#role playing oppression

[gnomeniche]

having very very vague thoughts about dhmis and the family as the site of violence

[bitimdrake]

sorry to be a hater but every time i see someone claim their male fave is “woman coded” (and therefore he’s more unique then all those other male characters and also people disliking him is basically sexism) my eyes roll into the back of my head so hard i black out

[kaerinio]

this is my reminder to write a thing about dany and westerosi notions of propriety. the short of it? she don't give not one f*ck

[orangerosebush]

Me when I see people espouse comedically inaccurate or shallow readings of a text that in all actuality just belie an even more profound trend regarding a refusal to seriously engage with a text's themes

[korkiekenobiconfirmed]

the near dark/lost boys dichotomy of 80’s vampire movies >>>>

bc lost boys is a celebration of the outcast, it’s about punishing those who created the monster you became and rebelling against the very idea of a polite society. it’s glamour and flash and fun and just a hint of a darker underbelly.

near dark is a raw, bloody look into the outcast’s reality. it’s a life on the run in one-stoplight towns and a violent end at the hands of authorities.

[chukush-holitopa]

Hey, if you think that antitransmasculinity isn’t real, just go ahead and unfollow me. Trans men deserve to be able to talk about our unique experiences that specifically relate to being trans men. We are hurt and abused by the same cis men everyone loves to lump us in with. And don’t start in on saying that us speaking on our experiences is in direct opposition to discussions about transmisogyny. I understand the knee jerk reaction to always try to be a good ally, and we should be centering trans women in our transfeminism, but the truth is that our struggles (transfem and transmasc) are deeply related to one another. Many trans women (mostly Black and non-white) include antitransmasculinity in their transfeminism. The term antitransmasculinity was coined by a trans woman. Antitransmasculinity is often a trojan horse for transmisogyny. They are intertwined. Saying that just because trans men are men that we don’t experience specific intersections of transphobia is just plain wrong. NTM it completely leaves out trans men of multiple gender expanses, and Two Spirit trans men.

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

there's that post going around that's a short twit thread talking about "the obesity epidemic" as a result of economic oppression and everyone's snapping their little fingers for it but like. you guys know that we achieved socialist utopia tomorrow there would still be fat people right. you guys know that genetics play a bigger role in that than anything else and that some people will just be fat regardless of every other factor in their life right. you guys know that's fine right.

like idk I don't think it comes from a purposefully fatphobic place and like yes it sucks a lot that the demands of capitalism deny people a lot of opportunities to cook or learn to cook and be more engaged and intentional about their food. but it has this flavor of "poverty is bad because it makes people fat," which only holds up as an argument if you agree that being fat is a terrible thing that happens to people rather than being a completely neutral reality about some people's bodies.

anyone pulling any fatphobia on this post is getting blocked on sight I'm not playing.

[talaricula]

Things I've seen tumblr memeing about James Somerton doing à la "How did no one see how bigoted he was!" as if those things haven't been a significant part of tumblr culture for over a decade :

Presenting untrue and bordering on conspiratorial versions of (queer or otherwise marginalised) history without any sources

Completely disregarding and disrespecting any expertise on socio-cultural topics/humanities and distrusting academics and historians (incl. acting as if no academics or historians could be queer or marginalised)

Downplaying the role misogyny played in the historical oppression of queer women and concluding that queer men must have been more oppressed than queer women

Bi women are, at best, not as queer as "real" queer ppl, and at worst, simply equivalent to straight women

Despite nominal trans inclusivity, transmasculine ppl are functionally women when convenient (combined with the above, bi transmascs are functionally straight women)

Despite nominal trans inclusivity (bis), shamelessly attacking, threatening and actively endangering any trans woman who questions them or smth they find important (often by unfairly presenting her as violent or as a threat)

Having absolutely fucking wild and reductive takes about ace ppl, the oppression they face and their place in the queer community

Stating that marriage equality is an assimilationist fight while completely ignoring its direct roots in the horrifying consequences of the AIDS crisis for partners of ppl who died of AIDS

Praising western media creators from the past for queer coding even under censure and in the same breath condemning current non western media creators for being homophobic bc their representation isn't explicit enough

Blaming China for all existing homophobic censoring in western media

Assuming all queer media would be better told by western creators and by western standards

Only out queer ppl get to tell queer stories

Heavily criticising almost all queer media created by women or ppl they see as such (see above points about trans ppl) or involving/starring a significant amount of women for any perceived or real amount of "problematicness", but fawning over and praising and negating criticism of queer media created by and starring mostly or even functionally exclusively men (even when it could be argued that, you know, not involving/seriously sidelining women is a pretty clear example of misogyny which should probably be considered "problematic")

And I'm probably forgetting stuff or there's stuff I have internalised myself and don't recognise as an issue

Like idk but I feel like the takeaway from Hbomberguy and Toddintheshadow's videos should maybe be "be aware of such patterns in your communities bc they definitely exist" and not "this guy is uniquely awful" and I feel like a lot of the discussion I've seen surrounding this has been severely failing at that. Most ppl who've spent any significant amount of time on tumblr prob either have internalised at least one of those thought patterns, have had to de-internalise them, or have had to be extremely vigilant to not internalise them (which is done by, you know, seeking out other sources, which also seemed like an important takeaway from the videos)

[divorcedyaoi]

op is a transmisogynist

[shesnake]

The Handmaiden (2016) dir. Park Chan-wook // Interview with the Vampire episode 11 (2024) dir. Levan Akin

He lost his Hindu-originated name “Arun” when he was trafficked from Dehli as a child, was renamed “Amadeo” by his paedophile Maker the vampire Marius, then finally assigned “Armand” by the Roman coven before they sent him to France. He’s also lost his voice in a way, shown code-switching and adopting different accents in different settings. Throughout world history, colonised peoples have often been forced to adopt the languages and names of their oppressive colonisers as a way to erase their cultural identities.

Armand’s history was essentially colonised. His personal sexual trauma is an allegory for wider colonial trauma. This idea was explored similarly in Park Chan-wook’s 2016 film The Handmaiden, where the character Hideko’s forced exposure to pornographic Japanese literature as a child is meant to parallel the colonial oppression of the Japanese occupation of Korea.

The only evidence remaining of Armand’s experiences of sexual and colonial violence is this painting The Adoration of the Shephards With a Donor that hangs in the Louvre. Another cruel irony here is that ‘Adoration of the Shepherds’ is an episode of Jesus’s nativity. Arun as a (presumably) Hindu boy was used as a prop in a Christian narrative. The one historical document that exists of his mortal life is a depiction of his religious assimilation. Completely divorced from his roots, with no identity outside the roles his abusers assigned him, Armand, Amadeo, and Arun “were cut loose and dead like children turned to stone.” Being immortalised, “donated”, and placed on display in a European museum, a space he’s not even really allowed to access, for the mostly-white gaze is a clear metaphor for colonisers’ persisting theft of cultural artefacts belonging to their victims.

The only consolation this journey has for Armand is creative inspiration. He took Amadeo, trapped in the horror of his youth for the entertainment of others, and transferred that idea into the play My Baby Loves Windows to torture Claudia.

Armand, colonialism, and the weaponisation of anti-Blackness by Deah

[chansaw]

i read donald sutherland’s letter to gary ross pleading for the role of president snow and was so struck by his eloquence, wit, and humor. i’m posting it in full below. what a loss </3

Dear Gary Ross:

Power. That's what this is about? Yes? Power and the forces that are manipulated by the powerful men and bureaucracies trying to maintain control and possession of that power?

Power perpetrates war and oppression to maintain itself until it finally topples over with the bureaucratic weight of itself and sinks into the pages of history (except in Texas), leaving lessons that need to be learned unlearned.

Power corrupts, and, in many cases, absolute power makes you really horny. Clinton, Chirac, Mao, Mitterrand.

Not so, I think, with Coriolanus Snow. His obsession, his passion, is his rose garden. There's a rose named Sterling Silver that's lilac in colour with the most extraordinarily powerful fragrance — incredibly beautiful — I loved it in the seventies when it first appeared. They've made a lot of offshoots of it since then.

I didn't want to write to you until I'd read the trilogy and now I have so: roses are of great importance. And Coriolanus's eyes. And his smile. Those three elements are vibrant and vital in Snow. Everything else is, by and large, perfectly still and ruthlessly contained. What delight she [Katniss] gives him. He knows her so perfectly. Nothing, absolutely nothing, surprises him. He sees and understands everything. He was, quite probably, a brilliant man who's succumbed to the siren song of power.

How will you dramatize the interior narrative running in Katniss's head that describes and consistently updates her relationship with the President who is ubiquitous in her mind? With omniscient calm he knows her perfectly. She knows he does and she knows that he will go to any necessary end to maintain his power because she knows that he believes that she's a real threat to his fragile hold on his control of that power. She's more dangerous than Joan of Arc.

Her interior dialogue/monologue defines Snow. It's that old theatrical turnip: you can't 'play' a king, you need everybody else on stage saying to each other, and therefore to the audience, stuff like "There goes the King, isn't he a piece of work, how evil, how lovely, how benevolent, how cruel, how brilliant he is!" The idea of him, the definition of him, the audience's perception of him, is primarily instilled by the observations of others and once that idea is set, the audience's view of the character is pretty much unyielding. And in Snow's case, that definition, of course, comes from Katniss.

Evil looks like our understanding of the history of the men we're looking at. It's not what we see: it's what we've been led to believe. Simple as that. Look at the face of Ted Bundy before you knew what he did and after you knew.

Snow doesn't look evil to the people in Panem's Capitol. Bundy didn't look evil to those girls. My wife and I were driving through Colorado when he escaped from jail there. The car radio's warning was constant. 'Don't pick up any young men. The escapee looks like the nicest young man imaginable'. Snow's evil shows up in the form of the complacently confident threat that's ever-present in his eyes. His resolute stillness. Have you seen a film I did years ago? 'The Eye of the Needle'. That fellow had some of what I'm looking for.

The woman who lived up the street from us in Brentwood came over to ask my wife a question when my wife was dropping the kids off at school. This woman and her husband had seen that movie the night before and what she wanted to know was how my wife could live with anyone who could play such an evil man. It made for an amusing dinner or two but part of my wife's still wondering.

I'd love to speak with you whenever you have a chance so I can be on the same page with you.

They all end up the same way. Welcome to Florida, have a nice day!

sourced from this article

[rahabs]

If I keep seeing people (largely Americans and Canadians, let’s be real) 1:1 compare the Israel-Palestine conflict to the colonialisation of Canada and America I might actually explode. As a First Nations woman with multiple history degrees and a law degree I can tell you with certainty that from every angle it is an utterly asinine and disingenuous comparison that doesn’t work, at all. The fact that people often cast Palestinians in the role of “poor oppressed colonised people” and Israel/Jews as a whole in the role “evil oppressive white coloniser” just makes it even worse, especially since Jews have lived in and occupied Israel before both Islam and Christianity even existed. So if you really want to play the “who was there first game” and boil everything down to that, I promise you, Jewish people will win that game, as they were there for thousands of years before the idea of Islam was even a glimmer in Muhammed’s eye.

[doberbutts]

Me: I find white, radical feminism to be actively dangerous because it is often used as a weapon of genocide, just painted over racism with a varnish of pretending to care about the lives of women of color while being completely ignorant to how gender plays a role in racial oppression. I think what fits my worldview better is black feminism, specifically the sort founded by black women who have done actual work within the community and who have contributed years of collective and academic study to how we can best address the gendered problems from oppressive society. In fact much of what I'm saying has already been mentioned in published essays and literature discussing these exact problems, as long ago as the 70s and 80s, and we even have records of newly freed slaves trying to work out these exact solutions.

Every goddamn person refusing to examine their own internalized racism because they're too addicted to their man-hate: so you think black women should just die a thousand painful deaths? You want to creep on women and beat your wife? You hate black women? You don't know any of black women's problems and you're hardly able to be counted as black yourself? Checkmate loser.

[danyllura]

Something I found very interesting about the Barbie movie was the Ken’s mimicking of patriarchy. I’ve seen some comments putting it as a stance of men’s inherent desire to oppress women but would argue it much more reflects the socialization process many young boys experience that encourages them take on misogynistic views. The kens do not resent the Barbie’s. They’ve grown up in a society the Barbie’s run and the adore and love them. I think you could say that reflects the early stages of life for many boys where often the main role models they know are women, their mothers (as they often have a more involved role than fathers) and eventually their teachers, which women still make up the vast majority of early childhood educators.

The Kens also notably lack a sense of brotherhood at the start of the movie. And it isn’t until they’re in the real world our main Ken experiences positive male attention and approval (which is only due to him also being a man). It is that desire for approval from his male peers that initially drives him to believe in patriarchy.

There is of course also the underlying struggle of his unrequited feelings for Barbie, but none of the kens truly resent the Barbies. They don’t actually want them as oppressed servants. Yes they want their attention, but even during kendom we see them happiest on their cheesy guitar playing group date. They begin oppressing Barbie’s not because it’s what they actually want but rather it’s them mimicking the behaviour of men.

And that is why I think it makes such a great ode to the socialization of young boys to be misogynistic. Boys do not have an innate hatred for women, nor is it something they naturally grow into of their own fruition. But rather it’s a patterned of learned behaviours they in most cases initially mimic for the approval of other men or to gain attention, but overtime becomes a very real ideology then adopt and believe in and likely pass on.

[scarlet--wiccan]

Agatha All Along, the highly anticipated follow-up to WandaVision, begins airing this week on Disney+. Now is the perfect to revisit some important information about both shows and the context in which some of Agatha's new characters are being introduced.

WandaVision primarily followed the character Wanda Maximoff and expanded on her family history by introducing her late parents as well her twin sons, who are born from magic and age rapidly over the course of the series.

In the Marvel comics source material, Wanda is part of a large, multigenerational family of Jewish and Romani characters whose stories frequently reflect the systemic violence and oppression that both communities face-- including Romani Holocaust victims, who are critically underrepresented in both education and media. In the MCU, these identities and histories are completely erased, and the characters are all played by white actors. Alternate versions of these characters also appear in the Fox X-Men films, and are similarly whitewashed.

The Romani people are a racialized minority that originated as a South Asian diaspora, and who face severe systemic oppression in Europe and North America. The modern Romani population is quite diverse, but they are not of white ethnic origin, and despite the fact that Wanda and her family have historically been drawn with white features, they are minority characters and ought to be considered as such.

Depictions of witches and witchcraft are often entwined with antisemitism and anti-Romani racism. In pop culture, witches and fortunetellers are typically portrayed as visual stereotypes of Romani women. In the real world, fortunetelling is a profession born from survival work, one which Romani families are often heavily policed and racially profiled for practicing. While Wanda usually subverts these tropes, they are often played straight elsewhere in the superhero genre, and any story about witches, especially one featuring Romani characters, needs to be critiqued in this context.

Agatha All Along introduces viewers to a new cast of characters, including Lilia Calderu, played by Patti LuPone, and the enigmatic "Teen", played by Joe Locke, who is heavily speculated to be an incarnation of Wanda's son, Billy.

In the comics, Lilia is a member of a prominent Romani family in Wanda's community. Often lauded as the "witch queen of the gypsies," Lilia embodies many racial stereotypes about Romani women. In Agatha All Along, Lilia is depicted as an older Sicilian woman, however, being portrayed as a batty fortuneteller with a tawdry psychic shop, she still embodies an offensive trope. Although Lilia is far from "good" representation, this is not an improvement-- if anything, it's even more exploitative.

Billy was raised in a Jewish American household and places a very strong emphasis on his Jewish identity, in addition to having Romani heritage. His identity as a young gay man is always presented in conjunction with this heritage, not in spite of it. Though there is a significance to Locke being a gay actor playing a gay character, his casting-- if he is indeed playing Billy-- is not authentic. White gay representation should not supersede racial inclusivity, and it is not an excuse for whitewashing or Jewish erasure.

Marvel Studios recently announced that the character Doctor Doom will be played by Robert Downey Jr., who is returning to the franchise after many years in the role of Iron Man. In the source material, Doom is also a Romani character with a very similar background to Wanda's. This identity is central to Doom's character-- although he is written to be both morally and politically challenging, the liberation of his people has always been a primary motive.

Clearly, this type of whitewashing is an ongoing pattern in the MCU franchise. Although "Teen's" identity is still unconfirmed and Lilia may, ultimately, be of little consequence, they are part of a larger problem, and Agatha All Along needs to critiqued in that context.

[tododeku-or-bust]

could you elaborate a bit on that post abt (not) wearing headphones in public/playing your phone out loud? i was under the idea that it was nice to not play stuff aloud bc ppl might have migraines or be sound avoidant, but didn't realize i might just be seeing it from a white perspective, and id love to learn more

All right! First, check this link out: Xochitl does a far more eloquent job of explaining the idea than I would:

I assume that you're specifically honing in on my tag about the "white right of comfort".

Okay, so here's the thing. You're allowed to find public noise annoying. I too, find public TikToks and music annoying! And if you have migraines and such, I can understand how it would be impolite and inconvenient.

But what you're NOT allowed to do, is feel entitled to the public and prioritizing your OWN comfort in it over everyone else to the point of DEMANDING that it conforms to you or it's "bad". Especially when there are things you as an individual can do to prevent this discomfort.

While this gross sense of entitlement is very first world American in nature, it is extremely White American in nature because white Americans actually have the social power to enforce what they believe is the "right" thing based on their own standards.

For many cultures around the world and for many people of color, noise in the community is a GOOD thing. It's part of being a community. I feel safer if the people around me feel safe enough to be outside, to exist and to be, visibly in public.

And you got to understand, while many white people think they're genuinely in the right for believing that being loud on public transit or in the public is worth enforcing as a "bad" thing, people of color have literally already been killed for it. A Black teenager was shot in the face for playing music that a white man didn't like. A Black mentally ill man was murdered in front of EVERYBODY on a train because he was having a mental breakdown. This sort of policing ALREADY HAPPENS to us. Hell, even white gays with any sense of community should be aware of how queer gatherings would be shut down for "noise" (when in reality it was bc it was homophobia).

And now people want me to empathize that YOU'RE oppressed by... noise? On Public Transit?? IN PUBLIC?? Kiss my ass lmao.

I've been on trains where a man was legit growling at me like he wanted me dead. Another i saw Teens high on crack. Another where people beg and people sleep and people listen to music. And you know what I did? I turned my OWN music up and went on my way. Because at the end of the day, the only person I control is me!

And if people were REALLY concerned about others welfare, they would COMMUNICATE. no one is willing to say "hey, I have a headache, do you mind-" bc they're afraid of the rejection, so it's easier to demand "well EVERYONE SHOULD BE LIKE ME". Mhm. Learn to confront your issues. But you're not "unsafe" bc music. You're just annoyed, and you'll get over it.

In summary it really gives me "I can give you something to cry about" energy. Bc y'all swear y'all don't understand the existence of an HOA but here yall are replicating the same Karen behaviors, and y'all don't even realize (or maybe even care) how racist you sound. But why would you lmao, that makes you uncomfortable! And damnit, you have a right to comfort!!