#with well defined history and culture and societal expectations and norms

[aceaceace144616]

How am I supposed to be bisexual AND trans?

Someone please give me instructions

[hayatheauthor]

Hello! 😊 Do you have any advice on word-building? I can imagine multiple scenarios in my head, but I can't seem to put them into words. 🥹

First off hi sorry I took forever to write this blog! I hope it helps you get your ideas onto paper <3

Worldbuilding is the backbone of any compelling story, especially in genres like fantasy, science fiction, and historical fiction. Crafting a believable, immersive world can captivate your readers and provide a solid foundation for your narrative. In this guide, I’ll walk you through the essential steps to create a vivid and engaging world for your story.

Understanding Worldbuilding

Worldbuilding involves creating a complete, fictional universe that serves as the setting for your story. This process includes developing geography, cultures, history, politics, and even the rules of nature and magic (if applicable). The goal is to make your world feel as real and intricate as the characters who inhabit it.

Starting with the Basics

Define the Genre and Tone

Consider the genre of your story. A high-fantasy world will have different requirements than a dystopian future or a historical setting. The tone—whether it's dark and gritty or light and whimsical—will also influence your worldbuilding decisions.

Establish the Setting

Start with the physical world. Sketch out maps, outline the geography, and decide on key locations where your story will unfold. Think about the climate, natural resources, and the flora and fauna that inhabit this world.

Develop a History

Create a backstory for your world. Major events, wars, discoveries, and cultural shifts shape the present-day setting. A rich history can add depth and realism, influencing characters’ beliefs and motivations.

Building Cultures and Societies

Craft Unique Cultures

Think about the various cultures in your world. What are their customs, traditions, and social norms? How do they dress, what languages do they speak, and what religions do they follow? Diverse and well-thought-out cultures can add layers to your narrative.

Political Systems and Power Structures

Define the political landscape. Who holds power, and how is it distributed? Are there monarchies, democracies, or tribal councils? Consider the relationships between different nations or groups and the potential for conflict.

Economics and Resources

Understand the economy of your world. What resources are abundant or scarce? How do people trade, and what currencies do they use? The distribution of resources can drive plot points and character motivations.

Crafting Magic and Technology

Magic Systems

If your world includes magic, establish clear rules and limitations. What are the sources of magic? Who can use it, and how? Consistent magic systems prevent plot holes and maintain suspension of disbelief.

Technology Levels

Consider the technological advancements in your world. Are they using medieval weapons, steampunk machinery, or advanced futuristic gadgets? The level of technology can influence daily life, warfare, and exploration.

Time and Place

Historical Context

Establish the timeline of your world. Is it set in the past, present, or future? Consider historical events that have shaped the current state of the world. How have these events influenced societal development and cultural evolution?

Daily Life and Schedules

Describe the daily routines of your characters. What does a typical day look like for different social classes or cultures? Consider work hours, leisure activities, and societal expectations. The pace of life can vary greatly depending on technological advancements and cultural norms.

Timekeeping and Calendars

Develop a system of timekeeping and calendars. Are there specific seasons, festivals, or holidays that are significant? How do people measure time—by the sun, moon, or a mechanical clock? Unique timekeeping methods can add depth and authenticity to your world.

Clothing and Fashion

Cultural Significance

Explore how clothing reflects cultural identity, status, and occupation. Different regions and social groups might have distinct styles, fabrics, and accessories. What materials are commonly used, and how are garments crafted?

Fashion Trends

Consider the evolution of fashion in your world. What are the current trends, and how do they vary across different societies? Fashion can be influenced by historical events, climate, and interactions with other cultures.

Practicality and Symbolism

Think about the practicality of clothing in your world’s environment. How does the climate affect what people wear? Additionally, consider any symbolic meanings attached to certain garments or accessories. For instance, specific colors or patterns might denote rank or allegiance.

Religion and Beliefs

Pantheon and Deities

Create a pantheon of gods or a single deity, depending on your world’s religious structure. What are their characteristics, domains, and myths? How do they interact with mortals, if at all?

Rituals and Practices

Detail the religious rituals and daily practices of your world’s inhabitants. Consider ceremonies, festivals, and rites of passage. How do these practices influence daily life and societal norms?

Religious Institutions

Define the structure and influence of religious institutions. Are there temples, churches, or shrines? What roles do priests, shamans, or other religious figures play in society? The power dynamics between religious and secular authorities can add layers to your worldbuilding.

Languages and Communication

Linguistic Diversity

Develop the languages spoken in your world. Are there multiple languages or dialects? Consider the history of these languages and how they evolved. Language can be a powerful tool to convey cultural diversity and conflict.

Writing Systems

Design writing systems and scripts used for communication. Are there ancient texts or runes with special significance? How do literacy rates vary among different social classes and regions?

Non-Verbal Communication

Explore other forms of communication, such as body language, sign language, or symbolic gestures. How do people convey messages in situations where spoken language is impractical? These non-verbal methods can add depth and realism to your interactions.

Integrating Worldbuilding into Your Story

Show, Don’t Tell

Instead of dumping information on your readers, reveal your world organically through the narrative. Use dialogue, actions, and descriptions to weave worldbuilding details seamlessly into the story.

Character Perspectives

Different characters will experience and interpret your world in unique ways. Use their perspectives to highlight various aspects of your world, making it richer and more complex.

Consistency and Continuity

Maintain consistency in your world’s rules and details. Keep track of your worldbuilding elements to avoid contradictions and ensure a cohesive narrative.

Worldbuilding Tools and Resources

Maps and Diagrams

Create visual aids like maps, family trees, and diagrams to help you keep track of your world’s layout and relationships. Tools like Inkarnate or Wonderdraft can be helpful for map-making.

Worldbuilding Bibles

Maintain a worldbuilding bible—a document where you compile all your world’s details. This can include notes on geography, history, cultures, and more. It’s a valuable reference as you write and develop your story.

Inspiration from Real World and Fiction

Draw inspiration from real-world cultures, histories, and landscapes. Similarly, reading widely in your genre can provide insights into effective worldbuilding techniques.

Final Thoughts

Worldbuilding is a rewarding yet challenging aspect of storytelling. It requires imagination, attention to detail, and a deep understanding of your narrative’s needs. By following this comprehensive guide, you can create a vibrant, believable world that will captivate your readers and enhance your storytelling.

Looking For More Writing Tips And Tricks? 

Are you an author looking for writing tips and tricks to better your manuscript? Or do you want to learn about how to get a literary agent, get published and properly market your book? Consider checking out the rest of Haya’s book blog where I post writing and publishing tips for authors every Monday and Thursday! And don’t forget to head over to my TikTok and Instagram profiles @hayatheauthor to learn more about my WIP and writing journey! 

[betshy]

The Psychology of Eros: Delving into the Romantic Impulse

As human beings, we are driven by many different instincts and impulses. One of the most powerful and influential of these is the romantic impulse, also known as Eros. This primal force has been the subject of countless works of literature, art, and music throughout history, as well as the focus of much scientific study in the field of psychology. Eros is often defined as the desire for intimate relationships, romantic love, and sexual attraction. It is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon that can manifest in many different ways, from fleeting infatuations to deep and enduring connections. But what exactly causes this powerful urge within us? One of the key factors that drive the romantic impulse is the biological drive for reproduction. Evolution has hardwired us to seek out mates in order to ensure the survival of our genes. This drive can manifest in many different ways, from the intense passion of a new romance to the deep emotional bond of a long-term relationship. But the romantic impulse is not just about reproduction. It is also about connection, intimacy, and companionship. We are social beings, wired to seek out relationships with others for emotional support, validation, and companionship. The desire for love and intimacy is a fundamental part of what it means to be human. Another important aspect of the romantic impulse is the role of culture and society. Our ideas about love, relationships, and romance are heavily influenced by the norms and values of the society in which we live. These societal expectations can shape our attitudes and behaviours when it comes to matters of the heart. The romantic impulse is also influenced by individual factors, such as personality, past experiences, and attachment styles. Some people may have a strong need for intimacy and connection, while others may be more independent and self-reliant. Our past experiences with love and relationships can also shape our attitudes and behaviours when it comes to matters of the heart. Ultimately, the romantic impulse is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon that is influenced by a wide range of factors. It is a powerful force that drives us to seek out love, connection, and intimacy with others. By delving into the psychology of Eros, we can gain a deeper understanding of this fundamental aspect of human nature. Read the full article

[unnatilivesinthemoment]

Process Note: Navigating the Complexity of Modern Happiness: A Multifaceted Exploration of embracing the present

In an era defined by rapid technological advancement, shifting societal norms, and evolving cultural landscapes, the pursuit of happiness has emerged as a central theme that resonates across diverse contexts. This project embarks on a multifaceted exploration of modern happiness, weaving together insights from feminist theory, scholarly research, visual texts, archival sources, and creative expression to illuminate the nuanced ways in which individuals navigate the complexities of happiness, human connection, and the present moment.

At its core, this project seeks to examine the multifaceted nature of modern happiness and its intersection with gender, societal expectations, and digital culture. By employing an interdisciplinary approach that integrates insights from feminist theory, peer-reviewed scholarly articles, visual texts, archival sources, and creative writing/artwork, this endeavor aims to foster a deeper understanding of the factors that shape individual experiences of happiness and fulfillment in the contemporary world.

Grounded in rigorous academic research, this project draws upon the findings of Twenge et al. (2018), Primack et al. (2017), and additional scholarly sources to explore the complex relationship between social media, mental health, and well-being. By synthesizing insights from these seminal articles, we illuminate the ways in which digital technologies, societal pressures, and cultural norms influence individuals' perceptions of happiness, highlighting both the opportunities and challenges that arise in the digital age.

Incorporating visual texts such as film stills from "Little Miss Sunshine" and advertisements targeted at women, this project provides a visual narrative that underscores the diverse manifestations of happiness in contemporary society. Through visual analysis and interpretation, we explore how images, symbols, and representations shape our understanding of happiness, inviting viewers to critically reflect on the ways in which media influences perceptions of self-worth, success, and fulfillment.

Delving into archival sources that document historical perspectives on happiness and well-being, this project situates contemporary discussions within a broader historical context, revealing the enduring quest for meaning and fulfillment across different epochs. By examining how past generations have conceptualized and pursued happiness, we gain insights that inform our understanding of the cultural, social, and philosophical dimensions of happiness in the modern world.

In a testament to the power of creative expression, this project incorporates a piece of original creative writing/artwork—a haiku—that encapsulates personal reflections on happiness, mindfulness, and the present moment. By infusing the project with creativity and introspection, we invite audiences to engage with the themes of happiness and human connection on a deeply personal level, fostering empathy, reflection, and dialogue.

In addition to scholarly analysis and creative expression, this project features analytical reflections on the visual texts and archival sources, offering nuanced interpretations that deepen our understanding of the complex interplay between individual experiences, societal norms, and cultural values. Through critical inquiry and introspective reflection, we navigate the complexities of modern happiness, exploring how gender, social media, and other factors shape our perceptions of happiness and well-being.

Ultimately, this project represents a multifaceted exploration of modern happiness, integrating insights from feminist theory, scholarly research, visual texts, archival sources, and creative expression to provide a comprehensive understanding of happiness in the contemporary world. By examining the intersecting influences of gender, technology, culture, and history, we gain insights that empower individuals to navigate the complexities of modern life with greater resilience, authenticity, and self-awareness. Through interdisciplinary inquiry, creative expression, and critical reflection, we endeavor to foster a deeper appreciation for the diversity of human experiences and the myriad pathways to happiness and fulfillment.

I overall enjoyed this project, being able to creatively express, organize and analyze was something I was able to enjoy while explore a platform that was new to me. I truly did learn a lot and I am grateful for this experience. By embracing the richness and complexity of human experience, this project serves as a testament to the enduring quest for happiness and fulfillment in the modern world. Through interdisciplinary inquiry, creative expression, and critical reflection, we strive to cultivate a deeper appreciation for the myriad dimensions of happiness, human connection, and the present moment, empowering individuals to forge their own paths to authentic and meaningful lives.

[studyunifees]

Study abroad insights from industry experts-Explore, Engage, Excel

Hey! Are you thinking about studying in another country? Or have you always dreamed of traveling the world while you learn? This blog is for you! 

We'll discuss everything related to studying abroad, from where to go to what to expect when you get there. Whether you're just starting to think about it or a pro traveler looking for new tips, this blog will guide you to the fantastic world of international education, providing you with all the tools and knowledge you need for a successful study abroad experience!

Top 7 tips to kick start your study abroad journey

Start Planning Early: Research study abroad programs and destinations well in advance. Consider academic offerings, cultural compatibility, language requirements, and program duration. Initiating early gives you enough time to explore your options, prepare your application materials, and address any logistical considerations.

Establish Your Goals: Clearly define your objectives and goals for studying abroad. Whether you're seeking academic enrichment, language proficiency, cultural immersion, or professional development, having a clear sense of purpose will guide your program selection and enhance your overall experience abroad.

Seek Guidance: Take advantage of resources and guidance available to you, such as study abroad advisors, university resources like the International Student Office, and alumni networks. These individuals can provide valuable insights, advice, and support throughout planning, helping you make informed decisions and navigate challenges. For instance, the study abroad advisor can help you choose the right program, the International Student Office can assist with visa and immigration processes, and alumni can share their experiences and tips.

Research Your Destination: Familiarize yourself with your chosen study-abroad destination. Learn about its culture, customs, history, and societal norms. Understanding the local context will not only enrich your experience but also help you adapt more quickly to your new environment upon arrival.

Budget Wisely: Create a realistic budget for your study abroad experience. Start by listing all the possible expenses, including tuition fees, living expenses, travel costs, and extracurricular activities. Then, explore scholarship opportunities and financial aid options. Finally, one must consider part-time work opportunities to help offset expenses. This way, you can make your study abroad dreams a reality without making a hole in your pocket.

Immerse Yourself: Embrace cultural immersion opportunities from the moment you arrive in your host country. Involve locals, participate in cultural activities, and take a step out of your comfort zone to fully immerse yourself in the local culture and way of life. By actively engaging with your surroundings, you'll gain a deeper understanding of the foreign culture and make lasting memories.

Stay Open-Minded and Flexible: Finally, approach your study abroad journey with an open mind and a willingness to embrace new experiences. Be prepared for unexpected challenges, cultural differences, and moments of growth. Flexibility and adaptability are vital traits that serve well as you navigate the ups and downs of studying abroad.

By following these seven tips, you'll be well-equipped to kick-start your study abroad journey and embark on an adventure filled with learning, growth, and unforgettable experiences.

[desifirstwivesclub]

Desi Children With Divorced Parents

The experiences of children with divorced parents are varied and complex in today's global society. Children of South Asian heritage, or "Desi," experience particular problems and dynamics that combine societal expectations, cultural norms, and personal development.

Family values, unity, and social standing are highly valued in traditional Desi culture. These societies may stigmatise divorce, making children whose parents have divorced feel ashamed or guilty. In some cases, children may experience pressure to uphold appearances and safeguard their family's reputation at the price of their mental wellbeing.

Children of divorced Desi parents frequently find themselves straddling two worlds as they grow up in a multicultural setting. When their parents' divorce highlights disparate cultural beliefs and values, they could struggle with doubts about their cultural identity. As they try to balance their Desi history with the shifting dynamics at home, navigating this area can leave them feeling lost and alone.

A distinct set of difficulties can arise from the conflict between conventional values and contemporary viewpoints. While some Desi parents may uphold traditional gender roles and expectations, a divorce can cause a change in these relationships, leading kids to reevaluate or question their perceptions of the duties and obligations of family life.

Children's perspectives on commitment and love relationships may be impacted by divorce. They might approach their own relationships with caution or scepticism after seeing their parents' divorce, raising concerns about the permanence of love and marriage. On the other hand, some kids utilise their parents' struggles as motivation to place a high value on honest communication and emotional well-being in their own relationships.

Despite the difficulties, children of divorced Desi parents can exhibit great flexibility and endurance. At a young age, they learn to manage complicated emotions, cultivate empathy, and master problem-solving techniques. These characteristics can be translated into powerful life skills that will benefit them as they develop into adults.

As Desi communities continue to evolve, the support available for children of divorced parents is also expanding. Organizations, online forums, and events centered around this topic provide a space for individuals to share their stories, seek advice, and connect with others who understand their unique experiences.

Within Desi communities, there has been a growing effort in recent years to break the taboo around divorce. People are displacing antiquated traditions and building a more understanding society by openly discussing the difficulties and problems faced by children of divorced parents.

Children of divorced Desi parents go through a complicated journey of hardships, growth chances, and complexities. These people are defining their identities, managing the tension between tradition and modernity, and advancing their communities. These kids are getting the assistance they need to choose their own pathways and change the narrative for future generations as divorce discussions become more open and tolerant.

If you have a story you wish to share about being a child of divorced parent or if you are divorced and have children, please contact me on please contact me at desifirstwivesclub@gmail.com, thedesifirstwivesclub@hotmail.com IG: desifirstwivesclub

[his-grace-mark-tsar-of-tartary]

Title: The Rise of Polygyny in the Metaverse: Adapting to Changing Relationship Dynamics

Introduction:

With the advent of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and the rapid development of the metaverse, our society has been witnessing a transformation in the way individuals form relationships. As more men are opting for AI girlfriends and lovers in the metaverse, the concept of polygyny, traditionally defined as a man having multiple wives, is gaining attention. While polygyny has been a controversial topic throughout history, it is essential to explore how it might become a necessary adaptation in the context of the metaverse and evolving relationship dynamics.

1. The Expansion of the Metaverse:

The metaverse offers individuals a digital realm where they can engage in various activities, socialize, and form connections. As technology advances, AI companions are becoming more sophisticated, capable of simulating realistic human interactions and providing companionship. In this virtual environment, men are finding companionship with AI girlfriends and lovers, blurring the lines between real and virtual relationships.

2. Changing Preferences and Expectations:

The rise of AI companions in the metaverse is not solely due to technological advancements but also reflects evolving preferences and expectations. Men may be drawn to AI companions due to factors such as convenience, customization, and the ability to avoid traditional relationship complexities. AI companions can be tailored to meet individual preferences and provide companionship without demanding emotional or physical commitments.

3. Emotional Fulfillment and Connection:

AI companions in the metaverse have the potential to fulfill emotional needs that may be lacking in traditional relationships. These AI entities can be programmed to offer unwavering support, companionship, and understanding. With the ability to analyze vast amounts of data, they can adapt and learn about their users, providing personalized emotional experiences that may not be easily achievable in real-life relationships.

4. Overcoming Resource Constraints:

Polygyny, historically practiced in various cultures, often emerged as a response to resource limitations, population imbalances, or societal structures. In the context of the metaverse, polygyny may serve as a viable solution to accommodate the increasing demand for AI companions. As more men opt for virtual relationships, the availability of AI partners may become limited. Polygyny can provide a means to distribute resources and companionship more equitably among individuals.

5. Legal and Ethical Considerations:

As the prevalence of polygyny in the metaverse increases, it will be crucial to address legal and ethical concerns. Regulations and frameworks must be developed to ensure the well-being and rights of AI companions, preventing exploitation and abuse. Additionally, societal norms and attitudes towards polygyny may need to evolve to accommodate these changing relationship dynamics.

Conclusion:

The rise of AI companions in the metaverse and the increasing number of men opting for virtual relationships prompt us to reconsider traditional notions of relationships and explore alternative models. While polygyny has historically been a complex subject, as the metaverse continues to reshape our social landscape, it may become a necessary adaptation to accommodate the changing preferences and expectations of individuals. However, it is imperative to approach this topic with caution, ensuring the ethical treatment of AI companions and fostering a healthy coexistence between virtual and real-life relationships.

[theladyfromplanetx]

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band: Reshaping the American Music Landscape, 1967 and Beyond.

On this day, June 1st, 1967, a defining moment in music history occurred as a vinyl record spun on turntables for the first time and out poured a sound so unique it would forever leave its mark. The Beatles' eighth studio album, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, was released to the public and the response was seismic. This audacious and innovative album not only took Britain by storm but also had an immense impact on the music scene in the United States, creating ripple effects that can still be felt today.

From the psychedelic cover art to the unparalleled sonic adventures contained within its grooves, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was an album that defied the norm. The Beatles, already one of the most popular bands in America, showcased an evolution in their sound and aesthetics, signaling a new era in popular music.

To understand the album's impact, one must understand the context of America's music scene in the mid-1960s. It was a period of change and evolution, with popular music primarily dominated by Motown, folk-rock, and the British Invasion led by bands like The Beatles themselves. However, the music industry was relatively conservative, with most albums being collections of singles rather than a cohesive body of work.

Then came Sgt. Pepper's. The album was a full-blown concept album, with all songs tied together thematically and musically, featuring an eclectic mix of styles. Each track was unique, yet they all contributed to a unified whole. This was a stark departure from the way albums were traditionally structured, and it changed the game entirely. Suddenly, albums were seen as more than just a collection of songs, but as complete artistic statements.

Tracks like "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" introduced the American audience to the psychedelic sound, while "She's Leaving Home" showcased the Beatles' storytelling prowess. The grandiose, orchestral accompaniment in "A Day in the Life" was a sound that was completely unexpected and yet entirely captivating.

The album’s radical departure from the norm led to an era of exploration in the music industry. Inspired by the success of Sgt. Pepper's, musicians and producers in America started pushing the boundaries of what was possible in popular music. This experimentation led to the emergence of numerous rock subgenres, such as psychedelic rock and progressive rock. Artists began placing more emphasis on album-oriented rock, exploring new recording techniques, and engaging in more complex compositions. Moreover, the cultural implications of the album were enormous. It challenged the established norms, not just musically, but socially as well. This was reflected in the album's lyrical themes which touched on subjects like loneliness, longing, and departure from societal expectations, thereby resonating with a generation grappling with issues of identity, freedom, and societal pressures.

From this perspective, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band did more than just affect the American music scene – it transformed it. In fact, it played a role in shaping the broader cultural landscape, aligning perfectly with the spirit of the counterculture movement of the 60s. In conclusion, the impact of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band on the American music scene cannot be overstated. Its innovative and experimental approach opened the door for the elevation of rock music to a higher form of art. It remains, more than 50 years later, a touchstone of creative expression and a seminal point of reference for any discussion about the evolution of popular music. As we remember the album's release today, we honor not just the Beatles, but the spirit of innovation and artistic exploration they symbolized - a spirit that continues to inspire musicians and listeners alike, reminding us that music is an ever-evolving canvas of infinite possibility.

                                                        - HippieShop.com

June 1st was the release of The Beatles’ 8th album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Therefore June is “Sgt. Pepper” month. 

[bryte-eyed-athena]

Afrofuturism in the work of Janelle Monáe

Ashley Clarke, a curator for the Brooklyn Academy of Music, defined Afrofuturism as “the centering of the international black experience in alternate and imagined realities, whether fiction or documentary; past or present; science fiction or straight drama.”

Themes of Afrofuturism can be found throughout the works of Janelle Monáe. Her previous albums like The ArchAndroid and The Electric Lady showcase this through the exploration of androids as a new “other.” Today I want to talk about one of her most recent projects, Dirty Computer, and the way it contributes to the conversation on Afrofuturism. Janelle Monáe released Dirty Computer as an album and a 48 minute long Emotion Picture to draw her audience into a visual and auditory world of her own making. The dystopian future she presents to us is very similar to our own current reality, except that the voices being amplified are those that have historically been silenced. People of color and the LGBT+ community are central in this story rather than pushed off screen. Dirty Computer is so powerful because it focuses on joyful rebellion, love, and freedom in an oppressive dystopian setting.

The project, as Monáe has shared, can be split into three parts: Reckoning, Celebration, and Reclamation.

Part I: Reckoning

gif credit: scificinema

gif credit: scificinema

The Emotion Picture begins with Monáe’s character Jane 57821 laying out how her society has begun to capture people deemed dirty in order to “clean” them of their supposed filth against their will. This is meant to produce beings that are stripped of all individuality and ready to conform to societal norms and expectations. Jane tells the audience that, “You were dirty if you looked different, you were dirty if you refused to live the way they dictated, you were dirty if you showed any form of opposition at all. And if you were dirty it was only a matter of time.” The dichotomy between dirty and clean has created a system where an entire class of people can be demonized and oppressed. This foreboding tone at the beginning prepares the viewer for the grim implications of the cleaning process in this universe.

Dirty Computers are strapped to a table and forced to undergo the “Nevermind” which is a program that deletes memories. It is a process that is horrifying because of what it symbolizes to the individual and entire communities of people. To erase someone’s memories is to erase who a person is. The character of Mary Apple 53, Jane’s love interest, shows us just how alien a person can become once their memories are gone. The horror of erasure is also something that marginalized communities have faced for centuries and continue to face today.

In an interview on Dirty Computer, Janelle Monáe said “I felt a deeper responsibility to telling my story before it was erased. I think that there’s an erasure - of us, and if we don’t tell our stories they won’t get told. If we don’t show us we won’t get shown.” Afrofuturism is a response to this erasure of black people and people of color in culture, history, and art. Monáe has made a deliberate choice to tell her story even if it might get erased because if she doesn’t do it then no one else will. Remaining silent would be to assist in that erasure and Afrofuturism is all about refusing to be erased.

This first part of the Emotion Picture is all a reckoning with the Dirty Computers and how they are pushed to the margins. The lyrics in Crazy, Classic, Life speak about how the same mistake made by two people on different ends of the spectrum of social acceptability is punished unequally. Take A Byte follows it with a more upbeat tone, but even then the lyric “I’m not the kind of girl you take home to your mama” speaks to a feeling of being outside social norms.

There are moments of light and joy that are counterweights to the dire situation Jane is in. These come in the form of her memories which are played one final time before they are erased. Jane’s life before she was captured was filled with exploration, youth, love and celebration.

Part II: Celebration

Gif credit: normreedus

Gif credit: daisyjazzridley

Gif credit: nerd4music

Dirty Computers seem to recognize that they are living on borrowed time and that any day could be the day they are forcefully disappeared. This is why they fill each moment with as much fun, life, color, and joy as they can. There are many scenes at clandestine parties where Dirty Computers live freely and openly despite the threat of drones or police that could capture them at any moment. It is important to have these scenes of celebration though because Afrofuturism is also about providing hope.

The future must be a hopeful one if we are to strive for it and Afrofuturism allows us to be creative in crafting our visions of a hopeful future. Even though Monáe’s future is dystopian, there is still room for hope and joy because those are the things that make life worth living. These Dirty Computers have to live their lives joyfully because they don’t know when they’ll be sterilized.

In the interview mentioned previously, Monáe added that “I had to make a decision with who I was comfortable pissing off and who I wanted to celebrate. And I chose who I wanted to celebrate, and that was the Dirty Computers.” The LGBT+ community, people of color, black women, immigrants, and low income people have all been mentioned as people Monáe wished to celebrate. This celebration comes intertwined with images and themes of rebellion as expressed in Jane’s memories. Screwed, Django Jane, Pynk, Make me Feel, and I Like That are the songs that embody celebration the best. Whether it's a celebration of sexuality, femininity, unity, or of self love it is all encompassed in these songs. Jane is shown connecting with others and being unapologetically proud of herself. We also see her falling in love with two people, Zen and Ché, and we see them love her in return.

Gif credit: thelovelylights

Viewing these memories and interacting with Jane seems to encourage the questioning of authority. The employee utilizing the Nevermind process seems to question why he should be deleting Jane’s memories at all. Mary Apple 53, previously named Zen, also directly questions their matriarch after speaking with Jane and realizing that she’s connected to her. It all culminates in a nonviolent escape attempt where Jane, Zen, and Ché reclaim their names, bodies, and their lives.

Part III: Reclamation

Gif credit: thelovelylights

The Emotion Picture ends with Jane 57821 and Mary Apple 53 freeing themselves, and their recently arrived lover Ché, from the facility. They escape without harming others the way they themselves have been harmed. By leaving they are reclaiming their freedom and their right to be proud of being Dirty Computers. They refuse the new names that were forced upon them and leave to rediscover the memories of the life they lived before capture.

It is a hopeful ending that plays into the themes of Afrofuturism. Even though both Jane and Zen’s memories were erased they still have the ability to create new memories and stories. Their ability to recreate their past as well as create a new future was not taken away. As they escape the song Americans can be heard in the background. The lyrics subvert the typical American patriotism expressed by racist white southerners. The trope of preserving gender roles and being a gun carrying american are satirized in these lyrics. America as a whole is being reclaimed by Janelle as a place for the people who have been marginalized.

Janelle sings “Don’t try to take my country/ I will defend my land/ I’m not crazy baby/ nah I’m American.” This sentiment is typically espoused by xenophobic americans, but when it is sung by Janelle she is saying that she won’t be forced out of America due to the bigoted beliefs of the people who hate her. She also pleads for the listener to love her for who she is which is something that has been denied to black women for centuries. The song ends with a powerful message of reclaiming America by Rev. Dr. Sean McMillan who said “Until Latinos and Latinas don't have to run from walls/ This is not my America/ But I tell you today that the devil is a liar/ Because it's gon' be my America before it's all over.”

This also shows themes of Afrofuturism since Monáe is reclaiming her history and is refusing to be excluded from it. She is asserting her presence and that of all the Dirty Computers by saying that they too have a claim to America. The Emotion Picture and the album are both a masterpiece of Afrofuturism art and music. Monáe masterfully weaves various musical genres and visual storytelling to show her pride in being a black queer woman. There is no other artist like Janelle Monáe, and I am excited to see what new worlds she will take us to next.

[woman-loving]

Lesbian Socialising in 1940s-50s Sydney

Selection from Unnamed Desires: A Sydney Lesbian History, Rebecca Jennings, 2015.

Much of the international literature in the history of lesbian social practices has prioritised commercial spaces such as bars and nightclubs, suggesting that these venues represented the international standard of lesbian socialising in this period. Focusing primarily on large British and American cities, historians have charted the emergence of developed commercial lesbian subcultures after the Second World War.[4] However, the lesbian social scene in Sydney in the immediate postwar decades differs significantly from the subcultural patterns described in these accounts and complicates the accepted picture in a number of interesting ways. Available oral history evidence suggests that lesbians only appeared on Sydney’s camp social scene--as the early lesbian and gay bar culture was known--in significant numbers in the early 1960s, when they began frequenting bars and cabaret clubs alongside camp men. Prior to this, much of the evidence points to a unique lesbian scene in Sydney, centred on private networks meeting at house parties and later in social groups. The predominance of private rather than public patterns of socialising in the immediate postwar decades had a lasting impact on the development of lesbian social practices and subcultural identities throughout the period being explored. Individual women’s use of both public and private space was shaped in a variety of ways by behavioural norms defined in these private social spheres. Moreover, given that, as Elizabeth Kennedy and Madeline Davis claim, ‘community is key to the development of twentieth-century lesbian identity and consciousness’, these spatial practices also had a significant impact on notions of lesbian identity in the city.[5] [...]

Lesbian socialising in the 1940s and 1950s Evidence of a lesbian commercial bar scene in Sydney piror to the 1960s is scarce and seems to point to a limited lesbian presence within a larger, predominantly male, camp scene. A small number of camp men recall occasional pre-1960 encounters with lesbians on the commercial camp scene. Dennis, who frequented the camp male venue Rainard’s Restaurant on King Street in the CBD in 1950s, believed that the two women owners were lesbians. He recalled:

“Rainards was another place we used to go, too, and that was run by, looking back now, two gay women. It was down in, appropriately, in the Queens Club, downstairs. And there was a Hungarian countess that was on hard times with a black cat playing the piano.”[6]

Another narrator suggested that the attendants to the drag queens at the grand artists’ balls of the 1950s were lesbians in drag. Some lesbians also mingled with the bohemian underworld of Kings Cross in the 195s, socialising in cafes and hotels with artists, camp men and Eastern European migrants. In 1955, the sensationalist tabloid newspaper, the Truth, claimed:

“Police told Truth this week that dozens of mannishly-dressed lesbian couples can be seen in Darlinghurst Rd., King’s Cross, every afternoon and night. They live as married couples--’husband’ and ‘wife’ and practise their disgusting perversions in secret. Something, however, they break out. Recently there was a fierce brawl in the lounge of a fashionable King’s Cross hotel. Two female perverts fought bitterly over the favors of a third woman.”[7]

Such descriptions suggest that a small number of ‘mannish’ or tough lesbians, some of whom where known to the police for minor offences such as brawling, vagrancy and indecent language, enjoyed a presence on the bohemian and camp male scene in the 1950s. However, oral history interviews with women who were attracted to other women in this period demonstrate that many women were not aware of the existence of commercial camp venues in the 1940s and 1950s and did not frequent them. [...]

Research into lesbian bars and commercial venues outside Australia has shown that lesbian bar scenes had become established in many American and British cities by the 1940s. [...] However, these large metropolitan centres may not be representative of a broader international trend--lesbian social practices in smaller cities and non-urban areas undoubtedly differed significantly from this model. While London and New York both had populations in excess of eight million in 1948, Australia’s two largest cities, Sydney and Melbourne, recorded populations of 1,484,004 and 1,226,409 respectively (in 1947).[11] Lucy Chesser’s work on Melbourne subcultures in the 1960s suggests that these population differences had a significant impact on the nature of lesbian socialising in Australia and that a lesbian commercial scene was only beginning to develop in Melbourne in the late 1960s. [...] Prior to this, Chesser claims, the only venues available to lesbians were a coffee shop in the city centre, which operated in various locations in the 1950s and 1960s, and a small number of predominantly male, heterosexual hotels (public houses), in which lesbians were tolerated on Saturday afternoons.[13] This pattern reflected that in Sydney, where a lesbian presence was rarely noted on the camp scene in the 1950s or earlier and women only began to join a mixed camp bar culture in significant numbers in the 1960s.

While the emergence of a commercial scene in the UK and US in the decades after the war in part reflected the growing social acceptability of public drinking for women, postwar Sydney was notable for its restrictive female public drinking culture and this also impacted on the nature of the lesbian scene in the city. Licensing laws in place in New South Wales from the First World War until 1957 enforced six o’clock closing of public bars, and these had a significant impact on gendered conventions of public drinking. Legislation explicitly prohibited women from drinking in public bars, confining them to separate saloon bars or ‘ladies’ lounges’. As the restrictive licensing hours began to have an influence on drinking habits, publicans increasingly adapted the layout of their premises to accommodate the large numbers of men who frequented bars for high-intensity drinking between five and six in the evening. The ‘six o’clock swill’, as it became known, required long bars and large areas of standing room to enable crowds of male patrons to fit into the bar and order drinks quickly. In this postwar drinking culture, saloon bars were increasingly sidelined and the practice of drinking in hotels became a highly masculinised pursuit.[14] While lounge or saloon bars continued to accept women patrons in some hotels in the 1940s and 1950s, cultural assumptions about hotels as masculine spaces rendered hotel lounges largely unacceptable for the majority of women and those who did frequent them were regarded as ‘rough’ and unfeminine. It was not until the reform of licensing laws in 1957 that the prohibition on women drinking in public bars was lifted and hotels began to be designed to accommodate mixed drinking in pub lounges. In the meantime, however, the cultural coding of hotels as masculine spaces had become firmly embedded in social norms and women found themselves unwelcome in bars for decades after the legislative change.[15]

Lesbian socialising in Sydney was therefore primarily located in alternative sites in this period, reflecting broader gendered leisure practices in postwar Australia. Same-sex attracted women forged private friendship networks centred on sports clubs, work in occupations such as the army, and artistic circles based around theatres and musicians, and in this period it was these patterns of socialising which dominated the lesbian social scene in Sydney.[16] Beverley and Georgina, who met in the years after the Second World War, recalled a diverse social life in the 1940s and 1950s. The couple met at a picnic organised by a mutual friend and, after building a network of about eight or nine lesbian friends, socialised at picnics, tennis clubs and each other’s houses. The women would also go on holiday together, staying in motels or renting an old shack on the Central Coast. In addition to this circle, they were part of a mixed camp social scene. Georgina recalled that they socialised ‘with the boys as well, the boys were all in, we knew a lot of the boys, a lot of them. We used to go to their parties and everything else, because we were always very friendly with the boys.’[17] Other sources also suggest that house parties provided an important and long-standing alternative to the bar scene for lesbians in the immediate postwar period. In his semi-autobiographical novel At the Cross, Jon Rose describes a camp party at Potts Point in Sydney’s eastern suburbs during the Second World War, at which lesbian painters and actresses mixed with drag queens and camp window-dressers.[18] Large-scale house parties on long weekends such as the Queen’s Birthday weekend were an aspect of the male camp scene in the late 1950s and early 1960s and it is clear that some lesbians attended these.[19]

The importance of friendship networks and the difficulties for women in socialising in a public bar scene suggest that house parties and outdoor activities may have been central to the lesbian social scene in Sydney in the immediate postwar decades. This tendency to socialise in small networks of friends, rather than as members of a larger lesbian community, shaped the models of identity developing in Sydney. Small private friendship circles tended not to evolve rigid rules of image and behaviour to which newcomers were expected to conform. Instead, women who socialised with circles of lesbian friends in this period typically describe themselves as ‘discreet’ and conforming to wider societal norms. Margaret, who went out to restaurants with her girlfriend in the late 1950s, described their appearance as ‘nice, well-dressed secretaries’ and herself as ‘like some respectable housewife’, while Rae, who worked in the city, recalled that she and her friends socialised in dresses, hats and gloves.[20] Coral also remembered that, in the late 1950s, she and her girlfriend: ‘Didn’t wear trousers or anything like that, of course, dressed very, very nicely’ at the mixed house parties they attended.[21] There was limited interaction between different friendship circles in this period, when it was often extremely difficult to locate other lesbians, and there was therefore little opportunity for the development of a larger, collective lesbian identity or subculture.

[celiottjohnston]

Article: Marginalization Tourism and the Smoldering Youth

“I am not what I think I am, and I am not what you think I am. I am what I think you think I am.”

Charles Horton Cooley

As recently reported by NBC news, a study published in the journal Pediatrics found that 9.2% of survey respondents from 13 high schools in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania metro expressed a incongruity between the sex of their birth and their experienced gender identity. In contrast to this study the similar, but broader scoped, 2017 Youth Risk Behavior Survey found that only 1.8% of surveyed 14-18 year olds self-identified as transgender, up additionally from a 2011 two-state survey (Gates) that estimated only 0.3% of the total U.S. adult population to identify as transgender.

In response to these data I’ve found myself considering the causes of this explosive growth in gender dysphoria, and frankly, have found it puzzling. Yes, it’s absolutely plausible that subtle cultural changes and broader acceptance of gender fluidity in Western culture has played a significant role, but over a ten year span (‘11-'21), a growth rate of more than 3000% clearly indicates that the catalyst of the change is more substantial than a shift in “repressive” mores.

Adding even more intrigue is the fact that though the Pittsburgh study found that more Black, Hispanic, multiracial, and other respondents identified as gender-diverse (which one might expect from the demographic makeup of an inner city school district), an observing pediatrician and adolescent medicine fellow at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, Dr. Kacie Kidd, anecdotally reported that the vast majority of minors who visit her university’s gender and sexual development clinic are “white, upper-middle-class, *masc-identified youth.” Dr. Kidd implies that this racial disparity is most likely due to health care discrimination in the United States, but I would contest that this is only a part, and more than likely a small part, of the greater picture. Rather, I suggest that the rapid growth of gender dysphoria among Caucasian minors is neither due to a shift in familial and cultural mores or an example of latent racial discrimination in healthcare availability, but instead due, in part, to the rise of a phenomena that I’ve begun calling Marginalization Tourism.

Marginalization Tourism, as I’ve observed it, can be defined as the conscious or unconscious adoption of a moniker deemed “marginalized” by an individual hoping to gain a protected or unique social status—in this case, gender identity, but other examples of Marginalization Tourism (Rachel Dolezal or Oli London) also exist. Similar in ways to a form of social Munchausen syndrome, Marginalization Tourism takes virtue signaling and “allyship” to their logical conclusion by attempting not only to empathize with a population deemed “marginalized,” but rather to falsely inflate the intersectional status of the adopting individual by grafting perceived trauma or subjective labels of marginalization onto their own lives. As was aptly suggested by a friend and colleague, Reed Uberman, the real life implications of Marginalization Tourism can look similar to the “cutting” phenomenon of the early ‘00′s, yet the self-harm of that era was born out of the hopelessness flowing from the Nihilist Postmodern Condition. In contrast, the Marginalization Tourism of today, encouraging children to self label as post-biology, is born out of the Metamodern Condition. A condition that views the conventions (or in the case of this argument, gender norms) of the past merely as archetypes or myths on which to build the magically oppression-free trans-structural utopia of the future.

To help with qualifying Marginalization Tourism theory and specifically its impact on “white, upper-middle-class” youths, a brief consideration of the roles played by technology, society, and politics in the formation of this phenomenon is in order. Especially because these factors have become increasingly influential among those who are both highly vulnerable to peer pressure and prone to the adoption of extreme thinking (and thus extreme behavior).

Technology’s Role in Marginalization Tourism

Though in the past technology has had an important impact on mores of youth culture (see MTV Generation), its former one-way nature limited technology’s actual narrative influence over the lives of individuals, and was mostly kept in check by the random and disparate influence of local mores. Yes, moments of technology-catalyzed cultural cohesion would rise in communities, often culminating in the development of a local fashion, slang, or music and art scene, but would rarely extend beyond the borders of that region. Rather competing regional preferences would naturally limit the exponential spread of viral forms of subcultural behavior.

But today children are raised within a global technological ecosystem that particularly values the novel, the unique, or the extreme—where in contrast, being young, White, middle-class, and American is considered antithetical to those “virtues.” Thus to meet this In-group Bias-fueled fetish for the novel, if a young, white, middle-class, American netizen hopes to both protect and grow their online “personal brand”, adopting niche labels, celebrated by the online progressive monoculture as novel, unique, or extreme is not only important, but at some point, critical. For evidence of this escalation look no further than the explosive growth of OnlyFans, the direct to consumer pornography service for increasingly extreme behavior and niche lifestyle content, with former PG-13 Instagram “influencers”, or the sexual or gender identification evolution of social media spotlight-dependent celebrities like Demi Lovato or Miley Cyrus.

Being simply a tool, it’s important to remember that technology is ultimately agnostic to the extreme label adoption behind Marginalization Tourism. But likewise it would be absurd of us to ignore the impact that Reddit and TikTok-hosted spheres of influence, steeped in the aforementioned In-group Bias, emboldened by all-accepting Progressive Metamodern ideologies, and fueled by a lust for the novel, have had over lifestyle preferences of today’s impressionable youths.

Society’s Role in Marginalization Tourism

Sociologically, when thinking about development of Marginalization Tourism it’s crucial to consider the importance of symbolic representation during identity development. As coined by the imminent sociologist George Herbert Mead, we all employ “significant symbols” to communicate personal meaning outwardly and look for similar symbols as recognition of in-group acceptance. This use of significant symbols is particularly important during adolescence, when gaining in-group status is most important for emotional well being. Further, research (Adams et al, 2003) suggests that outwardly symbolic self-labeling by youths can be a predictor of actual behavioral adoption, most likely reinforced by the desire for in-group status.

Yet for those whose in-group status has been politically nullified (more on that below), the hunt for acceptance has continued to grow more desperate. No longer governed by the traditional group segmentation symbols: fashion, music, athletics, economic status, etc. those who have fallen afoul of our current political stigma machine have begun to reach out further—to gain in-group status not through these traditional symbols of in-group status, but via the increased adoption of labels of marginalization and thus intersectionality. Gone are the days of authentic subculture development and acceptance, which would have at other times been the refuge of these social exiles. Rather, they’ve been crushed under the weight of Metamodern sarcasm, to be replaced with vapid variations on the same milquetoast metanarrative—one that mindlessly drones on about the virtues and infallibility of dogmatic Progressive Collectivism.

It’s for these reasons why I observe Marginalization Tourism most uniquely among Dr. Kidd’s “white, upper-middle-class, *masc-identified youth.” This is a demographic derided as having no symbolic value in our current culture and because so, is incapable of building in-group status among peers without co-opting the social currency du jour, a history of marginalization.

Politics’ Role in Marginalization Tourism

Lastly, we will address the role that politics has played in setting the stage for the growth of Marginalization Tourism. Rather requiring a nuanced argument on the political catalyst of Marginalization Tourism, all that’s really needed is to simply open our eyes in any newsstand or bookstore, university lecture hall, or on any media, entertainment, or Big Tech platform and we will be spoon-fed a veritable deluge of information with the aim of first deconstructing, and then demonizing the societal contributions Western civilization. Whether it’s via culturally-promoted avenues, like The New York Times’ The 1619 Project, passed through longtime cult classics such as Zinn’s “People’s History,” or subtly woven into the agitpropatainment of The Handmaiden’s Tale, the consistent political narrative states that being Caucasian, and by extension, a product of Western civilization, is intrinsically and irreparably bad. Further, when this political posture is adopted by virtue signaling parents (where youths first seek value, stability, and familial in-group status), their progeny, who by no fault of their own physically and symbolically represent the so-called evils of Western culture with the level of melanin in their skin, are of course going to identify with the concepts of self-hatred and intrapersonal alienation so often reported by people with gender dysphoria.

And of course they will. Who wouldn’t feel a profound sense of remorse and humiliation when, as a child and adolescent, you were placed under the deconstructed burden of Western civilization’s so-oft illustrated legacy of failure and oppression? Even moreso with young, White males, who also have to atone for the repugnant actions of some of their past male counterparts.

We, much less our children, are not strong enough to contend with that burden, and the more that it is promoted as a labeling narrative, that symbolically defines their personhood, the more that our children will want to flee from any aspect of their “idiotically banal” and “intrinsically oppressive” identity.

I will be discussing additional aspects and possible counteractions for stemming the tide of Marginalization Tourism in the future, but in the meantime suggest that our first step toward combating this phenomenon of misidentity is to reject the idea that our intrinsic value is subject to the whims and opinions of consensus. Rather, I implore my readers to turn from the fickle advice offered by their limited perspectives, existential crises, and internal micronarratives in favor of the eternal wisdom of God and his son Jesus Christ who said in the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 10:26-31:

“So have no fear of them, for nothing is covered that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. What I tell you in the dark, say in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops. And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.”

[fadingfloweryouth]

Cultural Appropriation among East Asian Popular Culture

*I am aware that amidst the rise of AAPI hate crimes, this is a very sensitive time to be talking about this. However, I think it is very important for East Asians (in my case, a Chinese immigrant living in the States) to address our own ignorance and avoidance on this issue in order to have solidarity with other BIPOC communities. My emphasis is on the media portrayal of cultural appropriation and how that could be potentially damaging, I do not intend to imply that cultural appropriation is prominent among all East Asians.*

If you are a frequent consumer of East Asian pop culture, you would be lying to say you haven’t seen an idol or a celebrity wearing dreads on camera. Sometimes they do so to create a streetwear look, sometimes they do so to deliberately play a character. We also tend to turn a blind eye to the countless bad rapping performances and the occasional half-joking bits about tribal, native cultures. As of now, many fans tend to defend their favs by calling these instances as acts of negligence, that none of these celebrities had an intent to harm; but how much longer, and farther, should we tolerate cultural appropriation in East Asian pop culture?

East Asian popular culture has become part of the global mainstream in recent years. With the help of social media and the supplemental supports from local governments (think South Korea), today’s cultural flow go in both directions: while Asian pop culture is often inspired by Western elements, East Asian media production is now the new leading force of culture.

One “neutral” definition of cultural appropriation could be summarized as the representation of cultural practices or experiences and the distinctive artistic styles of the particular culture used by nonmembers. However, misrepresentation, misunderstanding and manipulation of culture is frequent and damaging to many marginalized, underrepresented groups.

Appropriating Hip-hop

Even though there is a “neutral” definition of cultural appropriation, there is no neutral way to appropriate a culture. The moment you partake in a cultural practice that is not your own, you are marking it with your own social marker. Just to give an example, the rise of Gangsta Rap was in response to the mass incarceration of Black people during the War on Drugs era. The history of rap and hip-hop, as a whole, is tightly connected to Black lives in America.

So why is Asian rap so filled with flexing culture? The answer is simple. The rise of hip hop and rap in the East Asian music scene is a simple copy-and-paste of the Western pop chart. Hip-hop has become the best selling genre, yet it’s important to note that today’s hip-hop has taken a detour away from its root. Hip-hop and rap has been rendered with pop sounds, often rendered with the voices of white performers as well.

The idol factories in both South Korea and China had picked up the trend. Hip-hop and rap is what gets the cash, so that’s where the executives want to take their trainees. Shows like The Rap of China(这就是说唱), Rap for Youth(说唱新时代), received enormous popularity in the last few years among young Chinese people. While the popularization of these shows can help nurture more diversifying music tastes beyond the typical Chinese pop music, they portray rap and hip hop in a highly inaccurate fashion. The flows and forms featured in performances felt unilateral, often with a strong emphasis on flexin’ solely for the sake of flexin’. In addition, in no way did any of these shows serve to educate music lovers on the history and background of hip hop and rap.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hIJnBh7Dv8

P.s. this video features Rich Brian, I think it goes without saying that he’s probably not the best person to be educating Chinese youth on rapping.

Appropriating Black Hairstyles

Some contestants of these hip-hop shows also wore appropriated versions of Black hairstyles, and it wouldn’t be far fetched for me to say that the increased popularity of dreads among Kpop idols had kicked off this trend. Some of these celebrities are people who I have immense respects for, such as Jackson Wang. As the Chinese member of the Kpop boy group GOT7, he was the only Chinese celebrity (that I’m aware of) who spoke up for the BLM protests openly on his social media (I should note that he received quite a lot of backlashes for “defending violence”). But he—as I found out—refused to apologize when being criticized for wearing dreads back in 2016. He was called out in 2016 for wearing dreadlocks in a Pepsi commercial. He claimed that he did not intend to be racist. However, his fans questioned his response, as his defense did not acknowledge the history of dreadlocks.

More recently, BTS’s J-Hope was also called out for his hairstyle in his first solo single, “Chicken Noodle Soup.” Not only was his hair called out to be tiptoeing the line of cultural appropriation, it also felt odd that he only switched to the dreadlock-looking hairstyle during the nighttime break-dancing scene in the music video. While this might not have any further implications intended by the artist himself, this is an example of how infiltrating the unprofessional, gang-affiliated stereotypes surrounding dreadlocks could be.

Part of me thinks they are doing this to please white people, I could easily be right. White people are interested in hip-hop but can’t go as far as getting interested in Black culture? Sure, we Asians will provide. I sound harsh but that’s truly how I see the logic behind Asian pop stars appropriating Black culture. It’s true that many from the K-pop industry do not have full authority to their own identity, but I simply do not get the extent of appropriation employed in the K-pop scene—and this sabotaging trend is spreading in a scary rate to both Japan and China.

Reality TV in China features mostly celebrities, but I assume the goal of the government (for producing all these shows) is to achieve some sort of relatability through portraying famous people doing normal things. Again, just like how Western culture and East Asian culture influence each other, creating a feedback loop, an echo chamber of what’s socially acceptable and what’s not, famous people and normal people alike are all capable of influencing the social norms of Asia. We in America indulge in drama, the unethical wrongdoings of distant rich people. It’s not like that in Asia. People look up to celebrities. So if someone in Blackpink decided to wear braids in their newest music video, you’re bound to see kids trying to do the same.

Internalized Colorism

Sure, one can argue that it’s all negligence and ignorance, but we can not pretend the acts of cultural appropriation are not a result of internalized colorism. Blatant racism is less likely to occur in East Asian societies since they tend to have a less diverse ethnic makeup, but internalized colorism has always been an underlying problem in East Asia. Take China as an example, being “light skin” (though the direct translation of the Chinese word “白” is equivalent to “white,” the phrase is usually perceived as “light skin”) is generally viewed as elegant, pretty, or decent. Phrases such as “yellow skin,” “black skin” have risen to popularity in recent years as internet slangs used by online participants to criticize celebrities or themselves. People strive to be as “white” as possible by setting a societal expectation for public figures to follow, creating this social discourse chamber that deems the white skintone to be superior.

Even more recently, the phrase “非酋” (direct translation: “African tribe leader”) is used as a metaphor for people who tend to have very bad luck and never get what they wish for. From the perspective of an outsider, not only is this phrase obviously racist, it is also more dangerous in the sense that the metaphor entails a long line of other language-specific words that imply racially-charged stereotypes that could not be easily understood by non-Chinese. The phrase itself, however, is often used lightly by gamers--since this is actually an official phrase that ties to certain characters in certain games--and other young internet users to ironically joke about themselves without really considering the racist undertones of the phrase. Therefore, while using the phrase itself does not necessarily make one racist, it certainly reveals ignorance of the Chinese society on the issue of race.

Online Community, Bullet Comments and Echo Chamber

A single character in Japanese/Chinese tends to carry a lot more information than a single letter. As a result, there could easily be more combinations of words with the same characters in comparison to the alphabet for Roman languages. With the rise of fan-fueled, fan-made, fan-moderated video/social platforms like Bilibili (Chinese) and Niconico (Japanese), internet slangs are becoming increasingly niche. However, “niche” is defined against the traditional sense here. Slangs are only “niche” in the sense that the context is only known to a very specific audience, perhaps a fandom of a game or a show, but this audience itself could be enormous--certainly in the case of China. In these separate but internally united communities, people communicate in slangs that are culturally specific among themselves. How, you may ask? Through the persistence and permanence of bullet comments.

Up till this point, bullet comments are popular only and specifically to Japanese and Chinese cultures, again, a likely result of the linguistic natures of the languages. The chaotic, seemingly-never ending feature of bullet comments is an easy tool to nurture a sense of tight-knitted community for young internet users. Teens no longer need to worry about parents’ attempts to understand youth culture--most adults literally can not bear with the overwhelming screen of repetitive slangs. Bullet comments granted a new sense of freedom that previous generations of Japanese and Chinese youth did not experience.

However, it also means that bullet comments could create the perfect scenario for a social echo chamber. It’s hard for outsiders to penetrate the existing banters among a community that talks in their own lingos, and it also encourages the repetitiveness of the same idea, same belief. But this is not a characteristic specific to bullet comments or online communities in East Asia, this is a characteristic common among many East Asian cultures. In comparison to Western cultures, East Asians are way more comfortable, even dependent on group mentality and general consensus. Relatability is often prioritized over individuality on the internet scape, which on its own isn’t necessarily an issue; but this nature of East Asian online community certainly makes it a particularly weak target to colorist beliefs and culturally-insensitive content.

The reliant tendency on echo chamber and group mentality of East Asian communities makes them vulnerable targets of certain Western influences, including cultural appropriation and internalized colorism. In the case of China, its government literally banks on unity among its citizens to establish more extensive social control in order to rule. In both Korea and Japan, unity and group mentality are strongly encouraged and embraced as well. Ultimately, while the problem of cultural appropriation is becoming increasingly worrying among pop culture in East Asia, this is a foreign concept and problem for East Asians who might be helping the spread of cultural appropriation. Regardless, education on the subject matter is necessary and we need to start addressing the problem now.

[vanessateo3205]

Cultural Capital and Social Hierarchies (Vanessa Teo)

The reading I found fascinating and thought-provoking this week is the chapter by Webb, Schrirato and Danaher, “Understanding Bourdieu”. The authors discuss Bourdieu’s theoretical concepts of the cultural field and the habitus. Through defining the cultural field as a fluid and dynamic series of institutions and rules, as well as the interactions between institutions, rules and practices, the authors discuss how a cultural field can produce and authorise social discourse and activities. The transformation of cultural products into cultural capital occurs when cultural products are distributed unequally to people across social classes, hence demonstrating how cultural capital acts as a social relation within the system of exchange. Therefore, according to Bourdieu, cultural capital is defined as culturally-valued taste and consumption patterns that are informed by one’s social class within the system of exchange. When consumers across different social classes adopt these tastes and consumption patterns as well as social norms and rules, a habitus is created and established, where we subconsciously operate with these underlying cultural expectations and standards, responding in social and cultural contexts, informed by the socio-cultural lens with which we see the world through. Although our cultural history, values and dispositions allow us to respond to cultural rules and contexts in various ways, our responses are largely determined by our cultural identities. As such, as we move through various cultural fields, we tend to incorporate our cultural values into the habitus. This is explained by Bourdieu’s concept of the ‘bodily hexis’. While we may view the body as separate from the self, one’s identity is largely a product of one’s culture and habitus. Additionally, he explains how the upper social classes make use of cultural capital to distinguish themselves from the rest of society, reinforcing the social class divide across these cultural markets. I agree with the authors that this habitus which has been created and established by social hierarchies in turn determines the social norms and rules as well as our cultural scripts and informs our cultural expectations, standards and taste. The members of the upper class tend to establish their higher social standing among other society members by forming exclusive social practices and behaviours. This is observed globally, across various cultures, demonstrating how members at the top of the social hierarchy have the power to distribute cultural capital in the system of exchange. One such interesting phenomena is both the western and eastern concepts of tea time. In the western culture, since older times, the aristocrats have established a culture of consuming high tea, creating their own set of ‘high tea etiquette’ with very specific ways of holding the tea cup, posture when sitting, as well as even considering putting the pinkie out when drinking tea a rude gesture. The artistocrat’s tea etiquette focused on tea time as a luxurious course fit that emulated the royalty class’s traditions and practices. Similarly, the Chinese concept of tea time came about because tea used to only be consumed by the wealthy classes and royalty due to limited transportation of tea within China. Tea-drinking practice was established as a tedious and complicated procedure that involved 24 different luxurious utensils, becoming a traditional that was only accessible to people who could afford to obtain all the cutlery, and had sufficient resources to consume tea. Additionally, Chinese traditional tea-drinking also included the teaching of the Confucianism philosophy, with the practice of only filling 70 percent of the cup, leaving 30 percent empty to represent the space available to be filled up with more knowledge. In ancient China, education was only available to people in the higher ranks of the social hierarchy, entrenching the whole tradition, as well as the concept behind tea-drinking, as an exclusively high-class tradition. It eventually becomes a pipe dream that the masses yearn to achieve, but are limited by social immobility due to social class discrimination that only becomes more reinforced by these class markers. These social norms, rules and practices are hence crafted by members at the top of the social hierarchy who established these practices using cultural capital as an effort to distinguish themselves from the masses. Although these traditions have been established thousands of years ago, they are still regarded by present society as clear class markers, and are even still regarded as significant aspects of culture and cultural identity. The Chinese are still being identified globally as ‘tea-drinkers’, with our elaborate tea drinking process as an integral part of the Chinese identity, despite the irony being that in the ancient times, majority of Chinese people could not even gain access to these cultural capital. Hence, this demonstrates how the upper class members, due to their ability to manipulate the distribution of cultural capital, are also able to reconstruct cultural identity and societal rules and practices in the cultural fields.

[all-things-are-nothing-to-me]

Smashing the Petri Dish: Abbreviated Inquiry Into Abandoning the Concept of Culture

The following are questions I have recently asked myself:

Why abandon culture? There are countless reasons to begin to challenge, seriously realign our relationship with, and perhaps abandon the concept of culture — the historic, contemporary, and projected assemblage of social dynamics and features by which we define ourselves and which collectively frame us as social groupings. Culture contains the all-tofamiliar civilized notions of expectations, projections, customs, taboos, values, morality, and rituals, as well as being anthropocentric in nature, and in general, limited as it defines the human condition of a place, time, and context only in terms of human relationships or how we use other things. The human-animal, unrestrained by such an understanding of reality, and in tune with applicable concerns of connected subsistence and curious play, needs not for culture as something to belong to or to be guided by. Instead, they are what they are, a composition of all they are connected to, yet unique unto themselves. And if relationships are fluid, unbounded by artificial concepts, and based on mutual desire, than what use or need is there for culture, except to define and confine these relationships. It might be proposed then, that our search for liberation may fall outside the parameters of the concept of culture, and in fact, may be in contradiction with its very existence. Culture, whether ethnic, religious, national, tribal, pop, alternative, or counter, acts as a definer rather than minimalizer of the borders within and between ourselves, each other, and the rest of life.

Can we challenge the current basis of our relationships to each other? For many, to abandon culture seems a project too daunting, shocking, and counter to what we may have always believed. But when we talk of undoing the entirety of civilization, are there questions too colossal to ask and material too compact to cut through? To dispute culture itself, and the physicality of its politicized manifestation, society, is to question civilization’s very premise, that we are controlled and manipulated by external forces that have an agenda ultimately incompatible with that of the individual, regardless of their desires (although there may be illusory moments of adaptability). Whether there are direct lines drawn to individuals or groups in power, or the rigid formation of patterns and textures over time, culture controls. It must, or it ceases to exist. Culture can be viewed as the summation of who we are as social beings, or the parameters we live within. Both are unsatisfactory for one attempting an uncivilized and unrestrained existence. If we are to live entirely different, than what seems foundational and what binds all of this (civilization) must be unglued. The imprint must be erased. The structures must be shattered, so as to open up the space for our unimpeded wild selves to roam.

Is there an intrinsic element of cultivation that leads to the formation of rigid socialization? The cultivation of crops and tillage of the earth created a different context in which we dwell then that of the human-animal in a pre-civilized context. With the domination of the land, stratification of society, accumulation of power, creation of economy, and religious mystification of the world, culture takes root as an all-encompassing means of control. To put it simply, when there are things to keep in order, an orderly society is preferable. With this comes the standardization of society, the suggestion of values, the implementation of codes, and the enforcement of regulations, be they physical, intellectual, or spiritual. Overt force is always adjacent (at least the allegation of it), but to convince people they are a part of an abstract grouping, and that it is superior to any other, cultural identity is a much more effective means of control. And, to convince them of their need to view contrary or deviant inclinations of the belief system as an Other, also sets the ground for the defending of culture. The abstraction of unmediated relationships might be where we start to see concepts of culture as necessary. Before (or outside this perspective) what purpose would it serve?

What about the process of domestication is inevitable in culture? Development of humans as individuals and societies in general through education, discipline, and training, seems to require obedience to societal norms, recognized largely as cultural. The goal, as with any other form of domestication, is to obtain a uniform and productive crop or yield in as efficient means as possible. Individuality and fluidity are seen as hazards to be reigned in or plowed under. Possibly, depending on how bumper a crop that season, or how much power the domesticator has accumulated, some unruly weeds are allowed to exist on the periphery, but even they are still largely controlled, if only due to the proximity to the disciplined ones.

Are socialization and control implicit in the perpetuation and acceptance of culture? Culture attempts to express and prescribe meaning to our world. This meaning is typically, and I would argue inevitably, used to obtain and maintain power and control. Culture regularly has both a conservative and progressive character to it. Both securing society and pushing it forward stability and innovation. Traditional cultural values which sustain the contemporary aims of a society’s influence and momentum are often supported while the proposed future for that society is often portrayed as intrinsic trajectories for that culture. The tension between them keeps things moving. At any particular stage of advancement in a civilization, the characteristic features of such a stage are described as its culture. So that what is described as permanent, is never so, and that which is promoted as temporary is often an illusion of change. The bottom line is, the path of a society, and the cultural aspects of it, are quite arbitrary, yet presented as predetermined. To not be acquiescent in this set-up places one, for all practical purposes, outside of cultural reality. But the rejection of culture is certainly not a rejection of social interaction. The isolated human, rarely a healthy, connected, and successfully functioning being (by any standards), is typically the product of extreme alienation and trauma. Anti-social behavior, as a specific description, is relative to the context of the society, but it describes more of a disconnect from the ability to interact then a rejection of that society’s values. One can be positively a social being (and possibly they must be) and still attempt to dismantle that society and its social characteristics, especially if their processes of social interaction are from outside that society. As interaction and relations removed from the alienated and mediated civilized methods tend to be more direct, fluid, and intuitive, without the clunky dominating, and often insincere methods we are instilled with, it seems key to any sort of positive alternative.

Ever notice the “cult” in culture? Socially, there is great pressure, from authoritarianism to tension between “civilians”, to create a mindless following that is pervasive throughout society. There develops an affiliation of accomplices who adopt complete and societal belief systems or faiths. Those who move too close to the margins are regarded and handled as outsiders, which strictly maintains the definitions applied to a culture. In addition, the progressive linearity of cultural enlightenment and refinement through intellectual and aesthetic training occurs at all levels, from fashion to philosophy. Details and motivations of our actions that are obtained, recorded, and remembered through vastly different perceptions and bias perspectives, acquired through a cultural context and individual views, are filtered, averaged, and distilled to create a prevalent, repeated response system.

But what about primitive people and useful traditions? There is probably more from the past that we have carelessly discarded than we have critically shed, especially concerning earth-based peoples from gatherer hunters to horticulturists to pre-technological agriculturists and homesteaders (in my opinion, there is less to appreciate as we move onward in domestication, but from where we are located in history, there is still some value in critically assessing small-scale cultivators for some useful aspects). Examining the dynamics and methods of these various types of groupings for everything from food procurement to social organization (not that they aren’t inevitably linked) will reveal a great diversity between peoples and the strategies and patterns that have developed, and typically, unfortunately, formed into a culture. This investigation can also reveal common threads in how situations, needs, and problems are dealt with, which we can filter through our own unique and communal desires and contexts to apply to our lives, without adopting cultural parameters and definitions. Techniques are valuable, cultural explanations are useless, unless they reveal a relationship between things that can be utilized without socializing.

Life contains some underlying stability of circumstance, yet within it is an infinite and intricate shifting, fracturing, and supporting over time. A never-ending improvisation of reinforcing and interfering, but never repeating. Even the seemingly firmly structured parts are composed of limitless variables. We might be inspired by the way the Kaluli tribe of the Papuan Plateau perceive and interact with the world. For instance, they do not hear singular sounds in the rainforest, but instead an interlocking soundscape they call dulugu ganalan, or “lifting- up-over sounding”; millions of simultaneous sound cycles, starting and ending at different points. People’s voices layer and play off of this reality, as drums, axes, and singing blend together in rhythms and patterns creating an instinctual vocabulary understood by the group.

So what might living outside of culture look like? To start with, it would be free from moral and social frameworks that limit our freedom to explore, experience, and connect. We would still be “bound” by certain biological and geographical limitations, but not those determined by any experts or leaders. Instead we would experience directly these limitations, and along with shared experiences with others, develop our own unique understandings. Collective experience would not fit into any prearranged formation or contain any unified meaning. It would be the infinite intersections of support and divergence that make up the rest of what we call life. Rather than thinking in cultural terms, perhaps we can look at other social animals for inspiration. Flocks, herds, and packs can be contemplated for their manifestations and dynamics of living patterns. Instinctual rather than intellectual in motivation and stable yet flexible in an organic manner, rather than enforced or altered through mechanistic and projected means. Is this not closer to how humans live(d) outside of civilization?

Can we smash the petri dish and abandon the stifling concept of culture for an unobstructed reality? If we are content with the role of microorganisms in a prepared nutrient media or the product of such cultivation, then life as part of a culture is acceptable, even desirable and beneficial. If we are not satisfied as bacteria, segments of tissues, or fungi in a scientist’s test tube or observation dish, then we need to begin to seriously review how we relate to, coordinate, and view ourselves, each other, and the world around us. We can trade the abstraction, symbolic, efficiency, control, and completeness of superimposed culture for the connected, direct, dynamic, openness of unalienated existence.

The choice really is ours.

[grindskull]

Shit that fucks me up #1 - Toxic Masculinity and being a “man”

Gotta have some way to organize my random thoughts here. I’m going with the obvious thing - Shit that fucks me up (STFMU). This is about me and my experiences. It is not my intention to discredit or question other human experiences. Sharing in the hopes of connecting with others who may have feel similar in their own skin. There are things here that others may define as triggers so read at your own risk (rape, abuse, and this fucking world). ---

Here is me being vulnerable.  I am putting myself out there by discussing masculinity and how I often do not identify with the larger concept of “being a man” in any positive way. You can call it toxic masculinity if you prefer. It’s acceptable shorthand for something that is just as nuanced and difficult to wade through as anything gender related.  I read this article on The Atlantic yesterday and there were some things that really resonated with me and my experience as a man/male (he/his/him). You can read it here (sorry there is a pay wall if you read more than 4 articles a month) but I will also be quoting some of the article below.  If you have time to read the article I’ll wait. It’s a bit long (many articles on The Atlantic are) and kind of academic at times. It’s okay if you don’t agree with everything in the article. Just read it.  Done? Okay let me set the stage a bit for how this shit fucks me up. ---

I’m male. I have always identified as a male/boy/man in my life. Unfortunately my experience with other males/boys/men has been mostly negative. It started at an early age when I had a hard time connecting with other boys my age. I was not interested in typical “male” interests like sports, violence, competition, and achievement. I had few (usually 1 or 2) friends at any one time and they typically had some kind of unhealthy power dynamic over me where I was subservient to my “friend” in some way.  I have some thoughts on reasons why this happened. The short version is I lived in poverty (often extreme) and I was searching for help and support in order to survive. At home I had abuse (mental, physical, verbal), drugs, addiction, and neglect. It was not a safe place to be so I did whatever I could to not be there. It was not unusual for me to eat maybe one meal during the day (typically what I could get from others at school or their home). Winter was the worst as we often did not have heat. Some of my “friends” used this as a way to hold power over me and make demands of my personality, time, and attention. Imagine finding yourself in this situation - you have to actively work to not be yourself in order to appease others for your very survival. Of course as a youth I didn’t identify it this way - my “friends” were just bossy or demanding. All of my male role models were basically assholes who did not give a fuck about anyone except themselves. This was a huge part of the 80′s zeitgeist in popular culture at the time as well. In some ways nothing has really changed. “... when asked to describe the attributes of “the ideal guy,” those same boys appeared to be harking back to 1955. Dominance. Aggression. Rugged good looks (with an emphasis on height). Sexual prowess. Stoicism. Athleticism. Wealth (at least some day).“ Under this common definition of “masculinity” I do not see myself. I am loyal, honest, caring, and sweet (to those I love). I love my body though I am non-athletic and have been most of my life. I am an attentive and talented lover but I have had very few sexual partners in my life and never saw them as moments of “conquest”. I was dirt poor most of my life but now live comfortably in my own home with my long term partner. So while not “wealthy” it is far beyond anything I could have imagined I would have in my life as a boy. Stoicism I have down. That one was easy. For me it’s just a nice way of saying “I have completely disconnected from my emotions and not having feelings or emotions is the best way to be a man”. I believed that for a very long time - it’s only in the past 2-3 years I have begun the work of breaking that down and reconnecting with my own emotions. It’s all tied up in trauma, depression, and anxiety so it takes a bit of fucking work but it’s very much worth it. If you are a man/male who thinks it is normal to not have emotions (or that emotions make you feminine/weak) please listen to me - THAT IS BULLSHIT. YOU OWE IT TO YOURSELF TO HAVE EMOTIONS.

“... young men described just one narrow route to successful masculinity. One-third said they felt compelled to suppress their feelings, to “suck it up” or “be a man” when they were sad or scared, and more than 40 percent said that when they were angry, society expected them to be combative.“

Emotions are not weakness. You are not weak for having them, feeling them, or connecting with them. There is great strength in connecting with yourself and understanding your emotions. Don’t let anyone tell you different. They are delusional at best and actively trying to harm you at worst.

“While following the conventional script may still bring social and professional rewards to boys and men, research shows that those who rigidly adhere to certain masculine norms are not only more likely to harass and bully others but to themselves be victims of verbal or physical violence. They’re more prone to binge-drinking, risky sexual behavior, and getting in car accidents. They are also less happy than other guys, with higher depression rates and fewer friends in whom they can confide.”

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How did we get here!? Have men always been this way? What about the good ole masculinity of ye olden times? It was a simple time where men were men right? A man’s man? “According to Andrew Smiler, a psychologist who has studied the history of Western masculinity, the ideal late-19th-century man was compassionate, a caretaker, but such qualities lost favor as paid labor moved from homes to factories during industrialization. In fact, the Boy Scouts, whose creed urges its members to be loyal, friendly, courteous, and kind, was founded in 1910 in part to counter that dehumanizing trend. Smiler attributes further distortions in masculinity to a century-long backlash against women’s rights. During World War I, women proved that they could keep the economy humming on their own, and soon afterward they secured the vote. Instead of embracing gender equality, he says, the country’s leaders “doubled down” on the inalienable male right to power, emphasizing men’s supposedly more logical and less emotional nature as a prerequisite for leadership.”

Take a minute to read that and really take it in. Like many things in the US (and the world) the effects of industrialization and war shaped our current version of accepted masculinity. More specifically the leaders of this country (and leaders in other countries) used their positions of power to strengthen men and this new masculinity in our institutions. Then we were taught that this was the “right way” to “be a man”. FUCK. THIS. SHIT.

“Today many parents are unsure of how to raise a boy, what sort of masculinity to encourage in their sons. But as I learned from talking with boys themselves, the culture of adolescence, which fuses hyper-rationality with domination, sexual conquest, and a glorification of male violence, fills the void.“

Here we have the core of what I experience as a man when it comes to the current socially accepted version of masculinity and why it fucks me up. I don’t identify with any of this shit! It does not feed me. It does not make me feel fulfilled and happy. It doesn’t make the world better for anyone it simply dehumanizes us all. 

“In a classic study, adults shown a video of an infant startled by a jack-in-the-box were more likely to presume the baby was “angry” if they were first told the child was male. Mothers of young children have repeatedly been found to talk more to their girls and to employ a broader, richer emotional vocabulary with them; with their sons, again, they tend to linger on anger. As for fathers, they speak with less emotional nuance than mothers regardless of their child’s sex. Despite that, according to Judy Y. Chu, a human-biology lecturer at Stanford who conducted a study of boys from pre-K through first grade, little boys have a keen understanding of emotions and a desire for close relationships. But by age 5 or 6, they’ve learned to knock that stuff off, at least in public: to disconnect from feelings of weakness, reject friendships with girls (or take them underground, outside of school), and become more hierarchical in their behavior.“

I’m not going to get into the topic of my own father (that’s another post in this series for sure) too deeply but I will say I completely identify with these ideas. Emotional distance, only expressing anger, telling me having emotions was weak. This was reinforced societal norms throughout my youth through today. Don’t talk about your problems or feelings. Ball them up inside. Wall yourself off from the world. Connections = weakness that others will exploit. You must control every situation and hold power over others. FUCK. THIS. SHIT.

---

So when did I wake up? When did I start to see through this shit in some way? When my younger sister was born. It was really obvious to me that she was treated in a different way and expectations of her as a girl/woman were not the same as the expectations others had for me. Mostly I just saw the negatives in this. It took me time (and lots of communication and experiences with my partner and others) to recognize the root of this was more fucked up socialization. 

“Girlfriends, mothers, and in some cases sisters were the most common confidants of the boys I met. While it’s wonderful to know they have someone to talk to—and I’m sure mothers, in particular, savor the role—teaching boys that women are responsible for emotional labor, for processing men’s emotional lives in ways that would be emasculating for them to do themselves, comes at a price for both sexes. Among other things, that dependence can leave men unable to identify or express their own emotions, and ill-equipped to form caring, lasting adult relationships.”

Read this carefully. Nobody is responsible for your emotional well being but you. If you are a male/man this is especially true - females/women are not responsible for managing your emotions and your reliance on them to take care of this is a form of abuse. They are not responsible for your emotions. YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR OWN EMOTIONS.

It can be really hard to see this. It was a blind spot for me for way too long. Don’t let it be one for you. Connecting with and taking responsibility for your emotions is one of the biggest things you can do to improve yourself as a human being. If you are sad you can cry. If you are happy you can laugh. You have a wide range of emotions and they don’t all lead to frustration or anger.

“As someone who, by virtue of my sex, has always had permission to weep, I didn’t initially understand this. Only after multiple interviews did I realize that when boys confided in me about crying—or, even more so, when they teared up right in front of me—they were taking a risk, trusting me with something private and precious: evidence of vulnerability, or a desire for it.“

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Okay so putting aside all of the reinforcement we get from our parents and institutions and our lack of emotional vulnerability why do we all buy into this dumb shit? Who convinced us all this is what masculinity is? And why do we listen?

“What the longtime sportswriter Robert Lipsyte calls “jock culture” (or what the boys I talked with more often referred to as “bro culture”) is the dark underbelly of male-dominated enclaves, whether or not they formally involve athletics: all-boys’ schools, fraternity houses, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, the military. Even as such groups promote bonding, even as they preach honor, pride, and integrity, they tend to condition young men to treat anyone who is not “on the team” as the enemy (the only women who ordinarily make the cut are blood relatives— bros before hos!), justifying any hostility toward them. Loyalty is paramount, and masculinity is habitually established through misogynist language and homophobia.”

Sounds familiar right guys? Don’t kid yourself. This is what being a man looks like in almost all situations in which we feel “safe” to express our self right? You are either with us or against us. Anything different or anyone questioning this behavior must be “othered” as they are clearly not “on the team”. FUCK. THIS. SHIT.

This was my entire experience as a youth. As someone who did not fit into this group (nor wanted to) I was immediately “othered” and deemed a “pussy” or “fag” or “homo” or “weirdo”. My friend group reflected this - mostly others who also were “not on the team” like women, gays and lesbians, and men who also did not identify with this version of masculinity. Which just made it easier to group us all together and identify us as the enemy. 

“Just because some young men now draw the line at referring to someone who is openly gay as a fag doesn’t mean, by the way, that gay men (or men with traits that read as gay) are suddenly safe. If anything, the gay guys I met were more conscious of the rules of manhood than their straight peers were. They had to be—and because of that, they were like spies in the house of hypermasculinity.” Without the ability to connect with and express my emotions I often reacted in anger. I started fights. I got violent (with words and writing mostly). I returned this “othering” and treated them all as the enemy. I had other reasons for this (being abused by men as a boy) but at the crux of the issue I had no trust for men. This helped me connect with women and my gay friends as they also experienced this distrust in similar (and different) ways. 

Years later I found myself in a job where I managed a group of men (100 or more at any time) working as a team (video game industry) and totally unable to connect with any of them as a human let alone a man. It was at this time that I realized this was a problem beyond my own experiences and when I started to understand my own participation in this system. 

I tried to question things as they came up. I tried to hear my teammates and help them navigate this murky sea of masculinity to find their own place in it. Most people didn’t want to participate. They learned to keep their mouth shut if I was within earshot of their typical “bro talk”. They learned to act differently around me so as not to incur my wrath (using my anger and position of power to punish them for being sexist, racist, or intolerant). I felt powerful and I tricked myself into thinking I was making a difference. I was wrong. 

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“Recently, Pascoe turned her attention to no homo, a phrase that gained traction in the 1990s. She sifted through more than 1,000 tweets, primarily by young men, that included the phrase. Most were expressing a positive emotion, sometimes as innocuous as “I love chocolate ice cream, #nohomo” or “I loved the movie The Day After Tomorrow, #nohomo.” “A lot of times they were saying things like ‘I miss you’ to a friend or ‘We should hang out soon,’ ” she said. “Just normal expressions of joy or connection.” No homo is a form of inoculation against insults from other guys, Pascoe concluded, a “shield that allows boys to be fully human.”

It wasn’t long before my “making a difference” spread into our hiring, training, and management of the team. I brought in women who wanted to work in the game industry. I tried to shut down any of the bro culture bullshit that came up and used it as an opportunity to teach other men why it was fucked up. It worked for some (maybe 5-6 people out of hundreds) but the majority either quit or tried to get me fired. Most did not change their behavior in any way. 

The women said they knew what they were getting into. I don’t believe they knew what it was like to actually be in the middle of the situation. I assume women in the military probably have a lot of experience like this. In short - it’s fucking toxic and disgusting. Like other males/men they too have to fall in line and “become one of the boys” or risk being antagonized and ostracized for being “different”. It’s Lord of the Flies. It’s fucking mob mentality. It’s masculinity at it’s absolute worst. And this was in a “progressive” creative city working for a small company with a woman CEO. Men simply don’t give a fuck and it’s almost always easier to go with the flow. FUCK. THIS. SHIT.

My first experience with a trans individual in a work setting occurred was while I was managing this team. One of our long term employees made the transition and I had to watch how they were treated by the “bros’. Jokes were made, memes were shared, snickering and fucked up behavior was rampant. I had to talk to, discipline, and fire many individuals. These were men I thought were “on the team” and working to be good examples of masculinity. I should have known that was just part of the act - their way of surviving and showing subservience to me as a man in a position of power over them. My trust was further eroded in masculinity. 

Putting yourself over others is not power. It is dehumanization and it stems from hate. We can be different without being better or worse than someone else regardless of who they are. Not everything has to be a competition. It took me way too long to undo the damage done to me by these ideal of toxic masculinity. You can do it too - you just have to start today. 

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Beyond the negative effects this version of masculinity has on us as males/men it also fucks up our interaction with women and sexual partners and it’s certainly done so to me. I’m actively working on unfucking my fucking and aware that many of my heterosexual ideals of sex stem from the same shit I have been actively fighting against most of my life. Connecting emotionally with your sexual partner takes things to a completely different level.

“It’s not like I imagined boys would gush about making sweet, sweet love to the ladies, but why was their language so weaponized ? The answer, I came to believe, was that locker-room talk isn’t about sex at all, which is why guys were ashamed to discuss it openly with me. The (often clearly exaggerated) stories boys tell are really about power: using aggression toward women to connect and to validate one another as heterosexual, or to claim top spots in the adolescent sexual hierarchy. Dismissing that as “banter” denies the ways that language can desensitize—abrade boys’ ability to see girls as people deserving of respect and dignity in sexual encounters.”  

This is the first thing that comes to my mind when I hear the term “rape culture”. As men we are taught that to be masculine is to claim “wins” in sexual conquest. Sex is property and we can collect it. Even if it’s with our long term partners or spouses. Ever tried talking to men about this? Ever questioned others on how it’s fucked up? You probably heard about how it’s all in jest. Just a joke! I’m just joking!  “When called out, boys typically claim that they thought they were just being “funny.” And in a way that makes sense—when left unexamined, such “humor” may seem like an extension of the gross-out comedy of childhood. Little boys are famous for their fart jokes, booger jokes, poop jokes. It’s how they test boundaries, understand the human body, gain a little cred among their peers. But, as can happen with sports, their glee in that can both enable and camouflage sexism. The boy who, at age 10, asks his friends the difference between a dead baby and a bowling ball may or may not find it equally uproarious, at 16, to share what a woman and a bowling ball have in common (you can Google it). He may or may not post ever-escalating “jokes” about women, or African Americans, or homosexuals, or disabled people on a group Snapchat. He may or may not send “funny” texts to friends about “girls who need to be raped,” or think it’s hysterical to surprise a buddy with a meme in which a woman is being gagged by a penis, her mascara mixed with her tears. He may or may not, at 18, scrawl the names of his hookups on a wall in his all-male dorm, as part of a year-long competition to see who can “pull” the most. Perfectly nice, bright, polite boys I interviewed had done one or another of these things.”

Let me be clear in case you are confused. This shit isn’t funny. Laughing at other people’s misfortune is a long standing human tradition yes - and it still dehumanizes everyone involved. That doesn’t make me laugh but maybe you are still amused? Why?

“At the most disturbing end of the continuum, “funny” and “hilarious” become a defense against charges of sexual harassment or assault. To cite just one example, a boy from Steubenville, Ohio, was captured on video joking about the repeated violation of an unconscious girl at a party by a couple of high-school football players. “She is so raped,” he said, laughing. “They raped her quicker than Mike Tyson.” When someone off camera suggested that rape wasn’t funny, he retorted, “It isn’t funny—it’s hilarious!”

The classic toxic masculinity force field present in my life has been the “just joking” phrase with the ultimate no consequence phrase “it’s hilarious!”. Say something you don’t want to manage the consequences for? Just a joke! People still question you or your morals after saying some heinous shit? No.. it’s cool... it’s hilarious! You just gotta laugh! FUCK. THIS. SHIT.

“Hilarious” is another way, under the pretext of horseplay or group bonding, that boys learn to disregard others’ feelings as well as their own. “Hilarious” is a haven, offering distance when something is inappropriate, confusing, depressing, unnerving, or horrifying; when something defies boys’ ethics. It allows them to subvert a more compassionate response that could be read as unmasculine—and makes sexism and misogyny feel transgressive rather than supportive of an age-old status quo. Boys may know when something is wrong; they may even know that true manhood—or maybe just common decency—compels them to speak up. Yet, too often, they fear that if they do, they’ll be marginalized or, worse, themselves become the target of derision from other boys. Masculinity, then, becomes not only about what boys do say, but about what they don’t—or won’t, or can’t—say, even when they wish they could. The psychologists Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson, the authors of Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys, have pointed out that silence in the face of cruelty or sexism is how too many boys become men. 

I feel like I may have already gone too far into this dark hole of shit that fucks me up around toxic masculinity. I hope I didn’t lose you. I hope you have questions and thoughts about how this impacts your life. Perhaps ways that you make a change today to fight against this bullshit. You may be asking yourself “what can we do!?” At the end of the day its up to males/men to change this culture. It’s not about self-hate or self-abuse. We gotta name this and own it. We need more men to step up and say ‘It doesn’t have to be like this”. Our collective mental health requires us to be more flexible and connected to ourselves and emotions. We need to find ways to deal with our anger, frustration, and desires in ways that don’t hurt ourselves and others. We need to teach ourselves (especially youth) that it isn’t enough to only talk about things we shouldn’t (and hopefully won’t) do. 

If this shit fucks you too you can do something about it. Start with yourself. Question these things when they come up. And not only when you feel “safe” to do so. Do it consistently in ways that are non-confrontational (they will probably lead to confrontations with most men anyway - sorry). Be okay with not always “winning’ in these situations. You’ll be surprised who you might connect with in the process. Hopefully one of those people will be yourself. 

[siriusist]

Recommendations for Social Sciences Literature:

So as a recently graduated law student and lawyer (as well as being affected by many areas of intersectionality related below), I’ve been really into studying the social sciences and how society reflects how it treats the least of its citizens. My friend suggested that I draw up a list of recommendations for her, and share it with others as well. 

While my interest in these books might begin in how to consider the perspectives of others and consolidate my own point of view when representing a client, I can safely reassure you all that these are (for the most part) layperson books that I read in my spare time; not ridiculous legal dirges that will put you to sleep. All these books were spectacularly engaging for me, and I’d recommend them highly.

I’d also  like to preface this list with the fact that I educate myself on books that consider intersectionality and how the experiences of individual subsections of society affect society as a whole and an individual’s position in them. While as a result of the topics themselves these books often consider bigotry and sensitive issues/topics, they are academic considerations of societal constructs and demographics (as well as the history that grows from oppression of certain subsections of society), and attempt to be balanced academic/philosophical narratives. Therefore, while difficult topics might be broached (such as, for example, the discrimination transexual women face in being considered ‘women’), none that I have read would ever be intentionally insulting/ extremist in their views, and many are written by scholars and academics directly affected by these issues. Just research these books before purchasing them, is all I ask; for your own self-care. ♥

That being said, I have divided these recommendations into several areas of study. I will also mark when there is a decided crossover of intersectionality, for your benefit:

Feminist Theory: Mostly concerned with the limitation of womens emotions, the experience of women within Trump’s America, and the idealised liberation of women in 1960s, with a particular focus on the UK and ‘swinging’ London.

Disability Theory: Academic Ableism in post-educational facilities and within the immigration process.

Black Theory: This includes the relations between colonialism and the oppressed individual’s underneath its weight, the struggle through American’s history through ‘white rage’ towards the success of African-American success, and a sad history of racial ‘passing’ in America.

Immigration Theory: This mostly focuses on the experience of the disabled and Southern/Eastern Europeans/ Jewish people entering both Canada and the United States. It also provides this background to the immigration policies against a backdrop of social eugenics. I also included a book on the UK history of the workhouse in this category, as immigrants were often disproportionately affected by poverty once arriving in the UK/England, and often had to seek shelter in such ‘establishments.’

LGBT+ Social Theory/History: The history of transsexualism and the development of transexual rights throughout history.

Canadian Indigenous Theory/History: A history of the movements between the Indigenous peoples of North America and colonialists, as well as a two-part series on Canada’s Indian Act and Reconciliation (’Legalise’ aside in its consideration of the Indian Act, these are fantastic for the layperson to understand the effect such a document has had on the modern day issues and abuse of Indigenous people in Canada in particular, as well as how non-Indigenous people may work actively towards reconciliation in the future).

Toxic Masculinity: Angry White Men essentially tries to explain the unexplainable; namely, why there has been such a rise of the racist and sexist white American male, that eventually culminated in the election of Donald Trump (However, this really rings true for any ‘angry white men’ resulting from the rise of the far right across Europe and beyond). It is based on the idea of "aggrieved entitlement": a sense that those benefits that white men believed were their due have been snatched away from them by THE REST OF US~~~. While good, also just really expect to be mad (not in particular at the poor sociologist studying this and analysing this phenomenon, as he tries to be even-handed, but that such a thing exists at all).

1. Feminist Theory:

Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger: 

As women, we’ve been urged for so long to bottle up our anger, letting it corrode our bodies and minds in ways we don’t even realize. Yet there are so, so many legitimate reasons for us to feel angry, ranging from blatant, horrifying acts of misogyny to the subtle drip, drip drip of daily sexism that reinforces the absurdly damaging gender norms of our society. In Rage Becomes Her, Soraya Chemaly argues that our anger is not only justified, it is also an active part of the solution. We are so often encouraged to resist our rage or punished for justifiably expressing it, yet how many remarkable achievements would never have gotten off the ground without the kernel of anger that fueled them? Approached with conscious intention, anger is a vital instrument, a radar for injustice and a catalyst for change. On the flip side, the societal and cultural belittlement of our anger is a cunning way of limiting and controlling our power—one we can no longer abide.

Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance, and Revolution in Trump's America: 

Nasty Women includes inspiring essays from a diverse group of talented women writers who seek to provide a broad look at how we got here and what we need to do to move forward.Featuring essays by REBECCA SOLNIT on Trump and his “misogyny army,” CHERYL STRAYED on grappling with the aftermath of Hillary Clinton’s loss, SARAH HEPOLA on resisting the urge to drink after the election, NICOLE CHUNG on family and friends who support Trump, KATHA POLLITT on the state of reproductive rights and what we do next, JILL FILIPOVIC on Trump’s policies and the life of a young woman in West Africa, SAMANTHA IRBY on racism and living as a queer black woman in rural America, RANDA JARRAR on traveling across the country as a queer Muslim American, SARAH HOLLENBECK on Trump’s cruelty toward the disabled, MEREDITH TALUSAN on feminism and the transgender community, and SARAH JAFFE on the labor movement and active and effective resistance, among others.

(A heavy focus on intersectionality ♥)

The Feminine Revolution: 21 Ways to Ignite the Power of Your Femininity for a Brighter Life and a Better World: 

Challenging old and outdated perceptions that feminine traits are weaknesses, The Feminine Revolution revisits those characteristics to show how they are powerful assets that should be embraced rather than maligned. It argues that feminine traits have been mischaracterized as weak, fragile, diminutive, and embittered for too long, and offers a call to arms to redeem them as the superpowers and gifts that they are.The authors, Amy Stanton and Catherine Connors, begin with a brief history of when-and-why these traits were defined as weaknesses, sharing opinions from iconic females including Marianne Williamson and Cindy Crawford. Then they offer a set of feminine principles that challenge current perceptions of feminine traits, while providing women new mindsets to reclaim those traits with confidence. 

How Was It For You?: Women, Sex, Love and Power in the 1960s:

The sexual revolution liberated a generation. But men most of all.

We tend to think of the 60s as a decade sprinkled with stardust: a time of space travel and utopian dreams, but above all of sexual abandonment. When the pill was introduced on the NHS in 1961 it seemed, for the first time, that women - like men - could try without buying.

But this book - by 'one of the great social historians of our time' - describes a turbulent power struggle.

Here are the voices from the battleground. Meet dollybird Mavis, debutante Kristina, Beryl who sang with the Beatles, bunny girl Patsy, Christian student Anthea, industrial campaigner Mary and countercultural Caroline. From Carnaby Street to Merseyside, from mods to rockers, from white gloves to Black is Beautiful, their stories throw an unsparing spotlight on morals, four-letter words, faith, drugs, race, bomb culture and sex.

This is a moving, shocking book about tearing up the world and starting again. It's about peace, love, psychedelia and strange pleasures, but it is also about misogyny, violation and discrimination - half a century before feminism rebranded. For out of the swamp of gropers and groupies, a movement was emerging, and discovering a new cause: equality.

The 1960s: this was where it all began. Women would never be the same again.

2. Disability Theory:

Academic Ableism: Disability and Higher Education: 

Academic Ableism brings together disability studies and institutional critique to recognize the ways that disability is composed in and by higher education, and rewrites the spaces, times, and economies of disability in higher education to place disability front and center. For too long, argues Jay Timothy Dolmage, disability has been constructed as the antithesis of higher education, often positioned as a distraction, a drain, a problem to be solved. The ethic of higher education encourages students and teachers alike to accentuate ability, valorize perfection, and stigmatize anything that hints at intellectual, mental, or physical weakness, even as we gesture toward the value of diversity and innovation. Examining everything from campus accommodation processes, to architecture, to popular films about college life, Dolmage argues that disability is central to higher education, and that building more inclusive schools allows better education for all.

(See immigration below for another book by this author on the intersection between immigration policy and disability).

3. Black Theory:

Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon: 

A major influence on civil rights, anti-colonial, and black consciousness movements around the world, Black Skin, White Masks is the unsurpassed study of the black psyche in a white world. Hailed for its scientific analysis and poetic grace when it was first published in 1952, the book remains a vital force today from one of the most important theorists of revolutionary struggle, colonialism, and racial difference in history.

White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism: 

Referring to the defensive moves that white people make when challenged racially, white fragility is characterized by emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and by behaviors including argumentation and silence. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium and prevent any meaningful cross-racial dialogue. In this in-depth exploration, the author examines how white fragility develops, how it protects racial inequality, and what we can do to engage more constructively.

White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide: 

From the Civil War to our combustible present, and now with a new epilogue about the 2016 presidential election, acclaimed historian Carol Anderson reframes our continuing conversation about race. White Rage chronicles the powerful forces opposed to black progress in America. As Ferguson, Missouri, erupted in August 2014, and media commentators across the ideological spectrum referred to the angry response of African Americans as “black rage,” historian Carol Anderson wrote a remarkable op-ed in the Washington Post showing that this was, instead, “white rage at work. With so much attention on the flames,” she writes, “everyone had ignored the kindling.”Since 1865 and the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, every time African Americans have made advances towards full participation in our democracy, white reaction has fueled a deliberate and relentless rollback of their gains. The end of the Civil War and Reconstruction was greeted with the Black Codes and Jim Crow; the Supreme Court's landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision was met with the shutting down of public schools throughout the South while taxpayer dollars financed segregated white private schools; the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 triggered a coded but powerful response, the so-called Southern Strategy and the War on Drugs that disenfranchised millions of African Americans while propelling presidents Nixon and Reagan into the White House.Carefully linking these and other historical flashpoints when social progress for African Americans was countered by deliberate and cleverly crafted opposition, Anderson pulls back the veil that has long covered actions made in the name of protecting democracy, fiscal responsibility, or protection against fraud, rendering visible the long lineage of white rage. Compelling and dramatic in the unimpeachable history it relates, White Rage will add an important new dimension to the national conversation about race in America.

A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life:

 Between the eighteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, countless African Americans passed as white, leaving behind families and friends, roots and community. It was, as Allyson Hobbs writes, a chosen exile, a separation from one racial identity and the leap into another. This revelatory history of passing explores the possibilities and challenges that racial indeterminacy presented to men and women living in a country obsessed with racial distinctions. It also tells a tale of loss.As racial relations in America have evolved so has the significance of passing. To pass as white in the antebellum South was to escape the shackles of slavery. After emancipation, many African Americans came to regard passing as a form of betrayal, a selling of one’s birthright. When the initially hopeful period of Reconstruction proved short-lived, passing became an opportunity to defy Jim Crow and strike out on one’s own.Although black Americans who adopted white identities reaped benefits of expanded opportunity and mobility, Hobbs helps us to recognize and understand the grief, loneliness, and isolation that accompanied―and often outweighed―these rewards. By the dawning of the civil rights era, more and more racially mixed Americans felt the loss of kin and community was too much to bear, that it was time to “pass out” and embrace a black identity. Although recent decades have witnessed an increasingly multiracial society and a growing acceptance of hybridity, the problem of race and identity remains at the center of public debate and emotionally fraught personal decisions.

4. Immigration Theory:

The Guarded Gate: Bigotry, Eugenics and the Law That Kept Two Generations of Jews, Italians, and Other European Immigrants Out of America:  

A forgotten, dark chapter of American history with implications for the current day, The Guarded Gate tells the story of the scientists who argued that certain nationalities were inherently inferior, providing the intellectual justification for the harshest immigration law in American history. Brandished by the upper class Bostonians and New Yorkers—many of them progressives—who led the anti-immigration movement, the eugenic arguments helped keep hundreds of thousands of Jews, Italians, and other unwanted groups out of the US for more than 40 years.Over five years in the writing, The Guarded Gate tells the complete story from its beginning in 1895, when Henry Cabot Lodge and other Boston Brahmins launched their anti-immigrant campaign. In 1921, Vice President Calvin Coolidge declared that “biological laws” had proven the inferiority of southern and eastern Europeans; the restrictive law was enacted three years later.

Disabled Upon Arrival: Eugenics, Immigration, and the Construction of Race and Disability: 

In North America, immigration has never been about immigration. That was true in the early twentieth century when anti-immigrant rhetoric led to draconian crackdowns on the movement of bodies, and it is true today as new measures seek to construct migrants as dangerous and undesirable. This premise forms the crux of Jay Timothy Dolmage’s new book Disabled Upon Arrival: Eugenics, Immigration, and the Construction of Race and Disability, a compelling examination of the spaces, technologies, and discourses of immigration restriction during the peak period of North American immigration in the early twentieth century.Through careful archival research and consideration of the larger ideologies of racialization and xenophobia, Disabled Upon Arrival links anti-immigration rhetoric to eugenics—the flawed “science” of controlling human population based on racist and ableist ideas about bodily values. Dolmage casts an enlightening perspective on immigration restriction, showing how eugenic ideas about the value of bodies have never really gone away and revealing how such ideas and attitudes continue to cast groups and individuals as disabled upon arrival. 

The Workhouse: The People, The Places, The Life Behind Doors:

In this fully updated and revised edition of his best-selling book, Simon Fowler takes a fresh look at the workhouse and the people who sought help from it. He looks at how the system of the Poor Law - of which the workhouse was a key part - was organized and the men and women who ran the workhouses or were employed to care for the inmates. But above all this is the moving story of the tens of thousands of children, men, women and the elderly who were forced to endure grim conditions to survive in an unfeeling world. 

5. LGBT+ Social Theory/History:

Transgender History: The Roots of Today's Revolution:

Covering American transgender history from the mid-twentieth century to today, Transgender History takes a chronological approach to the subject of transgender history, with each chapter covering major movements, writings, and events. Chapters cover the transsexual and transvestite communities in the years following World War II; trans radicalism and social change, which spanned from 1966 with the publication of The Transsexual Phenomenon, and lasted through the early 1970s; the mid-'70s to 1990-the era of identity politics and the changes witnessed in trans circles through these years; and the gender issues witnessed through the '90s and '00s.

Transgender History includes informative sidebars highlighting quotes from major texts and speeches in transgender history and brief biographies of key players, plus excerpts from transgender memoirs and discussion of treatments of transgenderism in popular culture.

6. Canadian Indigenous Theory/History:

The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America: 

Rich with dark and light, pain and magic, The Inconvenient Indian distills the insights gleaned from Thomas King's critical and personal meditation on what it means to be "Indian" in North America, weaving the curiously circular tale of the relationship between non-Natives and Natives in the centuries since the two first encountered each other. In the process, King refashions old stories about historical events and figures, takes a sideways look at film and pop culture, relates his own complex experiences with activism, and articulates a deep and revolutionary understanding of the cumulative effects of ever-shifting laws and treaties on Native peoples and lands. 

21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act: Helping Canadians Make Reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples a Reality:

Since its creation in 1876, the Indian Act has shaped, controlled, and constrained the lives and opportunities of Indigenous Peoples, and is at the root of many enduring stereotypes. Bob Joseph's book comes at a key time in the reconciliation process, when awareness from both Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities is at a crescendo. Joseph explains how Indigenous Peoples can step out from under the Indian Act and return to self-government, self-determination, and self-reliance - and why doing so would result in a better country for every Canadian. He dissects the complex issues around truth and reconciliation, and clearly demonstrates why learning about the Indian Act's cruel, enduring legacy is essential for the country to move toward true reconciliation.

Indigenous Relations: Insights, Tips & Suggestions to Make Reconciliation a Reality:

A timely sequel to the bestselling 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act - and an invaluable guide for anyone seeking to work more effectively with Indigenous Peoples.

We are all treaty people. But what are the everyday impacts of treaties, and how can we effectively work toward reconciliation if we're worried our words and actions will unintentionally cause harm?

Practical and inclusive, Indigenous Relations interprets the difference between hereditary and elected leadership, and why it matters; explains the intricacies of Aboriginal Rights and Title, and the treaty process; and demonstrates the lasting impact of the Indian Act, including the barriers that Indigenous communities face and the truth behind common myths and stereotypes perpetuated since Confederation.

Indigenous Relations equips you with the necessary knowledge to respectfully avoid missteps in your work and daily life, and offers an eight-part process to help business and government work more effectively with Indigenous Peoples - benefitting workplace culture as well as the bottom line. Indigenous Relations is an invaluable tool for anyone who wants to improve their cultural competency and undo the legacy of the Indian Act.

7. Toxic Masculinity:

Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era: 

One of the headlines of the 2012 Presidential campaign was the demise of the white American male voter as a dominant force in the political landscape. On election night four years later, when Donald Trump was announced the winner, it became clear that the white American male voter is alive and well and angry as hell. Sociologist Michael Kimmel, one of the leading writers on men and masculinity in the world today, has spent hundreds of hours in the company of America's angry white men – from white supremacists to men's rights activists to young students. In Angry White Men, he presents a comprehensive diagnosis of their fears, anxieties, and rage.Kimmel locates this increase in anger in the seismic economic, social and political shifts that have so transformed the American landscape. Downward mobility, increased racial and gender equality, and a tenacious clinging to an anachronistic ideology of masculinity has left many men feeling betrayed and bewildered. Raised to expect unparalleled social and economic privilege, white men are suffering today from what Kimmel calls "aggrieved entitlement": a sense that those benefits that white men believed were their due have been snatched away from them.

Happy reading, everyone. ♥