#no man or institution ever freed women

[hadesoftheladies]

“christianity established women as human beings worthy of resp—“ it was women. “capitalism gave the woman power to—“ that was women, too. “the western world evolved to a place where men granted rights—“ women did that. “the liberal movement of this decade empowered women to—“ still women, just women. “this product taught little girls that they could be anything they wanted to b—“ women again. “the judge ruled for better legislative laws concerning women-related crimes—“ because of women. every bit of “progress” humans have made toward a humane society is women-driven, women led, women-bought and fought for. especially when it comes to the rights of women.

[reasoningdaily]

Black Twitter will not save us for what’s to come. As the days towards the 2024 presidential election draw near and the rage-filled screams of college students fill the halls of the nation’s most prestigious institutions, the United States finds itself at a crossroads. Will the most powerful country in the world revert back to when Donald Trump won the White House, or will we vote for Joe Biden to maintain his stronghold? This is the question that every American must answer before and on November 5.

If the everyday American (specifically the everyday Black American) was undecided about which candidate to vote for, it only takes one watch of Black Twitter: A People’s History, a three part docuseries based on journalist Jason Parham’s 2021 WIRED article “A People’s History of Black Twitter,” to understand that we must vote for Biden.

The series attempts to archive, document, and chronicle the force that is known as Black Twitter, two words that have been used to characterize Black digital life on the social media platform. It’s a platform that the series will remind you was not created by Black people, but brought into prominence by the attitudes, mannerisms, and behaviors of Black users on Twitter. But despite incessant commentary about how Black people are not a monolith, the docuseries—in its attempt to associate the Black Twitter community with an era that supposedly no longer exists—ultimately treats Black Twitter as such.

Creation is at the core of the series’ story. The words of Amiri Baraka’s "Technology & Ethos" essay are repeated and paraphrased throughout the three-part series in a fashion similar to a mother reading her child’s favorite tall tale before tucking them into bed. The essay opens with the following: “Machines (as Norbert Weiner said) are an extension of their inventor-creators. That is not simple once you think. Machines, the entire technology of the West, is just that, the technology of the West.” Baraka continues: “Nothing has to look or function the way it does. The West man’s freedom, unscientifically got at the expense of the rest of the world’s people, has allowed him to xpand his mind–spread his sensibility wherever it cdgo, & so shaped the world, & its powerful artifact-engines.”

The next line is where Black Twitter, or more broadly the relationship between Black people and technology, come into play. “Political power is also the power to create—not only what you will—but to be freed to go where ever you can go—(mentally physically as well). Black creation—creation powered by the Black ethos brings very special results.”

In the case of both Twitter the platform and also Twitter the company—where Black people acquired leadership positions at one of the fastest growing tech companies in the world, used their presence online to enact change in the areas of racial justice and police reform, and increased diversity and representation from Hollywood to Silicon Valley and everywhere in between—what did those very special results bring? That answer is complicated, and one that the docuseries tries to grapple with but falls short.

As seen in the series, #OscarsSoWhite corrected a decades long practice of exclusion by the Academy and created opportunities for actors of color to receive membership into the voting body that decides the Oscars. In the nine years since the hashtag’s creation, gradual efforts were made towards greater representation on screen. Yet, the subsequent mass exodus of women of color in Hollywood leadership positions and the low number of films directed by women and people of color seems to contradict the docuseries’ overarching narrative of a hashtag's singular impact. Yes, the hashtag narrative as an idiom to bring forth change is powerful, but the counter response to them is just as telling.

The most blatant example of this is the #BlackLivesMatter portion of the docuseries. The docuseries chronicles the pivotal role Twitter played in the rise of citizen journalism, particularly during the murders of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and Eric Garner. It also looks at the creation of #SayHerName, a social media response to the erasure of Black women, such as Sandra Bland, and Black trans women, like Mya Hall, who lost their lives to police violence, but were often overlooked by the male-centered BLM movement.

This is where Baraka is felt the most: Black creators have harnessed the power of technology, in order to counteract the West’s political power, which puts them in danger of losing their lives. Minute after minute, frame after frame, the docuseries asks the viewer to bear witness to the ways in which Black Twitter, through the creation and utilization of hashtags, on-the-ground reporting, and 24/7 news coverage, has long been victimized by police violence.

But like Baraka said, the machine is an extension of its inventor-creator, and the creator, or in this case the executive producers of the docuseries, have a hand in its invention. It's a creation that feels foreign to those who birthed and have maintained Black Twitter as a living and breathing cultural archive of Black digital life. A life that has no singular partisan belief or political agenda. A life that, in many ways, bites the hand of the docuseries creators. It’s a hand that delicately weaves the ascension of Barack Obama to the presidency with the birth and rise of Black Twitter. The two are in a covenant of holy matrimony.

Just ask Brad Jenkins, former associate director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, who frequently appears throughout the docuseries. Or Carri Twigg, the former Associate Director of Public Engagement of the White House, who serves as one of the series’ executive producers. There is no direct mention that the Black Lives Matter movement started under the Obama administration—or acknowledgment of the overwhelming collective action by Black students at the University of Missouri during that time, as well as the solidarity actions that occurred across college campuses in the U.S.

The series goes on to connect the rise of misinformation, the proliferation of Russian bots, and the 2016 election of Donald Trump as a reaction to the Obama presidency and Black Twitter. In fact, the series’ somber moments—where anti-Black sentiment is seen in reports of algorithms being altered to increase traffic towards users that display racist and misogynistic behaviors online, and clips of white women calling the police to inflict harm and violence on Black people for simply living—are linked to the Trump portion of the series. But that is ahistorical in and of itself because Black women have been calling attention to the ways in which they are subjected to anti-Black violence and harassment online since the 1990s. BBQ Becky is just Carolyn Bryant by another name.

Read More: Twitter Offers More Transparency on Racist Abuse by Its Users, but Few Solutions

If the Obama years of Black Twitter were fun, the docuseries posits, the Trump years of Black Twitter were hell. From the COVID-19 pandemic to the global uprisings over the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, the year 2020 within the docuseries is marked by culture shifts towards violence, including the misogynoir Megan Thee Stallion experienced online after she came forward about being physically assaulted by Tory Lanez. The year is also peppered with glimmers of a Black Twitter of yesteryear: a communal moment of gathering to live tweet “Verzuz” challenges or to watch The Last Dance as a family. Communal moments that are thought to be associated with the Obama administration.

And just like that, the docuseries pivots to showcase the Black voters in South Carolina, who are thanked for their votes for Biden in the 2020 election. Biden is even described as Obama’s right hand man. It is in this moment that the series wants the audience to remember the joy of the Obama years, the hope of the Obama years, and most importantly, the impact of Black voters in the Obama years.

I do not mean to spoil the climax of the 2020 section of the docuseries, but Biden won and Elon Musk replaced Trump as the villain of the series. Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, now known as X, is met with despair, exodus, and rage. Efforts to humble and humiliate Musk are flashed across the screen as former Black employees at Twitter in one-on-one interviews discuss the destruction of their years of labor and hard work to diversify the platform. Black academics, celebrities, and personalities lament as they say a goodbye to the good days of Twitter. Mastodon, BlueSky, Spill, LinkedIn, and of course TikTok are depicted as places of solace for Black users who feel unwelcome on X. (X has since eliminated any protections for marginalized and disenfranchised users on the platforms.)

Four years after the election of Biden to the presidency and with the forthcoming election looming, the series bids Black Twitter adieu with the foresight that Black people will always continue to innovate, despite not being given the tools or resources to create. This is exemplified by a reference to soul food, and a call to action to create our own archives—the thesis of Black Twitter: A People’s History.

But what Black Twitter fails to realize—and simply can’t capture—is that we are not in 2008 anymore. Or 2012. Or 2020. The Obama coalition is dead. The Biden coalition is falling apart by the day and culturally resonant programming falls flat compared to the citizen-led reporting that is coming to life in front of our very eyes. Just look at the actions of the student journalists at WKCR, the Columbia University radio station that covered the raid of Hamilton Hall by the New York Police Department. Or the wave of anti-war protests by Black students at HBCUs. Guess where these students learned how to organize from? Black Twitter. They’re not just archiving their own stories—they’re creating them.

But that’s the flaw of content like this. It doesn’t have the capacity to capture the legacy of a movement because it’s a movement that isn't over. It is still unfurling—still morphing and coming to life in front of our very eyes. These are children who came of age on Black Twitter. They’re still using those tools to make us laugh, to inspire change, to create community.

If there is anyone who will save us (and in turn, if there’s anything worth saving), it's them. Not Black Twitter.

[dizzydispatch]

My journey towards self-actualization began with Mamma Mia and ended with me becoming the love of my own life.

(long post, TW: mention of SA, description of PTSD events, themes of religious trauma, allusion to mild body image issues)

Growing up, whenever I watched read anything that featured or even implied premarital sex, I got this sinking, disappointed feeling, like a parent finding condoms in the shoebox under their teenager’s bed. It a this sort of disapproving sadness that somewhat tainted everything I read or watched that had such content or notations. It felt like betrayal, a loss of representation in every character who ignorantly committed these sins, unwary of how harmful the simple act of something as socially normalized as premarital sex was. 

Sex was forbidden, but not taboo. My parents discussed the matter liberally with me, with the conversational condition that it was a beautiful and holy institution ONLY when indulged within the confines of traditional Christian marriage. So, I didn’t want to have it. I didn’t have sexual urges. I was a good girl, wrapped in the Holy Spirit, freed from sex as a vice, an obsession, a possibility. 

In fact, I was so obsessed with the idea of a sanctified chastity that the principle of it became more of a vice to me than the pursuit of sex ever would have been. I had been warned that men (or, in my case, boys) only wanted one thing, and were so pathologically obsessed with it that a good man could be tempted and thus forever laced into the shoes of a deviant, even a rapist, just from seeing my exposed midriff. It didn’t matter that my particular midriff didn’t hold much (if any) sex appeal to my peers, because the presentation of absolutely anything “sexual” was sufficient motivation to ruin both him, this hypothetical boy/man with weak to no control over his primal urges, and me, the chalice of holiness whose very worth was, in no small part, dictated by the virginal status I held.

When I was seventeen, I went to see Mamma Mia 2 in theaters. My mother and maternal grandmother and I made it into a “girls’ night” in celebration of Grandma’s visit to our (the better) side of the States. It was strange, experiencing such a sexually-oriented film with the two women who most often told me how beautiful a “pure” bride was on her wedding night. Especially since these very women were now fawning over a movie that so heavily centered around the lead-up to a teen pregnancy that resulted in a single mother raising her daughter on an island without any of her potential baby-daddies even knowing she’d been expecting. I didn’t know it, but a seed had been planted while I sat in that theater, and it was about to be watered by my craven need for freedom and the innate desire for self-actualization.

The next day, I was home with my mother, doing chores. The events of the night before inspired me to play the first Mamma Mia movie while she ironed and I pretended I cared about the state of my bedroom. In reality, I was listening in rapt awe to “Honey Honey,” the scene where Sophie (the protagonist, former teen mother Donna’s now grown daughter) was reading her mother’s diary from the summer before her birth. In between narrating to her friends the portions alluding to three incidents that were each equally likely to be responsible for Donna’s pregnancy, she sang a song that celebrated the revelations, wondering which man could have contributed the necessary DNA that led to her existence. She was not only approving of, but practically celebrating the sexuality the diary expressed. Instead of disappointed, it made me feel… jealous. I was so envious of these girls, who had the freedom to wear tiny bikinis and openly ogle the agile Greek boys, all lined up to flirt and perform ostentatious dives off the docks for their benefit. They just seemed so… free.

When she’s sober, an addict may keep the source of her temptation out of reach. Before experiencing a relapse, there is often a distinct moment where a critical part of her willpower just… crumbles. She doesn’t decide to relapse then and there, but she subconsciously gives herself permission to use, or smoke, or gamble, or whatever it is. Whenever I start smoking again after a period of abstinence, there is usually a shift that takes place, when I’m weak or in a state of lowered inhibitions. Then the dopamine hits. Dopamine, you know, doesn’t hit when you engage in an activity that is neurologically rewarding, such as sex or drug use. It hits when you decide to do the thing, when your hand stretches out for the bottle, when you begin to salivate in anticipation of that Big Mac and large shake. It hits when you decide, whether knowingly or subconsciously, to reach for the cigarette pack, when you plan to take the long way home, the one that passes the casino. Being hit with a gut-wrenching envy for Sophie and her friends, for teenage Donna, for the archetypal, sexually-liberated young woman with the agency to give her virginity to her high school sweetheart, or enjoy a one night stand with a Tinder date— for me, admitting that jealousy to myself was that shift. I hadn’t actually decided I was going to have premarital sex. But something had permanently altered inside me, and it wouldn’t be long before I became the girl I so envied.

For a while, I clung to the concept of virginity. It’s a lot harder to get past the “zero to one” threshold than it is to go from one to two, two to three, and so on. The technical loss of my virginity happened when I was sexually assaulted, just after I turned eighteen. After that seemingly insurmountable landmark was passed, it was almost arbitrary to continue. So in college I decided to be an absolute whore. I slept with anyone and everyone who I could get into my bed. 

And… I hated it. It didn’t feel good. It didn’t give me any sort of pleasure. In fact, penetrative sex usually hurt. If it didn’t hurt, I mostly just felt bored, compelled to fake enthusiasm in order to cajole my partners over their edge so we could just be done, and I could collapse in sweaty exhilaration into their arms. It was a sense of pride, and really nothing else, that motivated me to even wait until they were done. At first, I couldn’t even get through to when my partner finished. But it only took me a few times before I had control over the panic attacks. I knew I could breathe, stay present, and be in the moment. I could ward off the crippling anxiety and darkness if I just stayed here. But sex was such a chore, such a burden that I sometimes found myself allowing the suffocating alternate to overtake me, just so I could, in good conscious, halt the act mid-stroke, to be freed of the discomfort in lieu of the part I really wanted: the part where they held me, kissed away my tears and told me that everything was going to be okay. 

Then I met... let's call him Elliott. With him, the first time, it was just as it was with everyone else. I laid down and let it happen, giving enough verbal affirmation to encourage him to continue while staying as distant from the act as I could inside my own mind and body. After a few enthusiastic minutes, he abruptly stopped. He kissed me, then got up, removed and disposed of the condom, and then crawled back into bed. 

“That’s… it?”

He laughed. “Now, now,” he chided. “Before you go and pull out the stopwatch, I didn’t finish.” 

I was puzzled. “Why… not?”

He shrugged. “Just wasn’t happening. Sorry to disappoint.” 

As I got to know him, I learned that Elliott had a slightly unique sexual appetite. It wasn’t that he didn’t find me attractive. He enjoyed the idea of having sex with me, and responded to me whenever I initiated (and even sometimes when I didn’t). He simply needed something other than just ‘urge’ to be, shall we say, successful in the act. For him, sex was cool, but the simple primitive urge to spill seed was more easily satisfied without a partner. In those cases, he was in complete control of the act. With the help of his imagination, a landscape so vivid and detailed and perfect that it made reality pale in comparison, there was no need for me, or anyone else. So, for him, the benefits of sex over masturbation were purely rooted in the one thing another human could offer: intimacy.

Elliott doesn’t need sex to feel love. He loves himself. He doesn’t need sex to feel pleasure or satisfaction for the same reasons. The only thing sex with me could give him that he couldn’t give himself was kindred spirit, and while that was lovely and wonderful, he didn’t need it to live, or even to be satisfied. Everything he needs to be happy, he can provide for himself with just a piece of paper and a pencil, a hiking trail, and adequate space in which to do a cartwheel. Elliott, like me, is autistic, but unlike me, his entire life revolves around his special interests. For him, there's nothing that anyone could give him that would satisfy him more than what he did himself.

I fell so hard, so fast. When we first started dating, I confided in him late at night that my biggest fear was of the phenomenon of love-hate dynamics, wherein the very quality or characteristic that you fall in love with almost inevitably becomes the same quality, recontextualized by circumstance and time, that drives you out of love again. He was always honest about who he was, never trying to hide his self-centered priorities or disguise the incorrigibly free spirit that makes him so unique and wonderful. So of course I can’t really be angry about what led me to end things with him, because they’re the same qualities I loved and admire even now about him. But even if his unfailing commitment to his own creative satisfaction at all costs made him unsuitable as a life-partner, that doesn’t mean they’re all bad. Quite honestly, even single, he’s one of the happiest people I’ve ever known. I envy that, and I wish more than anything I could be more like that.

Coming to terms with my asexuality meant giving up on the idea that a sexy, sordid love affair would bring me satisfaction in my life. In doing so, I allowed my priorities to shift past seeking romance around every corner, and began to focus on other things that gave me satisfaction. Following in Elliott’s footsteps, prioritizing self-actualization and personal growth and my own goals over the fleeting butterflies of romance— I started to do things.

I moved home, finished my college degree and fulfilled my dream of becoming fluent in sign language. I reconnected with my estranged childhood best friend, finding in him the inspiration in him to write the novel I always wanted to write. I found a job that, despite it being the last thing I actually wanted to do, benefitted me as a mode of improving my newfound bilinguality. I made friends at that job, and made a new life from the pieces of the one I left behind. I let my satisfaction come from the girl group I forged in the trials of the job, not the endlessly uninspiring monotony of the work itself. The friend group as a whole might’ve fallen apart after I left, but I held on to my roommate, someone who has taught me how to value myself and not settle for anything less than what I deserve. Having gotten everything I wanted from that job, I quit and found something I want to turn into a career. I started to learn to code, spent endless hours editing and drafting my novel, took up kickboxing and knitting, and discovered that I have a knack for bringing near-dead houseplants back from the brink until they're thriving. Just like I'm thriving, here, having left my own 'brink of death' long in the past. I finally found someone to love: I found myself.

I’m not saying that feeling lonely or wanting love is somehow wrong. But maybe, if you refocus your priorities onto the things that cannot be given to or taken away from you in this life, just maybe you’ll find a happiness that isn’t conditional, or inexorably tied to somebody else’s existence. More than anything else in the world, if there’s one thing I can say is worth the effort, it’s this. Find yourself first. 

Life will probably throw me plenty more curveballs. But I've got somebody really great in my corner. She's a total badass, she's smart, resilient, and happy. And she'll be there for me even when I'm not thriving. She is... me.

[theshedding]

Junteenth huh?

There is no good "God" that ever has nor ever will "free" anyone from slavery. In particular, everywhere that slavery has been performed around the globe over the last 600 years, its termination has been due to MAN and her/his works and sacrifice(s) to terminate it. Furthermore in each case, (other) men have opposed that freedom at every turn and proposed new and found ever clever ways to reinstate the institution using the same people...and/or people ethnically adjacent to those groups (e.g. England, France, U.S., Spain, etc.). 

So no, "God" is not interested in anyone's abolition; and any credit to God (Euro-centric or* Afro-centric) is definitionally a false attribution" to ending slavery.

____________ 

Here in the US: 

On 6/19 in 1865, the Black enslaved in the state of Texas were notified by Union Civil War soldiers about the abolition of slavery. This was 2.5 years after the final Emancipation Proclamation which freed all enslaved Black Americans. #Juneteenth   

But Slavery continued...and in 1866, a year after the amendment was ratified, Alabama, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, Florida, Tennessee, and South Carolina began to lease out convicts for labor. This made the business of arresting black people very lucrative, thus hundreds of white men were hired by these states as police officers. 

Their primary responsibility being to search out and arrest black peoples who were in violation of ‘Black Codes’. Once arrested, these men, women & children would be leased to plantations or they would be leased to work at coal mines, or railroad companies. The owners of these businesses would pay the state for every prisoner who worked for them; prison labor. 

It’s believed that after the passing of the 13th Amendment, more than 800,000 Black people were part of that system of re-enslavement through the prison system. The Amendment declared that "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." (Ratified in 1865) 

It says, “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude could occur except as a punishment for a crime".⁉️⁉️ Lawmakers used this phrase to make petty offenses crimes. When Blacks were found guilty of committing these crimes, they were imprisoned and then leased out...to the same businesses that lost slaves after the passing of the 13th Amendment. This system of convict labor is called peonage. 

The majority of White Southern farmers and business owners hated the 13th Amendment because it took away slave labor. As a way to appease them, the federal government turned a blind eye when southern states used this clause in the 13th Amendment to establish the Black Codes. 

@AfricanArchives

________________

Give praise where praise is due. This Juneteenth we recognize the actual sacrifice of human beings to fight a system of slave labor, dehumanization and financial exploitation throughout US history until present-day. Not someone's skewed perception of a "Good God" or "spirit"...lest we forget all lessons learned. 

 Happy Juneteenth.

[janiedean]

ooh so linked to the Brienne ask re: the kingsguard part. What are your thoughts on Aerys’ kingsguard, especially like Arthur Dayne who Jaime from what I remember has complicated feelings for but pretty much idolises him. And they’re so loved by almost everyone in universe!!! Like idk how to think about them really my feelings for them are also complicated

+ okay good because I honestly don’t see why people love them so much like most of the things we’ve heard about them are like. Objectively bad. And like yeah the idea of them is cool but well that can only go so far. also I’m sorry if these asks are a mess I’m exhausted!! ALSO I think you’re amazing for answering all of us anons with such detail I always love coming on to your blog

(putting both asks in the same place uu)

in order: the fact that they're loved by everyone in-universe and fandom actually likes them (or at least arthur dayne hahahahaha god) is like... some of george's best trolling because guess what the entire point is that they're supposed to look like amazing people/the real deal when instead they're all terrible the end - except again for the poor martell prince whom we don't know enough about and I'll give him a pass bc martell people are usually not stupid af but in order:

as I said george has made a point of stating that knighthood is a rotten institution and the kg especially aerys being like... what should be the highest honor for a knight is equally as rotten as knigthood in general and is made of people who do Not Deserve The Title - I mean again hey it's orders so marital rape is fine, hey we're leaving the 15yo to man an entire castle? WHY NOT, the king is mad? WELL WE SWORE TO SERVE HIM, like not counting martell prince there isn't one single person in the aerys kg except jaime who actually upheld the oaths they swore ie protecting the innocent so make of that what you will

the fact that jaime aka the fifteen year old is literally the only one who gets the job and then goes there like 'hey we're basically covering for marital rape what the fuck' and no one else bats an eyelid should already say everything there is to say about these people's moral standard

the fact that none of them actually stuck up for the fifteen-year old who was obviously not ready for the job nor tried to idk do anything to make it easier on him or whatever also says everything about their moral standard because honestly fuck you

the fact that everyone thinks they're amazing jaime included when they're all pretty much shitty is like... well, same as fandom does, which means that the readers bought what people in-narrative do... except that the moment you scratch the surface it's really damned bad

and I'm saying barristan is on thin ice because from his chapters you can see he's like... not a bad dude but like his reaction to jaime being in there still when he saw aerys is 'ah that fucker who killed the king and was so proud he had to try and get into it at fifteen'? like??? fuck you?? honestly the fact that all of them literally served a dude who put people on fire and was a menace/danger to the realm and then have the gall to think that jaime is the worst or who didn't like try to help him or anything while he was obv struggling with his vows and the fact that he was serving a madman says all about their moral standards, again

and honestly arthur dayne is the literal worst of all of them because like - first of all oh you knight the 15yo who goes along with you slaying bandits and you don't try to dissuade him from joining the kg? what the fucking fuck am I supposed to think - second of all you don't even warn him of what is expecting him when he joins when you've been there for a while? - but third of all which drives me insane and I hate that fandom sleeps on it and goes around happily like ARTHUR/LYANNA THE SHIP OF DREAMS... okay listen like I have literally zero investment in lyanna as a character or in r + l and I don't necessarily think he did everything - I think they had a mutual infatuation and eloped and she sorely regretted it and then it was on r. who shouldn't have like acted on it because he happened to be the 20+ year old with a wife and kids, but there's the whole tower of joy situation - in which sorry but we have arthur fucking off KL with other kg people and leaving all the others in the literal shit bc they'd have to deal with aerys and it'd be less of them than they should be, to go with rhaegar to the tower of joy to help him elope which whatever, and then lyanna was left there after r. had to go back... when her brother and father were burned alive and like if she knew that then I doubt she'd have wanted to stay and if she didn't then they withheld fairly important fucking information, so like he stayed there guarding a pregnant 15-16 yo who most likely did not want to be there and who is pregnant by his best friend whose family oh accidentally murdered half of hers........ and lyanna was there even after rhaegar died so I mean it's not like the moment he happened this dude goes and says 'hey maybe we should actually go back and see if we can solve this mess' no he kept her prisoner there anyway - on top of that... here I'm wildly speculating but: he had to know rhaegar was dead and when ned showed up if we are to believe him and idt he was unreliable on that... ned didn't want to fight him or kill him he just wanted to get his sister and leave and like he was most likely in love with ashara aka arthur's sister so why the fuck would he want to kill him right, and like rhaegar's dead and arthur has nothing to lose by letting ned up especially knowing that lyanna is fucking dying in childbirth like she's dying her brother's there just let him up and solve it later esp when the dude doesn't want to kill you....... but no ned had to kill him because he wouldn't budge and why the fucking fuck wouldn't you budge at that point? your side lost the war, the guy you were friends with that you did all of this for is dead, the girl is about to die at least let her die with her family, why? - only thing I can deduce from it: that rhaegar told him that the baby's survival was the most important thing because third head of the dragon blah blah blah and that if the war was lost to just grab the baby and lyanna if she survived and fuck off to essos until he grew up, except that lyanna didn't survive so the conclusion is that he tried to stop ned from going up there bc he'd have found out about the baby and tried to stop them and at that point who gives a fuck if lyanna died or not but he'd have liked... let her die and kill ned in the process and done that most likely, and sorry but when they knightly vows are, I would like to remind everyone, In the name of the Warrior I charge you to be brave. In the name of the Father I charge you to be just. In the name of the Mother I charge you to defend the young and innocent. In the name of the Maid I charge you to protect all women…. like... what, what exactly has this dude done that would qualify as that? because lyanna would be young and innocent and a woman and he basically is letting her die, that behavior does not qualify as bravery and he'd like... deny the kid a chance of growing up with his family period if he killed ned and he didn't seem to particularly give a fuck las we checked, and that's like not counting the whole 'oh I won't tell the 15yo who idolizes me that he's signing

his life away to trauma nor I will support him for shit when he does' part of it, but the tower of joy stuff is shady whichever way you look at it and honestly the more time passes the more I'm convinced this guy is just a complete pos and the worst of them all except gregor when it comes to like 'people thinking you're a good knight and you're actually a pos instead' and I'm dying on that hill until george proves me wrong

and on that the thing is that... I ranted about it once here but basically jaime idolizes the shit out of him because he never saw that even if his subconscious kinda knows because when he had the weirwood dream his greatest fear was confronting the former kg and everyone was accusing him of stuff he couldn't have physically prevented (more ranting on the weirwood dream here) and he's there like 'ah I wanted to be arthur dayne but I became the smiling knight instead' but like... actually he is more of a true knight than arthur dayne can ever hope to be? because like in the above meta I was talking specifically about how to pia he's like... better than arthur dayne, but like not to be that person but jaime who thinks he's the gregor clegane of his time and not arthur dayne, while arthur dayne was... doing the shady toj thing with lyanna - saved an entire city from aerys blowing it up - risked his neck for brienne even if he didn't even like her as in he got himself kicked in a healing stump when he couldn't even stand up for himself so she wouldn't be raped - risked his neck going back for her at harrenhal and jumped into the bear pit without even knowing how he'd manage it - was actually being a decent person to tommen until c. forced him to leave - the moment he saw what happened with pia he gave her her rapist's head when she's like a commoner no one gaf about and took her into her service - when his squire wanted to bed her he like told him to be kind to her jfc - is per tyrion the only relative who actually loved him/freed him/actually stuck up for him (and tysha is on tywin thank you all very much and jaime feels so great about it he doesn't think about it until he can't anymore) (also he was the one chasing the bandits away in the first place so he was probably there like oH I HELPED A MAIDEN too lmao god fuck tywin) - actually stuck for his cat vow bc he took riverrun without bloodshed - sent brienne after sansa with the magic amazing sword because he wanted to upheld their shared vow to cat going against his own family - the moment brienne shows up like hey wanna blow this joint and leave the army you don't wanna lead to find sansa he didn't even like blink before saying yes and I'm supposed to think that in between him and arthur dayne he isn't the only one who actually stuck to his vows as well as he could/knows anything about them/is actually a trueknight™? because lmao the fact that jaime doesn't fancy himself one because of aerys when everyone fancies arthur dayne one when the latter did absolutely fucking nothing beyond slaying bandits to put his money where his mouth was while jaime didn't even like brand himself like that and still did all of that and half of it was acting on instinct not even like doing the math before and *he* was the one wanting to be knighted at fifteen and took his vows seriously when oh wait knightly vows are basically the epitome of selflessness is like again grrm trolling the hell out of everyone characters included but it's clear from the narrative imvho and I can't wait for the moment he serves the just desserts and a) jaime realizes it b) everyone else in-narrative realizes it c) bran timetravels to the fucking toj and we find out what actually went down there and this saint arthur narrative is burned to the ground because honestly no

there, I think I spat out almost all of my venom XD

[benjhawkins]

One of the not-so-fun parts about studying history is coming across unpleasant facts especially with regards to Black folks in American History.

The Salem Maritime National Historic Site has a wonderful virtual tour called Pathways to Freedom  which explores what life was like for freed African Americans in Salem after Massachusetts banned slavery in 1783. Another virtual walking tour, A History of Slavery at Salem Maritime does not gloss over the fact that many of Salem’s most prominent merchant captains, Derby in particular, made their fortunes from the sale and labor of enslaved human beings. 

So, imagine my surprise when my spouse found in the Adverts 250 Project that Aaron Waite posted a series of “runaway” advertisements, seeking the return of a man he enslaved who was named Pompey.

The NPS has a museum store and gift shop named for Aaron Waite and his business partner Jerathmiel Peirce (who were the owners of the original 1797 Friendship). I have done a LOT of research on Salem maritime activities and not once has this information ever come up. A cursory Google search has not uncovered anything on whether or not Mr. Peirce was an enslaver as well, but most often in the North were enslaved men and women referred to as “servants” of a household or “servants for life”. The last ad I could find was dated Nov. 23 which makes me think that Pompey was successful in his escape. 

Anyway, as much as I’d like to just look at pretty ships all the time, it’s important to acknowledge these bits of history, as uncomfortable as it may be. Especially important I think for those of us in the Northern United States to realize that the institution of slavery was very much alive here as well.

[ambitiousandcunning]

Arjuna and what sets him apart.

The 14th day of Kurukshetra war was special in many ways. Just one day before, Abhimanyu had fought bravely but got killed. The enraged father, Arjuna made an oath to kill Jayadratha by sunset of the next day or die. This was the day he had to fulfill his oath. Drona made a complicated vyuha, a mixture of three Vyuhas. Jayadratha was to be protected at all costs. Almost every warrior of the Kaurava army was focused on stopping Arjuna. He created the greatest Carnage on that day, allegedly killing 7 akshouhinis, more than half of the Kaurava forces. It is well known how Arjuna fought, how he killed Jayadratha and fulfilled his oath. Arjuna’s valor is undoubtable. But in my opinion, what makes him special, what makes him stand apart from all other warriors is compassion. This is a relatively less known incident that happened on 14th day of war. For me, it is one of the most important things that happened that day. Following citations are from Jayadratha Vadha Parva, Mahabharata volume 6, translated by Bibek Debroy. (It is a translation of the Bhandarkar Oriental research institute, Critical edition of Mahabharata.)

All citations are in italics.

"Dhananjaya passed over those soldiers with some difficulty. He was like a sun that has arisen, blazing through the clouds. On seeing him, the Kurus were frightened. O bull among the Bharata lineage! But they recovered and cheerfully attacked Partha from all directions. They knew that he was tired and they also knew that Saindhava was far away. They roared loudly like lions and surrounded him from all directions. On seeing that they were so enraged, Arjuna, bull among men, smiled. He softly spoke these words to Dasharha. ‘Our horses are oppressed by arrows and are exhausted. Saindhava is at a distance. What do you think is the best course of action now? What is your wish? O Krishna! Tell me exactly. You have always been the wisest. In this battle, with you as their eyes, the Pandavas will be victorious over the enemy. Let me tell you what I think we should do next. Listen to me. O Madhava! I think it is best to unyoke the horses. Remove their stakes.’ Having been thus addressed by Partha, Keshava replied, ‘O Partha! My view is identical to what you have expressed.’

From this, we know that Arjuna has already breached enemy lines. He is among enemy soldiers. But Jayadratha was still far away. If you read the narrative from the beginning of this Parva, it is mentioned earlier that the sun had already begun it’s descent. The war had been going on for long. Arjuna noticed the exhaustion of his horses and tells Krishna that they should be unyoked. Krishna agrees.

This is a very significant decision on Arjuna’s part. Giving up his chariot means giving up the speed and becoming stationary. They were already running out of time. On that day time meant everything to Arjuna. For if he didn’t reach and kill Jayadratha in time, he was honor bound to die himself. Yet, in such a situation, he sees his horses are exhausted. He decides to let them rest, knowing they would die if pushed too much. But also knowing that he would have to die if they failed to complete the task.

Arjuna said, ‘O Keshava! I will repulse all the soldiers. You can properly perform the task that must be undertaken next.’ Dhananjaya got down from his chariot and stood there fearlessly. He held Gandiva bow and was stationed, as immobile as a mountain. The kshatriyas desired victory. On knowing that Dhananjaya was now stationed on the ground, they thought that this was a weakness. Roaring loudly, they attacked. They surrounded the solitary one with a large number of chariots. They stretched their bows and released arrows. They angrily displayed many different kinds of weapons. They covered Partha with arrows, like clouds enveloping the sun.

The great strength of Partha’s arms was then seen, since he angrily resisted a large number of soldiers surrounding him from every direction. The lord repulsed all the arms and weapons of the enemy. He quickly covered all of them with many arrows. O lord of the earth!

Here, it is described that Arjuna was on the ground and was attacked by the Kauravas who were themselves on chariots. He stood and fought them from the ground.

There’s more description of fighting which I will skip over.

"Sanjaya said, “The great-souled Kounteya created the water. Having repulsed the enemy soldiers, he then created a pavilion made out of arrows. The immensely radiant Vasudeva quickly descended from the chariot. He freed the horses and removed the arrows tufted with the feathers of herons. On seeing a sight that had never been seen before, a giant roar, like that of lions, arose from the masses of siddhas and charanas and all the soldiers. Though Kounteya fought on foot, the bulls among men who fought against him could not counter him and it was wonderful. Large numbers of chariots and many elephants and horses descended on him. But Partha did not exhibit the slightest bit of fear towards these men. The kings released large numbers of arrows towards Pandava. But these did not afflict Vasava’s son. He had dharma in his soul and was the destroyer of enemy heroes. The valiant Partha received those nets of arrows, clubs and lances, like the ocean receiving rivers. With the great force of his weapons and the strength of his arms, Partha countered the supreme arrows shot by all those Indras among kings. O great king! The Kouravas worshipped the supremely wonderful valour of Partha and Vasudeva. ‘Has there ever been anything more wonderful in this world, or will there ever be, than the way in which Partha and Govinda freed their horses in this battle? Those supreme among men displayed great energy and great assurance in the forefront of the battle. They generated great fear in us.’ O descendant of the Bharata lineage! Hrishikesha began to smile, as if he was amidst women, after Arjuna had crated a pavilion made out of arrows in that field of battle. O lord of the earth! While all the soldiers on your side looked on, the lotus-eyed one led the horses inside. Krishna was skilled in all acts connected with horses. He removed all their exhaustion, pain, trembling, nausea and wounds. He removed the stakes with his hands and rubbed the horses down. Having comforted them in due fashion, he made them drink the water. Having obtained water and having bathed, they were free of pain and exhaustion. He again cheerfully yoked them to that supreme of chariots. Shouri, supreme among those who wield all weapons, then mounted the chariot, together with the immensely energetic Arjuna, and they departed swiftly.”

It is emphasized in the narrative too, how this has never happened before. It is clear that no warrior had ever done this, especially when he was among enemies. What makes this more significant is that this was the day Arjuna had to move the fastest, or by his own words, die. Yet he chose to do this. This speaks volumes about the kind of person he was. Perhaps, a lesser man would’ve tried to push the animals until the last bit of their strength was gone. Another charioteer wouldn’t have agreed to stand among enemies so fearlessly under the protection of a single warrior. But the charioteer was Krishna. And the warrior was Arjuna. He had many feats in battle, conquered many countries, had many adventures. But more than that, more than anything else, it is this compassion that makes Arjuna special. That makes him a Hero.

Tagging @incurablescribbler and @medhasree for their opinions.

[theparanormalperiodical]

The Less-Than-Sweet TRUE Stories That Inspired Candyman (1992), And The Other 5 Scariest Urban Legends That Are Still Haunting The USA

In 1987, Ruthie Mae McCoy was found dead in her apartment.

As a mentally-unstable resident of the ABLA housing project - one of the most violent on the Chicago south side - her death is far from the only one to have taken place there. But her death is one of the most well documented.

So well documented, in fact, it’s legacy stretches back to the present day.

McCoy first reported strange occurrences taking place in her apartment when returning from the psychiatric unit at Mount Sinai Hospital. She claimed someone had threatened her life to a fellow passenger in the van next to her.

They urged her to seek help, but she chose to take shelter in her fear.

In April, the local police received a phone call from a frightened woman from the ABLA housing project who was claiming someone was trying to come through her bathroom cabinet. When the police finally entered the apartment, they discovered her on the floor of her bedroom with 4 gunshot wounds peppering her torso.

Her death would be just one of the threads that weaved the horror film icon, Candyman (1992).

Today we unpick the fabric, from the twisted history of the Jim Crow South, to America’s darkest urban legends.

Clive Barker never intended to create one of the most iconic Black horror films of all time.

In fact, Barker didn’t even create the feature length film that would change the face of cinema in 1992. What he did, however, was pen a short story about life on the breadline in Liverpool.

The Forbidden (1984) followed a graduate student in the UK who was studying graffiti. Among the garish curse words splashed on the walls of the run-down council estate she investigated, Helen discovered references to an urban legend that have been sprayed onto the concrete.

A legend called the Candyman.

As explained by the later films, Candyman is a pretty standard urban legend: you say his name into a mirror 5 times, and before you would appear a man sticky with sweet honey and with a hook for a hand.

Helen followed the trail back to reports and rumours mutilations and murders in the local area, failing to get any information out of the locals. She then became a victim of the Candyman himself.

Despite the short story closely mirroring the plotline of the film we know and love cower away from today, there is one crucial difference aside from the setting:

In the 1992 film, and in the upcoming 2021 reboot, the Candyman is African-american. Helen’s original encounter with the urban legend in Liverpool, however, was with a pale, waxy figure bearing all the traits of a dead white man.

When Clive Barker first conjured the Candyman from his imagination, he wanted to explore the theme of class in 1980s Britain. Bernard Rose, the director of the 1992 rendition of the tale, on the other hand, wanted to explore the theme of race in America, rewriting the characters on the other side of the pond and deepening the dark story Barker first put before horror fans.

Most importantly, he focused on developing the character of the Candyman.

Where he came from, what he did, and how he did it informed the entire plot, and would span 2 sequels shortly after.

The Candyman Of Cabrini-Green

Rose set the 1990 films in the Cabrini-Green public housing projects in Chicago’s North Side. Originally built in 1942 to home thousands of African-americans fleeing the Jim Crow South during the Great Migration, the housing project captured a snapshot of racial divides in America.

It doesn’t take a historian to understand that racism fuelled the neglect of the housing, and by the time the movie hit the theatres in the early 90s, only 9% living there were actually employed.

But Candyman didn’t just capture the poverty and racism inherent in American society; it pulled us through the mirror, and showed the viewers just one of the many origins fuelling the complex and corrupted history of the USA.

So Who Was The Candyman Based On?

Tony Todd was a pretty important part of the film.

Ok, aside from being one of the few black actors that managed to score a role in a horror movie that didn’t die in the opening credits, and yeah, as well as donning a prosthetic hook, he actually developed the character of the Candyman.

But most notably, he developed the backstory for the urban legend.

And the story starts in the 19th century.

Daniel Robitaille - an established painter - was commissioned to paint the portrait of a white woman. From there began an interracial relationship that was not accepted in this era.

When she fell pregnant, a lynch mob sought out Robitaille to make him pay for his alleged crime. They severed off his hand for touching a white woman, and covered him in honey, leaving him to die by being stung by bees.

What’s really striking of this tragic and terrifying image, however, is that this did happen.

Interracial relationships were scarce in the 19th and early 20th centuries in America and typically featured white men marrying black women (and consequently freeing them if they were slaves), and fed into deep-rooted racism that still haunts the country. One of the pillars of historic American racism and Western Imperial ideas of race was the ‘protection’ of white women from the ‘lustful’, ‘violent, and ‘savage’ black man.

In fact, marriage and politics were both considered the most important arguments supporting segregation, linking the freeing of slaves and interracial relations.

This fear became especially prevalent in the US after the Civil War; the influx of freed slaves would result in an increase in the forbidden relationships, bringing us back to the era Daniel Robitaille’s life was set in.

This timeline is made ever more accurate by the manner of his death: lynch mob activity peaked in the 1830s, 40s and 50s, proving that Robitaille’s story is unfortunately far too common. Although being stung to by bees and insects probably was used as a form of torture and murder, I can only trace a form of this execution method to Persia (approx. 6BC).

But what’s really quite striking is the transformation of Daniel Robitaille, an innocent and very much alive black man, to the Candyman, an urban legend who is seeking vengeance for his murder.

It’s the racial terrorism committed against Robitaille which make him so terrifying. The crimes committed against the innocent black man still tailor him into the image of a ‘scary black man’, the image that we are still haunted by today.

Urban legends are so petrifying because of the outlandish, outrageous monsters at the centre of the story that appear in ordinary places. And that’s exactly what we find here. But here’s the twist: the Candyman charted the original racism that founded the Cabrini-Green housing projects, and the racism still inherent in it.

In fact, that’s the sub-plot of the movie: Helen Lyle discovers more of the everyday realities of being African-american in the US throughout the movie, witnessing poverty and police brutality as well as the garish image of a hooked man smothered in honey.

We, the viewer, are given brief snapshots of black history and the black present, even if only through a bathroom mirror.

And it’s horrifying.

So Daniel Robitaille Was Based On History - But What Was The Candyman Legend Inspired By?

To summon the Candyman - if you dare - you simply need to say his name into a mirror 5 times. This less-than-innovative manner of conjuring the Candyman is obviously based on Bloody Mary and the act of saying her name into a bathroom mirror a certain amount of times that no one actually agrees on.

It is said she will then appear to either show you the face of your future hubby, scratch your face off, or kill you. You can find out more about this legend here.

But she isn’t the only legendary beast weaved into this horror hit.

His Hook Hand is obviously an aesthetic inspiration:

A couple were busy being horror-movie-villian-bait and making out in a car when the radio suddenly blared out an emergency broadcast.

A serial killer (*gasp*) had escaped from the local mental institution (*eye-roll*) and he had a hook for a hand.

One of them heard something scrape on the car so they drove off. Believing it to be merely a tree branch they take a look and discover a hook in the side of the car.

(Their insurance premiums! Oh the horror!)

The final urban legend explicitly linked to Candyman is La Llorona, possibly the second most famous urban legend after Bloody Mary herself.

This hispanic urban legend is tragic but fiercely popular: a woman had two sons and a loving husband. However, after being convinced her partner was cheating on her or loved her children more, she drowned them. She then drowned herself in grief.

It is said she still roams Latin America, looking for her deceased children and taking those who aren’t hers before drowning them when she realises they are not her sons.

To summon her (not sure why you’d want to) all you have to do is light some red candles in a room full of mirrors and yell out her name.

Candyman is thus clearly inspired by these classic american urban legends that have struck fear into gullible children and drunk teenagers for decades. But they aren’t the only stories that gave inspiration to such a film. And they certainly aren’t the scariest.

So What Are The Scariest American Urban Legends?

*clicks torch on*

#1 - The Alaska Triangle

Did you know this frosty American state is home to something scarier than Sarah Palin?

Also known as Alaska’s Bermuda Triangle, this is an area of untouched wilderness stretching from Anchorage and Juneau to Barrow. It’s earned such a reputation as this is where a lot of people go missing.

Okay, fine, an unknown area of woodland where people go missing - this isn’t a mystery, this is a tragedy. But the thing is, it's the sheer volume of people that go missing here which is so concerning.

It started in October 1972, when US House Majority Leader Hale Boggs, a congressman, and a political aide went missing while flying to Juneau. 90 aircrafts and dozens of boats scaled the area to no avail. No trace of the boat, no evidence of human life - or death. It was truly a mystery.

When more planes went missing, when more hikers didn’t return from their adventures, and when more tourists failed to return to their budget hotels, fears grew. Since 1988, 16,000 have disappeared. The rate of missing people here is more than twice the national average.

The disappearances have been traced back to a number of theories including aliens, energy vortexes, and a Tlingit Native American demon known as Kushtaka. The most popular case, however, is for the swirling vortexes of energy which can cause audio and visual hallucinations and health problems. And this isn’t the only location that allegedly homes them.

Search and rescue workers often report the physical feelings associated with vortexes with magnetic anomalies spiking in certain locations.

Could these missing people be lost in the ferocious wilderness of Alaska? Or is something else at play?

#2 - Turnbull Canyon

We now turn to a sunny California, and the 4 mile loop in the Puente Hills reserve. Aside from being known for the majestic views of the Hsi Lai temple and the Rose Hills Memorial Park, it’s been home to a number of paranormal forces.

But the most interesting thing about this location is that it's been considered an evil location for centuries. Local Native American tribes called it Hutukgna, ‘the dark place’. It was forbidden ground, and they didn’t set foot there. So, when Spanish missionaries came to convert them to Christianity, they did it here.

“Now we are without hope. Now we remain for as long as the sun rises and sets in the sky”

To this day locals and tourists report feeling as if they are being watched, and legend has it Native Americans that were killed there remain as spirits, waiting for the final sunset.

The urban legend amassed a new reputation during the Great Depression. Large groups of men and women in dark robes would partake in strange rituals at night which few witnesses have seen.

One witness claims they saw a young boy strapped to a cross. He was surrounded by a circle of people who danced and chanted in unknown languages. The robed group then flipped the cross until it was upside down, and proceeded to beat the child until he was close to death. He was then taken away. We don’t know what became of the child. But we do know a flurry of disappearances and kidnappings haunted the area throughout the early 20th century.

And then it gets even worse.

In the 1930s, an insane asylum was built there. It mysteriously burnt to the ground 10 years later.

Psychic mediums and visitors report feeling unbearable at the location, from reporting classic paranormal activity such as the feeling of being watched or seeing orbs, to feeling as if someone is rummaging about in your own brain.

#3 - Vampire Comte de Saint Germain

New Orleans already has a paranormal reputation. Jacques Saint Germain only blended seamlessly with this historic location. But the thing is, it is said he would have witnessed most of the history for himself.

Throughout history a man of similar stature and personality has been reported.

He was at a notable wedding in Cana where Jesus turned water into wine, he was an alchemist in the 1600s, and he was in high-society in 1742.

It was an encounter in 1760 with one Countess von Gregory which was really interesting: the Countess was convinced she knew him as the son of a man in 1710 - but he hadn’t aged a single day.

He joked, as he often did, that he was over 100 years old.

Fluent in 6 languages, his incredible abilities and knowledge made him an enviable man - and an impossible one, too.

We do know, however, that he came to New Orleans in 1902 from France and invited the elites for a special feast. He didn’t eat a single bite, but did drink dark, red ‘wine’. He then confirmed rumours of when he kidnapped a local woman, held her down, and bit into her neck.

When the police turned up to investigate, they found the room covered in blood stains. But Jacques was nowhere to be seen.

#4 - Nash Road

Like most titles of urban legends, the Three-Legged Lady gives away the story. But this tale fares just as tragic as the other legends that shape this list:

Just outside of Columbus, Mississippi is Nash Road.

Legend has it if you stop on the road, turn off the headlights, and honk the horn one, two, three times, she will appear. She will knock on the roof of your car to alert you of her presence, and race your car to the end of the road. She will slam her body - 3 legs n’ all - against the car the entire time.

There are many alleged origins of the three-legged lady. Some believe she killed a lover, severed off the leg and attached it to her body, whilst others believe she is holding what’s left of her daughter’s corpse. Alternate versions of the legend even claim she is the spirit of a human sacrifice of a nearby satanic cult.

#5 - The Watcher

The first letter was sent in the summer of 2015.

A family had just moved into a grand mansion in Westfield when they started receiving letters from a person who claimed to be watching over the house. They were eerie, they were menacing, and they were signed by someone only known as ‘The Watcher’.

Numerous former owners have all received other letters from the same person with the same sentiment.

“Who has the bedrooms facing the street?”

“Do you need to fill the house with the young blood I requested?”

“Did 657 Boulevard call to you with its force within?”

The Watcher often refers to the house as if it is an entity, even warning one unsuspecting family not to destroy the house when they brought in contractors.

There are many more details to this story, but what I find most intriguing is a paragraph from a letter welcoming a new family:

“657 Boulevard has been the subject of my family for decades now and as it approaches its 110th birthday, I have been put in charge of watching and waiting for its second coming. My grandfather watched the house in the 1920s and my father watched in the 1960s. It is now my time. Do you know the history of the house? Do you know what lies within the walls of 657 Boulevard? Why are you here? I will find out.”

The stalking is still under investigation.

***

I’ve written about enough ghosts, ghouls, and long-forgotten legends for just over a year now to know what true fear is.

And real life is always scarier.

If you liked this post and want to hear more then go on and hit follow!

Can’t wait to hear more real ghost stories? Check out the Peoples’ Paranormal Archive, the online ghost story collection that is chock-ful of real evidence of the supernatural just waiting to traumatise you.

[alexsmitposts]

The Nasty Truth About America’s Love Affair with Narcissism and Self Pity

Column: Society Region: USA in the World

📷There is a saying, “the crazy people have taken over the asylum.” They did that in the United States in 2016, a nation ruled by grifters, petty criminals and the delusional.The sane and decent became the “silent majority” as the not just America but the world learned that the darkness of the American soul depicted so often by Hollywood is not fiction at all and that a reality TV actor had tapped into a cesspit of sewage that has seeped into every American community.Then came 2020.By sheer luck along and, yes, the votes of 81 million Americans lucky enough to survive voter suppression and intimidation financed by a worldwide organized crime cartel, the insane are now out of power.The new “captain’’ of America’s “ship of state” may well, however, have something on his hands worse than the Titanic. The Titanic had the courtesy to actually sink while America, under this analogy, drifts lifelessly along.Extremism is big money in America, climate denialism, race hatred, social discord and civil war, hate is both a product and an addiction.It is also one of America’s biggest businesses. There would be no social media, no Google, no news organizations, no underbelly of device driven ecstasy, without fear and hate being marketed like cigarettes and CBD gummies.Roots of America’s Politics of Fear and Hate 2.0American extremism is not the result of poverty or oppression. It originates among the privileged, the “haves” who adhere to insane beliefs driven by boredom and generalized dissatisfaction at lives the rest of the word would envy, overpaid jobs, gas guzzling cars and trucks and fast food laden with fats and poisonous additives.If you asked many millions of Americans to define “reality,” their brains would grind to a halt. Reality is based, not on experience or observation but on “beliefs” and strongly held “opinions” which are invariably those scripted for them.Beliefs and opinions untested by the feedback loop of life has created a generation of Americans who are, essentially, living in a video game. This makes Qanon a AI program.Collective delusion has become the norm for many, and by “many” we mean up to 150 million lost souls, caught in an RPG game or, for some, a “first person shooter.”What does it make those who play? But then we have seen all this before, just without a population softened up to this degree by chaos theory conditioning. Some background:The Roots of Fascist AmericaIn 1940, Adolf Hitler was Time Magazine’s man of the year. The parents and grandparents of Trump’s supporters, following Huey Long, Gerald L.K. Smith, Father Coughlin and Charles Lindbergh sought to establish a “whites only” America based on the German model with carefully selected military leaders run by Wall Street pulling the strings.There is something magical, even today, about being “white folks.” That magic originated in the 18th and 19th centuries with the “Sturm and Drang” movement. Extremes of emotion and subjectivity were exalted above rationalism.Childish temper tantrums became a philosophy and eventually a political movement.The movement, which failed in Europe, found fertile ground in the United States in a society that increasingly defined itself though ritualized slavery and degradation and oppression of “coloured races.”This was a society built on the genocide that wiped out millions of indigenous peoples with the survivors now living on “reservations.”Imagine land where nothing grows, and no one could live. This is an “Indian reservation.” From time-to-time oil is found or minerals or there is a need to build a pipeline. Then even the worst land on earth is taken away.This was done in South Africa. It was done in Rhodesia. It used to be called “colonialism.”By the 20th century there were no indigenous people left to imprison. America then turned to warring against the freed slaves and millions of “undesirable” European immigrants, Catholics and Jews in particular.Curiously, this war was centered on banking issues, blocking trade unions, sustaining child labor and controlling farm prices. This created the alignments that

exist today, the strong tie between Wall Street and homegrown extremism built of bigotry and race hatred.You see, too many of the undesirables that fled autocratic Europe found that the long hand of international banking that maintained serfdom for millions, even in supposedly advanced Western Europe, had institutionalized the same in the United States under the guise of representative democracy.Leading the way was the resurgent Ku Klux Klan.By the 1920s national membership was estimated at over 8 million. Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and a dozen other northern and western states were governed by Klan controlled politicians who used the state militias and National Guard as a private army and local police as armed enforcers.Behind it all, the banks that brought Hitler to power and the American corporations that made millions financing Nazi Germany’s war machine, General Motors, Dupont-Remington, Lockheed, Alcoa and General Motors.Even Hitler Would Cringe…The new American revolution, driven by Donald Trump and his televangelist backers, is the result of as social anthropologists note, generations being allowed to live the life of spoiled children, steeped in narcissism and self-pity.The events of January 6, 2020 and how it tied to many American religious leaders has emptied churches across the US, with millions finding themselves humiliated with having followed “false prophets” in support of hatred and tyranny. From Salon:“…these religious figures (Trump’s powerful televangelist backers) and the institutions they led (have become) hyper-political, the outward mission (has)seemed to be almost exclusively in service of oppressing others. The religious right is not nearly as interested in feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless as much as using religion as an all-purpose excuse to abuse women and LGBTQ people. In an age of growing wealth inequalities, with more and more Americans living hand-to-mouth, many visible religious authorities were using their power to support politicians and laws to take health care access from women and fight against marriage between same-sex couples. And then Donald Trump happened.Trump was a thrice-married chronic adulterer who routinely exposed how ignorant he was of religion, and who reportedly — and let’s face it, obviously — made fun of religious leaders behind their backs. But religious right leaders did not care. They continually pumped Trump up like he was the second coming, showily praying over him and extorting their followers to have faith in a man who literally could not have better conformed to the prophecies of the Antichrist. It was comically over the top, how extensively Christian right leaders exposed themselves as motivated by power, not faith.”Jerry Falwell Jr., who introduced Donald Trump to America’s evangelical Christians, is himself an enigmatic figure.Falwell is typical of America’s religious leaders and stories such as this, from Fox News, are daily fodder for Americans:“Jerry Falwell Jr. allegedly played games with his wife Becki where they’d rank Liberty University students, they most wanted to have sex with, according to one pupil who claimed to have been intimate with Becki.The ex-student — who claims Becki initiated oral sex with him 10 years ago — told Politico that she bragged about playing the sex-ranking game while walking around the Virginia campus with her evangelical-leader husband.‘Her and Jerry would eye people down on campus,’ the former student of the conservative school told the outlet.Social Engineering Through PandemicAnyone who really lives in America will make this perfectly clear, this country has turned into a lunatic asylum. Our previous president told us COVID was a hoax, allowed over 40,000 from China enter the US while the threat of COVID was well known and turned his back while, today’s figure, 570,264 Americans died. Experts now cite that Trump was personally responsible for over 400,000 of those deaths. He is quite simply a mass murderer.Do remember that only 900 died in Australia. Canada lost 23,000. 35 died in Vietnam. 440 died in

Cuba.One might wonder how a Hitleresque figure such as Donald Trump could have millions of followers while the legal mechanisms in the US are amassing evidence for both criminal and civil prosecutions which quite probably will never come to bear.Groundhog Day, an Unending NightmareLet me tell you how I began my morning. As a journalist and intelligence briefer, I review incoming material, both open source and private intel. The big story overnight involves a revelation on a religious talk show involving theories on COVID 19 and vaccines.The show is by Jim Bakker, an important religious leader and political advisor. In 1989, Bakker was sentenced to 45 years in prison for mail and wire fraud but served on 5 of those years. He has stolen tens of million of dollars from his congregation to support a wild and lavish lifestyle of utter debauchery.In this area, he is typical of America’s evangelical Christian leaders.The guest on Bakker’s show was Steve Quayle. I know Quayle as an advisor to President George ‘W’ Bush on Middle East affairs. I know of no qualifications for this post.I do know of Quayle. After 9/11 he approached my staff in Amman, Jordan offering them generous payments to “launder” otherwise sourceless intelligence on Iraq into the Bush White House to justify an American invasion of that nation.Two million people died, maybe many more, due to fake US intelligence on Iraq. No weapons of mass destruction were ever found.Groundhog Day TwoLet us take the clock back a few years. I remember traveling to Kentucky, then and still a very backward area of the country, in 1956 to visit relatives. This was a presidential election year, and my father was working for Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic candidate that was opposing Dwight Eisenhower.Even I, at a fairly young age, was flabbergasted at the dinner table discussion that day as my “hillbilly” relatives expounded on their political opinions and version of historical fact. This is how they laid it out:We should support “Ike” because he killed Hitler personally after storming Berlin. They described a sword fight. What they described reminded me of the death of the Sheriff of Nottingham played by Basil Rathbone in the 1938 film Robin Hood starring Errol Flynn. They then went out to describe how the US beat both Russia and Germany who were at war with the US. It seems Russia did not fight Hitler at all but was actually Germany’s ally. My father, a reasonably educated person and longtime friend of Russia, found this somewhat disturbing. Next, we heard about how “godless communists” were going to take away our freedoms and destroy our standard of living. I might remind you that my relatives in Hazard, Kentucky had no electricity or plumbing. One of my cousins lived in an abandoned car parked in a slag field.During that trip, we visited my grandfather, a retired coal miner. He lived in a shack covered with tar paper along a railroad track. I loved my grandfather.Life Lessons Do not Come Over the InternetOver the next 60 plus years, I had shared tea with farmers in Vietnam, military veterans living in a small shack in the Khyber Pass and everything from heads of state to struggling farmers all over Africa and the Middle East. None would have guessed that there are Americans that live in not just utter poverty but steeped not only in delusional ignorance but far worse than that.A current obsession with American “conservatives” is the fear of being overrun with transexuals, who, according to many, represent a threat to our freedoms. I have never met a transsexual. From what I understand, up to 10,000 currently serve in America’s armed forces.Back during the 1960s when I served with a Marine combat unit in Vietnam, we probably had no transexuals, only gay or “homosexual” Marines and Navy. Absolutely nothing was thought of it as these individuals invariably served with honor and courage.They existed in significant numbers.Today aging “conservatives” who avoided military service in Vietnam continually harp about saving the rest of us from “homosexuals in the military.”Voting and

“Jim Crow”Let us take another look at efforts by the Hitleresque racists and bigots to save the rest of us from ourselves, against our will of course. In Georgia, the legislature recently passed a law that makes it a felony to offer water to someone waiting in line to vote.Water is an issue because, in Georgia and many GOP (Trump’s party) run states, polling places in areas where people of color vote have been closed causing day long lines. In 2020, volunteers offered food and water to those who would otherwise have either collapsed or left without voting. Now offering food and water can lead to being executed by racist police, quite literally, or spending 5 years in prison.In 2020, voters in many key urban areas were threatened by armed neo-Nazi militias or openly threated in emails from Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, organizations deemed terrorist in Canada and now citied by the US Department of Justice as trying to overthrow the US government.In January, during a US Senate runoff election in Georgia, 364,000 voters were challenged by the GOP in Georgia as “illegal.” All of them were African American. All 364,000 were qualified to vote and their votes were eventually counted, giving Georgia two Democratic US Senators.The Federal Elections Commission is now investigating that this effort to rig the Georgia senate elections was secretly financed by illegal contributions from members of organized crime.Groundhog Day ThreeI live in a rural and primarily Republican area. I parked my car less than 30 feet from the door of a polling place, a local church, and voted in less than 3 minutes with no lines or ID check.In order to limit mail voting, Trump ordered mail sorting machines destroyed with sledgehammers and over 40,000 mailboxes picked up and junked as scrap metal. Mail service in many cities simply ended. One letter I sent to Washington DC from Michigan took 45 days to arrive.Hundreds of millions of pieces of mail, starting in late September 2020 simply disappeared, not just votes but government checks, Christmas presents and medications from pharmacies sent to Veterans.All of this was not just publicly known, things are far worse than that. Those who so many decades ago believed the United States fought Russia in World War Two, would raise children and grandchildren with no respect for human rights, no understanding of democracy, no ethical norms nor any remote understanding of right or wrong.This is the reality for those living in America, a reality that those who watch America from afar through the distorted lens of Google Corporation and the press, can never fathom.Ah, but things are so much worse than that. It is not just having spent 4 years with a president who told us you could cure covid by drinking bleach or eating flashlights. It gets worse.Groundhog Day FourA few days ago, former Trump advisor Cirsten Welcon claimed that President Biden had been paid billions of dollars by China to let them test their newest “weather weapons” on Texas. Power outages there, now attributed to corrupt backroom deals by Republican politicians, led to many deaths and considerable suffering.Little did any of us know of the role of the magic Chinese weather machines.In another vignette, it has been a years since Trump advisor and televangelist Kenneth Copeland stood before a television audience raving like a lunatic. He then pursed his lips and blew at the television camera, the “wind of god” which he claimed destroyed COVID forever.This effort by Reverend Copeland, who has millions of followers and a vast financial empire, led President Trump to announce that COVID 19 was going to disappear.ConclusionSome would like to believe that the institutionalized insanity of America’s right is restricted to the “Untermensch” substrata of rural poor whites. However, for decades now, the most radicalized and extremist elements of America’s society, the most ignorant, the most warlike yet cowardly, have gained control of the US military through service academies which espouse their conspiracy theories.With the onset of Trump, they gained much

more than a foothold in American politics, they now control many states “lock, stock and barrel,” and are involved in not just voter suppression but a general quashing of human rights and free speech.The door to this turn of events began well into the 19th century. Laws, still on the books, are now being employed against Donald Trump, from CNN:The Democratic chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee has filed a lawsuit against former President Donald Trump that cites a little-known federal statute that was first passed after the Civil War.The complaint, filed Tuesday by Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, accuses Trump, his attorney Rudy Giuliani, the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers of violating the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act. The lawsuit accuses them of inciting the Jan. 6 Capitol riot to prevent the certification of the 2020 presidential election.These same extremist elements and calling them “extremist” insults al Qaeda and ISIS (banned in Russia) who are moderate in their beliefs and practices in comparison. These statements might sound extreme in themselves were it not for so many Americans, religious and military leaders, members of government and business leaders calling for wholesale murder of their political opponents citing their personal communication with a non-corporeal authority they said is “god.”Americans hear this all day every day, the emails are unending, TV networks like Fox, OAN or Newsmax say little else, and that message is carried not just through media but lawn signs dotting the countryside.Hundreds of thousands of American homes are festooned with paraphernalia espousing murder of public officials and their families. Americans see it every day driving to work. What they ask themselves when they see things like this is how many others hold these beliefs but keep it to themselves?What if academics wrote papers on the issues, we discuss here? What if the BBC produced a documentary? Would things get better? The problem dates back not just generations but centuries.It is not a moral problem; it is not a political problem. It is one of degeneracy. At some point we may be required to reassess our definition of sentience.

[apenitentialprayer]

The Gnostic Gospels: Major Theses

A summation of The Gnostic Gospels, by Elaine Pagel, with a chapter-by-chapter explanation of the basic theses. [I started this a while ago, but only did the first three chapter summaries. Gonna leave it as-is, because I don’t know if I’m ever gonna get back to it] Chapter 1: The Controversy Over Christ’s Resurrection According to Pagel, even the books that were accepted in the New Testament open themselves to non-literal readings of the Resurrection event. Nonetheless, the Christianity that would become orthodox absolutely insisted on a literal understanding of the Resurrection event. Gnostics, on the other hand, viewed the Resurrection in spiritual and psychological terms only. While both sides were likely sincere in their faith, the way they articulated the Resurrection event nonetheless express the particular political views of how the Church was to function. The gnostic Christians viewed the Resurrection event as an individualized, recurring event that a disciple must personally experience. By being initiated into the Christian life, the gnostic would subsequently experience a personal encounter with Christ; this personal encounter, along with any further ones, defined the Christian experience, even if such an experience contradicted the traditions handed down by previous gnostic initiates. Under this understanding of the transmission of the Christ-life, there would be no way to create a stable institutional framework through which to establish a normative Christianity. The orthodox Christians viewed the Resurrection event as a historical and physical event, which directly affects who can be considered a legitimate successor to Jesus. Because the Apostles encountered Jesus Christ firsthand, and the people of that generation alone encountered the Resurrected Christ in the flesh, ordained successors of the Apostles are the only ones who can be trusted to have transmitted the true faith to future generations. This new social order for Christianity was threatened by individuals who claimed that their personal experiences overrode the traditions of the Church (a fact that distinguishes gnostic mystics from orthodox mystics). Chapter 2: “One God, One Bishop”: The Politics of Monotheism Noting the absolute ire that Irenaeus had for Valentinian Christians (who were not quite gnostic, but nonetheless are usually identified as such by early primary sources), Pagel connects the polemical writings to the development of the Church hierarchy. Irenaeus felt threatened by the Valentinians, who believed the legitimacy of the Church hierarchy while nonetheless accepting a second source of authority, because they challenged the idea that the bishop was the true representative of God on earth. Drawing on the beliefs of Marcion of Sinope, several gnostic Christians distinguished the Father of Christ from the God who created the world. Valentinians believed that the bishopric was derived from traditions from the Demiurge, which were taught publicly by Christ, while their secret traditions came from a God even higher than this one. Because of this, Valentinians were accepting of the authority of the bishops for normal Christians, but once they were initiated into the secret rites, the bishop could no longer hold authority over them; they were freed from the power of the Demiurge by Christ’s true Father. While the hierarchy of bishops was becoming more and more common, the Valentinian Christians were practicing rites that attempted to circumvent the growing distinction between laity and clergy; ordination was not a permanent position, but the designated priest would change with each meeting. The fact that members of Irenaeus’s diocese were being initiated into these circles made him especially hostile to the Valentinians - especially since they did not view their practices as contrary to the Catholic faith. The fact that they believed that they were still members of the Church, and not of a rival organization, indicates that Tertullian’s story that Valentinus purposely separated himself from the clergy is not true; the split between the orthodox and Valentinian Christians seems to have been initiated by the orthodox themselves. Valentinus, for his part, attributed his tradition to Saint Paul, through a ‘Theudas’ who was purportedly a disciple of his. “Ireneaus ironically agrees with [the Valentinian Christians] that there are two sources of tradition - but, he declares, as God is one, only one of these derives from God [... t]he other comes from Satan - and goes back to the gnostic teacher Simon Magus.” Chapter 3: God the Father/God the Mother Pagel makes it clear that, while many modern theologians in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions speak of God as though He is not gendered, the standard language used to speak of Him is heavily masculine in nature. What distinguishes gnostic Christianity from both traditional Jewish-Christian tradition and the pagan traditions of surrounding cultures is that it incorporates heavily sexualized metaphors while still utilizing language derived from Jewish tradition. Pagel suggests that this difference in conceptualizing God with distinctly masculine and feminine aspects, rather than distinctly masculine and ambiguously gendered aspects, is the cause of the social differences between gnostic and orthodox Christianities. One criticism that appears repeatedly in orthodox attacks on gnostic Christianity is the allowance of female-led worship and ceremony. The orthodox, on the other hand, had an exclusively male priesthood, and at the height of the gnostic controversy even separated churches by gender, as was done in the synagogues. The gospels, even those that would become orthodox, depict Jesus as regularly interacting with women and having prominent female disciples. The letters of Paul, meanwhile, also have progressive verses concerning women and mention women in positions of authority in the early Church. Rather than seeing verses that seem to express limits on the equality between man and woman as such, she takes the position that Pauline letters of questioned authenticity were forgeries created by orthodox Christians to establish Paul to be a specifically orthodox Christian - as the reader may recall, Valentinus claimed to have been initiated through Theudas, himself claimed to be a disciple of Paul. Pagel believes that Paul is best seen as a figure who is both proto-orthodox and proto-gnostic, who the orthodox then co-opted. Pagel is careful to note that these generalized trends are not absolute; even in texts that seem to affirm women among the gnostics, the rhetoric of the feminine is used to negatively describe things. The Dialogue of the Savior, which sings praises of Mary Magdalene, nonetheless requires the readers to “destroy the works of femaleness” - that is, sex. In the Gospel of Thomas, Salome is told that she must become a man in order to enter the kingdom of heaven: that is to say, one must transcend the natural (and thus female) to become divine (male). Clement of Alexandria, meanwhile, was an orthodox figure who viciously attacked gnostics, but nonetheless spoke of God in feminine metaphors, including that of mother. He also praised famous women throughout history, Christian and non-Christian, in his Paedagogus. The reason that the orthodox community took this position is not clear; as one historian said, the only certainty is that it happened. Pagel notes several suggestions that are possible; that the influx of hellenized Jews into the Christian movement is one proposed cause. Another possible cause is that Christianity moved from the lower class, which divided labor between genders more evenly, to higher classes. [One possibility, one not brought up by Pagel, is that the rise of the gnostics themselves are the impetus for the change; Pagel had mentioned that many gnostic groups centered their movements around figures on the periphery of orthodox Christianity, which may have caused early Christians to double-down on stances already moderately held].

[slingsendarrows]

To His Coy Master

“I have often reflected on upon the new vistas that reading opened to me. I knew right there in prison that reading had changed the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive…My homemade education gave me, with every additional book I read, a little bit more sensitivity to the deafness, dumbness, and blindness that was afflicting the black race in America.” — Malcolm X “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”

Photo by Will Small

It never ceases to amaze the length, and breadth white people will go to willfully deny history in as much as it tells them the truth about themselves. I don’t blame them. It is a bitter pill to swallow owning up as a member of a people that has wreaked such havoc and extended so much unmitigated violence. Your domination in pursuit of betterment for your people and racial superiority was at the unquantifiable expense of others.

Now, before we get bogged down in the mire of wilfully confusing terms, let me resentfully explain what I mean by the words I am using. I say resentfully because expounding upon the injustices heaped upon my people requires I justify my position and take care not to offend the sensibilities of those I am addressing. It is dormant trauma indicative of the master/slave dichotomy I still have yet to shed. For it is only the oppressor that necessitates the oppressed exercise restraint and caution in stating and expressing his grievances, however vile and repulsive, adjusting for nuances and individual circumstances as if his subjugation wasn’t abrupt, violent, and complete. What is the virtue of incremental progress if the oppressor committed the original sin with absolute expediency? But, I digress.

“White people” or “white men,” refers to the collective white man, woman, and child as befits the ideologies of white supremacy, meaning those originating from Europe and the inheritors of their ancestors’ misdeeds. I will not deign to account for individual acts or attitudes of “good” white people because it is irrelevant. It is a tactic the oppressor uses to detract from the larger truth about himself.

Also, in speaking collectively, I will use the masculine pronouns, reflexive and otherwise, in an umbrella fashion similar to holy writ, signifying patriarchy as the apex of privilege and tyranny. Occasionally, I may address collective “white people” as women and men, specifically. “Master” is not restricted to those who owned slaves in actuality but those who propagated ideas of white superiority and black subjection.

Finally, and for what I hope will be the last time, privilege is a Russian doll ladder in that some have more than others in the broader context of the hierarchical structure as well as within each rung. Privilege is the exemption from specific experiences due to the inherent characteristics of race, ability, sexuality, gender identity, sex, socioeconomic status, etc. I have privilege within my rung as educated, able-bodied, cis-gender, and heterosexual. I shall leave it there.

I know you are, but what am I?

There are things you can’t unsee. I can neither unsee injustice nor abide civility for civility’s sake. Living as a black woman person is a burden, but one I am learning to carry with pride. You live in the depths of a valley with a clear perspective of the surrounding landscape. I look about me these days, and I yearn to be free. Natural freedom, not granted, but inborn and awakened through the conscious effort. Freedom rising from truth and understanding, painful though it may be. But master, I must tell you the truth about yourself, for I see now, as Malcolm X stated, you love yourself so much you’re often surprised to discover we do not share your “vainglorious self-opinion.”

Bettmann Archives/Getty Images

The cyclical nature of oppression angers me: outcries and marches, cosmetic salves for change, and disingenuous support that lasts just long enough for us to return to business, as usual. I don’t want to mince words anymore. It no longer serves to be palatable. You must swallow whole my incredulous raging despair and dubious hope for change. You will taste every unpleasant bite as I tell you the unflavored truth about yourself. I will not be distracted by dog-whistle racist dismissals of reverse-racism and black supremacy. Pipe down! You know I do not have the power to alter a fraction of your daily existence fundamentally.

For all your talk of progress, history shows very little of significance and import has materially changed. Individual achievement is pointless if institutionalized racism persists, unimpeded since the advent of colonial conquest when you left your lands to “discover” ours. It matters little that some of us make it if most of us continue to suffer the same injustices bereft of reprieve through education, wealth, and status. In short, your surface efforts at woke-ness and allyship are of little use if, in your white homes and white spaces, you propagate or remain silent in the face of racist sentiments and ideologies.

I reason real change calls for radical action. The how eludes me. Real change requires rooting out the problem in its entirety, a problem so deeply ingrained and pervasive it infects every facet of our daily existence. It is institutionalized. But our subjugation was so final we forgot our names. We have been in the wilderness far too long, thirsting for understanding and starving for identity. You hope we never figure out our freedom was never a matter for your consent.

In the midst of my hungering, I have awakened to two fundamental realizations: 1) we are and have only ever been as free as you have allowed us to be, 2) truth comes through knowledge of self, and knowledge of self comes through self-education.

It’s been a long, long time coming, but I know change is gonna come.

During moments of considerable racial unrest, you remind us to be grateful for the crumbs that fall from your feasting tables and make it into our mouths. With each protesting hamster-wheel cycle for change, you erroneously juxtapose our grievances against your apparent signs of progress, as if the two are analogous. You caution against violent reactions when your institutions murder us, and you selectively misquote our advocates out of context to suit your purposes and invalidate our rage. The conversation inevitably becomes about how we are not decent people, and our behavior courted death; therefore, we deserve to die. There is no need to mourn, much less to protest. Still, during our tear-gassed and rubber-bulleted peaceful protestations, you implore us, once again, to be patient. Someday we’ll all be free. Incrementalism over expediency!

Photo by Charles Moore

You ask us to remember Abraham Lincoln and his hundreds of thousands of Union soldiers. Do we not recall the numerous, albeit contradictory, supreme court decisions that have brought us thus far? Lyndon B. Johnson and his predecessors awarded us civil rights, benefitting the electorate with the sacrifice of black bodies. The matter of reparations is a non-starter — sins of the father, and all that; it’s in the past. See our constitutional amendments, white abolitionists, James Meredith, northern white liberalism, and lest we forget, the progressive black achievement permitted in your industries and society.

But the fact that we’re still witnessing black firsts 400 years later is not a sign of progress; it is the opposite.

Our schools teach the efforts and white generosity of Abraham Lincoln liberated black people in America. However, a cursory glance at your records will show this is factually incorrect. I am tired of being reminded to pay homage to the “Great Emancipator,” whom we remember, in large part, due to this astounding act of condescending deference. Master Lincoln is an excellent example of your self-conceit that our freedom is yours to grant or deny. And to add insult to injury, you congratulate yourselves for it. The overarching white supremacist belief you can deign to give us freedom is a glaring reminder we are only as free as you enable us to be. Your love for this lie is so profound; you pull it out each time issues of race arise. But Lincoln, a white man, freed you! He might have been black too.

So let’s set the record straight.

Lincoln did not free slaves out of moral imperative but political expediency. A cursory study of his papers and thinking at the time show he was willing to maintain slavery if it meant keeping the Union intact because “a house divided against itself cannot stand.”

Before the Missouri Compromise of 1820, a carefully maintained 1:1 ratio determined the slavery status of newly admitted states. This balancing act was codified when Maine and Missouri sought admittance; the former was free, and the latter legally permit slavery. The law also prohibited slavery north of the Mason-Dixon line.

At the onset of the Civil War, Missouri demographically split between confederate and union allies. In 1861, witnessing Missouri’s descent into chaos, Union Major Generals Fremont and Hunter issued emancipation proclamations calling for the execution of those found guilty of taking up arms against Union and the confiscation of their property, including freeing their slaves. Shortly after that, Lincoln fired the generals and annulled the proclamation. He issued a Second Confiscation Act in July 1862, allowing for the confiscation of slaves owned by the rebels, freeing them at the discretion of the court.

District of Columbia. Company E, 4th U.S. Colored Infantry, at Fort Lincoln

Slaves were commodities of considerable economic value. Slaves were mortgaged collateral and settled debts. Losing slaves would result in a substantial financial loss for southern masters. The Union knew that, so they exploited it. Freeing slaves robed the Confederacy of its free and disposable labor, eliminating the possibility of slaves fighting against the Union army at the behest of their rebel masters. Lincoln did not issue the Proclamation of 1863 because he thought black people were inherently equal and deserving of justice under the law. Asked about his decision-making process, he stated, “…if I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that…” The Civil War did not end slavery in acknowledgment of black equality. Slave emancipation crippled the Confederate economies and, in so doing, weakened the southern rebellion. Emancipation was a means to an end.

Lincoln could not conceive of a nation with black people as equal if not, primary stakeholders. Nevermind their backs built the wealth of the country. Now that the problematic part of nation-building over, he could simply return them from whence they came and be done with it. He thought it better to return black Americans to Africa and failing that, create a whole separate nation unto themselves.

Reportedly the only known photo of a black American Union soldier and his family. (Library of Congress)

In 1854, before the Civil War, Lincoln stated, at a speech in Illinois, his “…first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them back to Liberia.” It was the only foreseeable solution to the race issue. He considered the coal-mining prospects of the Chiriqui region in modern-day Panama an option for deportation and resettlement. Still, the idea met fierce abolitionist opposition when he tested it on a sample slave population in Delaware. He supported a congressional bill that would “…aid in the colonization and settlement of such free persons of African descent […] as may desire to emigrate to the Republic of Haiti or Liberia or such other country beyond the limits of the United States as the President may determine.” After signing the Second Confiscation Act, in August 1862, Lincoln invited a delegation of five prominent black men to the White House to clarify that white and black people cannot coexist; therefore, separation was the most direct path to peace. He wanted their support for a mass black exodus.

Liberia presented a logistical nightmare. The Chiquiri coal was worthless, and the land in dispute with Costa Rica. Approximately 450 black people moved to an island off the coast of Haiti, of which almost 25% died of poor nutrition and illness before the remainder returned to the U.S. Defeated, Lincoln, considered deporting “the whole colored race of the slave states into Texas.” Days before his death, he stressed, “I can hardly believe that the South and North can live peace unless we can get rid of the negroes…I believe it would be better [for the whites] to export them to some fertile country…”

Getty/Library of Congress

In conclusion, asking me to celebrate a white master for granting me what is rightfully mine is ludicrous — honoring him for a decision that only benefitted me as a secondary consequence of his primary purpose is the height of white arrogance. It merely cements you don’t believe freedom is ours by right; it is yours to give in the manner befitting your white sensibility stretched out over the expanse of time. Time to legitimize the numbing effect of revisionist history and position us in gratitude toward master’s acquiesce and tolerance, however slow. Master is doing his best. After all, his wife, at a time, condescended to teach Frederick Douglass to read and write.

And yet, here we remain, yearning for crumbs off of master’s table. Asking, begging, pleading, for what is ours.

The real nightmare scenario for white supremacy is an actualized black mind, educated and conscious of its pervasive and pernicious effects. Global black unity jellies the white man’s spine in fear of retribution for his crimes. It is why you champion incremental progress and hail peaceful protest as the height of moral discourse. You only understand violence for violence is what it took to achieve your dominance. You cannot conceive of any other possible outcome, and you cannot revise history with enough “good” white people committing “good” white acts to cover the rancid stench. You know it stinks, and since you cannot find a solution outside your oppressive playbook, you must deny, obfuscate, distract, appease and roll the ball down the road of historical replay.

To that, I now turn a deaf ear. We must educate ourselves about our people and history if we are to be truly free. We cannot depend upon you to what is right. You have made it abundantly clear.

[monicalorandavis]

The Watchmen Premiere electrocuted my brain!

Not literally. But in the alternative world in which Watchmen takes place, brain electrocution seems like a likely torture scenario. (Note: tiny squidlings fall from the sky in sweeping hail storms so tell me I’m wrong.) But before I get sidetracked with squidlings and sci-fi elements, this needs to be said: the pilot episode of Watchmen is one of the most interesting pieces of television I’ve ever seen. Never have I felt so grounded (so quickly!!!) and yet so free from the natural order of my America. It wasn’t disorienting (believe me, other things were) but, the America depicted in Watchmen is one I’ve seen in my best, and worst, imaginations of the America we could be (and could’ve been).

I feel, like so many black Americans feel, that things could have been better for us. For all of us - if the country had just paid the debts owed to black Americans. And this might not have been the review you were expecting, but it’s the one you’re getting.

Let’s start at the top, the show opens with a silent film. A young black boy, no older than 5, watches attentively. His mother, the only other person in the theater, accompanies on piano, tears streaming down her face. In the background, we hear gun shots and mayhem. But the boy is transfixed by the film. In the film, a black sheriff saves the day in the 1920s, while the scoundrel, a white man, gets strung up a tree. The adoring white crowd cheers for the black sheriff and the little boy beams. Now, freeze -

In the 1920s, there were no such films being made. However, what Watchmen does here, and throughout the pilot, seamlessly, is weave our real history into the fabric of its America, and by so doing illustrates just how easy it is to change history. The Sheriff in the film, Bass Reeves, is a beloved hero for black people and Oklahomans alike. He was born into slavery and then escaped and hid with the Indians until the 13th amendment freed him. After that, he became one of the most successful, gun-slinging sheriffs in the country, fearless and well-renowned. The fact that Nicole Kassell and Damon Lindeloff are laying the foundation for a country that honors black heroes is re-writing the way Americans learn about America. They’re saying, we don’t have to tell stories like we used to. And these motherfuckers did that in the first goddamn scene. (We haven’t even gotten to the superheroes yet!)

Fast forward, it’s 2012 (?) and Robert Redford, the actor and humanitarian, is the president. His policies have divided an already divided America. Instituting Redfordations (Watchmen’s nod to, yes, reparations) is as hot-button an issue as, well, reparations currently are. Some white people on the fringe have taken to underground organizing and terrorism against the state. Cops and black people have been targeted as enemy number one.

But it’s not all shoot-outs (though that first one was *chef’s kiss* delicioso) and choreographed fight scenes. Like any good action movie, Watchmen captures your heart during its quietest moments. There were some oddly passed-over glimpses into inner worlds (Don Johnson sniffing cocaine during dinner rings a bell) but, by and large, we find ourselves in a world that took a slightly different path. What we get to experience in Watchmen, and not our world (yet), is the chaos white people are willing to wreak upon society at large for committing the sin of justice.

Before you think I’m deliberately avoiding the superhero element, I will say that I am not a fan of the superhero genre in general. I know, I know. I suck. Needless to say, I haven’t read the graphic novels that the show is based on or the 2009 film of the same name. According to the internet, this is a fabulous interpretation of the original works, while the movie left something to be desired. Will I watch the film to find out? Maybe. Maybe (probably) not.

All I can say is, I like this version. I like Regina King, always, and I especially like her as the badass cop/vigilante in a goofy costume. To pause for a moment, and circle this point of costume, masks and anonymity - While, I certainly don’t understand Panda and his whole getup, I do like the premise of anonymity as a means of protection, in a larger sense. It encapsulates a larger theme of colorblindness and race. Yes, in our society, it is wholly naive and, frankly, rude to pretend to not see race. But, what if we really couldn’t? Then, and only then, would it be possible to have these huge social debates. Is race real?

Surely, the difference in skin color is real. But, take away the ability to see skin color and the ability of racists to target victims falls apart (because the whole of racism is quite literally only skin-deep). Faceless men and women have no discernible features under their masks. In Watchmen, the police learned this the hard way. Apparently, there’s some White Night where white supremacists attacked cops and innocent people (how unusual!!!!). As a result, the police wear a yellow mask that camouflages most of their face against attackers bent on identifying them. However, the rebels, organized under the 7th Cavalry moniker, also use masks to hide their own identities - borrowing a page from their “oppressors”. The whole thing is very 2019, and I keep fantasizing that Donald Trump will tweet some praise for the show, not realizing that he is, in fact, the sick underbelly, lost in their/his self-pitying, fighting for something he has no right to.

So, as you can understand, the superhero thing is at the bottom of the list when it comes to what makes this show so very interesting, which is saying something because HBO simply does not do superhero television programs (nor do I, really). HBO does cutting-edge, risky drama or sexy, incest fantasies, or comedies with strong, flawed leads we love to hate (or hate to love). HBO is taking a big swing and, while we’re only one episode deep, I’m in. This is cutting-edge, risky and sexy and everyone is flawed and white people are going to be mad, so I guess it’s covering a lot of bases for me.

I love the notion of an alternative America that atoned for the sins of racism. And I love this fictional narrative as much as racists hate the narrative that there is no longer any room for the white man in America. (They, however, do not know that their narrative is also fictional. Oop.)

And that leads me to my only concern with Watchmen. It is incendiary. In the way that everybody pointed to The Joker, this could starting something. The riots in the show pulsate with the same adjacency that exists now, in our country, at every moment, lurking behind every corner. One wrong move and this whole thing crumbles.

Will this show induce white rebellion against blacks? It wouldn’t be the first time.

[butchnymph-blog]

He keeps a "no means no" poster over the bed he uses to con college girls a decade younger than him into giving him pitysex on.

He's genderfluid because at his job he doesnt feel like a woman, he feels like earning managerial salary.

If he ever does have his name changed to Makayla how will I find him to learn if a girl finally gets him registered as a sex offender.

Once upon a time men told people they were space alien gods so that they could lead cults and force women to have sex with them.

A sociopath can assume any identity if it gets him what he wants.

He tells me he's a woman on the inside; except that women dont need sex from me to feel like women.

He calls the girl who lives with him stupid. He lies to her and hides things to prove she's stupid. He reminds her he knows things and she doesnt.

She told me she thought I was cute. He told her to. She was supposed to convince me that threesomes are fun. They have fun threesomes with other lesbians all the time, no problem. She doesnt like sex, but he's always suggesting a new person she has to hit on. He's asexual. He just likes hardcore porn and the "feeling" of sex. Lesbians love kissing him. Platonically. And fucking him. Platonically. I remember Charlie Manson. I remember Children of God. I wonder if he hit her when I pulled a knife and left instead?

If Manson put a dress on he'd know more about being a lesbian than me. Makayla knows best too.

There's power in what you do.

There's power in not believing.

Man created god in his image, but man is not god, and god is not.

Ask him.

How is it that he knows us when our fight was to be free of the obligation to fuck penis and his fight is to tell us we always wanted his penis.

How is it he knows what its like to be born a girl when he's disgusted by everything that is our reality. Our hair our voices our thoughts our cunts...

Why pretend to society that he has to fuck us to be allowed to wear the lipstick we still fight to be freed from in the workplace? When did anything between my legs prevent men from being less masculine?

Hold your power.

Lesbian isnt an institution of women who exist to give pitysex.

Lesbian power is in pursuing women no matter the lies told to you.

Truth is not whatever a charismatic man says it is.

Burn out the lies. Scream the truth.

Never let a girl be raped into a mattress by a man who manipulated her pity underneath a poster that says "no means no"

[charleymountbatten]

Dear Papa,

It’s been far too long since I’ve written you. I’m sorry for the silence, but I am currently in Etrusia and did not feel safe in writing openly until now. It’s a fair enough city, at a glance. The architecture, fashions, and parties are some of the most remarkable I’ve ever seen (though it all pales in comparison to home). Even the food is to die for, though the wine is rather disappointing. I feel like I really could have enjoyed myself here, if everything hadn’t gone completely wrong.

We both know slavery exists here. All my life, I’ve turned a blind eye to it, and so has everyone else in our family. Hell, I’m pretty sure most of the empire is content to let it slide, as long as it stays where it is and remains a dirty secret. I never gave it any thought before; it had nothing to do with me.

But now it does, and I can’t turn a blind eye to it anymore. I’ve seen it first hand. Children getting auctioned to be trained as gladiators. Beautiful women being sold as companions. And my friend Corellon being taken from the streets and tortured at the hands of one of the most powerful men in this city.

For fear of anything worse happening, I didn’t want to write until I got them back. They were kidnapped about two weeks ago, and for the past week we have been searching and fighting to free them. I entered a gladiatorial competition, where they were being given away as second prize. I won. Somehow, I got exactly what I wanted, and now Corellon is now as safe as they can be. But papa, they are really not ok. I can’t even begin to explain what that monster did to them. When I come home I can explain it better, as well as name names (I still don’t feel entirely safe doing so now). And though I think this man in particular is the worst of them, I can’t help but think that the entire system here is monstrous. As I said, I know we’ve always brushed it off, even laughed at how hilariously backwards Etrusia is about it, but I don’t think anyone in our family ever saw the full extent of how deeply ingrained this practice is.

Just as a warning, diplomatic relations between Carcarron and Etrusia might be a little difficult for the foreseeable future. For the sake of our family, I suppose I apologize, but I do not regret the choice I made. I freed Corellon during the award ceremony, and let them rip up the contract themselves. We brought slavery out of the shadows and explicitly condemned it, and I am pretty sure the nobles of Etrusia are none too pleased about that. Though I doubt this will have any lasting effects on the institution as a whole, I hope it will serve at least one important message- the friends of Charlemagne Mountbatten are off limits. I do sincerely hope I have your support, and Uncle Max’s, in this regard. And if not, well, I suppose I don’t give much of a shit about that either. I’ve learned from a very young age how to master the game, and my move was an entirely calculated one. All I ask is that you give me the chance to see how this plays out.

Love to all, your lindalë, Charlemagne Mountbatten

PS. I have a boyfriend.

[qqueenofhades]

50 Awesome Women To Know: Part 8

As we complete the latest set of 50, we ask: Are they somehow getting more awesome? Possibly. But then, they all are.

Maria Gaetana Agnesi (1718-1799): Italian, philosopher, philanthropist for the poor, mathematician, mystic, theologian. Spoke seven languages, wrote the first textbook on differential and integral calculus, and was appointed professor of mathematics at the University of Bologna. 

María Parado de Bellido (1777-1822): Indigenous Peruvian, spy and revolutionary during Peru’s fight for independence from Spain, heroine of the movement and of folk legend alike.

Marta Brilej (1917-2016): Slovenian, member of the partisan resistance against the Nazis during WWII with her husband as they made many attempts to catch her, courier and war hero, ambassador and diplomat (again with her husband) in London, Mexico City, Egypt, Yemen, and other places; died at age 99.

Mary McLeod Bethune (1875-1955): African-American, the daughter of slaves, an educator, humanitarian, and civil rights activist, appointed as a national adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt; founded Bethune-Cookman University, a historically black college, along with other efforts to improve education and the lives of recently freed slaves.

Mary Ritter Beard (1876-1958): American, historian of women’s rights and the labor movement, social justice advocate and activist, author of several seminal historical works (along with her husband) and dedicated suffragist.

Maryana Marrash (1848-1919): Syrian, author and poet, figure of the Arabian Renaissance, journalist and first woman to write in Arabic-language newspapers, patron of literary salons and intellectuals.

Mihrimah Sultan (1522-1578): Ottoman Turkish, daughter of Suleiman the Magnificent, the most powerful Ottoman princess in history and recognized as a huge political and economic mastermind in the empire, key figure in the “Sultanate of Women,” sponsor of major architectural projects and a patroness of the arts and sciences.

Mina Spiegel Rees (1902-1997): American, mathematician, pioneer of computer science, head of the math department at the U.S. Naval Research Office, first female president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, instrumental to the entire post-war direction of math and computer science in America.

Moremi Ajasoro (12th century): Yoruba, princess and tribal heroine, who was said to have married a rival prince and then returned to her people with information on how to defeat him, described as brave and beautiful.

N.K. Jemisin (1972 -- ): African-American, novelist, psychologist, and activist, three-time winner of the Hugo Award (the only author to have done so in three straight years) for her insightful, original, and compelling sci-fi and fantasy.

Nodira (1792-1842): Uzbek, poet, stateswoman, outspoken cultural critic, advocate for women’s rights in Central Asia under conservative 19th-century Islamic regimes, public figure, political advisor to her son who ruled as khan of Kokand, hanged after she refused to marry a rival.

Pearl Connor-Mogotsi (1924-2005): Trinidadian, actress, activist, promoter of Afro-Caribbean artistic cultures, institutions, and traditions; worked to represent black artists and authors as a literary agent in the UK in the 1950s; studied law at King’s College London.

Pearl Witherington (1914-2008): British/French, special operations agent during World War II, member of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, described as “the best shot the [entire Special Operations Executive] had ever seen,” leader of a ring of spies and so effective that the Nazis put a bounty of one million Reichsmarks on her head; presided over the surrender of 18,000 German troops, LITERALLY JUST. GO READ ABOUT HER.

Peretta Peronne (15th century): French, Parisian surgeon who was prosecuted by the medical faculty of the University of Paris in 1411 for being unlicensed (read: female, as part of a wider effort to restrict and professionalize medicine as an elite male university career). 

Raufa Hassan al-Sharki (1958-2011): Yemeni, feminist, activist, first female journalist in Yemen, fierce advocate for women’s education and opponent of conservative Islamist groups; historian of culture, clothing, and society.

Regina Salomée Halpir (1718-c.1763): Lithuanian, doctor, travel writer, adventurer, who was self-taught as a physician while living in Constantinople with her husband, befriended Empress Anna and Empress Elizabeth of Russia; doctor to the women of the sultan’s harem, eventually wrote her own (if somewhat tall-tale-prone) autobiography.

Rosa María Hinojosa de Ballí (1752-1803): Tejana; rancher and “cattle queen” of Mexican Texas, was left 55,000 acres by her husband in 1790 and owned more than one million acres by the time she died thirteen years later.

Rufaida Al-Aslamia (7th century): Arabian; recognized as the first professional nurse in the history of medicine and the first Islamic female surgeon (c. 620), trained and taught other women medical skills and also was a social worker for the poor, children, and the needy; knew the Prophet Muhammad personally.

Ruža Petrović (1911-1958): Croatian, anti-fascist activist who refused to give up her companions under torture; after having her eyes put out with a dagger in a hideously violent crime, she kept on fighting fascists, and provided strength and moral support to her comrades, was elected to the Antifascist Front and founded an organization for the blind.

Sara Forbes Bonetta (1843-1880): Egbado (West African) princess, kidnapped and sold into slavery, ended up arriving in England and became the goddaughter of Queen Victoria; married a wealthy Yoruba businessman and moved back to Africa; her descendants are still notable in Nigeria.

Sayyida al-Hurra (1485-1561): Moroccan, stone-cold badass governmental administrator and pirate queen, counterpart of the corsair captain Barbarossa of Algiers (who controlled the eastern Mediterranean while she controlled the west); married a king later on but made him come to her to do it; described as “living a life of adventure and romance” (WHERE IS HER MOVIE DAMMIT).

Sofia Kovalevskaya (1850-1891): Russian, mathematician, first woman to earn a doctorate in mathematics, described as “the greatest known woman scientist before the twentieth century,” first woman to edit a scientific journal, professor at Stockholm University in Sweden, feminist and author.

Therese of Bavaria (1850-1925): Bavarian, princess, daughter of Prince Liutpold of Bavaria; ethnologist, zoologist, travel writer, explorer of the Amazon, contributor and student of the (now-absolutely-tragically-destroyed) National Museum of Brazil, member of scientific and geographical learned societies.

Ulrika Eleonora Stålhammar (1683-1733): Swedish, dressed up as a man and served in the army for many years and reached the rank of corporal, married a woman named Maria and won the eventual court case trying them for homosexuality; they served brief sentences and lived happily ever after.

Zofia Potocka (1760-1822): Greek, known for her great beauty and adventurous life, born into a poor Greek family, but became the lover of high-profile nobles/royals, served as a Russian spy; friends with Marie Antoinette; later became a Polish noble, gave generously to the poor in her later years.

[livmoose]

Salomania: paradigmatic archetype shift

The narrative of Salome is widely known today: the princess of Judea dances to please her stepfather and asks in return for the head of John the Baptist served on a [silver] platter. But the understanding of underlying implications by modern audiences do not correspond to the initial story.

Henri Regnault ‘Salome’, oil on canvas, 1870

In the Bible, the dancing daughter is a twelve-year-old girl without a name. Not only that, but she is not even the hero (or rather the antihero) of the story; her mother, Herodias is.

Obviously, the character did a 180 throughout the years. Salome acquired her name, her sexual awakening, and even half a dozen years to fit the ideological framework of ever changing Christian mythology. A fascinating change.

After the year-long persistence of my friend, I finally got to reading Wilde’s ‘Salome’ followed by our discussion of the play. What piqued my interest was the difference of how each of us perceived the title character: I saw her as a conscientious seductress but my friend argued she was an innocent 14-year-old caught in the web of her desires. It turned out, neither of us was wrong.

Salome’s character is terrifyingly charming, ambiguous and open to interpretations. Wilde wrote her within the dual framework of a virgin whore (a patriarchal dream). In the play, she is on many occasions compared to the moon, the duplicitous symbol on its own. It’s beautifully chaste and divinely pure - thus the connection to virgin goddess:

[Salome] The moon is cold and chaste. I am sure she is a virgin, she has a virgin's beauty. Yes, she is a virgin. She has never defiled herself. She has never abandoned herself to men, like the other goddesses.

Oscar Wilde ‘Salome’

But it is also deceptive and threatening, undoubtedly pointing at its explicit sexuality:

[Herod] The moon has a strange look to-night. Has she not a strange look? She is like a mad woman, a mad woman who is seeking everywhere for lovers. She is naked too. She is quite naked. The clouds are seeking to clothe her nakedness, but she will not let them. She shows herself naked in the sky.

Oscar Wilde ‘Salome’

The moon symbolism is pervasive in the story, appearing in three states and three colors, white, red and black. Each of these leads to the interpretations of Salome as a goddess manifestation:

virgin: Artemis or Cybele who refused to lose their virginity - chaste and pure (white) moon;

whore: Aphrodite/Astarte/Ishtar in charge of love and sex - passionate and seductive (red) moon;

death: mysterious and scary Hecate - malignant dark moon (covered by clouds).

Though this is not a popular interpretation, I still like how flowing it is, especially given that each of the goddesses named has her own relation to the moon.

There’s a curious detail that empowers such a viewpoint. Salome’s dance as devised by Wilde is obviously a striptease - the seven veils that are dropped one by one. He probably developed this idea from one of the contemporary poets:

She freed and floated on the air her arms Above dim veils that hid her bosom’s charms... The veils fell round her like thin coiling mists Shot through by topaz suns and amethysts.

Arthur O’Shaughnessy ‘The Daughter of Herodias’

Striptease, however, was not a new concept (although I like toying with the idea Wilde, the flaming homosexual came up with the ultimate entertainment of a heterosexual man). The goddess Ishtar is known to have dropped her robes and jewels one by one seven times before every gate of the underworld when she was searching for her husband Tammuz. Seems like Wilde went heavy on symbolism here.

Furthermore, there’s a comparison between Herodias and Cybele that (given the similarities between Salome and her mother I’ll be addressing later) finely plays into the whole goddess thing:

Herodias appeared, her coiffure crowned with an Assyrian mitre, which was held in place by a band passing under the chin. Her dark hair fell in ringlets over a scarlet peplum with slashed sleeves. On either side of the door through which one stepped into the gallery, stood a huge stone monster, like those of Atrides; and as Herodias appeared between them, she looked like Cybele supported by her lions. In her hands she carried a patera, a shallow vessel of silver used by the Romans in pouring libations.

Gustave Flaubert ‘Herodias’

Foreshadowing in this short story is nothing but gorgeous.

Biblical story

At the beginning, there was a word. Not a single word - but the mention of Salome in the Hebrew Bible is still scarce:

On Herod’s birthday the daughter of Herodias danced for the guests and pleased Herod so much that he promised with an oath to give her whatever she asked. Prompted by her mother, she said, “Give me here on a platter the head of John the Baptist.” The king was distressed, but because of his oaths and his dinner guests, he ordered that her request be granted and had John beheaded in the prison. His head was brought in on a platter and given to the girl, who carried it to her mother.

Matthew 14:6-11

The general outline of the story is the same: the girl dances before Herod and asks for John’s head on a platter. But the focus is completely different, the main player here is Herodias. The girl doesn’t yet have a name - that will be a later development, when, in one of the texts not talking about John the Baptist’s demise, the name of Herodias’s daughter is identified as Salome.

Mark gives a similar account with much the same details:

And when Herodias’ daughter herself came in and danced, and pleased Herod and those who sat with him, the king said to the girl, ‘Ask me whatever you want, and I will give it to you.’ And he swore to her, ‘Whatever you ask of me, I will give you, up to half my kingdom!’ Then she went out and said to her mother, ‘What should I ask for?’ And Herodias answered, ‘The head of John the Baptist.’

Mark 6:22-24

Nothing in these accounts indicates the sexual dimension of the girl’s character. That changes in the Middle Ages.

Medieval interpretations

Disclaimer: this is where I enter the realm of guesses and speculations. Counter-arguments accepted.

As the Roman Empire fell and before the Renaissance struck, Christianity had its rule indisputable and undeniable. Establishing power over the populace through social events such as Crusades and subjugation of various functional institutions, the young religion rapidly developed its mythology. As part of its strategy of executing control, different groups of population were oppressed (everyone who was not a white male, basically), women among of them.

This is what I assume might have happened to Salome’s narrative: at some point, dance became associated with pagan cults and, as such, not exactly prohibited but condemned and looked down upon along the lines of ‘legs are given to us by God to walk the path of piety not to dance’. As a result, Salome’s dance suffered a blow that changed the character substantially. Here is the sophist argumentation behind the shift:

It is hard to imagine that Herod was so impressed by her footwork or enamored of her execution of dance moves. This dance had as its object the same as most dances - the arousal of sexual desires.

Jacob Hudgins ‘Expository Files 15:5’

The bias behind the argument is immensely, deliciously enjoyable. Besides, it flows quite naturally into the modernist and decadent interpretations of Salome’s story.

There is also a feminist spectrum for this narrative shift. I’m not particularly fond of it as it is tainted with the radical context. Still, it is a viable argument:

Let us be careful of the influence women can have over men.

Jacob Hudgins ‘Expository Files 15:5’

The author also hilariously binds the story of Samson into this. After Delilah tricked him twice already, Samson still trusted her with the secret of another of his weaknesses because of the ‘foolish reasoning of the man focused on fulfilling sexual desires rather than thinking straight’.

In order to exert control over women, they were reduced to two archetypes: a chaste maiden (embodied by none else but Virgin Mary) and a whore (naturally empowered by God’s antagonist and manifested through various characters, especially Jezebel).

As Salome’s dance ended with John the Baptist’s beheading, she could not be viewed as a virtuous character. Instead, she was merged with the vicious attributes of her mother, Herodias, the true villain of the story. This added the sexualized aspect to her dance, whether Salome seduced her stepfather at the direction of Herodias (earlier explanations) or on her own accord (later interpretations).

In favor of this argument is the fact that both Herodias and Salome at some point were associated with Jezebel:

‘Ah! Is it thou, Jezebel? Thou hast captured thy lord’s heart with the tinkling of thy feet.’

Gustave Flaubert ‘Herodias’

Jezebel is the figure of the Hebrew Bible so vile and despised that she became the powerful archetype in itself and later migrated to the New World as part of the ideological framework of slavery. She was associated with false prophets and, through her use of cosmetics, with ‘painted women’ (aka prostitutes). Notably, according to Flaubert, Herod (prior to being introduced to Salome) was seduced by Herodias in a similar manner - an argument in favor of the merging of the two characters.

So, at this point, Salome already possesses her name and the sexual aspect that was nowhere to be seen in the earliest accounts. Modernist view further enriches her character and adds the aspect of control that Salome lacked.

Decadence and character development

In XIX century, Salome crosses another threshold and that’s when the fun begins.

At first, she is still the instrument of her mother. In Flaubert’s short story, Salome is nurtured with quite the demonic intention of seducing Herod:

The dancer was Salome, the daughter of Herodias, who for many months her mother had caused to be instructed in dancing, and other arts of pleasing, with the sole idea of bringing her to Machaerus and presenting her to the tetrarch, so that he should fall in love with her fresh young beauty and feminine wiles. The plan had proved successful, it seemed; he was evidently fascinated, and Herodias felt that at last she was sure of retaining her power over him!

Gustave Flaubert ‘Herodias’

Salome obviously dances an overtly sexual dance, and she knows what she’s doing as the desire of the spectators does not escape her; on the contrary, she enjoys it:

Her round white arms seemed ever beckoning and striving to entice to her side some youth who was fleeing from her allurements. She appeared to pursue him, with movements light as a butterfly.

[...]

Her arms, her feet, her clothing even, seemed to emit streams of magnetism, that set the spectators’ blood on fire.

Gustave Flaubert ‘Herodias’

She is also trusted with carrying out the instructions given to her prior. It seems like Salome knows what Herodias wants from her and has no problem delivering it - however, it still is not her own intention:

[...] she leaned over, smiled upon the tetrarch, and, with an air of almost childlike naivete, pronounced these words:

“I ask my lord to give me, placed upon a charger, the head of—” She hesitated, as if not certain of the name; then said: “The head of Iaokanann!”

Gustave Flaubert ‘Herodias’

With this, the next step is obvious. Transforming from an innocent, even victimized pre-teen girl into an experienced seductress, the possibility of conscious effort has the ability to introduce Salome as the new villain of the story.

Gustave Moreau ‘Salome and the Apparition of the Baptist's Head’, watercolor, 1876

No longer was she merely the dancing-girl who extorts a cry of lust and concupiscence from an old man by the lascivious contortions of her body; who breaks the will, masters the mind of a King by the spectacle of her quivering bosoms, heaving belly and tossing thighs; she was now revealed in a sense as the symbolic incarnation of world-old Vice, the goddess of immortal Hysteria, the Curse of Beauty supreme above all other beauties by the cataleptic spasm that stirs her flesh and steels her muscles, – a monstrous Beast of the Apocalypse, indifferent, irresponsible, insensible, poisoning.

Joris-Karl Huysmans ‘À rebours’

This was the citation that got me digging deeper into the whole Salome story.

Driven by the hype around the subject inspired by the artistic tradition from Renaissance to Enlightenment, Oscar Wilde takes his turn in elaborating Salome’s character, taking the narrative even further. He gifts Salome with depth by applying decadent makeup to her character. Previously being merely a pawn to Herodias, ordered or manipulated into seducing Herod and demanding the prophet’s head, Salome obtains her own voice. Through giving her power of manipulation, Wilde sculpts her into a contemporary icon of femme fatale.

Wilde turns [Salome's] beauty from an object of inspiration to an object of horror.

Carmen Trammell Skaggs ‘Modernity’s Revision of the Dancing Daughter: The Salome Narrative of Wilde and Strauss’ 

Still, it is arguably relevant to regard his Salome as a spoiled child, a princess who knows no boundaries to her desires and cares little for the price of human life (hence her negligence toward Narraboth, the Young Syrian who kills himself before her eyes, devastated by her interest in Jokanaan and ignoring his advances).

Despite this naivety that stems from Salome’s youth and royal status, she is a figure of impending doom, in accordance to the ambiguity of the moon as her primary symbol in the play. After fascinating Herod with her beauty and seducing him into getting what she desired - Jokanaan’s head and getting a forbidden kiss from it, she scares the tetrarch to the point where he orders to ‘kill that woman’.

Aubrey Beardsley ‘The Climax’, pen and ink drawing, 1893

The motive of Salome’s gruesome death is not unique to Wilde. Cavafy takes a different approach to the character’s development, even though he still focuses the narrative around her unrequited love:

Upon a golden charger Salome bears     the head of John the Baptist     to the young Greek sophist who recoils from her love, indifferent

The young man quips, “Salome, your own     head is what I wanted them to bring me.”     This is what he says, jokingly. And her slave came running on the morrow

holding aloft the head of the Beloved,     its tresses blond, upon a golden plate.     But all his eagerness of yesterday the sophist had forgotten as he studied.

He sees the dripping blood and is disgusted.     He orders this bloodied thing to     be taken from him, and he continues his reading of the dialogues of Plato.

Constantine Cavafy ‘Salome’

This poem lends yet another dimension to Salome’s character, paralleling the insanity that Wilde’s play establishes. For decadent Salome, her own death is nothing if it serves the purpose of fulfilling her desire.

Notably, Wilde adds another magnificent detail that further enhances the narrative and serves as the marker that, starting from his play, modern audiences viewed this Biblical story through the lens of his ingenuity: the Dance of the Seven Veils. This little particularity that is not commented on in the play whatsoever is arguably the most recognizable element of the narrative today (Richard Strauss’s opera of the same name, strongly inspired by Wilde’s play, is famous specifically for this dance). Even the truncated prophet and his head on a silver platter is not as unique - Titian’s ‘Salome’, for example, is still sometimes viewed as Judith with the head of Holofernes.

Tiziano Vecellio ‘Salome’, oil on canvas, circa 1515

Modern interpretations

Salome is still as popular today as ever. Naturally, the story migrated to the screens, and there are a few notable screen versions (one of them being 2013 staging by Al Pacino; Jessica Chastain is absolutely terrifying as Salome, it’s really worth watching).

But the one that is actually really different and displays the character in response to the time context is 1953 film with Rita Hayworth.

Rita Hayworth as a title character in ‘Salome’, 1953

The film is truly ridiculous. Hayworth’s Salome is virtuous ad nauseam, the embodiment of the contemporary female ideal. She is beautiful - all men have their heads turned as soon as she enters the room. She is strong-willed when she tries to seduce the tetrarch to save Jokanaan. She defies her mother, refuses to obey Herod and actually turns to Christianity by the end of the movie. This is the most Out Of Character Salome to imagine: she is neither the little girl, an instrument of her mother’s political game, nor is she the experienced seductress pursuing her voluptuous desires. (By comparison, in 1961 production ‘King of Kings’, Salome - amusingly portrayed by 17-year-old Brigid Bazlen - is completely villainous with not a word trying to redeem her.) But, undoubtedly, she is the product of her time, which probably demonstrates the major feature of this and any other popular character: adaptability.

This film also starts the tendency of establishing political relevance of Salome. Herodias pursues John the Baptist because he defiles her - but her reasoning is to secure the throne to Salome. Similarly, in most recent interpretations of Wilde’s play, political commentary is not uncommon. According to these, Salome seduces Herod not only to get the head of Jokanaan, but also to get closer to the throne. To reinforce the idea, the focus of Salome while she dances seems to shift from pleasing Herod and his guests to the tetrarch alone - an intimate and subtly calculated move of a fine manipulator. To be honest, I personally still enjoy the dimension of Salome deep in the pit of her insanity more.

Modern poetry also has its take on the story. The focus is more or less dependent on a feminist point of view, with a touch of women empowerment achieved through exacting revenge on men who abused them:

Women are told to keep their legs shut. Women are told to keep their mouths shut. Some women are kept silent for so long, They become experts in the silent theft of power. The fifth veil has dropped.

Clementine von Radics ‘Salome Redux’

And talking about interpretations and weird turns they take. Skaggs discusses in her essay the possible homosexual subtext of Wilde's play. She specifically points to one instance in the play when Salome promises Narraboth a flower, a signal of homosexuality in Wilde’s time. Skaggs and other critics argue that Salome’s sexuality is presented as typically masculine, which makes the relationship between her and the Young Syrian border on homoerotic.

It's a big thing in representing Salome up to the point of the part being played by a male actor in recent stagings. Case and point: ‘Salomé’ by Royal Shakespeare Company. And then there’s Ken Russell’s 1988 film ‘Salome’s Last Dance’. The dance itself is not dropping 7 veils precisely, but is surely is unveiling - with a surprising twist. My jaw certainly dropped. Although I think this interpretation is going a bit overboard, Wilde would have ironically appreciated the critical effort. 

Conclusion

Salome’s narrative is nearly paradigmatic as it is exemplary of adaptability of many stories and characters that suffered similar changes through the ages (think Arthur, Robin Hood, and don’t even get me started on ‘The Iliad’). It is not a bad thing (oh no, just look at the beauty of Wilde’s ‘Salome’, which would not be possible without the initial shift). But it does show how myths intertwine with human psyche, how we use them to intensify the ideas and deliver them to our audiences, and how these myths reflect the contemporary questions people ask and values we seek. It’s an infinitely glorious thing, and I am deeply fascinated by it.

Bonus

Salome today is an undeniably tragic character. But there’s also this.