#the liberation of gender minorities cannot come without the liberation of people of color and ethnic minorities

[ftmtftm]

Also also just so we're all fully clear:

While this blog does regularly center around me talking about my own experiences as a white, jewish, gay, trans man with a weird gender (because it is a personal blog!) I very firmly hold the belief that patriarchy is an agent of white supremacy and colonialism and the dismantling of the patriarchy and gendered oppression cannot come without the dismantling of white supremacy.

Lenses of gendered oppression that do not take this into account or that actively deny this belief won't be taken uncritically here!!

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

September 1, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

Last night at midnight, a new law went into effect in Texas. House Bill 1927 permits people to carry handguns without a permit, unless they have been convicted of a felony or domestic violence. This measure was not popular in the state. Fifty-nine percent of Texans—including law enforcement officers—opposed it. But 56% of Republicans supported it. “I don’t know what it’s a solution to,” James McLaughlin, executive director of the Texas Police Chiefs Association, said to Heidi Pérez-Moreno of the Texas Tribune when Republican governor Greg Abbott signed the bill in mid-August. “I don’t know what the problem was to start with.”

Texas Gun Rights executive director Chris McNutt had a different view. He said in a statement: “Texas is finally a pro-gun state despite years of foot-dragging, roadblocks, and excuses from the spineless political class.”

The bill had failed in 2019 after McNutt showed up at the home of the Texas House Speaker, Republican Dennis Bonnen, to demand its passage. Bonnen said McNutt’s “overzealous” visit exhibited “insanity.” "Threats and intimidation will never advance your issue. Their issue is dead," he told McNutt. McNutt told the Dallas Morning News: "If politicians like Speaker Dennis Bonnen think they can show up at the doorsteps of Second Amendment supporters and make promises to earn votes in the election season, they shouldn't be surprised when we show up in their neighborhoods to insist they simply keep their promises in the legislative session.”

That was not the only bill that went into effect at midnight last night in Texas. In May, Governor Abbott signed the strongest anti-abortion law in the country, Senate Bill 8, which went into effect on September 1. It bans abortion after 6 weeks—when many women don’t even know they’re pregnant—thus automatically stopping about 85% of abortions in Texas. There are no exceptions for rape or incest. Opponents of the bill had asked the Supreme Court to stop the law from taking effect. It declined to do so.

The law avoided the 1973 Supreme Court Roe v. Wade decision protecting the right to abortion before fetal viability at about 22 to 24 weeks by leaving the enforcement of the law not up to the state, but rather up to private citizens. This was deliberate. As Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern explained in an article in Slate: “Typically, when a state restricts abortion, providers file a lawsuit in federal court against the state officials responsible for enforcing the new law. Here, however, there are no such officials: The law is enforced by individual anti-abortion activists.” With this law, there’s no one to stop from enforcing it.  

S.B. 8 puts ordinary people in charge of law enforcement. Anyone—at all—can sue any individual who “aids or abets,” or even intends to abet, an abortion in Texas after six weeks. Women seeking abortion themselves are exempt, but anyone who advises them (including a spouse), gives them a ride, provides counseling, staffs a clinic, and so on, can be sued by any random stranger. If the plaintiff wins, they pocket $10,000 plus court costs, and the clinic that provided the procedure is closed down. If the defendant doesn’t defend themselves, the court must find them guilty. And if the defendant wins, they get…nothing. Not even attorney’s fees.

So, nuisance lawsuits will ruin abortion providers, along with anyone accused of aiding and abetting—or intending to abet—an abortion. And the enforcers will be ordinary citizens.

Texas has also just passed new voting restrictions that allow partisan poll watchers to have “free movement” in polling places, enabling them to intimidate voters. Texas governor Greg Abbott is expected to sign that bill in the next few days.

Taken together with the vigilantism running wild in school board meetings and attacks on election officials, the Texas legislation is a top red flag in the red flag factory. The Republican Party is empowering vigilantes to enforce their beliefs against their neighbors.

The law, which should keep us all on a level playing field, has been abandoned by our Supreme Court. Last night, it refused to stop the new Texas abortion law from going into effect, and tonight, just before midnight, by a 5–4 vote, it issued an opinion refusing to block the law. Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent read: “The court’s order is stunning. Presented with an application to enjoin a flagrantly unconstitutional law engineered to prohibit women from exercising their constitutional rights and evade judicial scrutiny, a majority of Justices have opted to bury their heads in the sand.”

Texas’s law flouts nearly 50 years of federal precedents, she points out, but the Supreme Court has looked the other way. ”The State’s gambit worked,” Sotomayor wrote. She continued:  “This is untenable. It cannot be the case that a state can evade federal judicial scrutiny by outsourcing the enforcement of unconstitutional laws to its citizenry."

The Supreme Court has essentially blessed the efforts of Texas legislators to prevent the enforcement of federal law by using citizen vigilantes to get their way. The court decided the case on its increasingly active “shadow docket,” a series of cases decided without full briefings or oral argument, often in the dead of night, without signed opinions. In the past, such emergency decisions were rare and used to issue uncontroversial decisions or address irreparable immediate harm (like the death penalty). Since the beginning of the Trump administration, they have come to make up the majority of the court’s business.

Since 2017, the court has used the shadow docket to advance right-wing goals. It has handed down brief, unsigned decisions after a party asks for emergency relief from a lower court order, siding first with Trump, and now with state Republicans, at a high rate. As University of Texas law professor Stephen Vladeck noted: “In less than three years, [Trump’s] Solicitor General has filed at least twenty-one applications for stays in the Supreme Court (including ten during the October 2018 Term alone).” In comparison, “during the sixteen years of the George W. Bush and Obama Administrations, the Solicitor General filed a total of eight such applications—averaging one every other Term.”

So, operating without open arguments or opinions, the Supreme Court has shown that it will not enforce federal law, leaving state legislatures to do as they will. This, after all, was the whole point of the “originalism” that Republicans embraced under President Ronald Reagan. Originalists wanted to erase the legal justification of the post–World War II years that used the “due process” and “equal protection” clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to apply the protections of the Bill of Rights to the states. It was that concept that protected civil rights for people of color and for women, by using the federal government to prohibit states from enforcing discriminatory laws.

Since the 1980s, Republicans have sought to hamstring federal power and return power to the states, which have neither the power nor the inclination to regulate businesses effectively, and which can discriminate against minorities and get away with it, so long as the federal government doesn’t enforce equal protection.

Today’s events make that a reality.

Worse, though, the mechanisms of the Texas law officially turn a discriminatory law over to state-level vigilantes to enforce. The wedge to establish this mechanism is abortion, but the door is now open for extremist state legislatures to turn to private citizens to enforce any law that takes away an individual’s legal right…like, say, the right to vote. And in Texas, now, a vigilante doesn't even have to have a permit to carry the gun that will back up his threats.

During Reconstruction, vigilantes also carried guns. They enforced state customs that reestablished white supremacy after the federal government had tried to defend equality before the law. It took only a decade for former Confederates who had tried to destroy the government to strip voting rights, and civil rights, from the southern Black men who had defended the United States government during the Civil War. For the next eighty years, the South was a one-party state where enforcement of the laws depended on your skin color, your gender, and whom you knew.

Opponents have compared those who backed the Texas anti-abortion law to the Taliban, the Islamic extremists in Afghanistan whose harsh interpretation of Islamic Sharia law strips women of virtually all rights. But the impulse behind the Texas law, the drive to replace the federal protection of civil rights with state vigilantes enforcing their will, is homegrown. It is a reflection of the position that Republicans would like women to have in our society, for sure, but it is also written in the laughing faces of Mississippi law enforcement officers Lawrence Rainey and Cecil Ray Price in 1967, certain even as they were arraigned for the 1964 murders of James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Henry Schwerner, that the system was so rigged in their favor that they would literally get away with murder.

When they were killed, Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner were trying to register Black people to vote.

—-

Notes:

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/437665-texas-gop-leaders-drop-constitutional-carry-bill-after-gun-rights

https://www.texastribune.org/2021/08/16/texas-permitless-carry-gun-law/

https://www.npr.org/2021/08/31/1033068542/texas-voting-restrictions-bill-abbott-republicans

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/08/texas-abortion-supreme-court-roe-wade.html

Mark Joseph Stern @mjs_DCBREAKING: By a 5–4 vote, with Roberts joining the liberals, the Supreme Court REFUSES to block Texas' six-week abortion ban. Opinions here:

s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentclo…

3,936 Retweets5,180 Likes

September 2nd 2021

https://www.vox.com/2020/8/1/21350679/supreme-court-border-wall-trump-sierra-club-stay-stephen-breyer

https://www.vox.com/2020/8/11/21356913/supreme-court-shadow-docket-jail-asylum-covid-immigrants-sonia-sotomayor-barnes-ahlman

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[rametarin]

‘Super Straight’ is a terrible thing.

It fails conceptually to convey the argument it’s trying to make, and as a result, it serves as having the same sociological vulnerability in the discourse that, “reverse-racism” had back in the day.

The entire concept of reverse racism came about because for a brief window there, the radicals had groomed the shallow liberals into more and more extreme in what counted as racism, whom the term applied to.

So eventually, someone complained and argued they were being focus fired and their motives questioned, not because of the outcomes or their intentions in doing it, but because they were being accused and attacked for being white. And that was, “reverse racism.” The discourse of the era really hammered down on racism, but always using language, much like how domestic violence would always gender the abuser as he and the victim as she, that incriminated the white people of racism and bigotry and prejudice, never using examples of a black, or Asian, or indigenous American, as the perpetrator of racism.

This deliberate shaping of the discourse from people above was obvious. But, they also pretended, while deliberately using examples and terms of white bigotry and prejudice against other groups, that racism was just racism. That universally, racism was a problem, and the phenomenon was just bigotry and prejudice based on race.

You needed asterisks and clarification and to actually ASK whether that applied to people that weren’t white, and people either were afraid to ask, or if they asked, they were ignored, or if they demanded an answer and determination, were brushed off. Because it became obvious SOME so-called “progressives” believed racism was exclusively the phenomenon of white oppression against non-whites.

And if you pressed further and harder for clarification instead of “just putting the pieces together yourself” and taking your conclusions for granted, without questioning or making trouble, sometimes you’d get the liberal definition and sometimes a radical feminist would give you the real definition. Depending on if they felt they were in a place of impunity where there’s nothing you could do about it whether you knew or not, or they trusted you and believed you were on their wavelength.

If someone naturally concluded, by reading the room and seeing the examples in action, just coming to the conclusion themselves that racism was only considered racism when levied BY whites DOWN on black people, Asians, indigenous people, etc., then they’d say, “You’re just picking on me/antagonizing me for this because I’m white!! That’s racism!”

It’s at this point the radicals, if they were feeling bold and empowered- and many times, they were. Because they select and choose their social battles wisely, would pipe up:

“It’s not racism. You don’t get to say it’s racism. There’s nothing racist about trying to change a racist society by advocating this.” When, yeah, if you antagonize and harass and overindulge in haranguing the shit out of people in little Struggle Sessions, embellishing the offense caused by the background of a person, not based on the crime committed, you are being a racist shithead. It is racism to consider the background of the person that did the crime as to whether the crime was especially heinous, or not.

“FINE,” said the person being accused, “Then it’s reverse-racist!”

And it was. They’d been called out. The early Intersectional Feminists that belied something was exclusively and only ever racism when it was either white individuals or white society levied down on black, Asian or Indigenous People of Color, knew that something was happening. People were becoming aware that this discrimination was coming for white people, in specific and exclusion of anyone else. And while they were absorbing the sentiment in the void of actually indoctrinating them in plain english, they were rejecting it and created a word for their rejection.

Rejecting the idea racism was only racism when and if it was specifically BY a white person, TOWARDS anybody else.

Then came Liberal Progressive Damage Control.

The Liberal and Radical Progressive both said, in unison:

“There’s no such thing as reverse racism.”

The Liberal then clarified: “Racism is simply the phenomenon of racial discrimination and prejudice and bigotry, levied BY anybody on the basis of race, TOWARDS anybody on the basis of race! It applies to everybody equally!”

And they had to. Because these people’s reputations and ability to infiltrate and influence live or die based on how well other people are willing to tolerate them preaching their social doctrines. If their messages are rejected, they can’t control them.

The Radical Progressive/Feminist, however, maintained: “Racism is purely the phenomenon of white people or white society oppressing or discriminating detrimentally towards someone for being black, or Asian, or indigenous non-white. A non-white person cannot be racist, and a white person cannot experience racism.”

But the radical that said and believed that in the 80s and 90s, slunk away to the halls of academia. And they kept quiet, while liberal progressives breadcrumbed the people closer to university, where they’d have to pay to be steered further along in their, “social development.”

But the radical definition was always going to be the end-game for them. Liberal anti-racism was, in their eyes, just a step towards advancing society towards their radicalism. Not about actually ending racial discrimination and equality on a civic level, irrespective of race.

So. ‘Reverse Racism’ became a faux talking point, where liberal progressives would take this term, act as if it was a misconception purely born of overcompensating and insecure white people, and then speak as if the truth was, “it’s not reverse racism.. It’s just racism! Reverse racism doesn’t exist.”

Wholly ignoring the fact that people had experienced this nameless phenomenon of supposedly anti-racist people being intolerant or accusative towards those that had never committed any actual racism or bigotry, but were being singled out, focus fired and made public example of by their peers. They were experiencing SOME form of racial intolerance that treated them as if they were either perpetraotrs of racism by action, or by their background. Which is no different from expecting that a black person, just by being black, has either committed crimes like theft and assault, or will, because they’re black.

It was just generally accepted that if white people could be guilty of racism, then so could anyone else. Liberal progressivism, much the same way as they dissent when hate crime legislation is used to punish people for attacking white people on the basis of their race, “because those laws are meant to protect at risk minorities from white oppression,” didn’t like it. But, they had to maintain the illusion of impartiality and benignity. And so, they smiled and nodded and approved of the idea that racism was able to be applied universally to and by anyone. Even if, internally, they disagreed.

And so, they spun the discourse that had introduced “reverse-racism” purely as something insecure white people made up to squeal bloody murder about if they were getting called out heavy handedly or they felt unfairly for perpetrating racism. Speaking as if it only existed as a blubbering cope against the mean ole people that, “just liked equality and fairness and justice.”

Do you see how the evolution of this term and its perception shifted throughout the course of this story? How it came about, how it was created and why, how it was received and responded to, and ultimately what it became?

They took a word and concept used to define the outrage of the heavy handedness and made it into a point of mockery and profiled those most likely to use it as people like Rush Limbaugh.

After that, they used it as a tool of assumed intent and mockery if a situation ever arose in which a white person was talking about a situation in which they felt like the other person was being short or dismissive of them, and their assumed intentions, because of their race.

“Ohh? Am I being ‘reverse racist’ at you? Awwwww. Waaaaaaah. There’s no such thing as reverse racism. Cry harder.”

etc.

No one even had to accuse someone of it. But if you tried to explain the very real and very probable phenomenon where a person was treating you like shit or assuming the worst of your intentions on the basis of you being a white person doing it, and you attested the other person was discriminating against you racially for it, they whipped that out as if just by anticipating you were about to say it, you fit the profile of someone that was guilty of it and just trying to feel oppressed and outraged.

I see this exact outcome happening with the term, ‘Super Straight.’ Only, rather than the subject being racism and race discourse, it’s transgenderism and social constructionism.

And to be honest, it feels like this was surgically implanted into 4channer boards and perpetuated to make it LOOK like a “neckbeard altright dudebro” meme. The fact many are perpetuating it doesn’t help, but it feels... ingenuine.

It almost feels like those fake egg accounts on twitter and other social media that supposedly sent Sarkesian and Zoe Quinn that hate. And those 4chan posts that they oopsied over posting, revealing it was them giving themselves anon-hate and trying to get the mob to attack them just for victim clout points.

Super Straight as a concept and a joke feels like weaponized, “It’s Okay To Be White,” but put into 4channer mouth specifically to then use against them.

First, Super Straight cedes the idea that being straight includes any context in which a cishet man wants to suck a penis. It goes, “Okay, we will accept being straight includes sucking the penis of transwomen and seeing them as women sexually, so obviously to be SUPER STRAIGHT means to not do that!” Inherently doing that, you admit defeat and bow to social constructionism that says to be a man or woman is purely gender, and sexuality hinges upon gender, not sex. To be Super Straight creates a new definition that says straight isn’t exclusive to cishetero, but Super Straight is.

If you wanted to mock their expectation that all gender not just shift its definitions to make room to validate and legitimize the trans, but redefine sexuality and gender itself to make both cis and trans equally validly male and female with absolutely no credence or relevance paid to biology or chromosomes whatsoever, then this is not the way to do it. It’s not clever, it’s not succinct, it doesn’t force them into a logical or linguistic dead-end.

The argument put forwards by those giggling about, “super straight,” is that a cishetero person, in this case, a man, won’t be attracted to a transwoman, and creating a word to make that a valid thing is no different than using words to validate other things. Such as, “Grey ace demiguy.” Trying to use the same system of assumed validation for sex and gender against itself, without the tangential institutional control in place in academia, just doesn’t work. For it to work you have to assume whatever absolutism coming out from on high from the academic class can be respected equally without coming from that academic class, whom insist they define standards and norms, now.

Instead, they should be arguing for something like, “Cis-orientation.” If a homosexual is a term for a valid sexuality where a person is not attracted to the opposite sex, be they male or female, and that’s not considered, “heterophobia,” and arbitrarily acceptable just.. because... then obviously there’s SOMETHING that makes sexual attraction to the same sex valid, but sexual attraction to only someone of the opposite sex regardless of their gender somehow invalid and a phobia.

Yet, these people will defend homosexuality as valid, while arguing to not want to see transgendered people as viable candidates for romance or sex are transphobes.

They miraculously will not insist a lesbian just has, “phallophobia” or “cisphobia” if she won’t even at least ATTEMPT to, “get used” to it. They will acknowledge to be gay is simply to be unchangable oriented how they are, and they should not try and make them straight.

But bizarrely they WILL expect a lesbian to suck girldick, as, “that’s a female. You’re a lesbian, you like girls, so you should consider sucking female penis.”

Lysenkoism but for socio-sexual theory. That you can use words and self-identification to ignore or bypass someone’s sexuality. And it’s, “totally not -phobia or oppression, because it’s not being used to hurt a minority and you can’t oppress the majority.”

If there was any genuine interest in the rights and fairness and equality for the respect of people based on their gender orientation and sexuality, they would not be so queer-centrist in execution.

Instead, they would recognize that they cannot just redefne the universal words of man, woman, gay and straight, to suit an agenda that treats there as being no distinction between a trans or cis person. We simply cannot have that, unless of course the intention is to invalidate the biology of all parties involved, and remove the material, physical components for consideration.

That would mean devolving all gender and sex and orientation merely to arbitrary classes, which are imagined, not real. That would mean there being no difference between thinking you can forcibly convert someone’s sexuality from gay to straight, or straight to gay, as those things no longer would be considered to be concrete based on indivisible aspects of your biology and self, merely attitude and beliefs.

Not only would it do that, but it’d insist that chromosomes and reproductive role are arbitrary and absolutely detatched from a person’s identity, no different than assuming their blood type or astrological sign was attached to their gender.

This is quite literal denial of science and physical reality in the name of ideology. This isn’t trans rights, it’s masquerading as such. And keeping very tight lipped about anything outside the purview and real meaning behind how they’re selling their model of trans rights.

For Super Straight to be a recognizable talking point, it basically just creates a sacrificial lamb. Something that any social constructionist can attack in effigy and then say, “Well I’ve already debunked the popular idea that ‘super straightness’ exists, so stop clinging to the idea a cishetero person that DOESN’T date trans people is anything other than a bigot.”

Something they can “totally PWN with LOGIC and REASON”, broadcast how they’ve “defeated” the argument that a straight man would not suck a penis, no matter how much glitter and perfume on it, and invalidate any suggestion to the contrary by saying it has already been thoroughly debunked so they’re just going to yell “KUNG POW PENIS LOL” until their opposition gets bored and leaves.

I can’t help but feel like the whole concept was deliberately constructed allegedly by their ideological opponents in order to perform smugness and superiority over them.

[ravenmorganleigh]

Rule #1: Always think critically and fight ignorance with facts.

BY KALI HOLLOWAY AND MARTIN MYCIELSKI | DECEMBER 15, 2017

A 15-Point Guide to Surviving Authoritarianism

President Donald Trump speaks about tax reform legislation during a lunch with lawmakers working on the tax reform conference committee in the Cabinet Room at the White House in Washington, DC, on Dec. 13, 2017. (Photo by Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)

This post originally appeared at AlterNet.

Nearly a year ago, intuitively recognizing the Trump administration’s authoritarian aspirations, Polish journalist and activist Martin Mycielski wrote “Year 1 Under Authoritarianism.” In those early, nerve-racking days following Trump’s inauguration, the piece was shared across social media, an ominous portent of what was to come. The document — helpfully subtitled, “What To Expect?” — offered a list of predictions and warnings about Trump’s first year in office, and exhortations to fight back at every turn. In his introduction, published just days after Trump’s inauguration, Mycielski noted the article was based on his own experience in Poland, where extreme-right nationalists have taken over the government, and in a recent ugly demonstration, the streets. The piece should be read as an instructive manual of sorts, culled from firsthand observation of the “populists, authoritarians and tinpot dictators” leading right-wing movements across Europe.

“With each passing day, the [Polish] government is moving the country further away from the liberal West and toward the authoritarian models of the East,” Mycielski wrote. “Hundreds of thousands have protested against every illiberal, unlawful step. Every time we believed it couldn’t get any worse. We were wrong. This is why we want you, our American friends, to be spared the shock, the awe, the disbelief of this happening to you. Let’s hope history proves us wrong and the US wakes up in time…[H]ope for the best, but prepare for the worst.”

Mycielski’s “survival guide” has only become more disturbingly relevant with time, its predictions proved frighteningly accurate. Like Umberto Eco’s guide to fascism, it presciently notes the actions and attitudes that now unquestionably define this presidency; the lies and obfuscation of truth, racist fear-mongering, historical revisionism, purposeful chaos and anti-First Amendment agenda. Manipulation and malice are the Trump regime’s forte. (To see how quickly a country can be remade by a charlatan and his abettors, go back and review some of the earliest entries from Amy Siskind’s weekly list tracking changes under Trump. It’s all pretty scary, especially seeing it unfold in real time.)

But if there’s any hope, it will only come from recognizing the reality of what’s happening here, how much damage is being done, how much earth already scorched. The year has somehow flown by, yet seemed interminable. It’s good to remember the very big, very frightening picture before us, how far we’ve already come, and to consider what recourse we have with complicit and corrupt forces standing in the way. — Kali Holloway

Here is Mycielski’s 15-point guide to surviving authoritarianism.

1. They will come to power with a campaign based on fear, scaremongering and distorting the truth.Nevertheless, their victory will be achieved through a democratic electoral process. But beware, as this will be their argument every time you question the legitimacy of their actions. They will claim a mandate from the People to change the system.

Remember — gaining power through a democratic system does not give them permission to cross legal boundaries and undermine said democracy.

2. They will divide and rule. Their strength lies in unity, in one voice and one ideology, and so should yours. They will call their supporters patriots, the only “true Americans.” You will be labelled as traitors, enemies of the state, unpatriotic, the corrupt elite, the old regime trying to regain power. Their supporters will be the “people,” the “sovereign” who chose their leaders.

Don’t let them divide you — remember you’re one people, one nation, with one common good.

Fight for every media outlet, every journalist that is being banned, censored, sacked or labelled an “enemy of the state” — there’s no hope for freedom where there is no free press.

3. Through convoluted laws and threats they will try to control mainstream media and limit press freedom. They will ban critical press from their briefings, calling them “liars,” “fake news.” They will brand those media as “unpatriotic,” acting against the People (see point 2).

Fight for every media outlet, every journalist that is being banned, censored, sacked or labelled an “enemy of the state” — there’s no hope for freedom where there is no free press.

4. They will create chaos, maintain a constant sense of conflict and danger. It will be their argument to enact new authoritarian laws, each one further limiting your freedoms and civil liberties. They will disguise them as being for your protection, for the good of the people.

See through the chaos, the fake danger; expose it before you wake up in a totalitarian, fascist state.

5. They will distort the truth, deny facts and blatantly lie. They will try to make you forget what facts are, sedate your need to find the truth. They will feed “post-truths” and “alternative facts,” replace knowledge and logic with emotions and fiction.

Always think critically, fact-check and point out the truth, fight ignorance with facts.

6. They will incite and then leak fake, superficial “scandals.” They will smear opposition with trivial accusations, blowing them out of proportion and then feeding the flame. This is just smokescreen for the legal steps they will be taking toward totalitarianism.

See through superficial topics in mainstream media (see point 3) and focus on what they are actually doing.

7. They will propose shocking laws to provoke your outrage. You will focus your efforts on fighting them, so they will seemingly back off, giving you a false sense of victory. In the meantime they will push through less “flashy” legislation, slowly dismantling democracy (see points 4 and 6).

Focus your fight on what really matters.

8. When invading your liberal sensibilities they will focus on what hurts the most — women and minorities. They will act as if democracy was majority rule without respect for the minority. They will paint foreigners and immigrants as potential threats. Racial, religious, sexual and other minorities will become enemies to the order and security they are supposedly providing. They will challenge women’s social status, undermine gender equality and interfere with reproductive rights (see point 7). But it means they are aware of the threat women and minorities pose to their rule, so make it your strength.

Women and minorities should fight the hardest, reminding the majority what true democracy is about.

[Editor’s note: This is a rare moment where I believe Mycielski gets it wrong. People of color and women of all races are doing all they can; existence is itself political, but many have already gone above and beyond, taking key roles in resisting. They cannot be expected to “fight the hardest.” We need the people with the most privilege to step up and use their powers for good.]

9. They will try to take control of the judiciary. They will assault your highest court. They need to remove the checks and balances to be able to push through unconstitutional legislation. Controlling the judiciary they can also threat anyone that defies them with prosecution, including the press (see point 3).

Preserve the independence of your courts at all cost; they are your safety valve, the safeguard of the rule of law and the democratic system.

10. They will try to limit freedom of assembly, calling it a necessity for your security. They will enact laws prioritizing state events and rallies, or those of a certain type or ideology. If they can choose who can demonstrate legally, they have a legal basis to forcefully disperse or prosecute the rest.

Oppose any legislation attempting to interfere with freedom of assembly, for whatever reason.

11. They will distort the language, coin new terms and labels, repeat shocking phrases until you accept them as normal and subconsciously associate them with whom they like. A “thief,” “liar” or “traitor” will automatically mean the opposition, while a “patriot” or a “true American” will mean their follower (see point 2). Their slogans will have double meaning, giving strength to their supporters and instilling angst in their opponents.

EVERY authoritarian, totalitarian and fascist regime in history eventually failed, thanks to the PEOPLE.

Fight changes in language in the public sphere; remind and preserve the true meaning of words.

12. They will take over your national symbols, associate them with their regime, remake them into attributes of their power. They want you to forget that your flag, your anthem and your symbols belong to you, the people, to everyone equally. Don’t let them be hijacked. Use and expose them in your fight as much as they do.

Show your national symbols with pride; let them give you strength, not associate you with the tyranny they brought onto your country.

13. They will try to rewrite history to suit their needs and use the education system to support their agenda. They will smear any historical or living figure who wouldn’t approve of their actions, or distort their image to make you think they would. They will place emphasis on historical education in schools, feeding young minds with the “only correct” version of history and philosophy. They will raise a new generation of voters on their ideology, backing it with a distorted interpretation of history and view of the world.

Guard the education of your children; teach them critical thinking; ensure their open-mindedness and protect your real history and heritage.

14. They will alienate foreign allies and partners, convincing you that you don’t need them. They won’t care for the rest of the world, with their focus on “making your country great again.” While ruining your economy to fulfill their populist promises, they will omit the fact that you’re part of a bigger world whose development depends on cooperation, on sharing and on trade.

Don’t let them build walls promising you security instead of bridges giving you prosperity.

15. They will eventually manipulate the electoral system. They might say it’s to correct flaws, to make it more fair, more similar to the rest of the world, or just to make it better. Don’t believe it. They wouldn’t be messing with it at all if it wasn’t to benefit them in some way.

Oppose any changes to electoral law that an authoritarian regime wants to enact — rest assured it’s only to help them remain in power longer.

And above all, be strong, fight, endure and remember you’re on the good side of history.

EVERY authoritarian, totalitarian and fascist regime in history eventually failed, thanks to the PEOPLE.

— With love, your Eastern European friends

KALI HOLLOWAY

Kali Holloway is a senior writer and the associate editor of media and culture at AlterNet.

MARTIN MYCIELSKI

Martin Mycielski is an activist with the Committee for the Defence of Democracy (KOD) NGO and protest movement, which has organized the largest mass demonstrations in Poland since the fall of communism, opposing the authoritarian and unlawful actions of the Law and Justice (PiS) government and its leader, Jarosław Kaczyński. Follow him on Twitter: @mycielski.

[hidetothink]

can white cis gays like you stop trying to act like you're the only part of the community

Dear Anon,I apologize, but you will have to be more specific? What community do you mean?Do you mean the communities of gays and lesbians in the U.S which formed in the 1950's as solidarity among same sex attracted people fighting against the brutalization and legalized oppression of homosexuals and homosexual love? Communities which risked everything to fight against institutionalized homophobia when homosexuality was viewed as little more than a mental illness to be beaten, electrocuted, raped, or sterilized out of someone? Perhaps you mean these communities of people experiencing same sex attraction who build the foundations for the soon coming, and more well known, gay rights movement?Somehow I doubt you mean those communities.So perhaps you mean the "LGBT community," originally formed in the U.S. following the increasingly influential gay rights movements of the 70's and 80's? A community formed of L: (exclusively same sex attracted females), G (exclusively same sex attracted males), B (persons who experienced same sex attraction alongside their opposite sex attraction), and T: (same sex attracted persons, the majority males, who worked to pass as members of the opposite sex).You may note, dear anon, that there was a surprising connection among these groups! Though it may deeply surprise you, this community was formed FOR and BY persons who experienced same sex attraction, and by extension, the brutal results of homophobia. They were not separated and unrelated groups who came together for no reason. They were people united by their same sex attraction and the oppression they faced from it, and fought against this persecution.Somehow I doubt that you mean this community. Perhaps you mean the "LGBTQA community"? An evolution of the LGBT community which worked to include both "questioning" and "allied" persons who were not necessarily same sex attracted. This change gave plausible deniability to those who wished to interact with the greater LGBT community in the U.S. while maintaining the ability to claim heterosexuality as "questioning" or merely "allies." This was merely another form of the LGBT community protecting same sex attracted people in a violently homophobic world. Once again, community focus was on same sex attraction and its demonization in society. As with every incarnation before it, the LGBTQA community remained BY and FOR same sex attracted people and their fight for equality.Somehow I doubt you mean this community.Perhaps then, you mean the more modern "LGBT community." A community no longer focused on homophobia or same sex attracted persons due to changes in its definition."Gender identity theory" (a concept no human has yet to explain to me in any sensible, non-sexist form), the automatic inclusion of non same sex attracted individuals, and a litany of other ideological mutations have skewed what it means to be LGBT. Today, it has nothing to do with being effected by homophobia, nothing to do with same sex attraction, but rather with "failing to fit the cultural norm." Consequently, any community of people, from quirky heterosexuals to "socially outcast" kinksters became part of the "Queer Community."Perhaps you mean THIS community? One which has evolved into the increasingly homophobic and misogynistic community of people pushing for the dissolving of female exclusive spaces.Pushing for the redefinition of sexuality into a nonsense term which not only lacks function but also threatens to undermine the laws which protect those of persecuted minority sexualities. Pushing for the co-opting of oppressed minority identities on the basis of....whether a person really REALLY wants it?Pushing ideological legitimacy by abusing and stealing the concepts, cultures, and histories from people of color.Pushing ideological legitimacy by using intersex people as nothing more than a tool to be thrown away and ignored when failing to fit a narrative.Pushing for an oppressing class to be given the right to "reclaim" the slurs of those they hold privilege over, again, on the basis of how BADLY THEY WANT IT and how willing they are to misconstrue the facts.Pushing for children to be given untested medical procedures, children who are unable to give consent, children who will by the majority grow out of their dysphoria, and children who will most likely grow into same sex attracted adults.Pushing for sex based oppression to be replaced with gender ideology, which either falls apart when critically examined for more than a moment, or is outright defended as a belief system morally above both the need for proof or criticism.Pushing for oppression based on same sex attraction to likewise be replaced with nonsense gender theory which cannot be criticized without being labeled a murderous, bigoted, hate-monger worthy of death and rape. Or at least threats of such punishments.Pushing for a modern, liberalized conversion of homosexuals into heterosexuality by insisting lesbians and gay men open themselves to relationships and intimacies with those of the opposite sex simply because these individuals "identify" as members of the same "gender identity" or even sex. So, dear anon, which community do you refer to?The community which fought, suffered, and died for my right to live as a gay man more free and equal than ever in the history of the U.S.? The community which was created by and for same sex attracted people to protect and empower them? The community which concerns itself with actual reality and institutional oppression? The community which cares about homophobia even after the "cis gays" got their right to marry and everyone else decided the hill to die on was the right for males to enter female protective spaces, for "queer" to become a catch all for any societal divergent rather than a historic and disgusting slur, and for cis gays to "get over" their "transphobia" and stop being so frustratingly exclusively same sex attracted?Or perhaps you mean the community which is pushing for exactly what I described above? A community which is, in the eye of history, a mutation of its foundations so diametrically opposed to those foundations that I'm pressed to wonder if it's even worth being considered part of its lineage.I wait eagerly for your response, dear anonSincerely,A "white cis gay" who will not shut up and sit down when my identity and my history are attacked by my oppressors simply because members of "the community" demand it.

[nosodigmedial-blog]

The alt-right transgression: “MANOSPHERE” &  the “purging” of  LGBTQ.

Source: https://thehill.com

The alt-right is defined as people of the extreme right who reject mainstream conservatism in favor of embracing explicit racism, white supremacy, pure heterosexuality and transphobia (Hawley, 2017). They use “provocative memes”,” trolling” or “dog whistles” as part of their transgressive strategies, cyber harassment and “Pepe the frog” stands as a mascot of this “alternative movement” without leaders. The novel by Angela Nagle “Kill all Normies” (2017) takes a closer look into the far-right group of internet-based politics through 4chan, Gamergate, Kekistan, campus culture wars and the figure of Donald Trump:

“The rise of Milo, Trump and the alt-right are not evidence of the return of the conservatism, but instead of the absolute hegemony of the culture of non-conformism, self-expression, transgression and irreverence – an aesthetic that suits those who believe in the liberation of the individual.” 

(Nagle, 2017)

The politics of “transgression” have become popular with the alt-right and its anonymous online troops meaning that no taboo is too holy to be violated or debated on social media through trolling transgender or shaming overweight people for their looks or even linking feminism to cancer (Jenks, 2003). Another conceptualization of the transgression that applies to the alt-right culture is the idea of the carnivalesque. A carnival is a moment when everything is permitted: Micheal Bakhtin portrays carnival as freedom of expression on things that are otherwise sacred, it opens chaos and reminds us of the necessity of order. Carnivals are also the only time when powerless members of society through their eccentric behavior interact as equals with the power. The most visible example is the alt-right platforms: 4chan, 8chan, reddit where anonymous transgressive ideologies take place (Jenks, 2003).

Red pill : “a person that has woken up to the fact that society discriminates against men, not women”

 Source: https://www.theguardian.com

Hawley (2017) argues that the alt-right is an antifeminist movement which promotes discrimination against women with Twitter being the leading network for “slutshaming” women where “the sex realism” is in favor of the patriarchal society and the distribution of lower social roles to females in comparison to males. The stereotypic alt-right men express freely themselves online under the organization of movements within ”Manosphere” which represents a network of blogs and websites where men’s rights activists believe their gender is an oppressed minority and feminism is both destroying male civilization and the main reason why they cannot find a partner (Lilly, 2016). The political movement “Men's rights activists” (MRA) which overlaps with alt-right group “Man going their own way” (MGTOW) advocates male separatism by telling men to avoid romantic relationships and reject pornography and masturbation as white, straight men believe that they now exist at the bottom of the social and sexual hierarchy whereas women, people of color, and sexual minorities rule. One of the most prominent alt-right leaders is Roosh V. with his proposal to make rape legal when done on private property through his misogynist website “Return of the Kings”: “a blog for heterosexual, masculine men”.

Meet Roosh V.

Source: Mic

Another key transgressive figure is Milo Yiannopoulos (a former Breitbart News tech editor and self-proclaimed “political provocateur”) with his story of being a gay Jewish man among the alt-right leaders and their views on homosexuality as a contagious risk to society which brings the question:

What is the place of a LGBTQ member within a white supremacist movement?

According to Statham (2019), the far-right politics still accept the gay people as long as they distance themselves from their homosexuality: Milo openly detests his gayness and prefers to “keep it in the closet” when having in mind that his sexuality is biologically predetermined:

“Gay rights have made us DUMBER; It’s time to get back in the closet!” (Yiannopoulos, 2015)

The alt-right stands against the feminization of the gay culture and all LGBTQ members who cannot reproduce and do not understand the importance of the nuclear family to ensure the continuity of the white race being also one of the reasons to desire their purging.

QUESTION: Have you ever come across a Twitter post with transgressive content that you may consider an expression of the “manosphere”?

REFERENCES:

Hawley, G. (2017). Making sense of the alt-right. Columbia University Press.

Jenks, C. (2003). Transgression. Psychology Press.

Lilly, M. (2016). ‘The World Is Not a Safe Place for Men’: The Representational Politics of the Manosphere. Political Science, Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa.

Statham, S. (2019). " Keep it in the Closet and Welcome to the Movement": Storying Gay Men Among the Alt-Right.

[gcintheme-blog]

Transgenderism and Cultural Appropriation: A Gender-Critical Analysis

An anonymous friend in my inbox (which seems to be a very busy place... I’m new to this platform so please allow me time to decide how/if I wish to publish or reply to those) asked me to write about cultural appropriation. I have many thoughts that will have to be dispersed through a few posts. (The angry hijabis in my inbox aren’t going to happy. Neither are the people who followed me thinking I’m a liberal feminist, but I don’t care.)

Essentially, this post aims to break down the similarities and differences between the trend known as “cultural appropriation” and the ideology behind the transgender movement, specifically behind male humans who self-identify as women. I will explain my reasons for this below.

Let’s start with cultural appropriation, then. Here’s the definition I took from Wikipedia, which I realize can be flawed by I’m trying to retain some sense of neutrality by using the first available option when I Google English search “define cultural appropriation”:

Cultural appropriation is the adoption or use of the elements of one culture by members of another culture. Cultural appropriation is sometimes portrayed as harmful, framed as cultural misappropriation, and claimed to be a violation of the intellectual property rights of the originating culture. Often unavoidable when multiple cultures come together, cultural appropriation can include using other cultures' traditions, fashion, symbols, language, and cultural songs without permission. According to critics of the practice, cultural (mis)appropriation differs from acculturation, assimilation, or cultural exchange in that the "appropriation" or "misappropriation" refers to the adoption of these cultural elements in a colonial manner: elements are copied from a minority culture by members of a dominant culture, and these elements are used outside of their original cultural context—sometimes even against the expressly stated wishes of representatives of the originating culture.

I want to focus on this part: “The adoption of these cultural elements in a colonial manner: elements are copied from a minority culture by members of a dominant culture, and these elements are used outside of their original cultural context.”

This really gets to the problem with cultural appropriation: Members of a dominant group use cultural elements of another group without the proper respect for where those come from.

For example, I’m Iraqi. Henna is really popular in parts of Iraq, and across Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. My own family has used it before for specific ceremonies, like weddings, but also just for fun sometimes.

Now, henna is has become a trend in lots of places. American women might wear henna to a music festival because they think it’s beautiful. On one hand, it’s flattering that other people think this part of our culture (which is, admittedly, part of our own beauty ritual) something they want to copy.

But, on the other hand, Iraqi people might face discrimination for performing our own cultural ceremonies that Americans can do for fun. For Americans, henna is a fun trend, but for Iraqis, it is a part of our culture. Since the American army has killed so many Iraqis in the recent past just for being Iraqi, you can see where this might be hurtful.

However, I want to stress something here that is not very popular with the liberal feminist crowd. Cultural appropriation is a symptom of a bigger problem. It is a demonstration of existing racial power structures. In other words, cultural appropriation is important in that it can hurt feelings and point to these power structures, but it is not in itself violent.

If no Americans wore henna at Coachella this year, the United States still would have invaded Iraq. If no white people had dreadlocks, black people would still be disproportionately killed by police. If Selena Gomez stopped wearing the bindi, South Asian women would still be called “dot heads.” If no white people wore “Aztec prints,” the empire would still have been invaded and destroyed by the Spanish.

When people are socially, politically, or economically rejected, it is hurtful to then distort their cultural symbols without addressing those problems.

That is why I label the word “colonial” as imported here. In this sense, people from an oppressed culture cannot appropriate the dominant culture. In fact, it should be unsurprising that people act in accordance with the dominant culture, since it is dominant.

I’ll use myself as an example. I partake in a lot of “Western” cultures, from speaking English and Spanish to watching American and British television to wearing Topshop when I have the chance. However, I am not appropriating these cultures because I don’t have the institutional power to do that. Part of the reason many Iraqis know English so well is because of colonialism and invasions by English-speakers. The idea that we could appropriate those cultures is laughable! Iraqis don’t perform Western cultures for fun, but for survival.

As we will later analyze further, this is the same reason the declarations of transmen do not have the same impact on society and its structure as the declarations of transwomen. A woman cannot “appropriate” (this is the wrong word but we’ll get to that too) the demeanor of a man because women do not have the same institutional power to steal the culture of masculinity, which privileges men, in such a way.

But again, appropriate is not the correct word. Masculinity and femininity are not cultures. They are collections of traits that cultures have assigned to people based on their genders. Genders are the social expectations assigned to people based on their sexes. Human males are boys and men and expected to perform masculinity. Human females are girls and women and expected to perform femininity.

Masculinity and femininity can change through different cultures and therefore cannot be cultures themselves. For example, in present-day Egypt, wearing makeup is expected of women. But in ancient Egyptian culture, both men and women wore Egypt to be considered beautiful.

It is the belief of myself and many other gender-critical feminists that men and women should be able to express culturally masculine and feminine characteristics because they’re arbitrary to begin with. There is nothing to suggest biologically (or even historically) that female people should enjoy wearing makeup more than male people. If men feel happy wearing makeup, they should wear it! If women don’t want to wear makeup, they shouldn’t have to!

But we cannot pretend these choices are equal or equally empowering. Women in the West had to fight against the patriarchy for their rights to wear pants in the workplace. Why did they want to in the first place? Because masculine characteristics indicate maleness, which is the dominant sex and carries more power with it.

I’m sure Western men who wear skirts in the workplace (without calling themselves trans) exists, and good for them. But we cannot pretend women’s reasons for desiring to perform masculinity and men’s reasons for desiring to perform femininity are the same. Women have to imitate maleness in some situations to be taken seriously or even to stay safe. Men also have to be “masculine” in order to claim the most of their maleness, but when they choose to perform femininity, it’s not for the purpose of claiming some power they did not have before.

This is because women are not the dominant sex. Women are not more powerful than men. We might have characteristics assigned to us that some men find desirable, and they’re welcome to perform those. For example, crying when you’re sad can actually be a really healthy outlet, and it’s a shame men are told not to cry. Men might even help subvert the current oppressive power structure by doing things like this. But, men have no institutional power to gain by performing femininity.

But here, we reach the major difference between cultural appropriation and transgender ideology. People of the dominant culture who appropriate another culture are not claiming to be members of that culture. Transwomen are men who perform femininity and then claim to be women.

The issue is not men acting feminine, but the declaration that acting or feeling or identifying as feminine makes a person a woman. Feminism has actually been more generous than cultural discourse in how it has actually encouraged people of both sexes to break gender barriers in order to break down the entire system.

Take the Rachel Dolezal case as an example. The problem was not that Rachel Dolezal culturally appropriated. Cultural appropriation is a problem, but people do that all the time. The problem is that she claimed performing certain stereotypes changed her entire identity.

The reason the Dolezal case is exceptional, and made so many people angry, is because she claimed that because she “felt” black and she “acted” black, she was black. It wasn’t specifically the adoption of stereotypes that upset people, but the idea that performing those stereotypes could actually change who she was.

We recognize that is nonsense for a few reasons:

Race is visible. Even though educated people know there is no biological difference between the brains of people with different races (just like there is no biological difference between the brains of people with different sexes) we can still see that society is constructed in many ways around the color of a person’s skin (and other traits that define race), just like we can see society is structured in certain ways around a person’s biological sex. Rachel Dolezal tried to change her appearance and there were great debates (and laughs) on television over whether she was “passing.”

Black people have a socialization that white people just don’t have. Rachel Dolezal didn’t grow up with the idea that her ancestors were slaves in her country, or that they immigrated from African colonies, or that she has to be careful around police because they might suspect her of doing something wrong because of her skin. (Just like men do not have to grow up with the collective conscious that the people of their sex before them couldn’t own property or file for divorce, or have to worry about going out late at night because a man might rape them.)

Liking black culture and embracing black stereotypes doesn’t make someone black. Lots of white people enjoy rap music made by black people about black issues, but they aren’t black and they don’t claim to be. (Lots of men enjoy wearing dresses but they aren’t women and they don’t claim to be.) When black people embrace rap culture they are sometimes called thugs and even killed while unarmed, but white people don’t usually have those problems.

Oppressed people don’t have the option to just stop being oppressed. Black people cannot “identify” as white to stop the police from shooting them. Women cannot “identify” as men to stop men from raping us.

But for some reason, we allow male people to enter into the oppressed group of “women.” We allow them into our women-only spaces, like bathrooms, domestic violence shelters, and women’s universities. We change our language to accommodate them, using terms like “people with vaginas” instead of “women” to describe pressing issues like FGM. We tell them that by “feeling” like a woman and embracing a set of gender roles, they have the same experiences, or are even more oppressed than us.

All of this directly interferes with the liberation of women. If we cannot define ourselves as an oppressed class, or if anyone is permitted to enter or leave that class at will, then women cannot claim we are oppressed. If women cannot name that oppression, we cannot fight the patriarchy.

Transgenderism is not men acting in traditionally feminine ways. It is men saying that these actions, or the desire to do these actions, make them women. This is why it is uniquely dangerous. It frames womanhood as a set of feelings and actions based on those feelings rather than a specific oppression based on biological fact.

People of certain cultures are not oppressed because they “identify” as that specific culture. They are oppressed from the time they are born because society assigns them this “culture” and determines certain social, political, and economic factors through that. When other people then steal that culture for themselves without the associated oppression, it’s rubbing salt in the wounds.

Women are not oppressed because we “identify” as women. We are oppressed from the time we are born because society assigns us “womanhood” and determines certain social, political, and economic factors through that. When other people steal femininity for themselves and claim it makes them women, it mocks the oppression we have been through.

[loudlytransparenttrash]

This Week Within Our Colleges: Part 6

Regis University held "Anti-Oppression Week" programming, which included a “space only for people of color" and events condemning and events on white privilege and "gendered language." The session, titled “White Guilt, White Feelings, and the Struggle for Liberation,” was designed to teach white students how they are “complicit” in racial oppression. Jack Flotte, a member of Regis University’s Social Justice and Spirituality Committee, opened the session by scolding his white peers and professors on their state of “white fragility,” saying, “Like it or not, we are already accomplices. The question becomes: to what end are we partners in the crime of continuing to perpetuate these systems that dehumanize and oppress people, or are we partners in creating something new?” He also boldly claimed that “Black-on-black murder is not a thing. It’s just a bad argument. Black-on-black crime is not a thing. Don’t talk about it. Shut it down when people talk about it.”

Barnard College’s Task Force on Diversity and Inclusion released a set of draft recommendations with the aim of improving “representation, inclusion, and social justice” in the classroom and on campus. The college pledges to hire professors based on skin color, bringing in affirmative action hiring for professors, adding “10 new faculty members from underrepresented groups in 5 years.” The task force says “diverse student bodies and diverse faculties” lead to “better learning outcomes and campus climate.” 

A group of white faculty and staff members at MIT have formed a “White Person’s Accountability Group” to help white people understand their “roles both in perpetuating systemic racism and in dismantling it.” Organizers encourage other white staff to form their own "white caucus" groups and provide summary reports of their meetings to "people of color" on campus for approval. “The purpose of a white caucus is to provide a space where white people can share struggles and hold each other accountable as they seek to uncover the depths of their internalized racist superiority (IRS) and build their capacity for solidarity with people of color,” the guidelines explain. 

Protesters at Claremont McKenna College deliberately kept "white accomplices" segregated from other protesters to serve as a "buffer" against the police. “For white accomplices: Please keep in mind that your role at this protest, aside from acting in solidarity with POC students at the 5Cs, particularly Black students, is to serve as a buffer between students of color and the police,” the page states. “That means, if the police come, it is imperative that you engage with cops should it come to that.” Outside the Athenaeum, protest leaders shouted, “White students to the front!”

St. John’s College in Santa Fe promoted a new “study group” for “those who most often exhibit racist and sexist behavior - white males.” An email sent to all SJC students and faculty explained that the monthly sessions would explore ways of dealing with "the depravity of whiteness" and "the brutality of masculinity." “This is a group where those who most often exhibit racist and sexist behavior - white males - can begin to be self-critical of the very dangerous, brutal, and depraved hierarchical pathologies of superiority, supremacy, and inferiority handed down to us by white Euro-American institutions.” The study group will “read about and discuss the privilege of white people (especially white males), patriarchy, sexism, and racism in the neoliberal capitalist empire of the United States of America.”

After a Somali refugee student plowed a car into a crowd of Ohio State students before stabbing several of them with a butcher knife, the Ohio State University’s Middle East Studies Center in partnership with the Multicultural Center hosted author Nathan Lean to discuss the “pernicious phenomenon” of “Islamophobia” and “how the Right manufactures fear of Muslims.” 

A professor at Saint Joseph’s University used his platform to announce that he has no sympathy whatsoever for struggling “white voters.” He also told minority students in the class that "you do not have to open your heart" to white Trump supporters. “Those people I am not sympathetic to, and I do not believe that you have to open your heart to them. If you are a person of color in this room, if you are a woman in this room, you do not have to open your heart to them,” he continued, before stating that Trump’s election was an intentional dehumanization of marginalized populations. “They told you ‘you are not a person,’ and it is ok to deal with that how you want. I’m not going to tell you how to deal with it because I am not you; I am not a person of color, I am not a woman, but I am going to tell you that it is ok to deal with it any way you want,” he explained, later dividing his class into two groups of people - whites and everyone else - saying the latter were “allowed to feel any way they want" because “white dudes like me in this class have lots of power.” “People are going to die because of Trump,” continues Parry, declaring that “if we don’t start there, we cannot have a conversation.”

A Macalester College student organization referring to itself as “Stop White Noise” held a moment of silence to protest “the centrality of whiteness and Eurocentrism on campus.” “White centrality presents itself in numerous ways in academic spaces, a troubling one being the over-representation of white voices in discussion and content.” Initially, the protesters had intended to require only “white students and professors” to be silent, but ultimately decided that approach because it would “put undue pressure on students of color” who “may be the only person of color” in class.

The University of Nebraska at Omaha will host a workshop for “anti-racist allies” to develop “action plans” that confront America’s “foundation of systemic oppression." Participants will learn how to create "a new resistance that will outlast the white supremacist and misogynist regime we now find ourselves under.” According to the event page, white attendees will be expected to “begin to articulate how” they as allies can “recognize and dismantle normative whiteness and unexamined bias” or “work towards undoing the racism many white people have been raised with and have internalized.” Other objectives for the workshop include helping “white folks transform their ignorance and defensiveness into greater consciousness and motivation” with an added expectation of listening “to communities of color about their anger, mistrust, and needs from allies without burdening them for answers about ‘what to do.’”

Students at the University of Missouri–Kansas City could soon decide to get staff and administrators fired if they are found responsible for “victim-blaming and invalidating rape” by saying the word ‘alleged’ when a claim of sexual assault is made. Their outrage stems from an email from Vice Chancellor Mel Tyler in which he “routinely” referred to an alleged sexual assault as “alleged.” Ultimately, Jackson County prosecutors charged a Colorado man who was an undocumented immigrant. Students marched on Tyler’s office, led by student Helen Proctor, who told Tyler that “all of the administrators” need to go through sexual-violence training because he called an alleged crime an alleged crime before it went to court and proposed a student board, whose members would be given hiring and firing privileges of staff. 

The University of California, Irvine’s student government recently demanded “sanctuary” for all illegal immigrant students “regardless of criminal convictions.” The letter calls for an end to compliance “with immigration authorities regarding investigations,” while refusing to “allow immigration authorities physical access to all land owned or controlled by UC.” “We are a coalition of University of California student organizations committed to see all UC campuses become robust sanctuaries for undocumented immigrants and other communities targeted for repression by the Trump Administration.”

A student of Orange Coast College who filmed his professor calling Donald Trump’s election “an act of terrorism” received a one-semester suspension. He also received a number of other sanctions, including a mandatory meeting with the Dean of Students before he is readmitted, as well as remaining on disciplinary probation for one semester upon return from suspension. Additionally, he was told to write an apology letter to professor as well as a three-page, double spaced essay discussing why he videotaped the professor calling Trump’s election an act of terrorism. Unsurprisingly, the professor was voted “Faculty Member of the Year” by her colleagues.

The University of Arizona’s College of Humanities is offering suggestions to faculty to teach their class the correct way to tell someone they said something offensive is to say “ouch,” and their correct apologetic response, “oops.” The ouch/oops method is part of the handbook’s section on “Personal and Group Affirmation,” which offers suggestions on “creating a safe space” for students to talk about “challenging topics.” Arizona is not the first university to offer microaggression training under the “ouch” rubric: Iowa State rolled out its “Ouch! That Stereotype Hurts” workshop to local businesses and organizations in January.Several other universities offer similar trainings where participants are told to announce when they are offended by perceived stereotypes.

The Northern Arizona University Political Science department hosted a “Specter of Fascism” event at which professors repeatedly compared Donald Trump to Hitler and the Nazis. Dr. Kimberly Curtis continually referred to the Trump administration as the “Trump regime”, at one point comparing the administration’s actions to the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. Criminology professor Ray Michalowski later called Trump the “rapist in chief” of our country and concluded that Trump is a “neo-fascist” and dictator.

The “Knights for Socialism” group at the University of Central Florida held a workshop Sunday to teach left-wing students how to “BASH THE FASH” with a “Leftist Fight Club” open to everyone but Republicans. “In response to the record number of hate crimes against Latinxs, Immigrants, Muslims, Women, the LGBTQIA+ community, Jews, African Americans and other minorities since the rise of Donald Trump and other Alt-Right Neo-Nazis, Knights for Socialism has decided to host a series of self-defense clinics for anyone that wants to learn how to BASH THE FASH,” asserts the Facebook event page. “Ladies: The Commander in thief is a sexual predator and rapist,” the description warns. “He has normalised sexual assault and it is expected that sexual violence against women is going to skyrocket in the next 12 months. Please join us! There will be other women there for you to spar against! This event is open to everyone and anyone, EXCEPT REPUBLICANS!”

Students at Elizabethtown College wore white pins in the shape of puzzle pieces to remind them of their white privilege. Aileen Ida, president of the College Democrats, said white people are continually allowing for a societal system of oppression to occur unless they work against it. The white puzzle piece pin represents the racial struggles of others. “No matter how accepting someone is, that doesn’t stop them from being part of a system based on centuries of inequality,” she says. The inspiration came from a Lutheran pastor who made a commitment to “wear a white puzzle piece pin every day for a year to force herself to think about her white privilege and the impact her white privilege has on people of color.”

The University of Chicago hosted a workshop on how to avoid the “negative ramifications” of contacting law enforcement by teaching students “alternatives to calling the police.” During a workshop explicitly titled “Alternatives to Calling the Police,” the prestigious school will discuss “the negative ramifications of calling the police, especially in regards to their racial oppression of black people and other people of color.” 

Scripps College resident assistants recently hung two types of signs titled “Emotional Labor 101” across campus to warn white students against “making people uncomfortable.” One flyer refers to non-white students as "victims of emotional labor" because they must exert energy to make others comfortable and live up to societal expectations, and suggests they should be paid for their trouble. The other flyer, addressed to white students, instructs them to seek out other white people who are committed to social justice issues, and to be "mindful" of their privileged position.

Georgetown University students were outraged that a Muslim woman was allowed to deliver a speech criticizing Sharia law, calling her critique “Islamophobic” and “hate speech.” Nonie Darwish, who grew up in Egypt as a Muslim and later fled for the U.S, was invited to speak at the university. Some students, however, denounced the invitation of “Islamophobia” by claiming that by inviting Darwish, the university gave a platform to “hateful and violent views.” Darwish addressed the backlash against her invitation during the Q&A portion of the event, explaining that although she recognizes the right of people to be offended and not attend, she wished that at least some of them would have come to ask questions. “This is scary to me,” Darwish stated. “I want to kiss the floor of America because it gave me dignity as a woman, and I am speaking because I want to save you from making any ideology, not just Islam, above criticism. I beg you consider that.”

A Hampshire College student is facing charges after allegedly assaulting a female basketball player from another school for “culturally appropriating” hair braids. According to court documents, Carmen Figueroa ordered members of the Central Maine Community College basketball team to remove braids from their hair, citing cultural appropriation. When the team members refused, Figueroa, along with another student, began pulling their hair and bringing them to the ground. Figueroa allegedly stepped on and kicked one of the girls on the ground. She has been charged with disorderly conduct, assault and battery, and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon.

Evergreen State College will soon host a workshop for eager parents who wish to preempt their toddlers from developing “bias” before it’s too late. 

A Wellesley College student has created a public database of professors who commit “ableist microaggressions” or fail to “respect” students’ pronoun preferences. According to the student, encouraging students to name and shame professors is one way of addressing this and helping students with mental health issues by knowing which professors to avoid. Since Wellesley is a women’s college, many professors refer to students as women without hesitation, but apparently this automatic assumption is exacerbating the problem of mental illness on campus.

Students who “self identify as White” at Loyola University Chicago can apply to join a safe space to learn about white privilege, institutional racism, and internalized racism. Students who are unsure whether they qualify as "White" are encouraged to email a group leader for clarification. “R.A.W. is an affinity group for White students who have passion for ending racism, who have anger and confusion about institutional racism, who have guilt and hope about internalized racism.” Students who participated touted the social justice education they received in the group. "I always thought I wasn’t privileged but that's not what White Privilege means,” student Angee Serwin recalled. “Simply because I am White, I already carry a privilege that I didn't even try for."

Yale University may soon formally replace the term “freshman” with “first-year student.” Dean of Student Affairs Camille Lizarríbar, who has been at the forefront of the conversation surrounding the change, explained that she hopes the switch will be made “before the next academic year.” “I think there comes a time when you want to make sure that the way you’re calling things reflects the values that you have.” 

The University of Minnesota has become the latest university to do away with the traditional Homecoming King and Queen titles and replace them with the gender-neutral “Royals” term. Taking it one step further, University of Minnesota officials also point out that the winners can be any combination of any gender identity.” 

Columbia University students recently adorned a Thomas Jefferson statue with a Ku Klux Klan hood to protest “a man who is the epitome of white supremacy.” Members of the student group Mobilized African Diaspora condemn Columbia for honoring Jefferson’s legacy, calling him “the epitome of white supremacy” and arguing that his statue contributes to the ongoing marginalization of black students. The group goes on to accuse the administration of failing to uphold “its promise to protect Black and Brown bodies,” arguing that the statue “embodies the same threat that the KKK poses” for non-white students and even goes so far as to declare that “venerating” Jefferson “validates rape, sexual violence, and racism.” 

[ofcvssius-blog]

                            ( — ✕ ⁞ ❛ CASSIUS LESTRANGE ➡ CHARACTER SHEET ❜ )

GENERAL

Full Name: Cassius Alaric Lestrange. Pronunciation/Meaning/Origin:

Cassius - kas-ee-əs - Derived from the Latin Cassus “empty, vain”.

Alaric - al-ə-rik - From the Gothic name Alareiks which meant “ruler of all”.

Lestrange - le-strange - In French it means “the strange one”. 

Nickname: Cass. Alias: Cassius Attwood. Real Age: Seventeen. Birthday: Birthplace: Astrological Sign:   Zodiac Sign: Species: Human. Wizard. Ethnicity: Caucasian. Blood Type: AB Negative. Signature: His handwriting consists of large, scribbled, messy letters only he can read. Cassius only writes elegantly during exams. Current Residence: Durmstrang Institute. Community: Upon hearing his last name, people tend to distance themselves from the young wizard, fearing what he might be capable of. Hardly anyone ever takes time to get to know him, and most of the time he’s fine with that.

GENDER/SEXUALITY

Gender: Cis Male. Gender Role: Masculine. Orientation: Heterosexual. Pronouns: He/Him/His.

PHYSICAL TRAITS

Dominant Hand: Right. Eye Color: Blue. Hair Color: Dark Brown. Build: Athletic. Height: 6′3″. Weight: 174 lbs. Birthmarks/Scars: Cass has numerous scars, the most visible ones being on his arms. They do cover his torso as well. The majority are from the time spent training with his father and some from Quidditch. If someone does ask him about the scars he’ll only pin them on Quidditch. He does not put in a great deal of work in covering them up. If someone doesn’t feel comfortable than they can look away. Distinguishing Features:

HEALTH

Health: He’s in perfect health, if you don’t count the numerous Quidditch and Dueling injuries. Energy: Unless it has a certain impact on his or his sister’s life, or it concerns Quidditch, Cassius doesn’t really put much energy into anything he does, especially schoolwork. Memory: Cassius has a selective memory, discarding anything he renders unnecessary or particularly boring. Everything else he retains as long as needed. Senses: As a Quidditch player he needs all his senses sharp as knives in order to anticipate adversary moves and make efficient game plans. Also a fan of Dueling he needs quick reflexes in order to defeat his opponent. The one sense which is less developed than the rest is his sense of smell. Allergies: Ibuprofen. Handicaps: No. Medication: No. Phobias: Loosing his sister. Dementors. Addictions: Smoker. Coffee. Neurotype: Neurotypical although he’s never really been checked for anything. Mental Disorders: Occasional depression episodes (even if he won’t admit to them to save his life). 

SPEECH/SPEECH HABITS

Languages: English, Bulgarian, German (not fluent), Russian (not fluent), Norwegian (not fluent). Accent: Despite having spent most of his life in Bulgaria, Cassius has not retained the accent when speaking English. This is due to the fact that both his parents spoke the language without any impediments and the primary language in the Lestrange household was English.  Voice: Low pitched. Speech Impediments: None he’d like to admit. Greetings:  Hey. What? / Zdrasti (Bulgarian) Farewells: Later. / Chao (Bulgarian) State of Mind: “How are you?” “Fine. Just stop talking to me.” Compliment: “Wow, you’re not completely retarded.” Insult: Basically everything he says? Expletive: “Ah, shit…” Laughter: He doesn’t laugh much, but when he does it’s usually a low, ironic laugh that sounds more like a huff. Tag Line: He huffs a lot when he’s annoyed. Signature Quote: And i’m supposed to care why?

PERSONALITY

General Mood: Indifferent or Irritated. But mostly Indifferent. Attitude: It really depends on the person he is interacting with. If it’s someone whose company he enjoys then Cass struggles to be as pleasant as he can. If the person doesn’t interest him, or is someone he cannot stand, then he’s usually pretty brief and appears either annoyed or bored. Stability: When it comes to emotional stability Cass likes to think he’s got everything under control. Truth be told he’s gotten so good at dissimulating he’s even managed to fool himself.   Expressiveness: He tends to hold things in. When Happy: The usually ironic twist of his lips turns into an actual smile. When Depressed: Keeps to himself. Explodes at anyone trying to question him about his emotional state, sometimes even towards his sister. When Angry: Someone ends up in the Hospital Wing.

Strengths: Charismatic (when he wants to), intelligent, patient, creative, loyal, determined, adaptable, versatile, ambitious, skilled with words, curious, opportunistic, cunning. Flaws: Cruel, vindictive, manipulative, cynical, self indulgent, emotionally unattached, skeptic, unyielding, two faced. Perception: If you’re a descendant of a notorious wizarding family known for its criminal actions during the wars then the world seems a like pretty limited place with few to almost no shades of grey. Cassius has tried to find the grey but was unsuccessful, running into black dead ends wherever he looked. Conflicts: Freedom and duty, these are the two things between which his inner war is fought. A side of him wants nothing more than to be free of every burned his name demands and start a life of his own choosing while the other feels obligated to continue the family mission to ensure his ancestors did not die in vain and he did not suffer all these years for nothing. Lures: Power, Wealth, Stability. Soft Spot: His sister is his only soft spot. If any harm was to come to her he’d be lost. Cruel Streak: It doesn’t take much to trigger Cassius’ cruel side, although he might appear to have none. A misplaced comment about his sister, a passing remark about his ancestors or someone messing with his broom. Etiquette: Cassius knows when to be well mannered and when it’s not necessary. Usually he’s somewhere in-between.

PERSONALITY II

MBTI Personality Type: Temperament: Choleric. Enneagram: The Achiever, The Loyalist, The Challenger. Intelligence Type: Ego/Superego/Id: Ego. The Self: Emptiness. The Shadow: Kindness. Persona/Mask: A vain little brat who couldn’t care less about anyone’s opinion.

Role: Follower. Fulfillment: Cassius likes to think of himself as a leader when truthfully he’s more of a follower. It started with following his father’s wishes, even against his will, and continued with following the orders of his new foster family and of the Headmaster of Durmstrang. He dislikes having to take orders but with no alternative on the horizon, at least not yet, he has no choice but to play the part. Significance: I believe the only person he currently matters to is his twin sister. Cass doesn’t let people in and therefore has almost no friends to care for him. He’s not particularly thrilled about his loner status, even if he won’t admit it, but he’ll manage. Alignment: Neutral Evil. Vice: Pride, Greed, Lust, Envy, Wrath. Virtue: Diligence. Defining Moment: On the Quidditch pitch, especially during a match. It gives him a chance to clear his mind of daily problems and just focus on putting the ball through the goal. Quidditch is liberating and is the only thing he’s truly in control of. One Word: Conflicting.

PERSONALITY III

Hobbies/Interests: Quidditch, Drawing, Charms, Skills/Talents: He’s rather good at drawing. Great flier.  Sense of Humor: Dark. Dry. Witty. Sarcastic. Superstitions/Beliefs: Unlike most people Cass thinks that the number 13 is actually lucky and so are black cats. Also he owns a copper coin with a hole through it he found in the woods one day. It’s not lucky or anything, he just thinks it’s cool. Other than that he has no superstitions. Dreams/Nightmares: One of his recurring nightmares is he and his sister being caught by Aurors and imprisoned to be later executed. Each time his sister goes first and there is nothing he can do to stop it. The dream ends right after she dies leaving him strained, afraid and feeling useless. Quirks: Cassius can’t sleep in any other position than on his stomach with an arm dangling off the bed or on his back. Savvy: He knows pretty much anything there is to know about Quidditch. Can’t understand: Why some people still make such a fuss about the Dark Arts. It’s not like speaking of them will kill you, it’s improper use that will. Closet Hobby: Cassius likes to draw. He’s not very good at it and it’s not something he makes public. His sketchbook is tucked away on the bottom of his trunk for nobody to see. Guilty Pleasure: Sweets.

MORALITY/GOALS/ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Religion: Atheist. Morals: Not very many. He’ll break whatever law it takes, or whoever it takes, to get what he wants. Crime Record: Cassius did kill two students in his sixth year. Their deaths were ruled as accidental due to insufficient proof to show otherwise and he was never convicted for the crime.  Motivation: Power, Money, Freedom. Priorities: 1. His sister. 2. Himself. 3. Quidditch.  Philosophy: If you’re a descendant of a notorious wizarding family known for its criminal actions during the wars then the world seems a like pretty limited place with few to almost no shades of grey. Cassius has tried to find the grey but was unsuccessful, running into black dead ends wherever he looked. Influences: His father. Relates to: Although he won’t admit it Cassius relates to his late great uncle Regulus Black. Starting as a follower of the Dark Lord, Regulus eventually decided to live for himself and lend a hand for the Light Wizards as well by attempting to destroy a Horcrux. He was killed in the process and that is why Cassius is so afraid of following his own dreams, they might end up destroying him.

Main Goal: Keeping his sister safe and happy. Minor Goals/Ambitions: Becoming a professional Quidditch player. Career: Professional Quidditch player. Wishlist: A new broomstick, a new owl, a better house.  Accomplishments: Making Captain of the Quidditch team. Greatest Achievement: Also making Captain of the Quidditch team. Biggest Failure: Not being able to locate the Auror who killed his father during the summer break. Secrets: He really wants to be one of the good guys. Regrets: Falling out of touch with his mother (even if he won’t admit it). Worries: That eventually all his plans will come apart and he’ll be left with noting but dreams and a tiny cell in Azkaban. Best Dream: Getting his reputation and substantial funds back. Worst Nightmare: Loosing his sister. Being imprisoned for the murder in his sixth year.

Best Memories: Receiving his Durmstrang letter, winning his first match, buying his pets. Worst Memories: His owl dying, his sister being bullied by their father, discovering his mother had left home.

SKILLS/ABILITIES

Powers/Abilities: He excels at Charms. Great flier.  Weaknesses: Insightful conversation, mentions of his family, basically anything that involves having people skills.

STYLE

Style: When not in his uniform Cassius prefers comfortable, casual clothes which do not inhibit movement. His outfits might not be as fancy as other pure blooded students (mostly due to lack of funds for luxury) but he tries his best to always be well dressed and well kept. Grooming: Very well kept. Posture: It varies between stiff as a broom and slouchy, depending on his mood. Coordination: Considering he’s a Quidditch player he’s got to be very coordinated. Habits and Mannerisms: Tapping with his legs or fingers when anxious, nervous, bored or angry. Grinding his teeth together or clenching and un-clenching his jaw.   Scent: Cologne. Traces of broom wax.

AESTHETICS

Wardrobe: In Cassius’ wardrobe one finds mostly items suitable for cold weather. The colors vary, but most are rather dull, appropriate to the environment in which he lives. As for footwear you’re most likely to find boots and a few pairs sneakers tossed in the back. Equipment: His wand, School bag, Cigarette pack, Lighter. Accessories: During his fifth year of school Cassius got a tattoo on his left forearm similar to those Death Eaters wore in the past. Trinkets: A pocket sketchbook, his copper coin. Funds: The twins have limited funds therefore he never really has much money on him, just enough to get by. He’s very careful when managing his money, making sure he doesn’t run out until the next allowance even if it means missing out on a few things he wants. Home: A small, rundown house in the woods.  Neighborhood: ( Squirrels? ) Collections: None. Most valuable possession: His wand. Prized Possession: His wand.

FAMILY

Immediate Family: His father, mother and twin sister. Distant Family: Bellatrix and Rodolphus Lestrange, Rabastan Lestrange, Narcissa and Lucius Malfoy, Andromeda and Ted Tonks, Nymphadora and Remus Lupin, Draco and Astoria Malfoy, Teddy Lupin, Scorpius Malfoy  Upbringing: Cassius was raised by an indifferent mother and an abusive father. His mother only acknowledged him when he spoke of Quidditch since it was the only thing the two had in common and his father only cared about training. Outside of that he noticed his son when he was drunk and needed someone to lash out at.

RELATIONSHIPS/LOVE LIFE

Friends: A handful of Durmstrang students. Enemies: Basically anyone who gets in the way of Cass getting what he wants or anyone who challenges him. Bosses: Durmstrang Headmaster (at least for the next year). Followers: None.  Heroes: None. Rivals: Mostly Quidditch players from other schools. Pets/Familiars: Until his fourth year Cassius owned a snowy owl named Watson which passed away after being attacked by a bird of prey upon returning with a message from home. Sometime during the summer break between his fourth and fifth year the boy acquired a black cat which he named Sherlock, also from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s well known books.   Lovers: A few girls at his school but nothing significant. Cassius doesn’t really do relationships. Marital Status: Single. And will probably die that way. Sex Life: Quite active. Type: Pragma. Position: Dominant. Virginity: Gone is his fourth year.  

EDUCATION/INTELLIGENCE

IQ: 110. Although he never makes full use of his intelligence. Education: Cassius only excels in classes he enjoys such as Charms, Transfigurations and starting his sixth year Apparition. The others he only puts in enough effort to pass, nothing more nothing less. He also enjoys Care for Magical Creatures but often skips class in favor to other activities. School: Durmstrang Institute. Grade: Seventh Year. Social Stereotype: Jerk. Intelligence: Intrapersonal. Extracurricular Activities: Quidditch, Dueling Club, Ghoul Studies, Charms Club.

WORK STATUS

Occupation: Student. Income: Money is a little short since his father’s death and his mother’s disappearance. Wealth Status: Lower middle class. Organizations/Affiliations: Durmstrang Institute.

SOCIAL STATS

Reputation: I believe the general population doesn’t have a pretty high impression of Cassius outside of the pitch since he doesn’t really stand out with much. They might be either indifferent, friendly or malicious, depending on the level of familiarity or their intentions. First Impressions: Upon first meeting Cassius people might think he’s either a stuck up, sarcastic jerk or a lonely soul in need of help, depending on the mood they catch him in. Stranger Impressions: “What an ass…” Friendly Impressions: “What an ass…” Enemy Impressions: He’s definitely disliked by a great number of people but not really viewed as an immense threat, more like someone you need to keep away from unless you’re looking for trouble. Familiar Impressions: I believe his sister sees him as a lifeline of sorts, the one person left she can always turn to for support and understanding and who will always love her back despite anything she does. Compliments: Well played. Insults: Ass, jerk, he’s been called pretty much every foul name under the sun.  Self-Impression: Very deep down Cassius has a pretty low opinion of himself. After all the time he’s spent away from the influence of his family he figured he would have made some kind of progress with his life but he keeps making one step forward and one thousand back. He just doesn’t know how to adjust. 

FAVORITES

Favorite Colors: Navy Blue, Black, Red, Green.   Favorite Animals: Wolf, Tiger, Cat. Favorite Mythological Creatures: Cerberus.   Favorite Places: Sofia, Bulgaria. Favorite Landmarks: National Museum of Military History & Slaveykov Square, both in Sofia. Favorite Foods: Broccoli, Mushroom soup, Mekista, Garash cake. Favorite Drinks: Firewhiskey Coca Cola, Coffee. Favorite Characters: The Third Brother from The Tales of Beedle the Bard; Dorian Gray from The Portrait of Dorian Gray. Favorite Genre: Action, Mystery, Adventure. Favorite Books: The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. Favorite Sports: Quidditch, Soccer. Favorite Subjects: Charms, Care for Magical Creatures, Transfiguration. Favorite Numbers: 6, 13. Favorite Quotations: "I came, I saw, I conquered.”  - Julius Caesar

LEAST FAVORITES

Least Favorite Colors: Any shade of pink. Least Favorite Animals: Any kind of bug, Least Favorite Mythological Creatures: Pixie. Least Favorite Places: England. Least Favorite Landmarks: Earth and Man National Museum, Sofia, Bulgaria. Least Favorite Foods: Cauliflower.    Least Favorite Drinks: Mint tea. Least Favorite Genre: Romance, Drama. Least Favorite Books: Anything with too much romance and not enough action. Least Favorite Subjects: Divination. Least Favorite Numbers: 7. Least Favorite Words: Truth. (He can’t pronounce it right.)  

Character Sheet © Character-Resource

[its-alaaelhage]

Reflection #3

Over the course of its existence, feminism has mainly focused on the issues experienced by white, middle-class women. For example, it is largely shared and advertised that a woman makes 78 cents to a man's dollar. However, this is only the statistic for white women. Unfortunately, women of minority groups make even less. Black women earn sixty four cents for every dollar white men make, and Hispanic women only earn fifty six cents. Intersectional feminism takes into account the many different ways each woman experiences discrimination. Today's feminist movement is said to be in danger of losing momentum unless it recognizes that not every feminist is white, middle class, heterosexual, cis-gendered and able bodied. There is no one-size-fits-all type of feminism. 

Black women, especially those identified with Black rights movements such as Black Lives Matter, fear that feminism will split their ranks and divert public attention. Black women's problems also differ from those of whites in other ways, mostly related to the fact that their economic position is much worse than that of either white women or black men. Moreover, blacks hesitate to join organizations they perceive as white dominated. It is argued that both black and women's rights movements need each others' support and that black women cannot achieve equality unless both movements succeed. “The failure of feminism to interrogate race means that the resistance strategies of feminism will often replicate and reinforce the subordination of people of color, and the failure of anti-racism to interrogate patriarchy means that anti-racism will frequently reproduce the subordination of women.” I agree with this statement by Crenshaw because for a movement regarding women to make changes and spread we must include all women, not just white women. 

In the article “Mapping the Margins” by Crenshaw, it states Shahrazad Ali in her controversial book, The Blackman’s Guide to Understanding the Blackwoman.  In this anti-feminist tract, Ali draws a positive correlation between domestic violence and the liberation of African Americans. “Ali blames the deteriorating conditions within the Black community on the insubordination of Black women and on the failure of black men to control them.” Ali goes so far as to advise Black men to physically chastise black women when they are “disrespectful” and must use moderation in disciplining "their" women, she argues that Black men must sometimes resort to physical force to reestablish the authority over Black women that racism has disrupted. Ali's premise is that patriarchy is beneficial for the Black community, and that it must be strengthened through coercive means if necessary. This is absolutely shocking, especially coming from a woman. When she states that woman must be disciplined, as if they were the problem in this matter. I believe she’s ignorant and conservative in the sense that her mindset and ideology is old fashioned and reminds me of how people in the early twentieth century used to think. She encourages black men to physically discipline them by being abusive, as if women are incapable of communicating like human beings.

Reading Ali’s views on feminism and racism really upset me and made me think that even some women who are supposed to be enlightened about matters like this promote violence and patriarchy, thus encouraging violence against women. This raises another point that Crenshaw states; In our society, when women try to speak up about the abuse we endure by men, we are obliging women not to scream rather than obliging men not to hit. This is a very important idea, because we live in such a patriarchal society that no matter what disgusting and unimaginable things men do to women, we somehow always blame the woman. Even when women get raped, we tend to say, women were dressed very provocatively and were indirectly asking for it. This type of language is what discourages women to come out and speak and be able to stand up for themselves in full confidence if something awful has happened to them. This encourages men to act how they choose to act without any type of consequence. In terms of intersectionality, this type of behavior acts as an example of inter-cultural suppression, that further limits the impact that groups of oppression can have against an established order, in this case the rising tensions women of color have against both feminist ideologies, and the larger racial divides that permeate our society today.

[duaneodavila]

Nice White Boys Too

Conservative Republican Tennessee senator Frank Niceley offered a bill to change jury instructions that blew me away. Nashville criminal defense lawyer Bryan Stephenson posted a shot of the critical passage on the twitters.

Conservative TN republican just submitted a bill to instruct on jury nullification. pic.twitter.com/mBY49t7IHh

— Bryan Stephenson (@TNCrimDefense) February 2, 2019

Notably, it’s a one-way instruction, to over-ride the law, even if found to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, if conviction would “yield an unjust result.” This distinguishes it from many arguments for jury nullification which would vitiate the burden of proof and presumption of innocence, such that it would allow a rogue jury to convict as well as acquit without regard to law.

It’s not that such an instruction would be without a downside. Almost all “solutions” are flawed, requiring a decision as to whether the good is worth the bad. It could be used by a jury to acquit a cop for a wrongful killing. It could be used by a jury to acquit a white man of murdering a black man based on race. Juries are our neighbors. One never knows what they’ll do.

Despite the potential downside,  there was rousing support by the criminal defense bar for this proposal. But that support was not universal.

What would make someone take the view that it would be more beneficial to “nice white boys,” or that benefitting “nice white boys” along with every other defendant would be a negative? Is it because the senator proposing the law is a conservative Republican, and therefore the bill is tainted even if it would be hugely beneficial to all defendants?

After all, the mens rea bill proposed in Congress was lambasted not because it wasn’t a great bill, but because the Koch brothers supported it. If bad people support good law, it must be bad law. If Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez proposed the exact same law, the exact same words, it would have been lauded as the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Or is it just that the hatred of the doctrinaire view of social justice has festered to the extent that its warrior want good things to happen to “marginalized” identities, but bad things to happen to white people? Helen Pluckrose’s critique* of the distortions created by the ideology of intersectionality provides a useful explanation.

Intersectionality, by undervaluing shared human experience and rights — universality — and personal autonomy and distinctiveness — individuality — and focusing intensely on group identity and intersectional ideology, places individuals in a very restricted “collectivist” position previously only found in very conservative cultures.

It is regrettable that intersectionality in practice so often manifests in restrictive ideological conformity, exclusionary tactics, hostility, tribalism and even racist abuse. It’s regrettable because liberalism could be benefitted by specialist attention to the ways in which specific groups within society are advantaged or disadvantaged. However, focus on group identity and experience should not come at the cost of respect for the whole world of human ideas and experience and every individual’s right to access and subscribe to any part of it. Until intersectionality respects diversity of ideas as well as of identity and supports every individual’s right to hold any of them regardless of their group identity, it cannot be said to represent anything except its own ideology.

Part of the problem faced in trying to remedy the legal system is that the woke impute nefarious motives on any reform proposed by, perhaps even supported by, people whose identities are deemed wrong. A good idea from a person deemed bad by the woke is bad. They can’t tolerate the notion that someone they hate could do something acceptable.

Another part is that it shifts the balance of values behind the proposal, from one that favors all defendants, and therefore favors minority defendants because they are disproportionately represented in the well, to one that favors “nice white boys.”

An old platitude is that “a rising tide lifts all boats,” and it’s likely that a great jury instruction as proposed by Senator Niceley will inure to the benefit of “nice white boys.” But it is just as likely to aid defendants of every color and gender, if not moreso. And yet, does that make it a bad thing? Yes, it does, to those obsessed with identitarian dogma. It’s not enough that black and brown defendants will benefit, but that it might let a “nice white boy” walk is intolerable.

This distinction has become pervasive among the woke, reflecting the “low hanging fruit” argument that enjoys great appeal with SJWs. For example, a primary argument for the legalization of marijuana is that arrests disparately impact minorities. While true, the same can be said of murder and rape, yet no one is arguing for their legalization. The only question that should be asked is whether the marijuana should be legal, without regard to the skin color of people arrested. Disparate policing is a stand alone problem, and makes marijuana neither more nor less appropriate for legalization.

If it turned out that more “nice white boys” were arrested for weed, would the woke be calling for legalization or applauding the police for eradicating this white blight on our landscape? “Legal Phil’s” knee-jerk racist reaction is fairly typical of dogma-gone-deranged, but it precludes good law, good ideas, because they might help an “unworthy” racial demographic, even if it would serve everyone. Is it better to kill good reform for all defendants than allow the hated “nice white boy” to enjoy its benefits along with those they venerate? This isn’t going to work.

*Unfortunately, Pluckrose gertrudes her opening sentence, likely to deflect the obvious criticism to follow:

Those of us committed to social justice are accustomed to being told that intersectional feminism with its focus on critical race theory, queer theory and anti-ableism is the key.

While she no doubt is “committed” to the same good causes as social justice warriors, from eqaulity to diversity, that’s not the same as the loaded phrase “social justice.”

Nice White Boys Too republished via Simple Justice

[grannygremlinaudio]

So there has been the expected dismissal of Dr Ford’s accusations against Kavanaugh based on the old boys will be boys/he was a kid then and didn’t know better tropes.  This sort of thing needs to stop. I certainly hope nobody is really buying it (I mean, even the people who say it know what a crock it is and only do so to save their political strategy, right?) but worry that too many are.

I will admit, that when I first heard of Ford’s, then anonymous, accusation I did think to myself ‘ this was a long time ago and he was a minor at the time; yeah it’s horrible but is it enough to disqualify him? He could have grown as a human being since then’ - I mean, it’s not as if I support his candidacy, but looking at it from a strategic perspective, anticipating the responses. I certainly did things back then that I am not proud of (nothing like this mind you) and would never do today; haven’t we all? But since then we have a second accuser, with an incident that took place later at Yale, when he was a legal adult; this shows a pattern of behavior stretching at least into early adulthood and is undoubtedly, and now beyond any argument, of great concern. 

Or even ignore that (because the Senate committee is not full of people who tend to believe accusers or even take them seriously at all), and look at the footage we’ve seen of Kavanaugh speaking to various groups, reminiscing fondly and jokingly about his time at the high school in question, alluding to the general debauchery we have heard about.

But to get back to my main point, it is dangerous, unfair (in that it has historically not been applied equally to all people) and false to use the dismissive arguments Kavanaugh’s supporters have in the article above.

Firstly, as we all know, he was 17 at the time.  Poor black boys (as an easy example, not an exclusive list; generally anyone non cis/het-white-male and at least middle class) do not get the same benefit of the doubt when it comes to crimes committed as minors.  Even nonviolent crimes such as theft and drug possession.  They get charged as adults and sent to adult jail, where they tend to be taken advantage of by the older, actual adult, inmates.  Contrast this with that privileged white university jock (an actual adult, whose name I will not bother to look up because he doesn’t deserve it) who raped an unconscious girl and then only got, what, 3 months? 

Secondly, and not to diminish the first point above which is very important and a horrible travesty but others are speaking to that better than I can, the bigger issue may be the complete fallacy of the argument in any demographic case.  I’ve been a minor in a culture of escapist inebriation.  I’ve been wasted at parties.  No such thing as this ever happened; it would not have happened.  It is NOT normal in a categorical sense, not in gendered Catholic schools, nor coed public ones (I have attended both).  Every 17 year old boy I knew, would have known it was wrong and also known that the rest of us would put a quick end to it should we notice any such activity (yes, I can think back and identify certain individuals who may have, had the culture been more tolerable, tried it; but the point is, even they knew it was wrong).  Sure, the macho patriarchal entitlement-to-the-use-of-a-woman culture was there, boys still tried to pick up chicks, and there were the ones I knew of who girls would warn each other about, but they were (not to diminish the seriousness of the behaviour, but comparatively)  just manipulative jerks, not rapists (e.g.  the pity fuck master male-slut kiss and teller).  This situation with Kavanaugh, as described by Ford, is inarguably rape.  Gang rape at that; he had help.  There is no way a 17 year old boy, especially one ostensibly educated on the subject of Christian ethics, would not know this is wrong.  That’s the appeal; to top, to dominate, to impose one’s will, to do the wrong thing and get away scott free. It is a tool to generate respect from other boys within that same culture (leveraging faux sexual prowess, without actually being about the sex at all; like it doesn’t seem to matter who the victim is very much; it’s a matter of picking off the perceived weak ones in the herd). It is practice or training, for being a leader in America.

I have also previously extolled the fallacy of drunkenness as an excuse.  Lowering inhibitions does not equal turning a good boy into a rapist; that’s not how it works and for heaven’s sake we all (with the exception of dry individuals perhaps) know this.  Yes, there are mean drunks.  Abusive drunks even.  But what’s happening there is that the usual rationality that keeps these behaviours in check when sober (and this can often just be fear of consequence; never actual moral objection) are lowered. In fact it feels as if alcohol is purposely used in order to have an excuse to be able to do the things one knows one shouldn’t - or would like to but it too scared. Alcohol cannot be such an excuse when a) there is no remorse, in fact it is bragged about afterwards, b) it is repeated behaviour, and c) it is premeditated - the repeat nature and group participation shows that much rather clearly. These people are still assholes sober, they just have more self-restraint and more skillfully applied cosmetic  smiley face for the camera.  There is no level of drunkenness, that a true  respecter of women as fellow humans could achieve to make him into a rapist. Trust me; I’ve been pretty fucked up, and not just once.  I’ve said stupid things, even pathetically hit on girls, but never lost sight of consent. Never forced myself on anyone or taken advantage of the many inebriated girls that were around. I could have - there was that one girl, from a grade or 2 down (HS as well so very good comparison) at one party I recall who apparently had a crush on me (I was unaware) and who got so drunk (first time perhaps) that she was literally fawning/falling all over me.  I could have taken advantage - I mean she literally started it and she would not have resisted; I would not have had to hold her down or cover her mouth, or require any help to do so, but I did not - because I knew it would be wrong despite my own consumption of booze.  I found a friend of hers and transferred care.  I was a wasted horny teenager, as  eager to lose his virginity as any other, and somehow perfectly able to keep it in my pants. This should not be a point of pride for me; this should be normal, and I know that in many circles it is, the problem is that it is not universal.  There are numerous other examples I could give, and no, this isn’t about being the great white hope/knight in shining armour. There are also examples of when I failed to do act, or did not act enough.  What this is about is about being a human being, because you done know that girls do it for each other (even boys do it for each other) and in fact were there for us boys at times as well; it is our duty to be there for them as well.  It’s not exemplary, it’s the basic standard.  Or at least it should be.

What this (above in the article) is, is an exposure of the prevalence of the aforementioned macho culture within the ranks of the American conservative elite.  To be fair this is not exclusive to the conservative (Republican) elite, I would just argue that it is worse there - at least there is a movement against this sort of thing in liberal (e.g. Democratic) circles, but as we know there is still work to be done there as well.  It is an indictment of the old boys club, one hand washes the other, team colors are thicker than morality and justice.  An exposure of the farce of the Republican claim to have the religious moral higher ground. This also ties in with other areas in which so-called moral authority sees it fit and right to bend other rules (such as the right to rule and therefore subvert democracy to realise that right/take it back from the unworthy, as recently written about by Anne Applebaum in The Atlantic - that was about Europe, but it applies just as well to North America, especially the USA).

The fact of the matter is, that someone, like Kavanaugh, who has demonstrated a pattern of not acknowledging womens’ humanity, much less their equal status and rights under the law (the hallowed Constitution), cannot be fit to serve as a justice, especially in these times when we expect womens’ rights issues to appear before the supreme court.  Someone who has demonstrated a commitment to protecting himself as well as his old boys as being above his sense of justice and morality, cannot be fit in these times when we expect criminal investigations against the President and other public servants to occur.  Someone with such a warped and backwards view of normality, is just not fit to set de facto policy in the country’s highest court for the next few decades.

I am tired of the excuses and dismissals for these behaviours; all the while the same people trying to preach to me about my life and choices - how I am raising my kids wrong.  I do not accept your moral authority, and you are kidding yourselves if you think anyone except your small community of Kool Aid drinkers do. I am tired of these bullies and dinosaurs making me, my entire demographic, look bad.  The jig is almost up, the writing is on the wall and there is no putting the genie back inside the bottle.  No matter how many female kapos you find (such as those who wrote/signed letters in Kavanaugh’s defense), willing or coerced; your fellow men are now turning against you.  We will not tolerate or dismiss ‘locker room talk’ - we will react by shaming you in front of our peers, as your member hangs there retreating into your abdomen for safety.  We will pull your drunken (or not, as the case may be) ass off a girl if we need to.  We will not be your alibi or character reference. We will call bullshit on the usual defensive talking points we all know to be invalid excuses. We will do what should have always been done.  You will have no refuge.  You will not continue to shame us.  We will teach our boys, and they in turn will teach yours if you so fail, that the best sex, the only sex worth having, is with a person who really wants to give themselves to you (and where you in turn, really want to give yourself to them; that person specifically, not just because they are the easy prey orifice at hand) - anything else is just kidding yourself.  If she’s not into it, you can tell.

[trendingnewsb]

The Right Can’t Fight the Future

It seems axiomatic that the past and the future cannot exist at the same time. Thanks to the space-time continuum, people from different centuries cannot live simultaneously. The same goes for a nation, which cannot survive pulling toward the future and toward the past at once.

The United States is at a fulcrum. We are two countriesone lurching for the future, one yearning for the pastthat cannot live together, because we cant be both things. Donald Trump may have brought on the breaking point, but he didnt create the schism. It was already there for him to exploit. It was there during enslavement, when President Lincoln declared that the country could not survive half slave, half free, and it took a civil war to force these two nations: one brutal but pastoral, the other urban and focused on finance and technological innovation, often with its own kind of cruelty, to remain under one roof.

Today, Trump is speeding us toward declinethe very decline his supporters so feared. His imperious leadership; his familys grubby pretense at royalty and the apparent mad dash among members of his cabinet and White House team to hawk their positions for cash and luxuries have the feel of a decrepit regime looting the palace in its final days; stuffing the silver in their coats as they flee into exile.

Trumps announcement of anachronistic trade tariffs this week was portrayed as out of the blue, but it was no such thing. Trump ran on ending multilateral trade agreements and recreating an America of the distant past that culls every human and material resource from within. Republicans who are now in full blown freakout over a potential trade war voted for exactly what theyre getting.

In every way, Donald Trump is a president built for the past; a benighted, late 19th Century figure who spun his supporters a tale that he could restore a bygone era when coal fires burned, factories hummed, steel mills belched out soot and opportunity and a (white) man with a sturdy back, a high school diploma and a song in his heart could buy a little house, marry a little wife and have 3 cherry-cheeked kids he didnt ever have to cook or clean for, plus if he can afford it, a hot mistress on the side. Trump is the slovenly but brash, gold-plated emblem of a time when in the imagination of his followers, black women hummed a tune while they cleaned your house or did the washing, black men tipped their hat on the street but didnt dare look you in the eye, and neither would dream of moving in next door. A time when women asked their husbands for an allowance, not their boss for a promotion, men were allowed to be men complete with ribald jokes and a slap on the fanny for the pretty secretary at work, and there were no gays, no trans people, no birth control they somehow just didnt exist! The rural folks were the salt of the earth and we only let in a certain kind of immigrant whose only goal was to shake off his ethnicity and assimilate. Everyone went to (separate) church on Sundays and everyone got along. Its a plasticine world that for many must feel like it truly existed, though of course it never did.

Going backward, to a world without ambiguity on race, gender and work is a powerfully attractive idea, particularly for those who fear losing their cultural and social hegemony as the nation browns, and their economic ascendancy as technology creates new industries they scarcely understand.

But heres the thing: the past really is past. Coal is still a dying industry and America will never again have an industrial revolution. Its other countries turn to do that now. Black and brown people arent giving up our dignity, including the right to protest and to survive mundane encounters with police. Immigrants arent going away (and in fact we need them to keep the economy and the safety net flush). LGBT people arent going back into the closet. And women are staying in the workforce, with many aiming to become the CEO, while insisting on hanging onto our reproductive liberty. There is indeed a sizable minority of Americans who want to go back to the old times. But we arent going back.

Neither is the world.

While we regress, the rest of the planet will go right on trading without us. Tariffs on other countries will invite tariffs on us (Europe is already considering levying them on everything from Levis to Kentucky bourbon to Harley Davidson motorcycles). And protectionism will protect zero American jobs, while hiking the prices of everything we buy thats made with aluminum and steel, from cars to washing machines to pots and pans. Donald Trump, who never built a building with American steelpreferring the Chinese variety insteaddoesnt care about any of that. He only cares about the show. And he always gives his people a good show. But the economy does care. And America will pay a price for their P.T. Barnum president and his temper tantrums.

Meanwhile, there is another America, which is busy concerning itself with the future. Its the America that produces two-thirds of this countrys economic output, though it represents just hundreds of counties versus Trumps thousands. Its the America that objects to Russian interference in our elections, that welcomes immigrants and their economic contributions, that recognizes that even ancient institutions like marriage can modernize, that views womens full equality as a boon not a threat to civilization, that doesnt want to be ruled from Biblical texts or by a savage gun lobby, and that wants America to be a part of the world, not its creaky, cranky, lonely adversary.

In particular, young AmericansMillennials and post-Millennials, have had enough of our tired wrangling. Theyre sick of the Baby Boomers social agonies and the clenched grip of the World War II generation on American social and political life. They want an end to throwback rigidity on guns, gays, and religion. And they neither respect nor revere the current president of the United States.

Far from becoming more conservative with time, young Americans are staying right where they were when Barack Obama was first electedon the left of centerif not growing more progressive. Its why Republicans are so keen to suppress their votes. Where my generation, Generation X, polls at 51-41 percent blue over red, for Millennials the Democratic-over-Republican preference is a daunting 62-29, while Boomers are 48-46 D versus R and their parents, in the Silent Generation, tilt Republican 51 to 45 percent. The main reason for the increasing liberalism of the younger cohorts? These generations (including the youngest group, Generation Z) are chock full of young people of color. They are the most racially diverse generation in modern American history. And by next year, Millennials will be the single largest generational group in America, with their ranks swelled by immigrants (which explains the urgent right wing push for mass deportation.)

Does anyone really believe they will somehow morph en-masse into NRA-obedient, Fox News-zombie, anti-gay, anti-woman, anti-immigrant, maniacal healthcare destroyers wholl vote for serial sexual predators? Sure, the so-called alt-right can nab some Millennials to conduct their meme wars and more extreme members for their torches and khakis brigades, but truth be told, the majority of their peers are abandoning them or even refusing to date them. Young Republicans are more likely than their older counterparts to have left the party after Trumps election, with nearly a quarter of those aged 18 to 29 doing so during Trumps first six months in office. They live within a popular culture that tilts overwhelmingly to the other side; one where NBA players are hanging out at the museum rather than going to the White House, and openly calling the Republican president a bum.

With its broad and seemingly absolute power over the country, the Republican Party may not feel like it is dying, but it is dying nonetheless, at the hands of youth and multiracial population growth. The GOP can rush to install voter suppression traps and other restraints on change to try and keep the tide from coming in. But it will come anyway.

For the Democrats, the challenge is that they havent exactly built themselves for the future either. They will benefit from the coming wave because they are the default vehicle for the futurists ambitions. But that doesnt mean they wont have to change as well, by delivering on the soon-to-be largest generations demands, so they truly believe that political participation is a meaningful path to progress.

Perhaps the biggest challenge future-facing America faces is that past-craving America has a dogmatic and consistent voting base and a determined and persistent ally: Russia, which alongside its embedded mercenaries from the so-called alt right are harnessing maturing modern tools like social media to keep the futurists at bay. But we wont have a president who cuddles up to Russia and neo-fascists forever. Eventually, the fight against them and their propaganda will be joined in earnest and won.

The future is coming. It cannot live alongside the past. And in the end, it cannot be stopped.

Read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-right-cant-fight-the-future

from Viral News HQ http://ift.tt/2GC1MlX via Viral News HQ

[fawsiyaabdi-blog]

Muslim Women

1. What has been historically the problem with Western feminists trying to get involved with women’s rights issues in the Middle East? (Describe the dilemma faced by feminists on page 77).

Firstly, the issue with western feminists is that they look down upon any women who don't share their ideology. Any woman who doesn’t believe as they do and especially when their ideas of liberation don’t fit in with the western woman’s ideal, the delusion of superiority keeps them from having constructive dialog and understanding the actual challenges of Middle Eastern women resulting in the alienation of middle eastern women, in turn causing Middle Eastern women to rightfully reject their idea of feminism.

Under the well-intended but often problematic assumption of liberation through ally ship, Middle Eastern women and especially Muslim women are denied an opportunity to speak at the table again due to the assumed superiority of Western Feminism and the belief that they are incapable of recognizing their own oppression and fighting for their own liberation.

Secondly, western feminists often come into circles of Muslim women with their own ideas of how their lives should be, how they should behave, dress, speak. Through their eyes, every Muslim woman is oppressed. With a lack of understanding when it comes to what is religious and what is culture, what are regional practices and issues Muslim women as a whole face, western feminism paints all Arab and Muslim women with the same broad paintbrush never recognizing the contextual difference between each group and failing to educate themselves on the issues each faces in order to have more constructive discussions. When it comes to the oppression of Muslim women one must first separate culture from religion. The oppression women in Saudi Arabia face isn’t the same as the one Jordanian women face and while both face different issues, it isn’t the same as the one women in Turkey face. While they will identify as Middle Eastern and Muslim each faces a unique struggle.

Thirdly, while the words “women’s liberation” and “feminism” were never explicitly used, often the progress of Muslim women after Islam and the liberation that in itself given to Muslim women 1400 years ago are often ignored, not only by western feminists but also by some Muslim men who seek to control the movement and progress of Muslim women. Rights guaranteed to all Muslim women such as rights of property ownership, inheritance, education, and divorce, Prophet Muhammed gave women certain basic safeguards recorded in hadeeths to this day. Set in such historical context the Prophet can be seen as a figure who testified on behalf of women's rights. Additionally, Islamic legislation meant enormous progress such as marriage no longer being viewed as a status but rather as a contract in which women could freely enter and their consent imperative. As pointed out in the New York Times article, “Why Shariah” by Noah Feldman; A woman has the right according to Shariah Law, to administer the wealth she has brought into the family or has earned by her own work, when the British applied their law in place of Shariah Law as they did in many colonies the result was to strip Muslim women of the rights Islamic Law had always granted them. As pointed out in the book Islam: The Straight Path by John L. Esposito; women were granted rights and privileges in the sphere of family life, marriage, education, and economic endeavors, rights that help improve women's status in society.

2. How did the “second wave” feminists view the women of the third world?  How is this problematic?The issue with second-wave feminism is that it centers around the issues of white women, specifically white middle to upper-class heterosexual women. Second wave feminism preaches unity and sisterhood but only where the issues of white women are concerned. It never addresses racism, xenophobia, transphobia, or the sufferings of the poor working class woman. Not only does second wave feminism take up space from the marginalized minority but it also fails to acknowledge the oppressive role it takes on at home and abroad when it comes to how it deals with non-white women such as tone policing, frequent use of coded language, and its constant return to playing victim whenever challenged.

As pointed out in the article with their perceived position of prominence, power and presumed superiority second wave feminists take it upon themselves to decide what’s best for all women. Muslim women are presumed to be slaves, oppressed and lacking in agency and so they must white knight their way to rescue the poor woman who suffers at the hands of Islam whether she needs to be saved or not.

3. On page 79, what was the “Orientalist” view on women in the Middle East? Be sure to explain what “Orientalist” means.

The Orientalist view on Middle Eastern women at first was first as sensual, seductive and sexually charged compared to the white woman who according to Shadi Hamid embodied purity. Compared to the sexually liberated western woman, Arab women were viewed was changed to passive, sexless, and a slave. Regardless of what times we live in any woman who isn’t white is other-ed and abnormal when compared to the western white woman.

4.  Using page 82, explain the issues surrounding women and their choice to wear headscarves.

If feminism is about empowerment second-wave feminism fails miserably. In their attempt to liberate Muslim women, white feminists take on the role of the oppressor by pressuring Muslim women to remove their hijabs. Most white women assume any woman who visibly practices Islam is that she is being forced by someone, even when they prove themselves to be strong, capable, and feminist. Their view of Muslim women is condensed to what’s in the media rather than understanding that Muslim women come from a verity of countries and cultures. For second-wave feminists, if one chooses to wear a hijab you’re at odds with being a feminist. Anecdotally, a woman once said to me “being a feminist and Muslim isn’t possible”. Contrary to her words, there are a plethora of Muslim women, like me, living between the binaries. In the same way that a woman can be liberated when she removes her hijab, one is also liberated when she chooses to wear a hijab, the keywords being her choice. That is the quintessence of liberation; having the freedom to make your own choice. If your notion of feminism is true it should include all women with no asterisk.

5.  In the section titled, ‘Looking Ahead: Problems & Possibilities” (this begins on page 86) what, according to the author, must Western women do in order to be effective feminists in the Muslim world?

Before western feminist’s charge into any situation, they must first ask themselves what their motives are, what good will their actions bring, what issues it could create. These women must also take into account the fact they have not lived in these women’s shoes, their struggles are not the same and their end goals aren’t the same. Additionally, they must educate themselves on local customs, traditions, and religious practices. Finally, they must remember to not be the loudest voices at the table if they truly are seeking to be allies and support non-white and Muslim women.  

In order to change a society’s culture and religious framework, it cannot come from the outside, but rather within and it never happens overnight but through persistent work, each generation making the next better and so the work should be focused on the empowerment of middle eastern women.  

 6. What is your reaction to the following: (page 88) Ranjana Khanna puts it eloquently when she observes that postmodern sensitivities can often lead to “paralysis, or a rather self-satisfied navel-gazing on the part of some who agonize about how to be ethical when it comes to dealing with gender politics outside of one’s own context” (2001: 101). This postmodern silence, although masked in good intentions, is ultimately no different in effect than the silence of right-wing isolationists who scream “America first.” ? Is it possible to speak out against oppression without forcing your own views onto other cultures?

In order to maintain the delusion of social harmony, I’ve noticed many white feminists become so overcome with white guilt they either disengage completely or take on a role of powerlessness and ignore the injustice faced by other women. As stated in the article, when you reap the rewards of privilege you have a responsibility to consider the struggles of those without.

7. Carefully read the conclusion.  What irony does the author find between American’s imposing their beliefs on those and the Middle East and the rates of rape and incest in the USA?

Western feminism sees oppression but turns its gaze towards issues which are irrelevant to the women who are suffering. For example, during the Syrian crisis, many self-proclaimed feminists saw the images coming out of Syria but instead made the conversation about America's homelessness problem and the people who already live in poverty. These are people who weren’t doing anything about the poverty in America beforehand, will continue to do nothing, in fact often they are the ones voting against social welfare programs that seek to address these problems.

8.  What is your impression of the article?  Did it change or challenge any of your preconceived ideas about feminism in the Middle East?  Did it clarify or complicate the theory of “Postmodernism” for you?

To assume that American women are absolutely free is to have your head stuck in the sand, especially since men still vote and regulate what women can and cannot do with their bodies. In this country, women of color have it even far worse; facing misogyny, racism, and sexism. Though it is true, that many women in the Middle East are robbed of their God-given rights under the leadership and greed of men, however, when discussing the injustice Muslim women face black Muslim women who often face the trifecta of discrimination are left out of the conversation.  To think that the liberation of women in the west will look the exact same as the liberation of women anywhere else in the world is ignorant. Feminism no matter where it's practiced should be intersectional and those with privilege should always seek to uplift those who face injustice.

[sydneyepps]

Pomona's Institutional Discrimination Hurts All LGBTA+, All People of Color, and All Higher Education Professionals

Hello #SAPro friends, A few days ago, a great scholar-practitioner had a university rescind his offer of employment for speaking truth of his experience of discrimination... instances which stemmed from white gay men practicing racism within the LGBTQ+ community and from white women doing the "good work" in ways that do more harm than good. These things exist, and are no less real than the Moynihan Report, Bill Clinton's crime laws, Lena Dunham, "no fats, no femmes, no Asians”, or Rachel Dolezal. I am growing weary of higher education and its treatment of diverse minds when we speak truth to our survival despite outrageous odds; not only must we fight for every grade, but our very presence remains challenged in terms of why we are present (as if our melanin is the reason we get employed anywhere), how we remain (under constant surveillance), and why we are necessary (because we cannot possibly align... and if not, groupthink works better?). This is our collective experiences through our studies and our careers, and is shared by domestic and international students, faculty and staff. We are manipulated and used to further other's value, and discarded or run off when we stand in defense of our wellness. This is the POC experience at predominantly white institutions; a search of "Racial Battle Fatigue in Higher Education" will draw much literature on the status of conditions within these arenas with long-ignored strategies on how to start changing the dynamics, yet the acts of bravery - to be direct and intentional about rectifying eras of intentional blockades to minority success - are few and far between. The act of the Claremont College, to search for another leader for their LGBTQ Center, is a great example of how institutions wave flags of progress while simultaneously using historically discriminatory tactics to silence, and eschew responsibilites of bringing difficult histories to the table for examination. Once again, liberalism has materialized as a pathology rather than a viable gateway to liberating the developing minds of our students. Why are we so afraid to challenge a status quo that hurts ao many? Why must the door to full citizenship be so weighty? The challenges and pain of living as a queer person of color come alongside the academic excellence and outstanding service that makes/made Dr. Jon Higgins a great choice for the director of the Pomona College Queer Resources Center. We are dimming our message of providing discourse arenas for all, when we set a requirement of tenure - another privileged status, rarely given to racial, religious, gender and orientation minorities - for the honor of expressing experiences. Must the rest of us working for our students grovel at the feet of boards and administrators to be granted permission to lead the way for diverse truth? Or are we to act as if these battle scars, oozing and fresh, come with no moans? While my personal experiences have varied in terms of the support I've received, the arena in which H.E. politics have been used to silence and intimidate tend to be drawn along lines of race, gender and orientation; my openness to spread other gospels in exchange for support of my own passions and needs has provided my bedfellows... I'm cognizant of a work world that, had other tensions been resolved, perhaps my personal struggles and activist stances may not have resonated with individuals I see as progressives. The goal in working within higher education, for many of us, is to resolve societal ills that individuals are perpetuating into our society... in our businesses, families, religion, voting polls and local/state/national policies. Without recognizing the inherent discrimination within these facets of our life structure, and only listening to victims of discrimination for the desire to entertain oneself with the appreciation that the weight of oppression is not as heavy for you as someone else... that narcissistic joy of being under the radar... we are recreating an unjust world, generation by generation. The gap of injustice gets wider with every generation. Those who believe they benefit from the present society are merely a few years away from falling into the same hole they once claimed was never there. The middle class is a facade; the verbiage is a farce for those who are too naive to recognize their proximity to poverty. To those with real power... billions of dollars, and zero concerns over access to healthcare, guns, abortion, and the best formalized indoctrination money can buy... none of us matter. None of us matter. It is not enough to sigh and repost. We must ACT. We have to act when it is inconvenient and embarrassing. We have to act when we think there may be negative repercussions. We have to act when we wonder, "am I the one who needs to say it?" A lot of unsure voices speaking their deepest thoughts are better than unsure silence. Please read up on some of my recent posts on The Claremont Colleges and sign the statement below. MOST IMPORTANTLY, BOOK DR. HIGGINS TO SPEAK AT YOUR UNIVERSITY. This is a very insightful man who can bring a plethora of new thoughts on LGBT and POC student, staff and faculty inclusion and activism to your school... and all of our institutions need it! http://www.doctorjonpaul.com/ https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeYitannJ-PtjR25dOpx23GjwzZ6xlaafY93mjlcqN1aZVCvA/viewform

Forgive any grammatical/spelling errors, as I have written this in a bit of distress from my mobile device.

[therightnewsnetwork]

We Hear You: I’m a Sailor, a Marine, and a Transgender Woman Who Was Born This Way

Editor’s note: One reader who we heard from awhile back marked March 31 as Transgender Day of Visibility. So this weekend seemed like a fitting opportunity  to publish the letter as the lead item in our mailbag.—Ken McIntyre 

Dear Daily Signal: At first I was going to ignore Kelsey Harkness’ video report and the comments, but there comes a time when what I served our great nation for must be stated plainly (“Lost Voices in the Transgender Debate: Liberals and Conservatives Unite“).

I served for all Americans. I served so that you may hold opinions not based in logic, reason, or science. I served for your rights and freedoms. So by all means, feel free to express your beliefs and opinions.

I served as an enlisted person in the Navy and as an officer in the best fighting force in the world, the Marine Corps.  I am a 1984 graduate of the Naval Academy, a parent of four, a grandparent of six, a serial entrepreneur, and I know me better than anyone.

The only people who know me and my body are my doctors at the KU Women’s Health Specialty Center in Overland Park, Kansas, and they know that I am a woman. Yes, I was born with male genitalia, but I am woman through and through.

I have studied me and the science behind me longer than many of you have been alive. For you to presume to know me, a transsexual woman, is absurd to the height of ignorance. I was born a woman from the very beginning, but my body physically and outwardly expressed as male.

The brain is the source of all gender, not what’s between your legs. Like 99.95 percent of all people, your gender most likely aligns with your brain so you have no issues to address personally. This is an evolutionary requirement for the survival of the species.

For the other .05 percent, the brain and genitals do not align: a statistical number that holds true for all human populations planetwide. Like all human physical characteristics, gender expresses on a statistical distribution, a spectrum.

There was a time in our country when conversion therapy was forced on those who were left-handed to make them right-handed, because righteous people were by definition right-handed. You can teach a person to use their right hand if they were born left-handed, but are they really right-handed? No.

What about hair color, texture, degree of curl, or straightness? What about tallness or shortness? Are all humans born with 10 fingers and 10 toes? Statistically, most humans are. However, some are born with more or less.

Do all humans fall into one standard shape and size and color, texture, functionality of genitals (whether male of female)? No. Huge statistical variety there, too.

Are only “real” humans born without physical impairments such as spina bifida, cleft palate, weakened heart valves, missing organs, extra organs? No. All of these occur on a statistical distribution, which means while they are less likely to occur than the norm, they can and do occur. Are those people any less human than you?

Why must gender be excluded from the statistical variability that is so easily observed in all of human nature? Well, it’s not.

So I am a transgender woman who was born this way whether you accept modern, evidence-based, peer-reviewed biological and psychological science or not. My being a woman is not dependent upon your approval. I am a woman. Period.

“It is your turn to stand in defense of my rights now,” Cassandra Leigh Williamson writes. “Trans people are under assault.” (Photo: Cassandra Leigh Williamson)

Gender dysphoria is caused by the lack of congruence, the misalignment, between expressed sexual and secondary sexual characteristics and the brain. It is not a mental disorder, but a physical issue much like being born with a physical disability.

Thank God, though, we know how to correct the misalignment.

So it is your turn to stand in defense of my rights now. Trans people are under assault. Our rights, our freedoms, the freedoms and rights you take for granted, are being rolled back or denied. Gender identity needs to be a protected class of minorities within our national and state laws. Stand with me. Hugs and Semper Fi!—Cassandra Leigh Williamson

Note: Cassandra Leigh Williamson, who lives in a small town in Missouri, has a website at cassandraleighwilliamson.com and recently began a video blog on YouTube called “Cassandra Leigh.”

Crashing the White House ‘Pool’ Party

Dear Daily Signal: You are more of a news organization than any of the “lamestream” media (“Journalists from BuzzFeed, New York Times Assess Daily Signal’s Splash in White House Press ‘Pool’“). Your Morning Bell email is the first one I read in the a.m. I look forward to reading it with my coffee.

I cannot trust any of the lamestream media. Look what they did all through the Obama administration. Lie upon lie. I have not read or watched any of them since the last two years of President George W. Bush.

How can anyone (with a brain) believe anything they say, especially after seeing their complete breakdown when my president, Donald Trump, won the election. I want you to know that you are a great news team. Don’t let anyone cause you to doubt that fact.—Hazel Sproull, Glendale, Ariz.

Dear Daily Signal: I’ve just started reading articles in The Daily Signal as a direct consequence of The Washington Post’s position that it shouldn’t be part of the White House press pool (“The Daily Signal Won’t Be Bullied by the Establishment Media“).  I am supportive of more diverse voices in the media.

I’m not a Republican, but I am absolutely tired of one-sided coverage and the demonization of close to half the population in the U.S.  I think it’s repugnant that conservatives are portrayed as racist, sexist xenophobes in most of what I read. That is not my first-hand experience, and I find it analogous to name-calling on the playground.

Disappointingly, this intellectually dishonest approach is what currently passes for thoughtful discourse in many circles. It forces one to be skeptical of anything one reads these days, which is the main reason why we need different views.—Dean Mathieson

The GOP Split Over Obamacare Replacement

Dear Daily Signal: The Heritage Foundation, and The Daily Signal, are quickly losing my support by turning on President Donald Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan over the Republican leadership’s health care bill.

I am not a legislative guru, but I do understand that the enemy of a good plan is to hold out for the perfect plan. The American Health Care Act was not a clean repeal  of Obamacare, but it was what could be passed within the rules that control the scheduling and procedures of both chambers, the House and the Senate.

Additionally, it looked to me that Trump and Ryan offered all that was possible to the bill, and the House Freedom Caucus still refused to compromise—with their own party, for goodness sake. I am very disappointed.

I am as conservative as they come, but Heritage and the folks of the Freedom Caucus are obstructing the chance for conservatives to govern.—Roger Rudd

Dear Daily Signal: I am a loyal voter for President Trump. Because of that, I am very worried that his administration’s declaring “war” on the House Freedom Caucus or the Congress in general will paralyze his potential.

How can we convince our president to work with and not against the GOP majority in both houses, including the patriots of the Freedom Caucus? —Hal Miner

A Day Without Men

Dear Daily Signal: OK, if it so revealing to have a Day Without Women, let’s try a Day Without Men (“‘A Day Without a Woman’ Strike Promotes Idea of Women as Helpless“).  Let’s see what happens when citizens need the police, the fire department, the military, and a thousand common, everyday needs filled.

The local plumber, carpenter, electrician. Air conditioning service, garbage collection, highway construction and maintenance. And on and on and on. The greatest deficit in America today is old-fashioned common sense.—Jerry J.

Our Bodies, Our Lives 

Dear Daily Signal: Amazing premise that we “own’” our bodies, Walter Williams (“Are You Really Pro-Liberty? Here Are a Few Tests“)! How did we get to “own” them? We did not buy them, correct? They were given to us by something that we cannot describe or understand fully.

Mr. Williams might be talking in his commentary about our “lives,” which would be a better analogy, except that we were taught how to live by our parents. They were taught by those before them, and so on back about a couple of million years or so, correct?

How far back do we go in choosing a particular way of living? Only 30 years? 50? 100? 500? 2000? There are many examples throughout history that seem to have worked much better, and many that have worked much worse, than today’s lifestyle. Maybe Mr. Williams could compare a few of the good ones and some of the bad ones for us, so we could make an informed decision for ourselves.

Also, much of what I want in life cannot be bought, in my opinion. I would like to hear what Mr. Williams thinks about those things that cannot be bought.—Barry Benjamin

How Are We Doing?

Great job. The Republicans better stand up to the Democrats and get Neil Gorsuch onto the Supreme Court. Now. Don’t let them delay any longer, as we need a positive vote on issues.—Audrey Lauer 

Your Morning Bell emails have an unexpected pleasant twist to them. You actually have an email address for people to submit comments and a phone number where you can be contacted.—Paul Saucier

My compliments. You are doing great with your reports every day.—Ingrid Dohler, Esko, Minn.

Great reporting, thank you.—Helen McBroom

I get lots of emails on political news, but your Morning Bell is the most concise and informative. I like the headlines so I can read more if I have time.—Carolyn Gilbertson

Great job. I appreciate the work that you do to provide real news reports. I depend on The Daily Signal for true and accurate information.—Tommy Wilson, Lilburn, Ga.

Awesome. Signed a friend up and plan on becoming a donor. Keep up the good work, and thank you for helping save our country.—Madelyn Vanacore, Sterling, Conn.

The post We Hear You: I’m a Sailor, a Marine, and a Transgender Woman Who Was Born This Way appeared first on The Daily Signal.

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