigham, John C. "Ethnic stereotypes." Psychological bulletin76.1 (1971): 15.

Nosek, Brian A., et al. "Pervasiveness and correlates of implicit attitudes and stereotypes." European Review of Social Psychology 18.1 (2007): 36-88.

Bell, Hooks. "The oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators." Black Looks: Race and Representation (1992): 115-131.

Mulvey, L. (1989). Visual pleasure and narrative cinema. In Visual and other pleasures (pp. 14-26). Palgrave Macmillan, London.

Ponterotto, D. (2016). Resisting the male gaze: feminist responses to the" normatization" of the female body in Western culture. Journal of International Women's Studies, 17(1), 133-151.

Scharrer, E., & Ramasubramanian, S. (2015). Intervening in the media's influence on stereotypes of race and ethnicity: The role of media literacy education. Journal of Social Issues, 71(1), 171-185.

https://www.whiteribbon.org.au/understand-domestic-violence/types-of-abuse/

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kurenafujio · 5 years

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An Example of why I don’t debate much in my comment sections on YT/Tumblr/FB/ETC. (It’s Endless) | TLDR at the End

@omg-whydidimakethisaccount

"You do know that racist people did the same thing for Black Panther right? “Innocent people are getting called racist for no reason because they didn’t like the movie!” For a while people believed it, including me. Then as time passes a lot of people started realizing that people were claiming this happened.....but no one actually sees it. And while I’m sure a few people have, the fact of the matter is that racists spread the rhetoric for a reason"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhKFv92JGqM

All throughout the comment section you see people saying “I’m black and I don’t want Ariel to change.” And black people are complaining all over the internet about it being racial pandering. Which-it-is. You just aren’t looking for it. Have you never heard of the phrase that the dumbest people are the loudest? Of course you’ll run across racists. They’re the loudest of them all. But they’re not the only ones who are upset and it isn’t “just a few.” That’s just your confirmation bias. “For a while people believed it, including me.” You think that you woke up to some new epiphany but you’re just viewing everything in extremes.

"It’s quite similar to conservatives labeling everything “sjw”. In hopes to make people’s points valid, we label them as names such as sjws or snowflakes."

You’re using the same tactics by labeling everyone racist who disagrees. Just because racist people have an issue with something doesn’t mean that everyone who has an issue with it are racists. How tf can you be mad that people exploit the phrase “sjw” when you are exploiting the word racists for the SAME REASON.

"And that’s what people did for Black Panther. The racists were very vague on what their comments were but they spread this agenda that people are being called racist left and right. That people are hunting down poor souls stating an opinion and harassing them. This of course wasn’t the case, but the power of the internet sure made it seem so. But like I said, smart people started noticing that this was not the case."

This isn’t the same as Black Panther. He is a real superhero who was originally black and his movie was very cultural. So it brought up controversy and there was a lot of racism involved. However, Ariel is a Disney character who already has a character design that people love and have been drawing for decades. Black people (yes BLACK PEOPLE) have made themselves clear. They want new original characters to represent them. Not to have their skin tone slapped on a white character for pandering and re-branding purposes only.

"And this is the case for pretty much any movie that causes stir due to race such as this. Now I’ve been on a lot of social media platforms. Reddit, tumblr, YouTube comments, twitter, etc etc. I barely see people refer a person that doesn’t like the casting a racist......w/o reason. Racists spread the lies for Black Panther because they knew they would be called out for their racists comments so they hoped that referring people who called them out as “sjws” would somehow stray away from that fact"

“w/o reason” is vague. I’m not going to take your word for it that their reasons are good because you’re the same person who said that only a few people are black and or genuinely just don’t want her character to change which is clearly false. Which I have already explained. And again with the Black Panther. Just because you didn’t see those comments for what they were during THAT particular movie, doesn’t mean that every movie that has a black character will only get criticism from racists. You have no sense nuance.

"And sadly that is going on with Halle Bailey. My friends were accused of being “sjws” for simply calling out a racist who didn’t like Black Ariel. Like I said my black friends also don’t like her but they aren’t being racist they just don’t like the actress. However when they called out an actual racist that reposted a “sea monkey” post in response to Halle’s castings they were harassed for calling a person racist over a “joke”

Your situation with your friends is just confirmation bias. That doesn’t speak for all situations. Hence me linking you the video that I sent you. Also the seamonkey thing is clearly a racist joke but that has nothing to do with my original point. You literally just said you know people who genuinely don’t want her to be black and are black themselves. But instead of being nuanced and thinking, “Oh, some people are racists and some just don’t want her to change” you take away from it, “most are racists and very few don’t want her to change.” It’s ridiculous. You’re not being objective. And why does someone have to be black to not want her to change without being racist? That’s a bigoted way of thinking within itself. 'If you’re white and you don’t like her, you’re probably racist.' No.

"Some people didn’t even know what was happening. They just saw “innocent person gets harassed because they stated an opinion” and started harassing my friends too. And like that, the Black Panther fiasco cycles it’s way back to the internet"

This isn’t the same as the Black Panther incident.

“I get it. You are a proud person. You want everyone to have a chance to state their opinion. Sad thing is, that’s not the problem here. There’s a bunch of actual racists convincing people that they should be upset over this when in reality it’s a damn movie. And sadly people fall for it. I used to be one of these people. When Scarlet Johansson plays Asian characters I followed the crowd saying “she’s a good actress, the character is an android anyways, who cares!?!?”

No? You clearly didn’t even watch my video. I stated several times then and now that I KNOW that SOME people are racist who feel that way. However, you have NO RIGHT to label EVERYONE “most likely racist” for not wanting Ariel to be black. That is a hive minded way of thinking, you can’t compare this to Black Panther because the complaints are completely different, and the point that I originally made in my video is that people are not nuanced. You are thinking in black and white. Just because I am willing to acknowledge that a LOT of people just genuinely don’t want her to change and aren’t racist doesn’t mean that I am saying that NO ONE or MANY PEOPLE aren’t racist who feel that way. I’m saying its a mixed bag of opinions and not to lump every stranger who complains about it into one big group. How the hell can you complain about people labeling everyone sjws for a conservative agenda but at the same time you are labeling everyone who isn’t black, who doesn’t like this casting choice “most likely racist.” It’s not objective at all and you aren’t any smarter from the Black Panther incident by doing this. You don’t even realize that your mistake in both of these cases is that you looked at the responses in black or white. Either ALL/MOST complaints are racist or ALL/MOST complaints are not. That is a horrible way to discern the truth of any situation. And that mentality is exactly what I was ranting about in my video.

"But then to see the same people who I’ve sided with on the Ghost of the Shell debate all of a sudden throw a fit when a Black person is casted as Ariel? I realized there is something wrong. I didn’t accuse them of being racist. Because then I would’ve been racist. So I asked myself, why are people so weird about this sort of stuff? It’s cause our society was racist from the start. We value white skills, and we can make them take over any minority movie."

“The same people.” Who are these people? Again you are lumping everyone together. It’s so ridiculous.

"But when a minority takes a traditionally “white” role even though it’s not exclusive, all hell breaks lose. I don’t find all NotMyAriel logic racist.....but a lot of them come from racist rhetorics. When you go down to their core, they are very simple in logic. And the reason they are simple is because the racists spurred out the nonsense first. People just don’t realize it"

Not only is your own logic very simple minded but you aren’t even familiar with the term “Racebending Redheads” Which has been a trend lately. For some reason redheads are just raceless as characters and can just be swapped out with a black person. They keep doing it in movies and redheads are also complaining about this more and more. There are a lot of redheads who have an issue with Ariel’s new casting choice and rightfully so.

“ I mean do you know how many “What if we made Pocahontas white” I’ve seen? Or “What about Danish culture and redhead representation?!?:” all of which Danish people and redheads don’t give a damn. But that’s why these arguments are so....silly"

Lol but redheads do give a damn. Racebending Redheads is a thing. And yeah the Danish argument may be silly but you are literally cherry picking! What the hell? Did I ever bring up Danish culture in my video? Nope. Why not address the argument that people would rather see Princess Tiana as a Jamaican Actress than a light skinned African American who is from the same culture. Why? Because her character is dark skinned. So yeah this isn’t a cultural issue which is even more of a reason why you can’t compare it to Black Panther lol.

"Anyways, sorry for commenting so much. You seem like a well rounded individual and it’s always sad to see intelligent people fall into the same trap I fell into. Basically just really dig deep into these conversations"

TL;DR

You’re so condescending though. Insinuating that “smart people” are the ones who are “seeing through all of these lies.” I don’t agree with you so by your statement I am “not smart” until I do. In other words, you’re apologizing for the wrong thing. Like I said, you’re cherry picking what to argue against and then when its something you can’t argue against you just say crap like, “I used to feel the same way. Smart people are seeing through it. Did you know x y z that is completely unrelated to any of the good points that you made? Oh and I personally experienced a b c which is also unrelated to your 20 minute video.” Those aren’t counterarguments or realizations. It’s just bs and you aren’t listening to anything that disagrees with you whereas I am reading all of this junk and responding to what YOU SAID and countering it. Not replying with a bunch of unrelated strawmans and whataboutism.

#ariel is black #the little mermaid #racebending readheads #racebending #opinion archive #rant archive #controversial #racism #bigotry #nuance #close minded #simple minded #bias #confirmation bias #halle bailey #disney

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rockofeye · 6 years

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It'd be nice to see sort of a "Creole for beginners" post that talks about what terms are common in Vodou and maybe explains the grammar structure. I've noticed a lot of Creole I can mentally translate myself if I think about it long enough since many French words were taken into English awhile back, but French itself I don't actually know so sometimes it's quite a reach. The evolution of the language seems parallel with the evolution of Vodou and that's really interesting to me.

So, this ask has been sitting for awhile, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot as I am just finishing up an intensive month-long Kreyòl class.

Haitian Kreyòl/Kreyòl Ayisyen is a fascinating, gorgeous, succulent language. In some ways, it is super straightforward and in other ways, it is deeply complex as befits a language that has roots in Romance languages (more than one!), African languages (more than one!), and Indigenous languages. Like vodou, it is a language that embodies the history of Haiti and it has and does evolve as culture and the world advances.

Outside of Haiti, there is the idea that there is no common orthography/common way of speaking and utilizing the language. This is wrong wrong wrong. Largely, this stems from the fact that, until about 50 years ago, Kreyòl was almost entirely an oral only language because of colonialism–Kreyòl has only begun being taught in schools in the last decade, yet almost every Haitian speaks it fluently (the elite class speaks French, but that is largely a class marker–everyone knows Kreyòl). Many Haitians do not know how to write in Kreyòl, and write the best that they are able which leads to widely varied output….which leads outsiders to say that there is no commonly accepted orthography.

It would take a long, LONG time to really deconstruct and explain how Kreyòl works in practice so I’m not going to go there entirely, but here are some basics:

Kreyòl has 32 letter/symbols in its alphabet. Within that, there are 15 vowels/vowel sounds and 18 consonants/consonant sounds. Kreyòl only utilizes one accent (grave accent/aksan grav). Things with the alphabet that trip up Kreyòl learners who are native English speakers include:

‘C’ is not utilized except as a compound sound in ‘ch’, which is a soft sound like ‘shh’ and not a hard sound like ‘chair’.

‘U’ is not utilized except in compound sounds with other vowels.

‘G’ is always hard, never soft.

In Kreyòl, everything written is spoken–there are no silent letters, ever. A professor of mine terms Kreyòl as a truly democratic language; every letter has a sound that is expressed orally.

Basic sentence structure is Subject-Verb-Object (Li se yon bèl fi/She is a beautiful woman) and Noun-Adjective (Li bèl/She is beautiful). Within that structure:

Tenses and conditions (positive/negation) are assigned by separate verb markers/particles. Absense of a verb marker makes the tense automatically present.

Verbs largely do not conjugate, with some exceptions.

Articles are placed separately from the noun–definite articles are ALWAYS after the noun, indefinite articles are ALWAYS before the noun, and this gives speakers of other languages fits because it is different than the Romance languages most closely related to Kreyòl (my class had several folks who spoke several European-derived languages fluently, and the folks who spoke French or Spanish fluently struggled the most).

Adjectives are mostly after nouns, except when they are not.

Kreyòl is a language of double speak, both in general and in vodou. Words carry multiple meanings depending on context and tone, which can be a struggle when learning and can lead to confusion and sometimes awkward conversation. For example, the word for walk and market is spelled and pronounced the same way, the word for pen can also refer to internal genitalia and/or pubic hair in a female-assigned person in a somewhat rude/abrupt way, and utilizing a nasal versus open vowel sound in ‘I would like to meet you’ in Kreyòl changes that sentence to ‘I would like to fuck you’. Luckily, most Haitians are extremely accommodating to outsiders and understand that mistakes are honest mistakes (but they will laugh…).

Tone and composure (how you fix your face when you speak) is super important. How a sentence is said communicates as much, if not more, than the actual word. How I say ‘yon fanm sa a la’ can change ‘the woman over there’ to ‘can you believe this biiiiiiiitch over there’.

Kreyòl must be spoken with mouth open: no mumbling, etc. To get words across accurately, the mouth must open to make all the sounds.

The language is an independent standalone language with piece of French, Spanish, English, and multiple African languages visible. Much of the sentence structuring is African-derived, particularly from Bantu and Yoruba sources. There is a recent and evolving movement to claim identity of the language as Haitian only, not as Kreyòl.

The language also reflects the lived history of the country and it’s people. A lot of common phraseology reflects the history of enslavement; one of the more common ways to ask where someone lives in-country is ki bò ou ye/kibò ou ye, which translates to ‘what side are you from’. This is directly related to how enslaved Africans lived; plantations were huge and sprawling and so when enslaved Africans met others who were on the same plantation, how they related where they lived on the plantation was in that manner. Like vodou, the language is it’s own living history.

In the religion, language gets more complicated. French is utilized in some specific instances and some spirits, if/when they speak, only speak French, but Kreyòl is the liturgical language of the religion. All the songs and majority of the prayers are in Kreyòl, the community speaks Kreyòl, etc. In general, French is falling away as being a conversational language in Haiti–it is often used in business and medicine, but that’s about it.

There is also langaj, the language of the spirits. This is largely untranslatable language that spirits sometimes use in possession–it can be a combination of Kreyòl and African-descended sounds that are not complete in any African language. What langaj means is often private between the spirit and to whom that spirit is speaking, with the most common uses become accepted parlance (think ritual exclamations, like ‘ayibobo’, ‘awoche Nago’, ‘alaso’, ‘djarvodo/djavodo/djavado’).

Kreyòl is also spoken differently by spirits than by people. Kreyòl in general has many dialects throughout the country, and it follows that the spirits have many dialects as well. Kreyòl in general is spoken very fast by Haitians, and the spirits follow suit with that. In addition, some spirits speak more rural or localized forms of Kreyòl depending on what part of Haiti they are from. Some spirits speak very nasally, some speak so softly it almost sounds like they are only letting out soft breaths, some mix Kreyòl and langaj, some only speak/yell at top volume. All of that is super different than what a language program or even an in-person class can teach, and soKreyòl learned and used in religious settings is picked up contextually.

LearningKreyòl can be a daunting pursuit. Since it is SO orally focused, the best way is to learn orally in an immersive setting; either an intensive class or in Haiti or the Haitian community. There are some language programs, most of them are not great. Here’s what I like:

Ann Pale Kreyol by Albert Valdman is an excellent place to start. Though it is older and some of it is dated, it is still pretty foundational and his teaching methods are still used in classroom teaching. It is pricey for a used copy, but there are PDFs easily available online.

Valdman also produced a bilingual English-Haitian Kreyòl dictionary and it is FANTASTIC. I have several dictionaries and this is by far the best–you get definitions of words, what parts of speech they are, and how they are used both in English and in Kreyòl sentences. It is pricey and you could beat someone to death with it, but it is worth it for learning.

Pawol Lakay is as useful as Ann Pale Kreyol is, and it also comes with CDs (if you can threaten Amazon into making sure they send them with the book). It can be a little weak on sentence structure and what parts of speech are, but it’s good. There is a forthcoming language learning system for Kreyòl that beats the pants off of anything else on the market but it is not out yet.

MangoLanguages is good for basic hello/goodbye/my name is fluency, but I did not find it useful for conversational use. Good introduction, though, and the pronunciation in-program is pretty on-point. Most public library systems and college/university libraries have a free subscriptions for this, there are also pay options.

There are other books that are aimed at travelers and casual users which can be useful, but the above are the best resources I have seen so far. I do not like the Pimsleur system for Kreyòl at all, as it is super limited to essentially picking up women in Port-au-Prince which is great if that’s your jam but not useful for much of anything else. Youtube is full of Kreyòl movies and television and music, which is good to throw on in the background to absorb the sound and cadence of the language. Several professors have cautioned about listening to Haitian radio unless it originates in Haiti, saying that most Haitian radio originating in the US is a broadcast in a mix of Kreyòl and bad French, which can trip up a learner.

I hope this helps! Let me know if I can offer more info.

#vodou #haitian vodou #kreyòl #kreyòl ayisyen #haitian creole

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