#i mean imagine being part of a culture that's ostracized enough as it is

[chepib3]

dick and clark would have such interesting conversations about being ripped away from your culture and your family and about becoming a symbol of hope and resilience in the face of complete loss and all of those fun topics i'm going to pour my feelings about anglo/eurocentrism into those guys any day now

[not-goldy]

Not to ruin the mood, I love Jimin so so so so much. But it just hurts my soul to see him with Taemin a known colorist 😭 I would like to know how others are feeling

That's alright you already killed the mood sis💀

But let's tak about it.

When my sister first moved to Seoul all she did was complain about the people over there. They were mean and rude and racist, colorist, texturists, homophobic you name it.

A few years later, she'd be the one to lecture you about cultural relativism and how some things have been so normalized in those parts of the world that she can't tell anymore if they do all those things to be mean or their just being Koreans.

I had a Nigerian friend too (not trying to come for my Omo Niaja people😩) who'd bleached her skin so much she was near passing as white- save for her under eyes knees, elbow, and knuckles. She was giving real life kunfu panda.

I thought it was strange she'd do that and I complained to my other friend about it and he said, well what's wrong with being light skinned? I am light skinned. Do you think being darker makes you better than I am?

Imagine my shock and surprise😲

It occurred to me then how light skinned blacks also experience discrimination from the black community as well as nonblacks because they are perceived as not "black enough"

Colorism is insidious and prevalent even in media as light skinned black brothers are often overlooked for most roles and when they have to be casted at all they are cast in limited roles. Think Duke of Hastings and Bridgerton and all the roles dark skinned black actors fill as opposed to the light skinned poc actors on TV.

You can be black but will still not be black enough because you speak or sound a certain way, you'd hear you're "pretending to be black" you're pretending to be white, you're "an oreo" as if there's a proper and standard way of being black.

Black people are not monoliths. We come in all shades of black and from various cultures.

But Colorism is the cousin of racism and like racism it can be perpetuated by our own people- sneezing at Chris Brown. Goofy fella that one.

I am not going to defend Taemin.

I know his culture puts him at a disadvantage and exposes him to so many normalized behaviors that outside his culture is and would be construed as perpetuating oppression.

Kpop idols do undergo training and are educated on issues of racism and misogyny and other harmful practices indulged in innocuously. A little bit of self awareness will go a long way.

As long as he acknowledges this challenge, practices mindfulness and is ready to apologize for his actions and most importantly take steps not to repeate them I think he can be forgiven and shouldn't necessarily be "cancelled" for minor infractions.

The internet elves can be so sensitive at times💀

There's this concept in law called the principle of proportionality which is just common sense for the punishment must fit the crime.

You don't cut off people, or deplatform them for harms they've caused negligently unintentionally. Thats toxic and unlawful and extreme, cruel and unusual punishment- hate the crime and not the person as they say.

Saying all this to say, I, Jimin and others can love Taemin, be his friend and still condemn oppression in its various forms.

Expecting Jimin to cut off his closet friend, alienate him and ostracize him for his media blunders that aren't a true reflection of who he is at his core is toxic. True friends don't act like that. Let's be real.

[azhdakha]

Gatekeeping decolonization and indigenous identity

This is something that I, an Indigenous Tatar person, a woman, has been struggling probably since I started my way of reconnecting with my ethnic identity. It hurted to realize that I was deprived of it, deprived of culture, and got it replaced by a colonial one without even knowing it.

But once I got into my ethnic cultural spaces, there awaited another pain - "You're not enough to be a Tatar".

You're not Muslim, you cannot be a Tatar.

You're an atheist, you cannot be Tatar. You're a feminist, you cannot be a Tatar woman.

You are dating outside your ethnicity, you cannot be a Tatar woman.

You're an LGBT, you cannot be a Tatar.

Blatant antisemitism or racism towards your friends and dear ones.

You're a disgrace, a Mankurt, an Urys* doormat, Urys* s*ut, kafir, the list goes on...

You will hear this from your own people. You will hear this from people of other Turkic ethncities, you will hear this from other Muslims. From YOUR OWN. Not from colonisers and racists. I suppose one can imagine how much pain does it cause.

Years of running into such attitude and treatment caused several questions to pop up in my head. How are we supposed to decolonize and preserve our culture, if we push out anyone, who doesn't fit into a narrow category with the list of requirements? Does it even make sense to gatekeep a person from their right for their own ethnic identity because of not following a certain religion and a strict conservative traditional lifestyle in modern reality? Do we expect our nation to survive and not become an archaic thing that colonizers has been labeling us for ages, if we ostracize and kick out anyone who dares to choose a lifestyle? When I began to learn about decolonization and it's importance, the first thing I came to know was that it's first and foremost goal, it's whole purpose is freeing yourself from being forced to do or not to do something. Forced to live a certain way. What I cannot fathom is what is the whole point of decolonialism if it's not liberation and acception of diversity, if it means replacing one kind of coercion and humiliation with another one.

Now before I move to another form of this issue, I want to note that I strongly oppose any kind of Islamophobia. I believe that this might happen in any religious group. My nation, Tatars, happen to be majority-Muslim, this is why I will be talking about religious fanatism in the context of Islam.

"Tatars wouldn't be there if not Islam". It is a fact that Islam was a huge part and a huge contribution to the development of our nation and culture. Yet, the fanatics seem to reduce the whole nation to being Muslim and equalize being Tatar ro being a Muslim, erasing the difference between ethnicity and religion almost completely. Which is also something I cannot comprehend, because it contradicts the factual concepts of both. It simply doesn't work like that. Well, other than the fact that these same people are viewing people of other religious confessions and beliefs as a lower caste. Is it the justice and decolonization we're all fighting for? I think I'll pass.

Now I don't think I need to explain what's wrong with the requirement to follow the patriarchal, lgbt-phobic mindset and lifestyle. It makes things worse that my ethnic community is rather small. The circle of people that I can reconnect and practice my own culture is almost non-existent. And every time I get into one I expect hostility and ostracization, a need to prove again and again that I deserve to be accepted as some second-class Tatar.

I know that being Tatar is inseparable from what who I am, my experience, my perosnality, my idenity. This is why I believe that one can be Tatar and be and atheist. One can be Tatar and be an LGBT-person. One can be Tatar and be a feminist. One can be Tatar and be a leftist.

So I only hope that my confession will have at least a little bit of use. Will it be other people who have a shared experience, or the subject will finally be brought up in Tatar and Turkic communities. Or maybe I'll be screaming into the void once again.

[mikka-minns]

Yeah in most media and I've noticed in Modern Chinese media too, Gods only see Humans as lesser forms of them or insects they can easily crush beneath their feet and we're only useful as their tools but in Vietnam, Gods would quite literally go against whatever more powerful than them if they think to harm the Humans they protect unjustly

Well the Water God Thuy Tinh practically almost ruined the country hence he got the worst punishment, imagine what they would do to some bitch who can't handle and kill innocent mortals cuz they didn't give enough offerings to them?

Yeah a God like that would get QUITE THE REPUTATION here, like you're automatically a trash if you don't do shits but expect more gifts from others, the social reputation they would have is atrocious, the gossip culture here is a huge part of our lives and I like to think it's also a thing to the Gods

Having a reputation of being a Bitch in the Gods' world here is honestly a torture, I mean Thuy Tinh's exile is at least better since most of the time he's spent by himself, I like to think the Gods here are social and well being a God who's known for "want to eat but not want to work" here would give you quite the extreme social ostracism, a big punishment as cruel as being unknown, considering that "you work for to earn to your keep" is a natural thing in Vietnam. Gods here work to earn the respect and devotion from the People so you get what I mean

Even if you aren't super good at your job, being a minor god of a village still has its goods and merits, considering how it's a neat simple job and you're still greatly appreciated even with small efforts, it means you made a contribution to the general benefits of everyone, which is a part of our culture too, as small as your efforts are, they're still contribution for the greater good

We have retired Gods here apparently so I think they just took small positions in small villages and chill for the rest of their immortality, the sweet life

Chinese Gods should go here for retirement since we have great retirement benefits here for Gods and Humans, Gods usually don't deal with too many problems except the occasional chaos which is honestly unavoidable and a part of nature, but it's mostly peaceful and we got great natural habitats perfect for rest and relaxation.

I feel like Chinese Gods would apply for early retirement if they know how good the conditions are here in the Vietnamese Pantheon

Vietnamese pantheon fr gas the best conditions

I feel like they could succswsfully make peace with SWK. Since they are so chill in the first place and wouldnt do half(or any) of the stuff that got Wukong angry with the Chinese gods.

[curryswirl]

higurashi headcanons.

notes under the cut

Satoko is a trans girl. While I think she could be bi, i think she has a particular struggle with her attraction to women once she reaches high school and accepting it is a huge part of her early adulthood. I also love looking at Satoko’s exaggerated “proper lady” bit as a way for her to connect with and have fun with her gender euphoria. See Satoshi’s notes for more details about Satoko’s transition.

Rika is a lesbian, (barely a headcanon) and though I didn’t write it down, I think she considers herself agender, but femme aligned for sure. shrug. I think Rika, being so disconnected from Hinamizawa’s cultural rules, would be ultra supportive of anyone in her life who was a budding queer. She has a large hand in helping Satoko discover this. I think that Hanyuu’s alien origin also opens her mind to the fluidity of gender extremely early in her life.

Mion is a trans girl, and bi. I think that Mion’s deep insecurity about being percieved as a “girl” even though she has “boyish” (ie rowdy) traits has always felt very Gender to me. I think Mion might have began transitioning pretty soon before the story, definetly some time late 1982. I think that additionally, Mion’s crisis wrt Keiichi giving the doll to Rena could hit Shion harder if she was reminded of the general transphobia of the village, seeing as I headcanon Satoshi as an nb trans man as well. More on that in his section.

Shion, being Mion’s identical twin, is also a trans girl. Being exiled and feeling alone for her whole life probably has given her a lot of time to self reflect and I think that Shion began her transition much before Mion. The Sonozaki’s largely ignored this/chose not to acknowledge it/let it fuel their distaste for Shion for sure, but she found acceptance after Mion began her own transition, as Mion is the golden child and her conviction toward her identity impressed Oryou, who essentially dictates everyone’s opinion on the matter anyway.

Hanyuu is a gender fluid person who uses she/he/it. Originally being an incorporeal space creature, I don’t think that Hanyuu’s race had much of a perception of gender, but Hanyuu found euphoria in womanhood and manhood while adapting to human life. Also she’s huge. Which means Eua is even huger.

Keiichi is a he/him lesbian!! I’m not sure why but I’ve been so drawn to this HC lately. Maybe because it makes most of the love interests in lesbian ones if so :P Anyways, Keiichi grew up in the city where I think he was more able to find queer education despite being lonesome and it being the 80′s, especially if he had any awareness of American politics at the time. I think he may be the type to use he/him confidently with friends but have a hard time getting his parents to remember his pronouns because he’s not a trans man.

Satoshi is a trans man, though!! My idea for Satoko and Satoshi is that when their parents died and their Uncle and Aunt took them in, they managed to switch names and go stealth since their Aunt and Uncle probably didn’t give enough of a shit about them to know who was the older one prior to being saddled with them. I imagine they were very ostracized anyway, and Chie is definetly supportive of trans identities, so the transition went well for them both. Rika assuredly help pay for both of their wardrobes with her inheritance, and Chie helped change their legal documents (illegally I think because of laws in Japan but it’s a tiny town, so it wasn’t too hard hehe.)

And finally Rena, who is nonbinary!! I think Rena has a very unique idea about what is “cute” and coupled with their parents being fashion designers i think they would experiment ALOT with their presentation, and eventually land off of the binary spectrum. I like the idea of them gravitating toward their Dad because of his support for them in this regard. Rena definetly reads a lot of queer literature and history!!

[betafibiiiiiivviiixiiixxixxxiv]

so i saw a take about eula that made me mad so here’s my (biased) rant about her

i’m pro-end user license agreement, i think she’s cute, not just appearance-wise but personality-wise too

(didn’t pull her tho bc the kinda obvious powercreeping made me salty, might pull her when her rerun comes around just to have her and not level her)

but basically the gist of this rant is gonna be i think people unfairly mischaracterize her and i’m gonna talk about why i think she’s a good bean based on the two things about her that i’ve seen people mention they dislike the most: the way she talks and her relationship to/feelings about her family

disclaimer: a lot of this is my opinion and my interpretation of her character, probably has a lot of typos

this will probably be really like

incomprehensible i’m tired sorry but i’ll try to make sense

okay so

a lot of people from what i’ve seen dislike eula bc of the way she talks, but at least try to understand why she might talk the way she does

putting aside the reason why she talked the way she did to the people of mondstadt during her story quest (i’ll get to that later), let’s talk about her whole focus on vengeance first

imo her whole thing about vengeance is a shield of sorts for her

many of the people of mondstadt would only ever see her as a descendant of the lawrence clan, someone who means to do mondstadt harm

so might as well give them what they expect, even if it’s not what you really mean

her story in her character profile even says this

“Her grievances and vengeance are but a habit, a signal, a shield.

“What remarks she should just laugh off, what concepts she should bear in mind given her unique circumstances and position...“

one has to remember that eula is a descendant of the lawrence clan, a clan that is hated in mondstadt bc of how corrupted they became during the era of the aristocracy

it’s likely that when she was a child she was ostracized even though the sins of her family, her ancestors, aren’t her own

even if she wanted to make friends with the other children of mondstadt, they were probably too distrustful of her

in her story in her character profile, there’s no mention of jean or diluc in regards to her past, but amber is mentioned to have been her friend even before eula joined the knights of favnious

it’s likely amber was one of her few friends growing up, if not her only friend

and amber is a pretty easy-going and welcoming person; she probably didn’t care about the way eula spoke all that much and bc they’re friends she understands the feelings eula hides behind her seemingly contentious words

anyways about her and the people of mondstadt

the people of mondstadt only see the family she’s a part of; they don’t see her

from her profile story:

“Eula has been viewed with contempt by the citizens of Mondstadt since birth. The Lawrence name stands for a legacy of depravity and despotism that stains Mondstadt's past and scars the minds of its citizens even to this day.

“So, whenever Eula appears, old wounds resurface. People despise the aristocracy, and this does no favors for her reputation.”

“In truth, Eula is nothing like the fearsome predator many imagine her to be. On the contrary, constantly being met with prejudice at every turn means she is often the victim.

“At one time, shops would refuse to sell her their goods, restaurants would put no care and attention into her orders, and the citizens on her patrol route would refuse to cooperate with her. So, Eula's work is fraught with difficulties.“

and in her voicelines:

“The life of a Lawrence doesn't include much worth talking about... Basically, whatever you say, whatever you do, people will always despise you and treat you like a potential threat to society. It's nowhere near as bad as it used to be, though. Before I'd joined the Knights, good grief... I couldn't even buy groceries. Even Good Hunter and Mondstadt General Goods wouldn't take my money.”

“People tell me that if I just spoke more softly, or was more polite, or acted more deferentially, others may find it easier to forgive me, but the only reason they think that way is because they've never been branded a pariah before. There is no easy path to redemption when you're a social pariah. I'm more inclined to stop tiptoeing around everyone all the time and just get out there and make them respect me the old-fashioned way! As in, we square off and if they win, I humbly accept my punishment, but if they lose, they must acquiesce to my demands... Such as... Well, I mean, if I want to buy a loaf of bread, take my darn money, for crying out loud!“

the people of mondstadt wronged her and were mean to her simply bc of the blood that runs through her veins, and i think it’s bc of that she says that she’ll have her vengeance

imo her act of vengeance against the people of mondstadt is being a faultless knight, a knight who completes their duties flawlessly and is without reproach

from her story in her profile:

“...she is a law-abiding citizen and has never harmed another Mondstadter in her life. She may come across as having a somewhat frosty demeanor, but she is entirely scrupulous in her speech and conduct.”

“When Jean sends a new recruit to track down Eula in the wilds and deliver a new set of verbal orders, they always receive the same response: ‘If you have to resort to tasking the descendant of your former oppressors with doing your work, then perhaps you are not as strong as I thought’

“But despite the antagonism in her words, she will complete her newly assigned tasks to perfection. The new recruit is invariably forced to admit that with her abilities, it is no wonder she was able to achieve a captaincy within just a few years of joining the Knights.“

and honestly i just think she’s a tsundere

my evidence, your honor?

her “About Us: Feud” voiceline:

“Our feud is for the long term, so rather than get payback on a piecemeal basis, I think I'll make things easier for myself and wait for a day when I can settle the score once and for all. It could be in ten years, could even be twenty... But don't worry, I won't forget. In the meantime, I'll need you to take good care of yourself and have a happy, healthy life, okay?”

anyways about the way she spoke in her story quest

one first has to learn that this was what she was taught that way since she was young

reading up on the lawrence family based on her profile story, the renmants of the lawrence family are pretty much a cult i think

“The Lawrence Clan may have been overthrown a long time ago, but they have never given up hope of one day rising again and reclaiming their place as the ruling class. So that they are always prepared for this monumental moment, their offspring are subjected to an educational regime so unbelievably harsh that it is considered borderline abusive.

“’Noble obligations’ must be performed to absolute perfection in every possible sense, and these obligations cover etiquette, ritual, and study as well as cooking and other domestic chores.”

and also

she clearly doesn’t talk that way all the time?

personally the reason i think the mondstadters we talked to were like ‘ugh, this again?’ is bc all of the lawrence clan does it, and eula is part of the lawrence clan so it’s like, expected of her to talk that way

but the main reason she talked that way was to give an example to the traveler

she didn’t talk that way to us when we first met her, and she didn’t talk that way to amber and sarah

and some people think she still supports her family? like man

i don’t know if we went through the same story quest or not

but eula quite clearly ruined a plan of her uncle’s that was to harm mondstadt? and during that quest she quite clearly shows her disdain for her family and her family’s ideals?

“I’ve never experienced the age of ‘glory’ you always speak of, and I’ve never understood our family’s incessant pursuit of it. [...] The Lawrence Clan should never and will never become what you’ve dreamed it to be!”

not to mention her voicelines where she makes fun of her family often:

“Knights and aristocrats share the same cultural heritage, but the knights had enough sense to do away with all the superfluous detail.“

“Aristocratic etiquette is all just for show... Just smile and nod along! I was forced to learn all of the rules by heart, but even I don't take them that seriously.”

“I heard that bard sing a few songs about the Lawrence Clan... They were lighthearted and funny stories that mocked the clan in a way I've never heard anyone else do. Even I couldn't help but burst out laughing... And for this, he must pay!”

“Technically, aged Dandelion Wine should be poured into a silver goblet and allowed to breathe for 12 minutes, then you're supposed to add ice cubes, ideally so 60% of the ice is submerged beneath the wine. I refuse to do all that though, it's not worth the hassle.”

and not to mention this voiceline where she outright states that if her family crossed the line she’d end her family herself:

“If my family members refuse to change their corrupt ways, or worse, continue to cause active harm in Mondstadt... I should be the one to end them, along with the Lawrence name itself. For once, it'd be a family obligation I'd actually enjoy. And once the deed was done, I'd be free to pick any name I wanted. Or even let you pick one for me!“

also about her saying she wants to avenge her kin in her voicelines, (this is me kinda reaching, ngl) imo it could just be her sarcasm, or she could be trying to change mondstadt’s view of the lawrence clan so that others in the family like her who aren’t as attatched to the aristocratic customs and share her beliefs can walk freely in mondstadt’s streets without fear of reprisal, which can be evidenced by this voiceline:

“The name Lawrence only became a social stigma after the clan fell from grace. It was once an honor to be called a Lawrence, but unfortunately, most people have forgotten about that part of history. The Grand Master says that I am performing rather well as a knight, and that if it's not enough to restore the honor of the Lawrence name, it's certainly a strong rebuttal against the one-sided opinions so many people throw around. I'm quite satisfied with that appraisal.“

furthermore based on her voiceline about barbara, i’m pretty sure she wants to be liked? to be acknowledged in a good way?

“Everyone loves her. What's her secret? Maybe I could learn a thing or two from her... Hmm, or maybe not. I can't imagine a ‘Shining Idol’ would want anything to do with a descendant of a depraved dynasty.“

like, she doesn’t want to be thought of as just a descendant of the lawrence clan

she wants to be known for who she is, not her family

i think this is why she avoids lisa too, since lisa would have read all about her family and she doesn’t want lisa’s judgement

lastly, what she learned from amber’s grandfather, found in her profile story:

“From him, she learned an open-mindedness and down-to-earth persistence that she had heretofore not possessed. Before grievance and vengeance, before clan and outsider, one must find "oneself" first.

“One's way of living, self-preservation, objects of perseverance...

“Then call it "grievance" and name it "vengeance" — that will not change its essential strength and goodness.

“It would be Eula's very own gentle path of revenge...“

she didn’t turn against the people of mondstadt and join her family in their crusade for glory even though the people of mondstadt treated her horribly

she instead strove to be someone worthy of being respected, someone who is more than just a part of a disgraced and despised family

anyways i think that’s all i wanted to say

basically tldr: end user license agreement is a sweet and gentle person and i like her very much

[ngendo]

Birthday Flex

*Text first published on 23rd March 2021 on Facebook.*

Dear People, Thank you so much for the birthday wishes. It's very strange to try to celebrate while there is so much hurt in the air, streaming through our blood, burying itself between each, single, breath. I know three people who have lost loved ones this week, and it's Tuesday. Because of them and so many others, I celebrate the fact that I am still here. That I still breath, that I still get pissed off, that I continue to march on wards to (and hopefully through) 40, that I can complain, that I can lay on the grass in my garden, go for walks in the evening, drink tea, cuddle with my lover, play football with Chairman, harvest mint between giggles with my niece. I MUST celebrate that the things that prickle my skin and make my blood boil, can only do so, because I am here. Being angry is part of being alive, and knowing, that we DESERVE better WHILE we are here. Here. Not tomorrow, not in an afterlife unseen. HERE. I am grateful to be alive on this beautiful, hectic, violent ass planet. Violent, because we made it so. I am grateful to be aging because the other option is to be gone. I am grateful to have anger coursing through my veins, because it means that sometimes I find enough courage to erupt, to burn, and to say NO FUCKING MORE. The liberation to be a woman and to burn so bright that people fear your voice, but cannot come to your face and silence it..... ahhhhh, it's like eating cool chunks of pineapple in the afternoon sun, until my tongue stings. To be an African Woman that can shout my truth and only receive whispers in the wind from those who prefer my silence.... to KNOW that I have brought fear to those who willingly oppress others daily..... it is the scent of freshly cut strawberries saturating my nose.   It is the fruition of my toil.   I wish that all of us could experience this at least once in our lives, for it is simply being a human. Being allowed to occupy space. That is it. Daily, we operate in fear, silenced in advanced by doctrine, by tradition, by manhood, by whiteness, by the patriarchy. Fuck all that shit. Burn Bissshhhh. Burn. My anger is born of LOVE. >Love for my people. >Love for Afro women carrying too much weight on their backs, while foreigners with lenses exoticize the length of our necks, and our male counterparts pontificate about our resilience with opaque ideas of 'tradition'. >Love for my LGBTQI people ducking and diving between shadows because our society worships a white god that banished Blackness and ALL African sexuality, into aberration. >Love for the people who service our middle class asses daily but every damn time one of us tries to get them better salaries, the neighbourhood committee throws mountains of paperwork in your face to keep poor people poor. (Note for anyone who is economically marginalised, DO NOT trust the Kenyan middle and upper class. We're too busy imagining we can become millio-billionaires while using the Bible to justify your poverty. At any chance you get, throw us overboard.) > Love for the fucking effort it takes just to speak your truth despite knowing that some of your friends will feel the need to inform you that they  as a person living in white skin (especially the ones in Europe) KNOW the ultimate and only legitimate complete alpha and omega truth about being a Black person. (Fuck right off by the way. Cheers.) > Love for all of us surviving Christianity through complete cultural erasure and the severing of ourselves from our own Black bodies and tongues, even when we cannot name that emptiness. > Love for all of us relegated to even lower depths of the hierarchy because we were born with not a penis nigh! >Love for us additionally ostracized for being the parent that stayed. (Single moms where you at!? ) > Love for all of us who silently cry NO MORE even as society uses our bent backs as a foundation for the institutions that oppress us. Growing up, I was repeatedly told that I as a girl should be quiet, I should sit with my legs close together and cover myself up, I was told it's not nice for me to be angry, or to swear, nice girls don't move their hands about when talking, nice girls don't shout. I was told, "Women don't have muscles" even as I could tense the rippling sinews on my abdomen and form a juicy waru on my arm. Anger is perhaps the greatest muscle we were taught to never flex. It was smothered into the most silent corners of our ever silent bodies. But our anger is bright and buoyant and fucking beautiful. While others are allowed to tear through nail salons, and churches, and communities, and races, and entire continents, and their psychosis is celebrated as conquest and empire, or noted as depression and 'having a bad day'...... Our rightful and justified anger has been silenced from our very first cry at birth. The rage of women, could turn this whole world upside down, inside out. This woman has muscles. This woman swears. This woman sits with her legs open when she fucking wants. This woman has sex. This woman takes shits. This woman writes poetry and paints pictures. This woman makes films, and my films are fucking legit. This woman loves herself. I love myself. I love myself over and beyond the conditional respect and allowances you may grant me. They are not important to me. I have no love for your rules and regulations set to limit my freedoms. If this hurts your sensibilities, try loving yourself instead. In any case, IDGAF. Happy New Birth Year to me. Happy Re-Birth to all the women I know. We must burn today, because we won't be here tomorrow. We must burn today, because otherwise, when we are gone our only legacy will have been our subservience; kneeling as a stepping stone for the dreams of others. We must burn today, because that subservience will be celebrated to oppress those that come after us. Women. Burn. May our collective anger over run the shackles that contain us. Heck fucking yeah!!

[yibuo]

1. As a SA I agree with u that sex is something we dont discuss and we never even touch the topic until we think we're grown up to talk abt, even with friends. I love it when western ppl try to discuss and dissect asian content with their own values and upbringing. So I dont really think lwj or wei ying are asexual at all, the story in the novel starts at a tender age of 13 or 14 and most asian kids at that age are really kids, No 13 year I knew was confident abt dating at that young age.

2. But I disagree u on one think I loved the way the author wrote lan zhan, coz this boy has hidden away from any human emotion. He locked himself in the library or used to practice what he learned, he never even learned the art of simple conversation and suddenly him realising that he might have fallen in love must have made his life unstable. Him telling his brother that he might be in love just tells u how much wei ying affected him, he just didnt have the tools to express the need and love

3. Lwj was smitten and even wrote a song just for them, he wasnt confident enough and didnt know enough to make a move, when he did wei ying forgot and so lwj kept thinking he was reject but still stood with him. Lwj is basically the longing and wwx was disbelief. Wwx never believed he was worth anything, he might have gotten a house to call home but the way the lady of the house treated him made him have issues. Love wasnt the only thing which made him give his golden core to jc.

4. It was also the sense of duty that these ppl helped me now I have to sacrifice myself for them. Even with lwj he keeps thinking hes ruined lwjs white cloths everytime they end up fighting someone or thing. He felt guilty for his feelings coz he wasnt sure that he would be ever accepted anywhere. Wen for him became a mission coz he lived as a dirt poor kid, he knew how they felt.

5. So yep I dont think lwj or wwx were written badly it's just the cultural thing coming in abt relationships. I seriously am loving this writers another novel coz they write the relationship like normalised relationships. Couples are made when one person is persuaded by the other. Never have I seen both ppl fall in love at the same time. P.S. sorry for the rant, it just makes me angry when white ppl think that us asians live their kind of life style

hey! this is going under the cut because much food for thought. you made 2 valid points and i’ll reply to both. also please feel free to correct me if i’m wrong. this is just based on my experience as a south asian lgbt who had the luxury to grow up and figure out this whole sex and lgbt thing along with other (east & south) asian lgbt individuals. i’m definitely not opposed to criticism and it’s important that i be corrected should i have said something wrong !!!!! and tbh that might give me some priviledge because i know some asian individuals probably didn’t have the same type of support group that i did to help figure out sexuality things

western values and expectations being pushed onto asian media - i think it’s really funny how people from the west like to push their expectations of romance/relationships onto asian media. like asian parents, east or south, are very minimal about exposing us to sex ed and sex in media, and media itself is very minimal on showing sexual attraction between characters (straight or gay) and romance is limited to kissing and hugging (unless it’s after marriage...maybe). like sex is just viewed as a baby-making tool?? i had this convo with my 1st gen east-asian friends last night nd we all came to the conclusion that we grew up w the idea that “sex happens but it only happens to ur partner for the rest of ur life” kinda thing so it’s completely a culture shock to us when western media has high-schoolers having sex and being chill about it ?? i couldn’t even imagine. so yeah anyway. not asexual. no sex in the show doesn’t mean asexual.that’s just not how dramas work lol plus yeah lol why are people expecting teenagers to have sex like...???? that’s just not a thing in mainstream media btw i’m not saying that gay sex shouldn’t be in asian media- i’m just tryna say that sex in general isn’t prominent especially in asian media

also it’s really interesting a lot of people were like the western idea of gay relationships are “conservative” like i feel like the hypersexualization especially of gay men started from western culture (specifically cis white males, for ex, when they first started making clinics to target lgbt people, the clinics were modeled after cis white males, which ended up ostracizing other lgbt groups) lol (like have U Seen All The Gay Thirst Traps On TikTok Lol /s) i’ve seen a lot of my friends (asian and white alike) be negatively affected by these standards which are propogated by the hypersexualization of gay males

wangxian- for lwj i just wish they didn’t write that part where he was some angsty teen who had to blindfold kss his crush to get his point across...i think that part was just so weird because it kinda furthers the idea of “people forcing each other on other people is romantic” but like it really isn’t?? idk that’s just my 2 cents i feel like that’s common sense lol and then i think it’s weirder that he hides it and even weirder that at the end it’s just cool “like o u forced kissed me? i thought it was a girl or something but that’s cool whatever <3″ idk it was just weird and it didn’t sit well w/ me. i’ve just seen people close to me affected by this kind of stuff and romanticizing of noncon just doesn’t seem like a kink it’s just. weird. sorry i don’t know how to form sentences. otherwise i really liked the idea of lwj being someone who’s so far from romance and love and expressing emotion turning into someone who shows love and loyalty

tldr; asian mainstream media doesn’t really focus on sex (not sexuality but sex), kinky sexy times are ok but noncon isn’t, western ppl stop tryna take over the world pls

[digikate813]

My Top 5 Favorite Ponies from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic

One thing that’s amazing about Friendship is Magic is just how many memorable characters there are. Not only were there six main ponies who each took turns having dedicated episodes, but each season brought with it new locations, new challenges, and yes, new characters. All diverse and most endearing. Which is why today I”m counting down my Top 5 favorite pony characters. And since ponies are what started all of this, we’re gonna stick with ponies. Although there are many great characters in Equestria and beyond who aren’t ponies that could easily make for a list of it’s own. But let’s start this off with…

#5 Derpy Hooves/Ditzy Doo

No I am not calling her Muffins. Nobody calls her Muffins besides Hasbro. But if that’s what it takes to keep this adorable wool eyed mare around, then so be it. As someone who came into the fandom right before Season 3, Derpy as a creative piece and what she represents to the fandom, fascinates me.

Of course what made Derpy special right from the start is how fans personified her. From a simple animation error, she developed a character that attracted people. And from what I can tell, as the first season continued, fans assigned her personality traits like they were an improv troop. Derpy is really excited about muffins? They must be her favorite food! She drops things out of a moving truck? Maybe it’s a delivery truck. Maybe she’s a mail mare! From becoming a companion to a time traveling stallion to being a single mom of a unicorn filly also in the background who looked a little like her. It was the first time (though certainly not the last, not even on this list) the brony fandom created such a rich and involved life for a character who was never meant to do more then fill in the background.

But then “The Last Roundup” controversy happened. And something about Derpy’s role in the fandom culture, changed. Suddenly Derpy was, a symbol. People related not to the people who complained that she was offensive, but how her presence on the show was censored and almost silenced. One of the most relatable things to a brony is being ostracized from the outside world for expressing yourself. As time went on, Derpy began to become a symbol of strength and self love. Heck my favorite song in the fandom and one of my favorite songs period, was inspired by a note left behind to the writer and performer at Bronycon saying “It’s Great to be Different. Love Derpy.”.

Derpy went from being a lovable joke, to an icon that represented the failures and triumphs of many members of the community, and those who chose to tell her stories. That even if you are different in some way, you can still live a full and loving life. And when “Slice of Life” came around, it felt like it was the true celebration of what Derpy was to all of us that she was meant to be back in The Last Roundup. But because there was more screen time now, they were able to show all of what makes Derpy so adorable and beloved.

From her many future appearances in the show itself, to the empowering and endearing fan made content surrounding the little gray pegasus that’s been produced since, Derpy is an amazing creation that is so wonderful to watch no matter what form she takes. And now for the complete opposite pony…..

#4 Twilight Sparkle

I generally consider MLP an ensemble show, since there are so many characters who get almost an equal amount of focus. However, there’s no denying that the show started with, and therefore mostly revolves around Twilight and her journey. Her friends and then their friends and family, as it expands into the massive cast we know and love. But that all started with a studious little unicorn.

There’s so much to like about Twilight. On the surface I always found her excitement for knowledge and study to be a great trait, especially to display to kids. Showing how excited people can be to learn and explore without being the “token nerd”. And of course her freak outs are legendary.

But what I appreciate about Twilight is her external and internal journey as a character. That despite being the studious one, she doesn’t know everything. That just because she’s really good at the skills she acquires, doesn’t mean she’s perfect all the time, or that she should be expected to be.

Twilight’s journey represents the path of the entire show. Learning different lessons on friendship and responsibility. That just because things happened in the past doesn’t mean you can’t evolve if someone’s willing to give you the chance. That just because someone is different and maybe a bit closed off, doesn’t mean it isn’t worth it to try and get to know them. That when you move up in the world and magically sprout a pair of wings, and it feels like you’ve achieved everything you thought you could, doesn’t mean you have.

There are always things to learn, ways to grow, mistakes to be made and friends to find. That lesson and advice can come from the most unlikely of places like Discord and Starlight.Twilight had a cray journey through the 9 seasons of Friendship is Magic, but the most important thing is that she never stopped learning. Even when she moved on to teaching.

Twilight represents how no matter what you think at the time, there’s no one path to life. One day you’re focused on being a princess’s best student, the next you’re a princess yourself. Or venturing out beyond the borders of your land. Or opening a school to all creatures so you can help them all. To eventually, ruling the land. And even after achieving that, there are still challenges.

A friend of mine once pointed out that Twilight’s journey is quite a bit similar to some of the reformed villains. Somepony who was isolated and alone and wanted nothing to do with friendship. Who thought she could do everything herself. Until five random ponies decided to march into a forest to lend a hand, and changed her life forever. Twilight represents that no matter how much you succeed or how much you fail, there’s always something to gain from it. And that nobody accomplishes greatness alone. TL:DR, Twilight embodies the magic of friendship. Which is pretty obvious I know but it’s still worth celebrating.

#3 Princess Luna

Luna Luna Luna. Everypony loves Luna. At least everypony in the fan base does, it took a while for the ponies in the show to warm up to her remember. So Luna makes this list above the main character who I just said embodies what the entire show is about because, thanks to Luna’s overwhelming popularity, it sparked my curiosity enough to watch the episode she featured in. My first episode of MLP was “Luna Eclipsed”. So yeah, Luna is partly responsible for getting me involved in all of this and why you’re reading this right now.

Some people think Luna is overrated or not worthy of all of this praise. And while I understand where these people are coming from, I can’t say I agree. The reasons to love Luna only got longer as the years went on, but I think the spark in the beginning was her story as Nightmare Moon. Can you imagine how easy it would have been to make Luna Celestia’s opposite in every way? Not just in their functions for the land? Relatives who are evil for the sake of evil are hardly rare in children’s media. Especially in the stuff marketed to girls.

But what set Luna apart is that they gave her motivation. An actual reason for why she wanted to plunge the world into eternal night. Because she wanted to be appreciated. And while Luna may not have, taken the best approach towards accomplishing that, who can’t relate to that?

And I’m always a huge fan of villain redemption stories personally, so as I watched “Luna Eclipsed”, and saw Luna fitting back in with the ponies was something I really liked. And after getting more involved with the series, it was really gratifying to see more of her as she slowly began to have a more prominent role in the show and progress more as a character.

Having her teach the CMC through their dreams was a great idea for a group of episodes, showing that Luna can use her past mistakes to teach other ponies to be better. Watching her still struggle with those feelings of guilt and regret from her actions as Nightmare Moon in the somewhat controversial, yet beloved to me and quite a few others, “Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep?”. And much later, getting to finally see how she spends time with her very different, yet still loving sister.

The show may have had many villains see the error of their ways through the power of friendship and rainbow lasers, but Luna was the first, and to this day, most loved. She dominates the charts every time a “Best Princess” poll comes up because apart from Twilight, she’s the most interesting and developed.

There may have been times where they had to work backwards for development, but in the end Luna had an amazing presence throughout the series from Day 1, and in a way, may have been one of the keys to it’s first spark of appeal to older viewers. But who knows?

#2 Time Turner/Doctor Whooves

Well we’ve all got a favorite background pony. And as much as I love Derpy, this eccentric scientist remains my favorite. Like with Luna, part of the reason the fan named Doctor Whooves is one of my favorite ponies is because he got me more involved in the fandom. And just to clarify, no. I was not a Doctor Who fan before I was an MLP fan.

But there was just something about the bizarre combination of My Little Pony and Doctor Who that just peaked my curiosity. And thanks to the likes of the incredible audio dramas Doctor Whooves and Assistant and Doctor Whooves Adventures, I became even more interested in both MLP and Doctor Who, and dove full force into the fandom within a fandom that was the Doctor Whooves community. So many Doctors, so little time. And it was glorious!

Doctor Whooves is just one of those concepts that is so enjoyable to create stories and concepts around. Between the two worlds the possibilities are endless! And it was always fun and exciting to come across someone else’s version of this idea that’s, weird, but works. And I myself have celebrated my love for the time traveling stallion in all sorts of ways from animatics to reviews to traditional fan art.

And then, “Slice of Life” happened. While he wasn’t an actual time traveling thousand year old alien (not as far as we know anyway) I really loved how they characterized him in the show itself. His eccentric experiments, Peter New’s delightful rambly voice work, throwing in a couple of Doctor Who references that are blatant and subtle at the same time. It was so much fun to watch, and to see him again every now and then during the remainder of the series.

And to think all of that came from a random hour glass cutie mark and someone out there thinking his mane looked sort of like David Tennant’s hair. Have I mentioned how much this fandom’s imagination blows my mind???

#1 Fluttershy

Oh my dear sweet Fluttershy. One of the benefits to having six main ponies is that they can cover a broad spectrum of character types. Everyone develops a favorite among the group at some point, and while there are many different reasons for a character to be your favorite, 9 times out of 10 when someone is asked who their favorite is among the Mane Six, it’s usually because they can relate to them. That they see themselves in one of these pastels ponies personalities or goals or growth. That is what Fluttershy is to me.

I relate to Fluttershy, so much it scares me sometimes. Being really quiet around people I don’t know well. Getting nervous about things others might find ridiculous. Apologizing profusely for things. And most importantly, trying to be genuinely nice and understanding, even when it’s hard.

I understand both Fluttershy’s highs and lows. How she really tries to be stronger then her anxieties, that are tough for those who don’t have those issues to understand why she’s acting that way. How satisfying it is in those times when you can overcome your anxieties, and look a scary person or situation in the eye and face it. How the friends you make can make you more comfortable and open to new opportunities and experiences.

Despite her shy nature, Fluttershy is a tower of strength. And her development throughout the course of the series is the most satisfying to me. Going from not being able to talk to a new pony in town, to sincerely befriending the lord of chaos. From being kicked around by strangers in a marketplace, to being assertive with her own brother and helping him get his act together. From bending over backwards to not hurt other ponies feelings, to firing workers who weren’t respecting here wishes.

Probably the best thing about Fluttershy’s character development is that, it takes it’s time. But the progress she makes is clear. As she says in “Fame and Misfortune”, it took her a while to get there, but you don’t learn a lesson once and completely change who you are. Fluttershy represents the very subtle development we all make everyday if we try. It may not show too much the next day, but if we keep striving to be better and more outgoing, the results will speak for themselves over time.

I love absolutely everything about Fluttershy. Her design is adorable. Her voice work from Andrea Libman is perfect. Her work with animals and the kindness she spreads throughout the show is sweet and admirable, and she’s a beacon of hope for those who feel weak or suffer from anxieties. Who feel like they can never improve. Fluttershy shows that you can make improvements every day. It doesn’t mean you have to change overnight. And that the quietest pony, can turn out to be the strongest.

So those are my Top 5 Favorite Ponies, and be sure to let me know who some of your favorite ponies are. Not just your all time favorite, but some of the runner ups. There are many different reasons to love certain characters and that might not all apply to one of them. That’s the fun thing about this topic. With so many great characters and so many reasons to like some of them, everyone’s answer is unique and interesting. Just like the ponies themselves.

[the-far-bright-center]

Update :)

Hey everyone, it’s been a while. You may have noticed that lately there’s been a bit of a decrease in daily posts here, and that I haven’t been as consistent with tagging, etc. For the past three months, I’ve been in the middle of an unexpected and extremely stressful house move. During this time, I’ve had very unreliable and inconsistent internet access, so I decided to run this blog on a queue, and add to it with intermittent reblogs whenever I could get the chance. To say it’s been frustrating is an understatement, and I sincerely apologize to those of you who have messaged me or sent me asks during this time – I’ve been so exhausted, it’s been impossible to keep up with everything.

Thankfully, the house move is now winding down (we’re now finally in the new house, but still unpacking, settling in, etc.), so I should at least be able to resume curating this blog with more of my usual attentiveness. I’d like to say that everything will now go back to normal, but….I’m honestly not quite sure what ‘normal’ is anymore. Over the last few months, I have been thinking long and hard about my continued involvement in SW fandom, and have come to some difficult, but, imo, necessary, conclusions.

Don’t worry, I am not leaving tumblr, nor am I going to stop posting on this blog. It means too much to me to do that. However, I feel I must make it clear that, from here on out, I can no longer have anything to do with any current or forthcoming ‘New Canon’ material, whether it be films, tv series (animated or otherwise), novels, comics….just…none of it. 

Most of you know me well enough by now that I don’t think I even need to explain why, but I will do so, just in case.... 

I had always intended to completely divorce myself from the Disney stuff once Star Wars: Rebels had finished airing, but since, for a variety of reasons, it turned out that I was never able to finish watching that show through to its conclusion, this ended up happening far sooner than I’d expected. (I won’t even get into my thoughts on the renewed Clone Wars season – the less I say about it, or even acknowledge its existence, the better…for the state of my mental and emotional health, at the very least.)

My reasons for wanting—no, needing— to stay as far away as possible from Disney’s version of Star Wars from now on are many and varied [see here, here, here, and here], but ultimately it comes down to several inter-related issues, the most key being that ever since TFA, I have not been able to trust Disney with Star Wars, and will never be able to fully trust them with it ever again. It does not matter how much ‘good’ material they put out to balance out the bad, it’s too late…the damage is done. And since the version of SW as put forth in the sequels is probably the worst, most out-of-character, inaccurate, and disrespectful interpretation of my beloved story that I could possibly imagine, I therefore cannot help but view the rest of Disney’s output (however innocuous, and regardless of who writes/directs/creates it) with extreme skepticism, and an anxiety bordering on panic.

As I’ve gone over many times before, the entire premise of the so-called ‘sequels’ is anathema to pretty much all of my long-held beliefs and understanding of the saga as a whole…and to what I had, for decades, assumed that other fans implicitly understood and valued as well. And so, the fact that so many fans have so readily embraced those movies and swallowed down Disney’s bizarro version of the SW saga without hesitation or question, has continued to leave me feeling more and more heart-broken and ostracized. Not only from an entire fandom, but also from popular culture in general. It’s made me realize that, for far too many people, ‘Star Wars’ is indeed just a blockbuster series of movies, and is not the mythical two-part saga that it is to me. For far too many people, it is now, at worst, an endless, profit-churning franchise…at best, another version of an expanded universe, albeit one that has been corporately ‘canonized’. 

The fact that I can no longer relate to most other SW fans is beyond depressing for me. Something I used to take for granted – the universal appeal and relatability of Star Wars as a modern myth—no longer exists. I can’t even talk about my beloved Star Wars with people in RL anymore, lest someone let slip a spoiler that will break my heart all over again.  It is no wonder that the lead-up to every subsequent release since then (even the ones I have been actively ignoring, which is most of them) has left me a shaking, nervous wreck….and given the often fragile state of my mental health in general, this has been downright dangerous for me at times. Even just stumbling across or hearing about SW related news and announcement can leave me distressed and despondent for days on end. It takes a herculean effort for me to then reclaim a positive headspace and find my ‘happy place’ again after something like this. So I blacklist as much as I can, but it doesn’t always work, because… in order to keep this blog even remotely active, I have to peruse other SW blogs for content. And, given my need to AVOID spoilers like the plague, I struggle to do this at the best of times. Disney has so oversaturated the market with their output that sometimes it seems like every damn day there is yet another announcement of some new release. It’s just too much, and the fact that there is no end in sight is demoralizing as hell. (I dream of creating a time machine and going back to before all of this shit, just to make it stAHP.) Ultimately, all of this combines together to leave me feeling completely alienated, stressed out, and just plain unhappy.

But no more, I say. This is FANDOM….it’s supposed to be FUN. It’s supposed to make me happy. Life is already horrifically depressing and stressful as it is. And what is more… this blog in particular is supposed to be my safe space. That’s what I created it to be, in the first place.

In short, the conclusion I’ve reached is this: in order to continue enjoying the REAL my preferred version of SW in the way that I need to engage with it, I MUST completely remove myself from new Disney content. If I do not, I will lose the ability to enjoy any of it at all. 

So, my friends, while I’m not going anywhere (not just yet anyway), I do need to ask you all to please continue being patient and understanding with me about these above-mentioned issues. If you want to engage in meta discussions with me, for instance, please be aware that I will only talk about interpretations of ‘Star Wars’ as Lucas’ saga (and anything that is supplementary or supportive of that), and will not engage with anything that tries to insinuate that the sequels nonsense is even remotely part of the same story. Likewise, I beg you all to please refrain from commenting on my posts or messaging me about anything to do with upcoming releases, news, or any Disney Star Wars stuff from this point on. Again, I’m happy to discuss past content…to an extent (if you’re not sure what, please feel free to message me for clarification). But any new Disney content I just….don’t want to hear about. At all. Even if you THINK I will like it or be ok with it. The fact is… I won’t. Because Star Wars is finished. It’s a completed story. ‘IT IS ALREADY OVER. NOTHING CAN BE DONE TO CHANGE IT.’  I neither want nor need any more from it – whether as a story OR a ‘franchise’ – than what already exists.  And I become stressed and anxious the moment anyone (purposefully or inadvertently) suggests that I ought to be watching/reading/seeing/hearing about what I personally feel is just a fake version of the REAL THING that I hold dear.

Finally, I just want to clarify that, because of all of this, it’s unlikely that I will be able to keep this blog up-to-date with all the ‘latest�� content (not that I ever have done so, lol). I will, however, continue to keep it to the standards I have set so far. As always, the subject matter will be mostly be Prequels Trilogy, along with the (original!!) Clone Wars animated series (aka, seasons 1-5), Rebels (but only up through season 4a), Rogue One, and, of course, the Original Trilogy. Some supplementary material from those eras may creep in, along with occasional EU content. I just I thought I’d better make it clear that there won’t be any further ‘new canon’ on this blog…. at least, not unless some kind of unforeseen miracle happens and Disney decides to de-canonize their shitty sequel trilogy and magically make me trust them again! (ha ha I can dream)

Because it’s so difficult for me to find new content on tumblr without running into stuff I do not want to see, I have for a while now had the goal of creating my own content for those times when I can’t find anything new. Frustratingly, due to the house move, I’ve been way too busy to even contemplate that in recent times, but I do have some still-unfinished and in-progress projects that I’d like to eventually share here. In addition to this blog, I also ‘curate’ my own RL Star Wars collection, so once I get a new safe place to set it up, expect regular photoshoots of my action figures and other collectibles as well. :)

Most of all, I want to say THANK YOU to everyone who has stuck with this blog for so long. Thank you for respecting my various quirks, neuroses, and eccentricities, and for helping to keep this blog a safe space.

And to any new followers out there…. a belated, but very warm, welcome! :)  

[violetsystems]

#personal

The weather is back to being amazing again.  This is the horrible curse about Chicago.  For maybe five or six months out of the year, the temperature is gorgeous if not sometimes extreme.  Now that the AC is on, my cat sleeps like a human in bed often.  A little human.  I wake up a few times a night to find her in different spots.  Mostly just waiting for me to feed her wet food in the morning.  I still feed the cat outside my door.  My immediate neighbors do as well.  I think when you think about common ground between people in society you have a good starting point there.  They share the porch here.  Sometimes it’s a little claustrophobic.  But it is never trans or homophobic.  I think people like myself who openly identify as straight and cis could do a better job at empathizing.  But people are already bothered enough by society to where I try to tread lightly as to how I do this.  Nobody wants to be patronized.  It’s tacky.  So it’s always the little things in this neighborhood that communicate the most.  Hanging a plant for your elderly neighbor.  Shoveling the snow early in the morning in the dead of winter.  In the summer, it’s a little easier to be patient with the ways people try to communicate.  And then there’s the glaringly obvious clues that people don’t really give a shit.  I went to do the laundry yesterday.  It’s a small building so not a lot of traffic down there.  The trash is usually filled with laundry supplies.  I went down there and somebody had deposited a U Kotex tampon box in the trash.  This act alone baffles me but it’s such a familiar thing.  I would call it a microaggression.  And here’s how I would explain it.  Back when I was shoveling the snow, somebody had scrawled a message in my immediate neighbor’s doorstep.  Part of it had been snowed over but the message I could read simply said “Gay people live here.”  I couldn’t tell who wrote it.  I worried that my neighbors didn’t.  In short, I cared silently about how this would be perceived.  So I erred on the side of being inclusive and shoveled it last.  Either way, it was information I could choose to respect or neglect.  Months later, finding a tampon box in the shared laundry room when you know some of your neighbor’s identify as nonbinary at the least is sus.  I did the same as I did back in winter.  I disposed of it before anyone got the wrong idea.  Again I’m no detective.  But it’s obvious to me people don’t care about how that might make somebody feel.  I do.  I don’t go knocking on somebody’s door and loudly exclaim “why are you throwing your tampon box in the trash?”  It could have been them for all I know.  So like I do often, I fix the situation before an incident arises.  And nobody knows it was me.  I know for a fact certain neighbors of mine are completely passive aggressive.  The couple behind me definitely gets off on not locking the gate behind them.  It just so happens my immediate neighbors and I are the ones who seem to get targeted for package theft.  I’m used to being targeted and smeared.  When I see other people getting fucked with it largely concerns me.  I can’t always erase the fact that people often play elaborate pranks on me in public.  Where I live and sleep is a different matter.  The problem with microaggressions in society is pretty simple.  Bullying never went away.  It’s normalized as a badge of courage.  A rite of passing in society.  A hazing and a reprogramming of sorts.  Some of us feel pressured by society to fight back.  To act up.  To tear down.  And then some of us have fought that battle alone for years only to be ostracized and explained away.  I spoke with a friend recently about being bored with Chicago and alienated.  They replied flippantly “Well everybody knows you aren’t really a big fan of being social.”  Everybody also knows I flew to Asia fourteen times by myself over a five year period.  The attention to detail only goes so far before it has jumped the shark.

Any sort of a sacred communication, writing or otherwise will eventually degrade into noise.  People in Chicago definitely don’t like you being you outside of a clearly, organized group.  I was reading something about Pride recently how the organizers did not want police involved at all.  It sounds like a no brainer to me.  Pride started as a riot.  A necessary response to oppression and repression.  As an aging straight white man I don’t really see myself at pride.  Neither do I see police belonging there as well.  And yet.  The police feel left out or something?  When Black Lives Matter makes a valid point about police being the number one threat to the very definition of the movement this is a threat how?  When you’ve had your civil rights shredded daily in broad daylight just being a regular person and I mouth the words ACAB all of the sudden I’m a threat to society?  Somehow me opening my mouth and speaking up for other people makes me a target.  And yet I do it pretty clearly and succinctly under my rights of freedom of speech.  It gets abused.  Toyed with.  Tampered with.  Just like any basic infiltration of any cool thing or movement here in America.  No matter how many years I see these people try to throw a wrench in independent movements thinking for themselves, I’m struck at how amateur they become.  America can’t have you thinking for yourself without supervision.  It bullies people into being afraid.  It infiltrates with a smile and a well meaning look only to poison the well and look back accusingly.  “Why aren’t you thirsty?”  It sticks it’s fucking nose into everything and acts like its the champion or savior when it has done nothing except play the villain.  Good cop.  Bad Cop.  Still a fucking cop.  And it doesn’t actually have a leg to stand on.  It uses other people to do it’s dirty work.  Pits movements against each other to neutralize dissent.  It takes over the core history and rewrites itself into the story as the main character.  It buried people’s authentic narratives in favor of lumping them into a moderated congregation.  It talks but never lets you speak.  When it does, it talks over you and mansplains everything you’ve been saying all along wrong.  It’s baked into the culture.  Traditional American doublespeak is an advancement of Orwellian lying.  People think they can smile so sweetly and say absolutely nothing of substance.  That these little pockets of resistance need to be ironed out and managed.  That autonomy isn’t an actual survival reflex.  Of all the people you know who have been fucked with and survived.  It’s me.  And I am just some normal dude on the internet.  And yet I can’t speak loud enough in mainstream society to get people to understand I have a point.  That people gaslight, gatekeep, and gestapo their way into putting you in your place.  The shit I’ve seen here in America let alone Chicago would have Germany in 1940 blushing.  And yet, I don’t really put up with any of it.  It’s fucking clown show level cosplay.  Rich people who think they can walk through walls of ethics, privacy and culture to throw around their weight.  People don’t like me these days because I interfere with them directly making a profit.  Imagine that.  I’ve been targeted for everything.  Made to look like I’m crazy, old and alone.  And now I have to deal with billionaires afraid of where I’ve invested my meager retirement funds.  And I deal with it everyday.  Sharks swimming around me in Teslas and T-Shirts trying to intimidate me into throwing in the towel.  After the towel was thrown at me repeatedly.  I can’t explain how ridiculous this is.  I can explain how insensitive it is to throw a fucking tampon in the laundry room when your neighbors are gender queer.  And then as an ally, people think it’s my job to confront this.  I do.  I put all in the trash where it belongs.  Where the racoons and my civil rights still dwell.  You don’t need these people in your business.  You don’t need to feel guilted by the oppressor into thinking there is something wrong with you not trusting authority.  They openly lie, plot and spread deceit.  So don’t let them into your scenes, movements or personal lives and move on.

This is easy to say when you live outside the blast radius of culture war.  I happen to enjoy the freedom of living in a city just as much as everybody.  It is something else to manage the personal and organizational politics therein.  New York to me is a little less pretentious and stuck up about the status quo than the midwest.  The midwest is clingy and clumsy about how it asserts it’s power in a vacuum.  And Chicago right now is just one huge lawless fucking vacuum.  I would love to write about it.  Maybe even sit down for a chat with the Mayor about how she plans to fuck up the next two years of being half in control.  But we all know I’ll never make it as a journalist.  I’ll never have the opportunity here to be acknowledged as a writer.  I’ll never be recognized for anything I’ve ever done because it would require an inconvenient truth to be brought out into the open.  You only make it in this town if you are connected.  You only get to be free if you let the powers that be have their say.  It’s only ok to survive if you are transparent in everything you do.  And when you are, your information is spread out to the point it’s a liability at best.  People already know everything about you including where you fit in the hierarchy of capitalism.  I belong on the outskirts with all the “freaks.”  Being bullied like it’s 1990 all over again.  These people never learned to be better.  So they simply get off on judging everybody else by their lackluster fucking standards.  You can stand up to them.  You can learn how to tell if someone is being genuine or trying to subvert your power.  You can say no.  You can not let these fuckers into your most trusted places and spaces.  And you can fuck with them back if they do.  For me, it’s not a good look for me to take the bait.  This entire process has been hopeless to me.  I have learned nothing good about how real society operates at its bitter core.  What I can tell you is this.  People tell you whatever they think will make you feel good.  And if you question their motives, they will make you feel guilty first before getting caught in a lie.  If you catch them in a lie, they act like you are crazy.  And this is the rhythm of how protest, resistance, and freedom is squelched in America.  Nobody is fighting back.  I would know.  Because I am literally exhausted making this point as an ally for years on the internet.  We need to organize and yet we’re too busy ripping each other apart.  We know we have common ground.  We know we connect in genuine ways still.  And people are scared to.  They’re just coming out of their shells.  I think the whole point of things like Pride were to create autonomous zones where people could feel free.  To feel like they weren’t judged or watched.  I know what it is like to be surveilled on levels I’m embarrassed to share.  I live that hell every day of my life for reasons unknown.  I don’t know how it was brought on me.  It hurts.  Every fucking day of my life to be watched and misunderstood.  I created a sacred space for myself to communicate this.  A place where I can be proud of who I was and talk about it.  A place where I could catch my breath and continue to resist and to think.  And there’s no shortage of right wing nuts who argue their stupid clubhouses need to be protected by a flag most people wipe their ass with.  Respect is a two way street.  I’m just directing traffic.  And I’m warning people around my neighborhood specifically.  I’ve seen the passive aggressive judgmental bullshit go too far and I’m not going to let it go by unnoticed.  I know just who is completely full of shit out here and why.  And people trust that I know because it’s my job to pay attention to detail.  I don’t get paid shit to be a good person.  But you don’t get away with being racist, homophobic, transphobic or any other shit like that on my watch.  I will let you know on site.  One tampon at a time.  <3 Tim

[orbemnews]

When your own family is racist toward you A close relative nicknamed her “jungle bunny,” she said. Another relative once turned her framed photo so her face wasn’t visible. And she wasn’t allowed to play with some White cousins — an insult that added to the discrimination she received from strangers. “I heard from a relative in my house that she (my mother) never should have had me because you’re supposed to stick with your own kind,” says Anderson, now 46. “I was never taught how to take care of my hair, so it was always a mess.” Like virtually all people of color, these multiracial people have encountered racism in their lives. And, as Meghan Markle alleged in Sunday’s explosive interview with Oprah Winfrey, prejudicial comments or attitudes can even come from the people closest to them — their own families. Meghan, the wife of Prince Harry whose mother is Black and father is White, says there were “concerns and conversations” within the royal family about how dark their unborn son Archie’s skin would be. Buckingham Palace later issued a statement saying Meghan’s allegations were being “taken very seriously,” while Prince William, Meghan’s brother-in-law, told a reporter, “We’re very much not a racist family.” But Meghan’s remarks have been followed with interest by multiracial people, some of whom told CNN they have endured similar comments from relatives. Racial prejudice between family members is not uncommon Family relationships across races can add another layer of complication for people who are already straddling two or more worlds. In the US, a vast majority of multiracial people — roughly 90% — say they have not been mistreated by a relative or extended family member because of their mixed-race background, according to a 2015 Pew study. But it does happen, and to some racial groups more than others. For example, the Pew study found that 21% biracial adults who are White and Black say they have been treated badly by a relative because of their racial background. And when the day after Meghan’s interview with Oprah one London woman tweeted, “I don’t think the racism mixed race kids face from their own families is discussed enough,” it sparked more than 137,000 likes and a long thread of comments by mixed-race people sharing hurtful experiences. The woman, Kemah Bob, tells CNN she sent that tweet after talking to friends who have parents from different backgrounds. “I’ve heard stories about the ways they’ve been hurt or cast out by their families,” she says. “I can’t imagine experiencing racism from within my own home — from people who say they love me.” CNN also spoke to half a dozen multiracial people who said they’ve been mistreated by their own family members. Some did not want to be identified for fear of straining family relationships, but described hostile upbringings that included their parents being ostracized by other relatives for having children with someone outside their race. One man said his grandparent would call his phone to hurl expletives at him, bringing him to tears. Anderson, the mixed-race Maine woman, was raised by her mother and grandmother in Milo, a town that hosted a Ku Klux Klan parade in the 1920s. Some of her White family members disowned her mother because of “race mixing,” she says. Another relative called her father the “Black bastard.” “Racism lets you know right away that you are not White,” she says. “My Blackness stood out and was rare where I grew up, so it has always been a big part of my identity.” Multiracial people can struggle to fit in on both sides of their family Sharon Metzger, 28, was raised by a White father and a Zambian mother. Her parents met after her father’s Peace Corps stint in the southern African country of Lesotho. They later moved to Arizona and Maryland before setting in Fishers, Indiana, where she lives. Her biggest challenge was trying to fit in both her parents’ worlds, she said. Her Zambian family described her as a “Point Five,” a term implying you’re 0.5, or a half of one race, and commonly used to refer to biracial people in Africa. Trying to determine her identity as a child without making either of her parents feel left out added to the confusion. “As a teenager I felt like ‘the other,’ ‘ she says. “I’ve gotten so tired of answering the ‘so you’re Black and … ?’ So now I state ‘I’m Black’ and I do so proudly.” While she was growing up, Metzger says a relative from her White side would openly lament why her father went to Africa. Metzger has two younger half-brothers whose mother is from Senegal. “She would say, ‘I wish you never went to Africa. You should have stayed in the states,’ ” Metzger says. “If he didn’t (go) the three of us wouldn’t exist.” She says other family members used to describe her hair as too wild and constantly asked her to apply relaxer on it. “I was hurt, annoyed and frustrated,” she says. “It’s almost as if you’re at fault for being biracial. I didn’t like my hair for a long time, especially during childhood and adolescence.” Over time, Metzger says she’s learned to accept herself but steers clear of some family members on both sides. “I usually just kinda keep to myself. I’m at the point where if they’re not over it, it’s their loss,” she says. “It’s better for my mental health, plus I’m figuring out who I am as a person and trying to make my own meaning of what a Black woman is.” Racism can be difficult for families to talk about Joy Hepp is White and the mother of a 3-year-old girl. The Los Angeles woman is expecting a second child with her Haitian partner, who is Black. As the daughter of a half-Mexican mother, Hepp grew up surrounded by a rich mix of Latin culture. She also knows the power of representation after growing up with a sister who had blonde hair and blue eyes. Hepp is preparing to help her children navigate a multiracial world, one that she believes will be complicated by racism. That’s one of the reasons she paid close attention to Meghan’s interview. And she took notes on the subsequent conversations. “I know at the end of the day, my kids will be seen as Black,” Hepp says. “You have to open your eyes to what factors are in place. Their father and I, and the community around them, we’re working to raise them into strong productive and confident individuals.” Hepp says one of her biggest challenges has been convincing her White relatives that her daughter and unborn child will face challenges due to their racial background. “There’s a lot of disbelief, like, ‘oh no,’ like, ‘that can’t be true.’ Just being in denial about systemic racism that exists,” she says. “How do we move forward as a country if people — even family — don’t acknowledge it?” Cassi Moghan can relate. Her birth mother was White and father was Black, and she was adopted into a White family at age 2. Her racial background was a taboo that her family refused to talk about, she says. While she was not called names because of her race, she says the silence around her heritage was just as painful. “I didn’t really grow up discussing racism very much as it all seemed too complicated and painful for everyone,” says Moghan, 56, who was born in England and now lives in Athens, Greece. Moghan believes confronting White family members about their racism can be harder than calling out a friend or colleague. But she hopes conversations such as Meghan and Harry’s interview with Oprah will help push issues of race within families more into the open. “Hearing more experiences from people like ourselves can only help others not feel as lonely as I felt,” she says. It’s one reason multiracial people around the world are following Meghan’s clash with her royal in-laws. If she can bare her pain and emerge stronger, maybe they can, too. Source link Orbem News #Family #Multiracialpeopleoftenfaceracismwithintheirownfamilies-CNN #racist #us

[dipulb3]

When your own family is racist toward you

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/when-your-own-family-is-racist-toward-you/

When your own family is racist toward you

A close relative nicknamed her “jungle bunny,” she said. Another relative once turned her framed photo so her face wasn’t visible. And she wasn’t allowed to play with some White cousins — an insult that added to the discrimination she received from strangers.

“I heard from a relative in my house that she (my mother) never should have had me because you’re supposed to stick with your own kind,” says Anderson, now 46. “I was never taught how to take care of my hair, so it was always a mess.”

Like virtually all people of color, these multiracial people have encountered racism in their lives. And, as Meghan Markle alleged in Sunday’s explosive interview with Oprah Winfrey, prejudicial comments or attitudes can even come from the people closest to them — their own families.

Meghan, the wife of Prince Harry whose mother is Black and father is White, says there were “concerns and conversations” within the royal family about how dark their unborn son Archie’s skin would be. Buckingham Palace later issued a statement saying Meghan’s allegations were being “taken very seriously,” while Prince William, Meghan’s brother-in-law, told a reporter, “We’re very much not a racist family.”

But Meghan’s remarks have been followed with interest by multiracial people, some of whom told Appradab they have endured similar comments from relatives.

Racial prejudice between family members is not uncommon

Family relationships across races can add another layer of complication for people who are already straddling two or more worlds.

In the US, a vast majority of multiracial people — roughly 90% — say they have not been mistreated by a relative or extended family member because of their mixed-race background, according to a 2015 Pew study.

But it does happen, and to some racial groups more than others. For example, the Pew study found that 21% biracial adults who are White and Black say they have been treated badly by a relative because of their racial background.

And when the day after Meghan’s interview with Oprah one London woman tweeted, “I don’t think the racism mixed race kids face from their own families is discussed enough,” it sparked more than 137,000 likes and a long thread of comments by mixed-race people sharing hurtful experiences.

The woman, Kemah Bob, tells Appradab she sent that tweet after talking to friends who have parents from different backgrounds.

“I’ve heard stories about the ways they’ve been hurt or cast out by their families,” she says. “I can’t imagine experiencing racism from within my own home — from people who say they love me.”

Appradab also spoke to half a dozen multiracial people who said they’ve been mistreated by their own family members.

Some did not want to be identified for fear of straining family relationships, but described hostile upbringings that included their parents being ostracized by other relatives for having children with someone outside their race. One man said his grandparent would call his phone to hurl expletives at him, bringing him to tears.

Anderson, the mixed-race Maine woman, was raised by her mother and grandmother in Milo, a town that hosted a Ku Klux Klan parade in the 1920s.

Some of her White family members disowned her mother because of “race mixing,” she says. Another relative called her father the “Black bastard.”

“Racism lets you know right away that you are not White,” she says. “My Blackness stood out and was rare where I grew up, so it has always been a big part of my identity.”

Multiracial people can struggle to fit in on both sides of their family

Sharon Metzger, 28, was raised by a White father and a Zambian mother. Her parents met after her father’s Peace Corps stint in the southern African country of Lesotho.

They later moved to Arizona and Maryland before setting in Fishers, Indiana, where she lives. Her biggest challenge was trying to fit in both her parents’ worlds, she said.

Her Zambian family described her as a “Point Five,” a term implying you’re 0.5, or a half of one race, and commonly used to refer to biracial people in Africa.

Trying to determine her identity as a child without making either of her parents feel left out added to the confusion.

“As a teenager I felt like ‘the other,’ ‘ she says. “I’ve gotten so tired of answering the ‘so you’re Black and … ?’ So now I state ‘I’m Black’ and I do so proudly.”

While she was growing up, Metzger says a relative from her White side would openly lament why her father went to Africa. Metzger has two younger half-brothers whose mother is from Senegal.

“She would say, ‘I wish you never went to Africa. You should have stayed in the states,’ ” Metzger says. “If he didn’t (go) the three of us wouldn’t exist.”

She says other family members used to describe her hair as too wild and constantly asked her to apply relaxer on it.

“I was hurt, annoyed and frustrated,” she says. “It’s almost as if you’re at fault for being biracial. I didn’t like my hair for a long time, especially during childhood and adolescence.”

Over time, Metzger says she’s learned to accept herself but steers clear of some family members on both sides.

“I usually just kinda keep to myself. I’m at the point where if they’re not over it, it’s their loss,” she says. “It’s better for my mental health, plus I’m figuring out who I am as a person and trying to make my own meaning of what a Black woman is.”

Racism can be difficult for families to talk about

Joy Hepp is White and the mother of a 3-year-old girl. The Los Angeles woman is expecting a second child with her Haitian partner, who is Black.

As the daughter of a half-Mexican mother, Hepp grew up surrounded by a rich mix of Latin culture. She also knows the power of representation after growing up with a sister who had blonde hair and blue eyes.

Hepp is preparing to help her children navigate a multiracial world, one that she believes will be complicated by racism. That’s one of the reasons she paid close attention to Meghan’s interview.

And she took notes on the subsequent conversations.

“I know at the end of the day, my kids will be seen as Black,” Hepp says. “You have to open your eyes to what factors are in place. Their father and I, and the community around them, we’re working to raise them into strong productive and confident individuals.”

Hepp says one of her biggest challenges has been convincing her White relatives that her daughter and unborn child will face challenges due to their racial background.

“There’s a lot of disbelief, like, ‘oh no,’ like, ‘that can’t be true.’ Just being in denial about systemic racism that exists,” she says. “How do we move forward as a country if people — even family — don’t acknowledge it?”

Cassi Moghan can relate. Her birth mother was White and father was Black, and she was adopted into a White family at age 2.

Her racial background was a taboo that her family refused to talk about, she says. While she was not called names because of her race, she says the silence around her heritage was just as painful.

“I didn’t really grow up discussing racism very much as it all seemed too complicated and painful for everyone,” says Moghan, 56, who was born in England and now lives in Athens, Greece.

Moghan believes confronting White family members about their racism can be harder than calling out a friend or colleague. But she hopes conversations such as Meghan and Harry’s interview with Oprah will help push issues of race within families more into the open.

“Hearing more experiences from people like ourselves can only help others not feel as lonely as I felt,” she says.

It’s one reason multiracial people around the world are following Meghan’s clash with her royal in-laws. If she can bare her pain and emerge stronger, maybe they can, too.

[darkstar6782]

4.05: Monster Movie - My Rewatch Review

I absolutely love that they chose to do an episode in the style of a classic monster movie. I have never been a particular aficionado of them, but they are enough of a cultural phenomenon that I at least appreciate the aesthetic, and there is something about knowing and appreciating your roots when it comes to the ambiance of the horror genre that I love to see. And this episode gets the ambiance spot-on, from the old-timey setting (great idea to use an Oktoberfest celebration to get the medieval castle and village vibe without a whole lot of reach), to the black-and-white film, to the old-fashioned special effects and the organ music soundtrack. And it’s nice to have a relatively light-hearted episode after the way the season started, and given where it is about to go.

That doesn’t mean it was without its serious moments, though, because it wouldn’t be an episode of Supernatural if it didn’t add in at least a little bit of drama. Dean’s conversation with Jaime about how he views the hunter’s lifestyle now compared to before he went to Hell was a minor reveal, but it was painful in two different ways. The first was Jamie’s response to finding out what kind of life Dean and Sam lead—instead of praising their heroism, or saying that it sounded dangerous or lonely, she came right out in the bluntest of terms and told him that his life must suck. Which, from a certain perspective, is most definitely true, but it’s always a bit jarring and sad for the people around Sam and Dean to realize that so easily, because I think a lot of their drive to keep living the life that they do comes from the idea that, if people knew what they sacrifice in order to save others and keep them safe, they would consider it a noble and heroic calling, not just a crappy lifestyle choice. And though Jamie does go on to thank them by the end, the fact that she sees the reality of their lives so quickly has to be kinda painful for Dean to confront.

And then, there is Dean’s admitting that, before he went to Hell, he was wanting to give the job up, because it had just cost him too much, but that coming back—specifically, I imagine, being brought back by the angels and being forced to confront the upcoming Apocalypse—has renewed his purpose and commitment to the hunter lifestyle. This is not surprising, but what’s sad is the fact that Dean does not hold on to this revelation about his own life’s purpose down the road, when Sam is faced with the same choice, nor does he use it to examine the fact that Sam also had that choice to make in the past and made a different one. The central conflict between these boys for most of the series seems to be the fact that they have a hard time reconciling the different things they want out of life with the fact that they are brothers and they don’t want to give up the bond with one another that the hunting lifestyle has provided them. And yet, just a little more introspection on Dean’s part every time Sam decides that what he has to gain by hunting isn’t worth what it costs him (almost always when he has to do it alone after Dean has died) would have saved them a lot of drama in the seasons to come.

There is, of course, also another obvious parallel to what Sam is going through in this episode, though, unfortunately, only we as the audience are privy to that fact. Because the shifter’s story is a truly tragic one—called ‘monster’ and ostracized by everyone, even his own family, just for being different (likely from a very young age, by the sound of it), he chose to become the monster that everyone already assumed he was. This gives a similar level of nuance to shifters that we have gotten for vampires in the past—the fact that there is still human intelligence there, and human choices and human drives and needs. The implication here, in fact, is also that shapeshifters are born believing they are human, and it is likely the circumstances of their discovering that they have the ability to change shape that drives who they become later in life, much like how Sam’s discovery of his psychic abilities and the way that his family reacts to that knowledge informs how he chooses to use them. There could be plenty of shifters in the world that do not use their abilities at all, or that never hurt people, because they are capable of making the choice not to, but there is also a level of upbringing and love and support that has to come from those around them to keep them from turning into the worst versions of themselves. You hear that, Dean?

[youandmebeingsadistrouble]

Sheila Na Gig

For the last few months I have been researching witches, pagan rituals, traditions and Celtic history. I first came across the Sheila na Gig statues when researching women’s rights before and after British rule over Ireland.

In Celtic Ireland women enjoyed legal rights, rights that would been seen as being very progressive even in some of today’s societies. Women kept their own property in marriage and a wife could divorce her husband for fourteen different reasons. British conquest brought to an end Ireland’s independent legal system and removed most of Irish women’s traditional rights. It also brought sexual prudity, which hadn’t previously been part of Irish culture.  

In Celtic tradition there are many stories of strong warrior women, equal to men, if not stronger. There is Queen Maeve who led her army to victory, in one battle drowning an army in urine and menstrual blood. The narrative of this story has changed over the years, having been influenced by patriarchal readings of what happened, but compared to the stigma in today’s society around women and menstruation, this story is quite a powerful display of womanhood; menstruation shown as being powerful, a superpower nearly, instead of a weakness or something to be ashamed of. Irish women would fight in every rebellion as equals to men. It is easy to be unaware of this history and these legends in modern Ireland and can easily be hard to imagine when we are currently still fighting for economic and reproductive rights in Ireland.

The policing of female sexuality is not only a problem in Ireland, as control over women’s bodies and sexuality can be seen in most societies around the world. There is no doubt that the female body is political, whether it is being sexualised or de-sexualised, but there is power in realizing that we cannot continue to apologize for existing, for having needs, wants, desires and power. I am obviously particularly interested in the history of women in Ireland, being an Irish women myself, specifically Northern Irish. I was pleasantly surprised by the information I discovered on Irish women and the struggle for a United Ireland, the equality and respect they were granted as they fought alongside men. It is impossible to escape the effect of centuries of religion in Ireland, and with this religion comes the control over women in Ireland. This is why I was particularly interested and surprised when I discovered the figurative carvings of Sheila na Gigs that were carved on churches and castles in Ireland and Great Britain.  

My discovery of Sheela na Gig statues is what led me to continue to research the history of women in Ireland, from Celtic legends to the Easter Rising. There is something so striking, so powerful in these unapologetic carvings with their exagerated vulva’s. I was also especially surprised to find that many of the Sheela na Gig carvings appeared to be masturbating, quite a radical depiction of women considering that even today female masturbation is quite a taboo subject and still not widely explored in modern art. There are many different explanations for what the Sheela na Gigs represent and it can be imortant to look at who is giving the explanation, for example, the theory that they are on churches as a warning against lust probably came from religious figures. There are suggestions that the Sheela na Gig represents a pagan goddess, perhaps the goddess cailleach, who was so powerful she could create and shape the hills and valleys. The imagery of a goddess is powerful in itself as she represents an immanent power, authority, control and respect. She is a spiritual figure that seeks to empower women in their own choices and self worth unlike many of the spiritual figures in other religions.  

There are claims that the carvings are fertility figures, although many of the Sheela’s do not fit a fertility function. But this theory is no less empowering, as the ability to carry and give life can be seen as one of the greatest signifiers of a woman’s strength and power, the vulva being the gate between the womb and life, and so it is not hard to see how the Sheela’s could be associated with fertility.

My favorite interpretation is that the Sheila na Gig are used to ward off evil, that they perform a powerful type of Anasyrma as a form of protection. Anasyrma is the gesture of lifting up the skirt or kilt, connected with religious rituals, eroticism, and lewd jokes. It is a form of exhibitionism similar to flashing, but differs in that instead of being for the implicit purpose of the exhibtionist’s own sexual arousal, it is instead done only for the effect of the onlooker.  

Anasyrma is effectively the exposing of the genitals, always by a women, and is interesting in that it, is the woman using her genitals as an apotropaic device that could be interpreted as empowering to herself, while historically and socially it has widely been men exposing their genitals to women in a form of power over women, an unwanted sexual advance. We can see similar figures to the Sheila na Gigs performing anasyrma such as the ancient Greek figure Baubo. Baubo’s performance of anasyrma is performed to create humor and laughter. There is also the Putta di Porta Tosa figurine in Milan mounted at an entrance in the city wall. The figure shows a woman standing, facing outward towards any potential attackers and she is holding a knife while lifting her garment to expose herself with the other. This is another example of a statue using anasyrma for protection. Another interesting example of this is Jean de La Fontaine’s painting ‘Nouveaux Contes’ showing a woman lifting up her skirt to terrify the devil himself. This shows the anthropic power that anasyrma has been believed to have, that it is strong enough to ward off the worst evils. A story from The Irish Times (September 23, 1977) reported a potentially violent incident involving several men, which was averted by a woman exposing her genitals to the attackers.  

It is not only the exposing of female genitals that has mythical powers but the female body in general. In a similar vein to Queen Maeve and the power of menstruation that I spoke of before, Pliny the Elder wrote that a menstruating woman who uncovers her body can scare away hailstorms, whirlwinds and lightning.  Another interesting example of sexuality and eroticism having powerful effects on the earth is Balkan Pagan traditions where women would run into the fields and lift their skirts to scare the gods and end the rain. This was brilliantly explored by Marina Abramovic in her performance piece 'Balkan Erotic Epic’  where she dressed in traditional folk costumes and reenacted these ancient rituals.

In Africa woman have in the past, and still do, strip naked as a curse and as a means to ward off evil. Women give life and so they can also take it away. Women invoke this curse under the most extreme cases, causing the men they curse to an extreme form of ostracism. It was used by women in Nigeria during the second Liberian Civil War and against President Laurent Gbagbo of the Ivory Coast, cursing his rule. In 2002 members of the Niger Delta Women for Justice occupied the Chevron Texan oil company in Escravos to protest for better treatment from the company. When the military showed up to remove them the women threatened to naked curse them and so the soldiers did not even touch them.

These are just a few examples of the influence and history of the female body and supernatural powers believed to be held by women around the world. There are undoubtedly even more examples than this, but I found these examples particularly interesting when exploring the female body and genitals in art and performances. For a subject often surrounded in shame and taboo it is intriguing to see learn of its use in forms of protest, its perceived influence over nature, life and death and war. It seems clear that despite an attempt from external forces to stigmatize the power of the female body, there is a undeniably history of it’s power in every culture.

With my project I am seeking to channel the different interpretations of what the Sheela na Gig means and the power of the female body in different culture’s, particularly Irish, legends. I have created my own interpretation of the Vulva using only sticks and wool, which is fitting, as Irish women have been weaving for centuries. By wearing my brightly colored 'vulva’ and bringing attention to it I am performing my own type of anasyrma, alluding to the different powers this brings. I am empowered by it’s ability to ward of evil, to scare men and to evoke fear in an enemy. I am empowered by presenting my own version of female sexuality as opposed to the usual presentation of female sexuality that is catered towards the male gaze. I am empowered by performing this piece on my own terms with the power from within connotations it has for me as a woman as opposed to the power over which male 'flashing’ seeks to bring. I do not seek to perform this piece to make anyone uncomfortable but to bring attention to the provocative and political nature and history behind exposing the female body and genitals. I am also able to see the comedy in my performance as my act can be perceived with surprise and humor, channeling anasyrma’s power to allow for a letting go of sadness. I certainly find it to be a humorous performance and often find myself laughing while trying to perform it.

All in all what inspired me and what I want to convey with this piece is the power of the female body to provoke and protest, to be beautiful, strong, and magical. There is no denying that whether or not you believe in these stories of the powers of the female body and the female genitalia, the fact that they exist is proof enough that they must have some power, to have provoked such a strong reaction from so many different people throughout history.

[ilya-t]

Living in the Transit Lounge by PICO IYER (1998)

By the time I was nine, I was already used to going to school by trans-Atlantic plane, to sleeping in airports, to shuttling back and forth, three times a year, between my parents’ (Indian) home in California and my boarding-school in England. Throughout the time I was growing up, I was never within 6,000 miles of the nearest relative—and came, therefore, to learn how to define relations in non-familial ways. From the time I was a teenager, I took it for granted that I could take my budget vacations (as I did) in Bolivia and Tibet, China and Morocco. It never seemed strange to me that a girlfriend might be half a world (or ten hours flying-time) away, that my closest friends might be on the other side of a continent or sea.

It was only recently that I realised that all these habits of mind and life would scarcely have been imaginable in my parents' youth; that the very facts and facilities that shape my world are all distinctly new developments, and mark me as a modern type.

It was only recently, in fact, that I realised that I am an example, perhaps, of an entirely new breed of people, a trans-continental tribe of wanderers that is multiplying as fast as international phone lines and Frequent Flyer programmes. We are the Transit Loungers, forever heading to the Departure Gate, forever orbiting the world. We buy our interests duty-free, we eat our food on plastic plates, we watch the world through borrowed headphones. We pass through countries as through revolving doors, resident aliens of the world, impermanent residents of nowhere. Nothing is strange to us, and nowhere is foreign. We are visitors even in our own homes.

This is not, I think, a function of affluence so much as of simple circumstance. I am not, that is, a jet-setter pursuing vacations from Marbella to Phuket; I am simply a fairly typical produce of a movable sensibility, living and working in a world that is itself increasingly small and increasingly mongrel. I am a multinational soul on a multicultural globe where more and more countries are as polyglot and restless as airports. Taking planes seems as natural to me as picking up the phone, or going to school; I fold up my self and carry it round with me as if were an overnight case.

The modern world seems increasingly made for people like me. I can plop myself down anywhere and find myself in the same relation of familiarity strangeness: Lusaka, after all, is scarcely more strange to me than the foreigners' England in which I was born, the America where I am registered as an ‘alien’, and the almost unvisited India that people tell me is my home. I can fly from London to San Francisco to Osaka and feel myself no more a foreigner in one place than another; all of them are just locations—pavilions in some intercontintental Expo—and I can work or live or love in any one of them. All have Holiday Inns, direct-dial phones, CNN and DHL. All have sushi and Thai restaurants, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Coke. My office is as close as the nearest FAX machine or modem. Roppongi is West Hollywood is Leblon.

This kind of life offers an unprecedented sense of freedom and mobility: tied down to nowhere, we can pick and choose among locations. Ours is the first generation that can go off to visit Tibet for a week, or meet Tibetans down the street; ours is the first generation to be able to go to Nigeria for a holiday to find our roots—or to find they are not there. At the lowest level, this new internationalism also means that I can get on a plane in Los Angeles, get off a few hours later in Jakarta, and check into a Hilton, and order a cheeseburger in English, and pay for it all with an American Express card. At the next level, it means that I can meet, in the Hilton coffee-shop an Indonesian businessman who is as conversant as I am with Michael Kinsley and Magic Johnson and Madonna. At a deeper level, it means that I need never feel estranged. If all the world is alien to us, all the world is home.

I have learned, in fact, to love foreignness. In any place I visit, I have the privileges of an outsider: I am an object of interest, and even fascination; I am a person set apart, able to enjoy the benefits of the place without paying the taxes. And the places themselves seem glamorous to me—romantic—as seen through foreign eyes: distance on both sides lends enchantment. Policemen let me off speeding tickets, girls want to hear the stories of my life, pedestrians will gladly point me to the nearest Golden Arches. Perpetual foreigners in the transit lounge, we enjoy a kind of diplomatic immunity; and, living off room service in our hotel rooms, we are never obliged to grow up, or even, really, to be ourselves.

Thus many of us learn to exult in the blessings of belonging to what feels like a whole new race. It is a race, as Salman Rushdie says, of ‘people who root themselves in ideas rather than places, in memories as much as in material things; people who have been obliged to define themselves—because they are so defined by others—by their otherness; people in whose deepest selves strange fusions occur, unprecedented unions between what they were and where they find themselves.’ And when people argue that our very notion of wonder is eroded, that alienness itself is as seriously endangered as the wilderness, that more and more of the world is turning into a single synthetic monoculture, I am not worried: a Japanese version of a French fashion is something new, I say, not quite Japanese and not truly French. Comme des Garçons hybrids are the art-form of the time.

And yet, sometimes, I stop myself and think. What kind of heart is being produced by these new changes? And must I always be a None of the Above? When the stewardess comes down the aisle with disembarkation forms, what do I fill in? My passport says one thing, may face another; my accent contradicts my eyes. Place of Residence, Final Destination, even Marital Status are not much easier to fill in; usually I just tick ‘Other’.

And beneath all the boxes, where do we place ourselves? How does one fix a moving object on a map? I am not an exile, really, not an immigrant; not deracinated, I think, any more than I am rooted. I have not fled the oppression of war, nor found ostracism in the places where I do alight; I scarcely feel severed from a home I have scarcely known. Yet is ‘citizen of the world’ enough to comfort me? And does taking my home as every place make it easier to sleep at night?

Alienation, we are taught from kindergarten, is the condition of the time. This is the century of exiles and refugees, of boat people and statelessness; the time when traditions have been abolished, and men become closer to machines. This is the century of estrangement: more than a third of all Afghans live outside Afghanistan; the second city of the Khmers is a refugee camp; the second tongue of Beverly Hills is Farsi. The very notion of nation-states is outdated; many of us are as cross-hatched within as Beirut.

To understand the modern state; we are often told, we must read V.S. Naipaul, and see how people estranged from their cultures mimic people estranged from their roots. Naipaul is the definitive modern traveler in part because he is the definitive symbol of modern rootlessness; his singular qualification for his wanderings is not his stamina, nor his bravado, nor his love of exploration—it is, quite simply, his congenital displacement. Here is a man who was a foreigner at birth, a citizen of an exiled community set down on a colonised island. Here is a man for whom every arrival is enigmatic, a man without a home—except for an India to which he stubbornly returns, only to be reminded of his distance from it. The strength of Naipaul is the poignancy of Naipaul: the poignancy of a wanderer who tries to go home, but is not taken in, and is accepted by another home only so long as he admits that he's a lodger there.

There is, however, another way of apprehending foreignness, and that is the way of Nabokov. In him we see an avid cultivation of the novel: he collects foreign worlds with a connoisseur's delight, he sees foreign words as toys to play with, and exile as the state of kings. This touring aristocrat can even relish the pleasures of Lo culture precisely because they are the things that his own high culture lacks: the motel and the summer camp, the roadside attraction and the hot fudge sundae. I recognise in Nabokov a European's love for America rooted in America's very youthfulness and heedlessness; I recognise in him the sense that the newcomer's viewpoint may be the one most conducive to bright ardour. Unfamiliarity, in any form, breeds content.

Nabokov shows us that if nowhere is home, everywhere is. That instead of taking alienation as our natural state, we can feel partially adjusted everywhere. That the outsider at the feast does not have to sit in the corner alone, taking notes; he can plunge into the pleasures of his new home with abandon.

We airport-hoppers can, in fact, go through the world as through a house of wonders, picking up something at every stop, and taking the whole globe as our playpen, or our supermarket (and even if we don't go to the world, the world will increasingly come to us: just down the street, almost wherever we are, are nori and salsa, tiramisu and naan). We don't have a home, we have a hundred homes. And we can mix and match as the situation demands. ‘Nobody's history is my history,’ Kazuo Ishiguro, a great spokesman for the privileged homeless, once said to me, and then went on, ‘Whenever it was convenient for me to become very Japanese, I could become very Japanese, and then, when I wanted to drop it, I would just become this ordinary Englishman.’ Instantly, I felt a shock of recognition: I have a wardrobe of selves from which to choose. And I savour the luxury of being able to be an Indian in Cuba (where people are starving for yoga and Tagore), or an American in Thailand; to be an Englishman in New York.

And so we go on circling the world, six miles above the ground, displaced from Time, above the clouds, with all our needs attended to. We listen to announcements given in three languages. We confirm our reservations at every stop. We disembark at airports that are self-sufficient communities, with hotels, gymnasia and places of worship. At customs we have nothing to declare but ourselves.

But what is the price we pay for all of this? I sometimes think that this mobile way of life is as novel high-rises, or the video monitors that are re-wiring our consciousness. And even as we fret about the changes our progress wreaks in the air and on the airwaves, in forests and on streets, we hardly worry about the changes it is working in ourselves, the new kind of soul that is being born out of a new kind of life. Yet this could be the most dangerous development of all, and not only because it is the least examined.

For us in the Transit Lounge, disorientation is as alien as affiliation. We become professional observers, able to see the merits and deficiencies of anywhere, to balance our parents' viewpoints with their enemies' position. Yes, we say, of course it's terrible, but look at the situation from Saddam's point of view. I understand how you feel, but the Chinese had their own cultural reasons for Tiananmen Square. Fervour comes to seem to us the most foreign place of all.

Seasoned experts at dispassion, we are less good at involvement, or suspensions of disbelief; at, in fact, the abolition of distance. We are masters of the aerial perspective, but touching down becomes more difficult. Unable to get stirred by the raising of a flag, we are sometimes unable to see how anyone could be stirred. I sometimes think that this is how Rushdie, the great analyst of this condition, somehow became its victim. He had juggled homes for so long, so adroitly, that he forgot how the world looks to someone who is rooted—in country or belief. He had chosen to live so far from affiliation that he could no longer see why people choose affiliation in the first place. Besides, being part of no society means one is accountable to no one, and need respect no laws outside one's own. If single-nation people can be fanatical as terrorists, we can end up ineffectual as peace-keepers.

We become, in fact, strangers to belief itself, unable to comprehend many of the rages and dogmas that animate (and unite) people. Conflict itself seems inexplicable to us sometimes, simply because partisanship is; we have the agnostic's inability to retrace the steps of faith. I could not begin to fathom why some Moslems would think of murder after hearing about The Satanic Verses: yet sometimes I force myself to recall that it is we, in our floating skepticism, who are the exceptions, that in China or Iran, in Korea or Peru, it is not so strange to give up one's life for a cause.

We end up, then, a little like non-aligned nations, confirming our reservations at every step. We tell ourselves, self-servingly, that nationalism breeds monsters and choose to ignore the fact that internationalism breeds them too. Ours is the culpability not of the assassin, but of the bystander who takes a snapshot of the murder. Or, when the revolution catches fire, hops on the next plane out.

In any case, the issues, in the Transit Lounge, are passing; a few hours from now, they'll be a thousand miles away. Besides, this is a foreign country, we have no interests here. The only thing we have to fear are hijackers—passionate people with beliefs.

Sometimes, though, just sometimes, I am brought up short by symptoms of my condition. They are not major things, but they are peculiar ones and ones that would not have been common fifty year ago. I have never bought a house of any kind, any my ideal domestic environment, I sometimes tell my friends, is a hotel room. I have never voted, or ever wanted to vote, and I eat I restaurants three times a day. I have never supported a nation (in the Olympic Games, say), or represented ‘my country’ in anything. Even my name is weirdly international, because my ‘real name’ is one that makes sense only in the home where I have never lived.

I choose to live in America in part, I think, because it feels more alien the longer I stay there. I love being in Japan because it reminds me, at every turn, of my foreignness. When I want to see if any place is home, I must subject the candidates to a battery of tests. Home is the place of which one has memories but no expectations.

If I have any deeper home, it is, I suppose, in English. My language is the house I carry around with me as a snail his shell; and in my lesser moments I try to forget that mine is not the language spoken in America, or even, really, by any member of my family.

Yet even here, I find, I cannot place my accent, or reproduce it as I can the tones of others. And I am so used to modifying my English inflections according to whom I am talking to—an American, an Englishman, a villager in Nepal, a receptionist in Paris—that I scarcely know what kind of voice I have.

I wonder, sometimes, if this new kind of non-affiliation may not be alien to something fundamental in the human state. The refugee at least harbours passionate feelings about the world he has left—and generally seeks to return there; the exile at least is propelled by some kind of strong emotion away from the old country and towards the new—indifference is not an exile emotion. But what does the Transit Lounger feel? What are the issues that we would die for? What are the passions that we would live for?

Airports are among the only sites in public life where emotions are hugely sanctioned, in block capitals. We see people weep, shout, kiss in airports; we see them at the furthest edges of excitement and exhaustion. Airports are privileged spaces where we can see the primal states writ large—fear, recognition, hope. But there are some of us, perhaps, sitting at the Departure Gate, boarding-passes in hand, watching the destinations ticking over, who feel neither the pain of separation nor the exultation of wonder; who alight with the same emotions with which we embarked; who go down to the baggage carousel and watch our lives circling, circling, circling, waiting to be claimed.