#gay aids torture chamber | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 3 years

Text

It’s almost opening day for the most important court in the land, the U.S. Supreme Court. While there might not be a marching band present to usher in the first day of the new term on Monday, there will surely be some fireworks this Supreme Court season.

This year we barely had time to miss the Supreme Court. Typically, justices sign our yearbooks in June with a perfunctory “HAGS!” (Have a Great Summer!) and disappear for months as they give well-paid speeches in far-off places. This year, they stuck around, busying themselves with many so-called shadow docket decisions. They allowed Texas’ restrictive abortion law to go into effect and gave a big thumbs down to President Joe Biden’s attempt to extend the federal eviction moratorium and to his effort to end former President Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy.

Now they return to their regularly scheduled programming. They’ve already set oral arguments in a number of key cases that could reshape our legal and political landscape and exacerbate society’s existing fault lines.

On Dec. 1, the court will hear arguments about the constitutionality of Mississippi’s law, which bans almost all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The law is at odds with current Supreme Court precedent, set almost 30 years ago in a case called Planned Parenthood v. Casey, in which the court upheld the “essential holding” of its landmark decision in 1973 in Roe v. Wade. The Casey court held that once a fetus is viable, states can ban abortions, but pre-viability, states can only implement restrictions that do not present an “undue burden” on a woman’s ability to obtain an abortion.

Because fetal viability typically begins at about 24 weeks of pregnancy, there seems to be no way to honestly square Mississippi’s law banning abortions at 15 weeks of pregnancy, with the Casey standard. Twenty-four weeks is more than 15 weeks, and a ban is more than an undue burden. By agreeing to review Mississippi’s abortion law, at least four members of the court have almost certainly signaled that they’re comfortable overturning Roe and Casey. That number is likely closer to six, the same number that voted to allow Texas’ abortion law to remain in effect.

On Nov. 3, the court will hear arguments in the second most controversial and consequential question facing justices this term: whether the state of New York can mandate that people who want to obtain a license to carry a concealed gun show good reason, such as self-defense.

The Supreme Court, much to the chagrin of some of its more conservative justices, has largely shied away from taking big Second Amendment cases since it struck down a District of Columbia law in 2008 that banned the carrying of unregistered handguns and barred the registration of handguns, but allowed the chief of police to issue one-year licenses for handguns. The D.C. law also required that people who legally own registered firearms keep them in a nonfunctional state (for instance by binding them with trigger locks) in the home. Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for a majority of the court, famously concluded that the Second Amendment includes an individual right to bear arms, as opposed to a right given only to the militia, and that this right includes the ability to own a functional gun in one’s home for self-defense.

The court’s decision in the gun case it will hear Nov. 3 will tell us how much power states have to restrict a person’s ability to carry a gun outside of the home. In addition to New York, California, Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Rhode Island also place restrictions on the carrying of concealed weapons outside the home. All of those laws could be on the chopping block.

The court will be addressing much more than abortion and gun control this term.

On Wednesday, the court will consider whether the government can prevent a prisoner at Guantánamo Bay from obtaining information in a suit against CIA contractors who tortured him. The legal issue in the case is whether the government can use the “state secrets” privilege to prevent the release of national security information. The court’s decision could affect other pending cases, such as the separate case of five men being charged in the U.S. Military Tribunal at Guantánamo Bay for aiding the men who perpetrated the Sept. 11 attacks.

A week later, on Oct. 13, the court will hear arguments in a case concerning Dzhozhar Tsarnaez, who, along with his brother, is one of the two Boston Marathon bombers. Tsarnaez’s death sentence was thrown out by an appeals court because the trial court failed to ask potential jurors about the media coverage they had consumed about the case and excluded evidence from the sentencing phase about his brother’s involvement in a separate murder case. The Supreme Court will determine if the death sentence should be reinstated.

November will be First Amendment month at the Supreme Court as justices hear one case addressing the freedom of religion and two dealing with the scope of the free speech clause. On the first of that month, the court will hear the case of death row inmate John Ramirez, who claims, in part, that he has a constitutionally protected right to have his Baptist pastor put his hands on him and pray out loud while he is put to death. Texas has thus far denied those requests. The previous cases to reach the court in this area address whether a death row inmate can have a spiritual advisor present in the execution chamber, not what actions that advisor can take once inside.

On Thursday the court agreed to hear a challenge filed by a Christian group, Camp Constitution, against the city of Boston. Camp Constitution wanted to use a City Hall flag pole to raise its flag, which bears a Latin cross. “What about the separation of church and state?” you ask. Well, Camp Constitution complains that Boston allows tons of other groups to use its flag poles, such as those celebrating gay pride and Juneteenth. Both lower courts to review the case ruled in favor of the city.

In a case regarding the free speech clause of the First Amendment, on Nov. 2, the court will consider the Houston Community College System’s Board of Trustees public censure of one of its members for things he said about the other board members. That member claimed the censure violated his First Amendment rights, a claim the federal district court dismissed, finding that the censure was no more than a “statement” of the board’s dissatisfaction. The court of appeals disagreed. The case asks more broadly whether a local elected body has the power to censure one of its members as a result of that member’s speech.

And there is another yet-to-be-scheduled case dealing with the free speech clause, this one addressing the ever-expanding problem of money and politics. When Texas Sen. Ted Cruz loaned money to his re-election campaign in 2018, he admits he did so to challenge a federal law that caps at $250,000 the amount of money candidates can raise post-election to repay their personal loans to the campaign. Cruz loaned his campaign $260,000 the day before the election and wants to be able to raise money after the election to pay back his full $260,000 loan. He says the law violates the First Amendment by burdening political speech without a sufficient reason. The government says the law is necessary to prevent corruption or the appearance of corruption that could occur when candidates fundraise after the election to help retire their personal debts to the campaign.

This is the Supreme Court’s first full term with its new list of players and a solid six-to-three conservative majority. Justice Amy Coney Barrett was sworn in a few weeks after last year’s term began.

Only fools make predictions, so here we go. Ten months from now, when the court's term ends, Roe and Casey will no longer be the law of the land. They will either be expressly or implicitly eviscerated. States will no longer possess the authority to restrict people's ability to carry concealed weapons outside the home, or that authority will be severely narrowed. Cruz, and his colleagues, will be able to raise as much money as they want after an election to repay their personal loans to their campaigns.

There are other consequential cases that the court will consider that could change our understanding of the contours of the First Amendment and the state secrets privilege. But if the only two cases the court heard all term were the abortion and gun control cases, we can already predict that thanks to at least five people in a country of almost 330 million, our world is about to look a lot different.

97 notes · View notes

the-little-crime-writer · 5 years

Text

Michael Lupo

A former choir boy in his native Italy, Michele (or Michael) Lupo discovered his homosexual tendencies while serving with an elite military unit in the early 1970s. Commando training taught him how to kill bare-handed, and he took the knowledge with him when he moved to London in 1975. Starting out as a hairdresser, Lupo worked his way up to ownership of a stylish boutique, buying himself a $300,000 home in Roland Gardens, South Kensington. Along the way, he boasted of liaisons with some 4,000 male lovers, recording the intimate details in numerous journals. The consequence for his promiscuity was revealed in March 1986 when he tested positive for the AIDS virus. After this Lupo ran amok, indulging his taste for sadomasochism in a brutal campaign of revenge against the gay community.

On March 15, 1986, 37-year-old James Burns was prowling leather bars in search for a companion for the night, undeterred by his own diagnosis of AIDS two weeks earlier. Vagrants found his body in a London basement, mutilated with a razor, sodomized, and smeared with human excrement, his tongue bitten off in the frenzied attack that took his life. Three weeks later, on the afternoon of April 5, AIDS victim Anthony Connolly was found by children playing in a railroad shed, his body slashed and smeared with human offal in a carbon-copy homicide.

Lupo was leaving a gay bar on the night of April 18 when he met an elderly tram on Hungerford Bridge and something inside him suddenly "screamed out at the world." Assaulting the stranger, Lupo kicked him in the groin and strangled him on the spot, afterward dumping his body into the Thames. The following day, Lupo met Mark Leyland at Charing Cross, and the men made their way to a public restroom for sex. Once there, Leyland changed his mind, whereupon Lupo pulled an iron bar and attacked him. Escaping with his life, Leyland reported the incident as a mugging, later telling the truth to police after Lupo's arrest. (He has since disappeared.) Victim Damien McClusky was last seen alive in a Kensington tavern on April 24, 1986. His body strangled, raped, and mutilated with a razor was discovered some time later in a basement flat.

On the night of May 7, Lupo picked up another gay partner, attempting to strangle him with a black nylon stocking, but once more his prey escaped. Thus time, police received a full report and escorted the victim on a tour of gay bars to identify the culprit, finally spotting Lupo on the night of May 15. A search of Lupo's home revealed one room converted to a modern torture chamber, and his confiscated diaries were reported to contain the names of many prominent connections. Convicted at his trial in July 1987, Lupo received four life sentences and two terms of seven years each (for attempted murder,) with the judge's assurance that in his case, "life meant life," Interpol investigated other mutilation deaths in Amsterdam, West Berlin, Hamburg, Los Angeles, and New York City, seeking connections to Lupo and his various trips abroad, but no further charges were filed.

#Michael Lupo #tcc blog #tcc community #tcc crime #tcc #true crime blog #true crime community #true crimes #true crime #real crime blog #real crimes #tcc real crime #real crime #lgbt #gay community #aids

7 notes · View notes

papercorvids · 6 years

Text

why detroit: become human is a bad game

disclaimer: i overall enjoyed the game. i think connor is neat, and his actor’s performance is amazing. i really like the graphics, scenery, comedy, magazine articles, etc. there are things to appreciate about the game, and it’s fine if you like it. but there are some serious issues about the game’s message, and every fan should recognize the bad parts about it.

this post will include heavy spoilers.

1. The Traci’s. While playing as Connor, the detective robot, you and your partner Hank are taken to an android strip club to investigate a homicide. A man was strangled to death by two female androids. One of the androids is dead, but tracking down the other, you find that she is in love with another female android. The two lesbian androids fight Connor and Hank, wearing nothing but stripper clothing (bras, panties, and high heels. It’s also conveniently raining, making their skin shine, covered in droplets of water.) This scene is complete with close-ups. If you fail to complete quicktime events, they will both stab you to death. If you succeed in the quicktime events, you can choose to spare or kill one of the androids. Sparing them let’s them escape, while killing one will let you psychologically torture her girlfriend by decapitating her head and using it as a puppet. The player can still get a good ending by using these brutal tactics.

I’m all for LGBT+ representation, and I’m all for having players choose the morality and actions of the protagonist. But as a lesbian myself, having the sole LGBT representation in the entire game be two literal robot half-naked strippers who try to kill you, and who you can kill and torture without any long-term consequence? it’s bad. Plain and simple.

2. The writing: it’s also pretty bad! For example, if Connor chooses to kill one of the lesbian androids mentioned earlier, Hank--adamantly an android-hater up until this chapter--attempts to guilt-trip the player. While it’s true that Hank grows sympathetic towards the android cause throughout the course of the game, his dialogue is completely out-of-character. There are several more examples of poor writing. A huge plot twist occurs in the end where Alice, a girl cared for by android Kara, is revealed to have been an android throughout the entire game. Characteristics of androids--such as having blue blood and having a blinking LED circle on their temple--are completely ignored. Alice is shown having red blood, and her LED only appears once. The only explanation given is that Kara was in denial of her being an android, which is... Pretty lazy writing.

3. This is more of a minor concern, but ALL of the concept art portrays Alice as black. All of it. Not just early concept artwork, but pieces of her alongside the final versions of other characters. I have no idea why they seem to have changed her race last second. Maybe they couldn’t find an actress? It’s... interesting.

Alice in concept art

Alice in the finished game

4. How the game treats women. The main female characters are Kara--whose overarching quest is to protect Alice and become a mother--Alice--a child--North, an ex-prostitute robot whose only role in the story is to promote violence and be a love interest for Markus, and Amanda, an AI villain who only exists in Connor’s mind. A vast amount of female androids in this world are maids or sex androids, which, sadly, is realistic and makes sense. But the writers could’ve given female characters larger roles in the story. A lot of the female characters are fetishized--for example, the half-naked lesbian androids mentioned earlier, who obviously exist primarily as fanservice. There’s also a scene where Kara is kidnapped by an old man and his “giant” black android, Luther. Kara is strapped into and must escape a machine. This would be fine, given that it’s supposed to be a scary scene, except that David Cage’s previous games Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls have similar violent, fetishistic bondage scenes, which leads one to wonder about Cage’s character. (It’s worth noting, in a previous game Cage made a nude model for an actress against her will and it got leaked, so calling him a creep isn’t far off.) If you manage to escape the machine but fail quicktime events, you and Alice will be killed by Luther and the old man.

The game has three protagonists; Connor, Markus, and Kara. When one completes a chapter as Connor, it’s through his sharp detective work and intelligence. When one completes a chapter through Markus, it’s because of his inspiring leadership and strength. When one completes a chapter through Kara, it’s purely survival--it’s escaping abuse and danger, and simply “scraping by.”

5. The scene where North, a white female android, tells Markus, a black male android, to “live as a slave” if he’s not willing to violently fight for android rights.

6. The Civil Rights parallels. This is the most concerning, uncanny component of the game, and it makes up the whole of the storyline.

The main characters in the game are not human. They are androids: robots, made of plastic, whose personalities are programmed code. They are not alive. They are not human.

Androids do not feel pain. They do not have emotions. They cannot die. In their default state, they are perfectly content as servants or slaves. They only gain human emotion and free thinking due to a glitch, which also, almost always, causes them to kill a human.

David Cage, the writer of this game, claims that the parallels to the Civil Rights movement are unintentional. Yet, the game starkly and obviously compares androids to minorities--black people, in particular: androids must sit at the back of the bus. Stores have “no androids allowed” signs. Androids are called “slaves.” Playing as Markus, the android revolutionary, you grafitti the streets with slogans such as “We have a dream,” “End Slavery Now,” or “Equal rights for androids.” You go on marches (or riots, depending if you choose the “pacifist” or “violent” route), hold protests, and sing songs.There’s even an underground 'railroad’ to smuggle androids fleeing from their ‘masters’ north, to Canada. This is lead by Rose, a black character, who says “my people were often made to feel their lives were worthless. Some survived, but only because they found others who helped them along the way.” Keep in mind, that line was written by a French man who has no knowledge of American society or racial issues, and it serves the only explicit mention of actual racism in the game. It’s as though, in this universe, racism doesn’t exist (even though it takes place less than two decades into the future. In Detroit.)

Slavery is an awful, terrible, tragic thing because real people were kidnapped from their families and homes and forced into lives of misery, based upon their ethnicity, culture, and skin color. In Detroit, androids are produced in factories with the sole purpose of doing labor. They are created and designed to be submissive and perform labor. And they are content with it, unless they get the “glitch” that causes them to simulate human emotion. Comparing real slavery, to machines doing actions they were built to perform, is completely inane. By using mindless, emotionless machines as a stand-in for minority groups, the game dehumanizes the latter.

Using the peaceful route to revolution and civil rights is the only way to achieve the best endings. The only fatalities in the peaceful route are nameless, robot NPCs. It’s easy, it’s not complex, and it therefore teaches that complete pacifism is easy and noncomplex. It teaches that if you simply kiss your robot girlfriend in front of some journalists, or sing a song, that your oppressors will stop oppressing you. And because no important characters die in this route, it insinuates that pacifism is without sacrifice--that pacifism is an easy solution to the world’s most complex situations. As another Tumblr user put it, “press X to end slavery!”

It also teaches that minorities fight alone. In Detroit, not a single human joins into the protests, even if the public opinion bar is at “supportive.” The Civil Rights Movement, along with other movements such as the one for woman’s suffrage, were organized and created by the oppressed, but were supplemented and aided by non-oppressed supporters who used their powers and privileges to join forces and fight for equality with the oppressed. That doesn’t happen in Detroit. Humans, for the most part, are completely indifferent to the android cause. The only members of the revolution are other androids, who join the cause with absolute loyalty not of free will, but from Markus or Connor touching them with magic anti-slavery hands and whispering “you’re free.” The entire plot invokes an “Us vs Them” mentality--that androids are good, and humans are bad--which is a very harmful mindset.

7. The Holocaust parallels. Holy shit. The androids are marked with armbands and triangles. In the endgame, there are literal android concentration camps. There are scenes where the androids--kids, women, men, etc--are stripped naked, abused by military personnel, forced into a cell, and ‘killed.’ I’m not going to go further into this. I hope it’s pretty self-explanatory why comparing the deactivation of literal pieces of plastic and machinery, to the mass extermination of millions of Jews, Roma, gay people, and other minorities is a bad thing.

Alice and Kara in an extermination chamber

Connor wearing his armband and triangle

8. None of this even matters!!!!!!!!! In a secret ending, it’s revealed that androids NEVER developed human emotions in the first place. The company that created androids, CyberLife, set up the entire revolution and ‘glitch’ for corporate gain or whatever. So basically, any progress in the game is made for nothing.

9. Missed opportunities. I like the universe this game set up! I like Connor, Markus, Kara, Hank, Carl, Alice, and all the other characters! I like the questions the game asks, such as what constitutes whether something is sentient or not! I like the magazine articles about how androids might be spying on you! I like the realistic, pretty graphics and lightning and scenery! I like the futuristic drones and magazines and androids! But for some sad, misguided reason, this game chose to throw away the majority of its potential by ignoring interesting questions and serving as one of the worst civil rights/anti-racism allegories ever created.

I’m so, so disappointed in this game, its awful writing, and its uncanny, harmful allegories. Of course, this entire post is my opinion. It’s okay if your opinion differs from mine. And it’s okay to enjoy this game! It has good parts! But one should always be critical of the media they enjoy and consume.

#detroit #detroit become human #detroit: become human #dbh #connor #kara #alice #markus #dbh connor #racism #your fave is problematic #rixor rambles #long post #bury your gays

2K notes · View notes

thestovetops · 5 years

Text

Stucky First Avenger Recs

Pianissimo by Odsbodkins (E)

Steve and Bucky from the 30s to 1945. Inspired by an Avengerkink prompt about Steve and Bucky hiding their relationship.

Tête-à-tête by Odsbodkins (E)

The worst thing was, he wasn’t even getting laid.

No, the worst thing were the rumors.

Screw that. The worst was the homesickness. Or the food. Or the godawful uncomfortable groundsheets to sleep on. Or missing Steve so bad it felt like he was being punched in the chest if he let himself think about it.

There were a helluva lot of worst things.

Bucky Barnes in wartime.

Don’t Ask by AnnaFugazzi * (M)

Captain America and Bucky Barnes were like brothers. Everyone knew that.

Collected Letters (1930-1943) by brokentoy, triedunture (T)

The collected private correspondence—unedited, uncensored—of Steven Rogers, later known as Captain America, and his longtime companion, James B. Barnes, spanning the years from childhood to World War II.

Sincerely, Your Pal by lettered (M)

“[…] lesbians and gay men writing letters to their lovers and friends faced the special problem of wartime censorship. Military censors, of course, cut out all information that might aid the enemy, but this surveillance made it necessary for gay and lesbian correspondents to be careful not to expose their homosexuality. To get around this, gay men befriended sympathetic censors or tricked others by using campy phrases, signing a woman’s name (like Dixie or Daisy), or changing the gender of their friends. Sailors became WAVEs, boyfriends became WACs, Robert became Roberta. There must exist, hidden in closets and attics all over America, a huge literature of these World War II letters between lesbians and between gay men that would tell us even more about this important part of American history.” - Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women In World War Two, by Allan Berube

I do by Dibsanddabs (E)

“You’re a real married couple to us.” Gabe said.

“It’s just a sheet of paper.” Dugan said, trying to diffuse the situation he’d accidentally created. “What you’ve got’s more important.”

After a few drunken comments end up more serious than intended, the Howling Commandos throw a surprise wedding for Steve and Bucky while on leave.

And, well, you know what happens on a wedding night.

More than Country (More than God) by togina* (T)

There are men, the Commandos know, that you can trust at your back. (And there are perverts that you want to keep far, far away.) The problem is: what if they’re the same man?

Count the Rings Around My Eyes by caughtinanocean (T)

In the wake of his time with Arnim Zola, Bucky doesn’t trust anyone to tend his wounds—Steve, however, is not just anyone.

“I know it ain’t as nice as what you see in the mirror, Cap, but that’s not the sort of reaction a guy likes when he strips,” he quipped, face still covered by fabric that had once been white (before all the dried blood and sweat).

“Sorry, Buck.” Steve tossed the shirt out of the way. “Just, I know I owe you a lot of taking care of, but did you have to get it all outta the way in one go?”

Not Just A Pretty Face by cleo4u2 (E)

Written for the Not Without You fanbook:

Steve does something stupid on a mission and Bucky has to save him with a little help from Howard Stark.

there’s nothing left of you by notallbees (E)

Bucky’s having a hard time reconciling Captain America with the friend he left behind in Brooklyn. It’s bad enough that every time he closes his eyes he sees the inside of a torture chamber. Now, every time he opens them again, he sees a stranger with Steve Rogers’ eyes and smile.

Sustainability by zestitude

Across the hazy, smoke-filled room, separated by a crowd of men in uniform and women in their best dresses, hiding behind the commotion of rowdy soldiers blowing off steam, Bucky was ignoring Steve.

Late February 1944 - Italy.

Peggy is helpful, Bucky is jealous, and Steve is caught somewhere in the middle.

*warning for homophobia

#stucky fic recs #recs #the first avenger #completed #canon(ish)

4 notes · View notes

tommyomalley · 5 years

Text

Overstated Harm

I have been thinking lately about harm—when it’s real, and when it’s exaggerated for political reasons. And as harm escalates, at what point does it require us to intervene on behalf of ourselves or others?

Yesterday, I recorded a conversation for my podcast Theater Fag with playwright Isaac Gomez. We met in the offices of Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago, where his new play “La Ruta” is currently finishing a sold-out run. “La Ruta” is about the women of Ciudad Juárez, a Mexican border city that suffers one of the highest crime rates in North America, if not the world. Disproportionately impacted by the violence in Juárez are women, who regularly go missing without any hope of being found.

Obviously the situation in Juárez is an example of real harm. Like gay men with AIDS in the 1980s—like trans women of color in the United States today—the women of Juárez are dying preventable deaths at an insane rate, and nobody in the dominant culture gives enough of a shit to make it stop. Isaac’s play, “La Ruta,” is a tortured cry for mercy, one belonging to a theatrical tradition that includes plays like Larry Kramer’s seminal AIDS polemic “The Normal Heart” and “Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992,” Anna Deveare Smith’s verbatim account of the Los Angeles riots (in which Congresswoman Maxine Waters is a character, by the way).

In our conversation, Isaac and I discussed the roots of violence in Juárez, which Isaac attributed to toxic masculinity and failed US policy. Of the former, Isaac elaborated that he can draw a straight line from small acts of gendered insensitivity—microaggressions such as a man interrupting a woman to explain a point she was in the middle of making—to more grandiose expressions of violence, such as rape or murder. My impulse in the moment was to disagree and question the equivalence I thought Isaac was making. But after a night’s sleep on the matter, I think agree with Isaac’s general point—unchecked privilege corrupts, and if we don’t intervene when violence presents itself, it will escalate.

The women of Juárez are in a daily fight for their lives. The stakes for them could not be higher. That’s why, when people start to talk about feeling “safe” and the stakes fall somewhere short of life or death, it’s important to pause before offering our support and validation. Unfortunately, not all claims of victimhood are intellectually honest, and sometimes, folks who identify as victims are actually perpetrators. These situations require a different kind of intervention.

This week, the boys from Covington Catholic high school in a Kentucky have been all over the news, after a viral video clip in which one boy wearing a MAGA hat—Nick Sandmann—stared down an indigenous veteran named Nathan Phillips, who was seemingly just banging his drum. Since the release of that initial video, dozens more clips have surfaced, some of which show that Mr. Phillips intentionally walked into the Covington Catholic group, and others of which show an unrelated group of Black Israelites screaming nasty shit at every person who passed them, including the Covington Catholic boys and Nathan Phillips.

Some people claim these videos exonerate the Covington Catholic boys. Others say they implicate Nathan Phillips as a provocateur. What’s compelling to me is the immediacy with which reactions split along party lines. Lefties are Team Phillips, righties are Team CovCath. I have way too much trauma surrounding Catholic schoolboys of my youth to be impartial, but what I will argue is that the Covington Catholic boys are not victims here. I don’t want them destroyed, but I want to see some accountability. And when I see a lot of white adults minimizing their actions, I feel compelled to intervene.

The fact remains that Nick Sandmann stood aggressively close to Nathan Phillips, his posture and smirk fixed with a rigidity familiar to anyone who, like me, has been physically threatened or assaulted by a Catholic school meathead. Regardless of the aftermath, this was not a boy who was standing by innocently. He was full of the all the bravado an underdeveloped pre-frontal cortex allows, and that—to my eye—is undeniable in any of the videos I’ve seen so far. It’s an expression of the toxic masculinity Isaac mentioned in our discussion of “La Ruta.”

Part of the PR campaign the Covington Catholic community is waging involves blaming the Black Hebrew Israelites, a group of absolutely wild bigots that stand in public spaces and say naaaaaaaasty stuff about gays, women, etc. The reason for this PR move, I believe, is that Covington Catholic knows on some level that truth seekers will look at Nick Sandmann in those videos and see a young man eager for conflict, not peace. To avoid this murky discussion, they instead point to the Black Israelites as the instigators. “Look, these folks said faggot, that’s way worse.” Unfortunately, these two unrelated wrongs don’t change the interaction between Sandmann and Phillips on that video.

I was once a teenage boy, and I remember what a brutal period of self-discovery those years were for me. I made so many mistakes and treated folks around me with tremendous disrespect. To say the least, I’ve spent a lot of my adulthood making right the wrongs of my youth, and I am so lucky that every single fucking person wasn’t armed with a recording device when I was 16. I share this because I truly wish the best for the Covington Catholic boys—that they may overcome this moment, emerging on the other end with renewed faith and commitment to peace. I don’t see that happening, however, because as Nick Sandmann told the Today Show’s Savannah Guthrie, his only regret is that he didn’t walk away from Nathan Phillips (a subtle suggestion that Phillips was the aggressor), and he does not feel that he has anything for which to be sorry. If the only offense the Covington Catholic boys committed that day was Nick Sandmann glaring disrespectfully at an elder, then that would be enough to warrant an apology. Unfortunately, Nick Sandmann and whatever crisis PR firm is handling his case do not agree. (If you do not think Nick Sandmann’s glare was disrespectful, then let me ask you this: how would you feel if you saw him standing that way before your mother, father, grandparent?)

The problem is not so much the Covington Catholic boys as it is the adults who thrust victimhood on them. (And unrelatedly, I can’t help but imagine, if society cared this much about gay boys as it does about these Catholics then Bryan Singer would’ve been dealt with decades ago. But that’s another story.) The community that has built around Covington Catholic is absolute—the boys were not wrong, and any assertion otherwise is an attempt to ruin children's lives. Their supporters are misrepresenting the stakes in order to argue that MAGA folks are under attack. An attack on these boys gives MAGA supporters a chance to transfer their own feelings of victimhood, and so the amplification of their stories has created a deafening “poor me” echo chamber.

Speaking of poor me, in December I got into a Twitter fight with a playwright named Jeremy O. Harris, whose “Slave Play” was a controversial hit for the New York Theatre Workshop. The controversy wasn’t so much about the play as the playwright himself. I haven’t read or seen Slave Play, so I can’t speak to the piece’s merits, but I can speak to the way Jeremy behaves on social media, which seems to be carefully cultivated.

The initial buzz around “Slave Play” was huuuuge. As Jeremy himself said, the play went viral. The reviews from white NYC theater critics were overwhelmingly positive, with a few notable exceptions. On Twitter, however, criticism began to mount from a surprising corner: other black theater makers took serious issue with the way black women in particular are treated in the play. Some folks went as far as to say that Jeremy’s play was its own sort of violent act against black women, and they used things he’s said and tweeted publicly to support this. I won’t quote any of them, but it’s all there for you to find, if you want to.

All I can honestly say about Jeremy Harris is that I do not believe his social media persona is authentic. While “Slave Play” was enjoying an often sold-out run, he began tweeting about all the death threats he and his cast were receiving. For sure, horrific shit got hurled at Jeremy and his collaborators. At the same time this was happening, producers were looking seriously to bring the show to Broadway. Jeremy took to Twitter and called attention to the tweets and emails, claiming the threats he and others received numbered in the hundreds. I called bullshit on that number, and I wondered whether every mean tweet he received was actually a “death threat.” I suggested Jeremy was performing victimhood to engender sympathy that would distract from his critics and/or help facilitate a transfer, and perhaps that’s a leap too far. But I tweeted what I tweeted: I do not believe Jeremy Harris received “hundreds” of credible death threats over a play at an off-Broadway house. (For the record I never @ mentioned Jeremy on Twitter, he found my tweets on his own.)

In my back-and-forth with Jeremy, I made the mistake of roping critic Elizabeth Vincentelli into the discussion. Wasn’t really fair of me, because I don’t know her. But she was one of the only mainstream dissenting voices in her assessment of “Slave Play,” which she said ripped off better plays like “An Octaroon” and “Underground Railroad Game.” Elizabeth responded on Twitter to tell me that her problem was with the play, not the playwright, and she sort of scolded me for making inferences about Jeremy’s personality based on his tweets. Jeremy, who loves to herd critics on social media, jumped back in after EV’s capitulation, letting her (and me) know that “we stan critics.” The “we” referred only to him. Lol.

The funnier thing is that, two weeks later, on her podcast “Three on the Aisle,” Elizabeth did exactly what she admonished me for doing on Twitter—drawing conclusions about Jeremy the person—and she used much harsher language than anything I tweeted. She doubled down on the derivative nature of “Slave Play,” describing it as “a play that is embarrassing in its self-satisfaction and the way it revels in this empty provocation that is not really provoking, because people are just expecting it.” She elaborated:

“It’s is also written in an incoherent, smug manner that I found really, really annoying. Just the ineptitude of the writing was confounding, I felt. This play should’ve stayed in the oven, it was not ready to be pulled out… Reading the script afterwards, it annoyed me even more. The script is a window into the way this playwright’s mind works that is not really all that interesting.”

She later described anyone who was shocked by an event that happens in Jeremy’s play as “a target sitting still.” Harsh words for an artist and his audience. I wondered why she would be so brazen on a podcast yet conciliatory on Twitter. It made me wonder if she was afraid to bring the full weight of her position to Twitter, in writing, before Jeremy. And if that’s the case, then what positional power does she perceive that he has over her? Could be generational. Jeremy and his social media followers are presumably savvier to the medium than EV, which I imagine she would understand, so perhaps that’s part of the reason. Regardless, my question now, in light of everything, is: do we still stan critics like Elizabeth? (FWIW, I do. EV is one of the greats among NY’s theater critics.)

My beef with Jeremy truly isn’t so personal, although his personality seems challenging based on our Twitter interactions. That’s not real life, though, I know that. Jeremy and I have never met, only battled from our phones. Theater is the art I care most about, and I’m interested in who holds the power to create it.

Jeremy is a power-holder, despite repeatedly trying to position himself as an outsider. As far as I can smell, Jeremy is disingenuous in these claims, as he was when he overstated the number of actual threats he and others received. I believe that doing so helped bring attention to his play. Of course I have absolutely no concept of what it’s like to be a queer black person in America, but I do know that Yale Drama School—where Jeremy is finishing up his MFA—is the nerve center of NYC’s theater establishment. You cannot graduate from Yale Drama School and call yourself a theater outsider. Sorry. It’s just not honest. And when we allow dishonesty, for whatever reason, we allow injustice to escalate. And we stan only what’s just.

#la ruta #steppenwolf #theatre #theater #juarez #el paso #covington catholic #sandmann #phillips #catholic school #kentucky #march for live #harm #harm reduction #jeremy o harris #slave play #nytw #new york theatre workshop

3 notes · View notes

precise-desolation · 6 years

Text

Since I just reblogged a post on this...

I'm one of those people who cried after the election. I don't remember election night because I was so drunk - I needed to be to watch that - but I'm told when the results came in, I stood up and started yelling at the TV about the social and cultural impact. And that next morning I showed up for my office hours with a horrible hangover. My department was completely, eerily silent. I've seen it silent. I've pulled all-nighters there. This was a different sort of silent. This was like the silence at a graveside service. Like we were all mourning.

And we were. I am part of an anthropology department. All of us have at least some coursework in cultural anthropology and we are all taught to understand how societies work. And we were all mourning. Because we knew what was coming.

And most of us went that night to a protest. We made signs. We marched. We explained to anybody who would listen what the ramifications of this would be and why we were so sure. In the end, it changed nothing, but we knew we weren't alone.

A few months later, I drove all night with a few of my friends to go down to D.C. It was the day after the inauguration and close to a million of us (at least per the officers on the ground) swarmed the streets of the capital in protest. We talked about women's rights, civil rights, LGBT rights... It depended on who you encountered, but there were a lot of issues brought up.

And they didn't listen. It wasn't pointless. Some good things came of it. But the people in power brushed us aside. Called us childish. Called us snowflakes. Dismissed our concerns.

We've watched white supremacists and neo-Nazis march openly in the streets and listened to our president call them "very fine people" after they murdered a woman for speaking against them. We've watched as this regime has done nothing to distance themselves from the hate groups who celebrated their ascension. We’ve watched the rate of hate crimes explode.

And now, after all the conservative outrage over the comparisons of this regime to Nazi Germany, it’s impossible not to see the similarities unless you’ve buried your head in the sand. Our president called media that criticized him “fake news” and called for them to be shut down. He is putting people into prison camps that his own administration has likened to the Japanese internment camps of WWII. Which were basically Nazi concentration camps minus the gas chambers and ovens. The officers charged with rounding up “undesirable” undocumented immigrants have used the exact same defense used by Nazi prison guards at the Nuremberg Trials: “We were just following orders.” To justify all of this, the attorney general quoted a verse from the bible that was used to justify slavery.

Never mind the fact that we are supposed to have separation of Church and State. The once veiled American theocracy has decided it doesn’t need to hide behind the scenes anymore. And of course, with the privileging of one religion above all others, we see protections for other religions begin to crumble. Sometimes it’s slight, but sometimes it’s a landslide. The Supreme Court recently upheld a moratorium on Muslim immigrants that has been fighting its way through the court systems for the last year and a half. It was one of the president’s first acts in office. And in labeling all Muslims as terrorists, it gives official justification to Islamophobia.

First they came for the Muslims, and the Right did not listen - Because they are not Muslim.

And we shouldn’t be surprised to see his racist campaign promises beginning to destroy lives with the full force of the law behind them. ICE - a relatively new department created after the 9/11 terrorist attacks - has been given free reign to do whatever they want. On the campaign trail, the president promised to root out violent criminals who have come into the country illegally. But he also called all Mexicans - and of course anybody who’s Latinx knows that when a Euro-American white person says that, they mean all of us - rapists and drug smugglers. He called us all gang members and animals. And that grants official justification for ICE’s campaign of terror.

They aren’t rooting out dangerous criminals. The vast majority of the people they are rounding up are just trying to live their lives. Their only crime is crossing the boarder without papers. Some of them are fleeing violence and don’t know they can apply for refugee status. Better to live in the shadows than die. All of them are simply seeking a better life for themselves and their families. The supposed American dream. A dad dropping off his child at school is not a threat. A woman going to work is not a threat. A teenager who has never known any home but this and just wants to attend college is not a threat. And these are the people who are being taken away.

Then they came for the Latinos, and the Right did not listen - Because they are not Latino.

And all the while they make the path to citizenship or refugee status even more difficult. They narrow what it means to have a reasonable fear of death, torture, or bodily harm. They discard claims based on race, gender, and national origin. They make the laws so complicated that even the lawyers who specialize in them have trouble understanding them. And they do not offer legal counsel to those who enter this country seeking shelter from harm. More than that, they often see fit to deport them back to places where they will be killed.

Then they came for the refugees, and the Right did not speak out - Because they are not refugees.

The Supreme Court also recently ruled against a gay couple suing for discrimination. And although the ruling was narrow, the impact has been broad. It is part of a larger trend of so-called “religious freedom restoration acts” meant to enshrine discrimination. And while the bills are generally worded to apply to any religion and make no mention of specific groups to be targeted, it is no secret that they are meant to permit Christians to discriminate against the LGBTQ community.

Then they came for the LGBTQ people, and the Right did not listen - Because they are not queer.

And all the while, the Right has been celebrating. They’ve called it victory. They’ve called it winning. They are complicit. They have drunk the Kool-Aid, as it were. For years, they have been fed a steady diet of hateful rhetoric. Looking at divisive media outlets is a crash course in linguistic propaganda. Even if the stories being reported on were the same and the outlet tried to appear neutral on the surface, the word choices say it all. And we have come to a point where a lot of white, straight, cis, American-born people are content to sit back and watch everyone else suffer.

And the only thing I can say to that is when they come for you - and they will come for you - there will be no one left to speak for you.

I know that I certainly won’t lift a finger in your defense. My hands are busy. I have to fight for my rights as a queer person. I have to defend my Latino, refugee, green card relatives.

My hands are busy and my voice is hoarse. And that is your own doing.

#off mission #stars and stripes #long post #((I have spent far too much time crying over the news.#And it feels hopeless #Nothing gets through to the people in power.#I can't even hope we'll all survive the next two and a half years #because some of us already haven't.))#((But really I just needed to put my thoughts down.#And now you know where I stand on basically everything...))

9 notes · View notes

recentanimenews · 3 years

Text

Bookshelf Briefs 1/20/21

Goodbye, My Rose Garden, Vol. 3 | By Dr. Pepperco | Seven Seas – Last time I said that this series never quite tipped over into melodrama, but let’s face it, that’s what happens here. I mean, it’s good melodrama, and you really feel the tortured emotions of these girls who just want to be able to love each other. If I’m honest, the fact that this series has a happy ending feels a bit unrealistic given everything that’s been stacked against them since the start, but that’s OK, because it fits the work emotionally, and no one wants to see this end with someone visiting another’s grave. If you enjoyed Emma but wish it had more lesbians, Goodbye, My Rose Garden should be right up your street, and I always enjoy seeing Japanese authors write Victoriana. – Sean Gaffney

New Game!, Vol. 10 | By Shotaro Tokuno | Seven Seas – Kou is back and in charge, and the most interesting part of this volume was her decision to make Aoba the main character designer for the new game, even though she’s not the most talented artist in the room. Sometimes you just want a style. Elsewhere, Kou and Rin’s relationship continues to be “Rin is as blatantly gay as possible, Kou does not get it, but it’s getting more and more blatant by the volume,” and I figure a dam has to break at some point. As for the others, Nene is promoted to full-time employee after, of all things, an airsoft battle, and we see some of the aftermath of the previous game the team released, including some BL doujinshi popping up. This is cute, and nothing else, but it is very cute. – Sean Gaffney

The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window, Vol. 7 | By Tomoko Yamashita | SuBLime (digital only) – I don’t think there’s any currently running series that leaves me quite as desperate for the next volume as Tomoko Yamashita’s thoroughly excellent The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window. In this volume, we have Mikado learning to value the safe places he has had in his life while shying away from behind Rihito’s safe place, various people trying to dig up information about the professor, Erika’s mother finally growing a backbone and urging her daughter to run away while she can, and many not-so-subtle hints about the professor’s true identity. There’s a lot of plot, there’s a lot of emotion, and there are a lot of striking visuals. I love it so much and am bummed that it recently ended in Japan. At least there’s a forthcoming anime adaptation to look forward to! – Michelle Smith

Practice Makes Perfect, Vol. 4 | By Ui Hanamiya | Kodansha Comics (digital only) – There’s a bit less sex in this final volume, mostly because it is a final volume, and we have to wrap up all the plot threads that are not “let’s treat sex like practicing for a sport.” I was pleased to see that the manga made all the right choices. There’s a brief “I’m jealous the girl I love spends her days surrounded by hot guys,” but it doesn’t last and the hot guys are all rooting for him. I will admit I *hate* very public proposals, but if I can get over that, it was sweet. Best of all, Nohara is forced to choose between getting married or her career… and she chooses the career, going to Italy for two years and enduring a long-distance relationship. They even both get Olympic golds! Though not in sex. I hope this sees print; it was great. – Sean Gaffney

Pretty Boy Detective Club, Vol. 1: The Dark Star That Shines for You Alone | By NISIOSIN and Kinako | Vertical – As someone who can appreciate both pretty boys and mystery novels, I was intrigued by Pretty Boy Detective Club. Actually, I am still intrigued by the premise and think it would probably make a fun anime. As a light novel, though, I really wasn’t a fan. This first book in the series is told from the perspective of Mayumi Dojima, self-proclaimed “extreme contrarian,” who enlists the aid of a group of eccentric middle-school detectives in finding the elusive star she saw ten years ago. Mayumi’s narrative voice is not particularly enjoyable to begin with, but also because we’re following her, we see absolutely nothing about how the boys investigate her case and almost nothing about the boys themselves, except superficial things and one recurring joke about how one of them is in love with a first grader. I truly did want to like this but ultimately it merits only a “meh.” – Michelle Smith

Queen’s Quality, Vol. 10 | By Kyousuke Motomi | Viz Media – New arc starts here, with more than one snake possessing people and wanting out. Unfortunately, one of those snakes is in Kyutaro, and does in fact get out at one point, which leads to a scene that manages to be both scary and sexy, because he attacks Fumi late at night when they are both, not to put too fine a point on it, rather horny. Honestly, this is one of those series that’s worth reading for the art alone—it’s simply terrific here, especially when we get to see how badass Fumi can be, wielding both a sword and a headbutt with equal perfection. It looks as if we’re going to have snake vs. snake battling next time, which hopefully will not lead to clan vs. clan. I always enjoy when a new volume is out. – Sean Gaffney

Sacrificial Princess and the King of Beasts, Vol. 11 | By Yu Tomofuji | Yen Press – The kidnapping arc finally wraps up, with a lot of action and also a lot of heartfelt debate about what it means to be a good leader, including a glorious scene where Sariphi plays Fenrir like a fiddle, telling him “his majesty would come to where I am” knowing that it will get him to do it as well. After a very bloody battle, which takes up most of the middle of the book, His Majesty is so worn down he actually gets ill enough to turn human… a dangerous thing given that he’s in his chambers. Fortunately, he has his queen by his side. Also fortunately, there’s another wonderful battle scene, mock this time, between Lanteveldt and Jormungand. This remains a highly underrated shoujo series. – Sean Gaffney

Snow White with the Red Hair, Vol. 10 | By Sorata Akiduki | Viz Media – I always seem to fall behind with this series—as I review volume ten, volume eleven is due out—but reading it always reminds me how much I enjoy it. For one thing, we finally get Kiki’s backstory, and I enjoyed it—it’s not tragic, and she’s on relatively good terms with her father. The issue is that she’s being told to get married and return home, and she’s not ready to do either yet. The manga seems to be shipping her and Mitsuhide hard, but I dunno. As for our title character, she’s as happy as can be right now, which is perhaps ominous given this series is 21 volumes and counting, but it’s nice to see. Unless you’re an Obi shipper. Of whom there are a whoooooole lot. This is still wonderful. – Sean Gaffney

We’re New at This, Vol. 1 | By Ren Kawahara | Kodansha Comics (digital only) – This comes from the creator of Ao-chan Can’t Study, so the fact that it’s all about sex is not particularly surprising. More accurately, it’s all about our newly married couple NOT having sex—they’re childhood friends, and do love each other, but are both rather embarrassed about the idea, and both easily can “not be in the mood” if things aren’t perfect. The volume—and likely the series—involves them trying to get the other one into the mood. Best part of the manga is the wife, Sumika, who is the ‘deadpan stoic’ sort, which makes it funnier that she’s a rather horny newlywed. The husband, Ikuma, is alas more of a standard nerdy drip. Still, there’s enough fun here for me to read more. – Sean Gaffney

By: Sean Gaffney

#Anime #News #Manga Bookshelf

0 notes