White people concern me

I saw i really concerning quora thread (is that what they are called?) and it was essentially about people debating the ethics of a white person wearing box braids. A concerning amount of people said it was "white bigotry" to tell someone off for wearing box braids and that "it's just hair". One white girl was sent home from school for wearing box braids, and someone replied to the mother stating "you should sue the school for discrimination". The amount of privilege dripping from that statement is gross, imagine being able to sue someone over any minor inconvenience. Now i must state: i'm am not black, nor am I white, which puts me a really interesting position as an outsider to this sort of stuff. Personally, i am more than willing to respect black people's culture, i really don't think it's that difficult. So it baffles me that white people get so upset about it. One person said "is it cultural appropriation of the chinese if we use gunpowder? No." Which yes, it is not cultural appropriation to use gunpowder, to MY knowledge, chinese people have never been discriminated against for using it or inventing it, you know what they have been discriminated against for? Their eyes. Everywhere you look you see people making fun of chinese people's eyes (not just the chinese of course, but japanese ect) many children make the whole "chinese, japanese, zombies" joke. And yet you know what was trending a bit back? Fox eyes. SUDDENLY when a white person pulls their eyes back, the monolid is pretty. It always was pretty, but it took a white person doing it for people to like it. And you know what? IT STILL BACKFIRED FOR THE POC COMMUNITY! Chinese and japanese people were being sexualised by white men whilst black people were being harassed about asianfishing, because a lot of black people naturally have monolids. Somehow an issue that wasn't even relevent to black people became another thing to attack them over. Someone else pointed out that a white girl was beat up for wearing box braids by a black person, which isn't right of course. HOWEVER, I have heard a few stories of white girls being bullied by OTHER white kids for having box braids. You know what else i've heard? Countless stories of black kids being harassed for their hair. Countless stories of chinese kids being bullied for their eyes. Countless stories of trans people being attack for their top scars. The list goes on for us minorities, but the minute a white cis person is hurt? tragedy! Hurt by one of us? WHITE BIGOTRY! For those of you who aren't aware: reverse racism doesn't exist. It doesn't. Most of the accounts of "reverse racism" are white people not liking the fact that they have to think before speaking. Not liking the fact that they might be wrong about something. Not liking that they need to be better and learn. and you know what the craziest thing is? I TOO NEED TO MIND MY LANGUAGE! ME, A BROWN PERSON CAN'T SAY OFFENSIVE RANDOM SHIT ABOUT JEWISH OR BLACK PEOPLE OR ANY OTHER RACE THAT I'M NOT APART OF??? SHOCKER!!! WHITE PEOPLE AREN'T THE ONLY ONES WHO HAVE TO "be careful" OF WHAT THEY SAY, WE ALL FUCKING DO, AND WE FUCKING DO IT WITHOUT COMPLAINING, SO STFU, YOU AREN'T SPECIAL AND YOU AREN'T DISCRIMINATED AGAINST.

There was one reply in that quota thread that gave me hope, the person stated that "short story, if you want to use box braids, end racism". It's so easy for people to say "i don't see colour" Well you should. Because for centuries, POCs have been discriminated against for our features and skin tone, you don't just get to say that its "not a problem anymore". Acknowledge colour, have discussions about colour, have discussions about culture, preferably from people of said culture (though it isn't their responsibility to educate you, they can do so if they are comfortable)

Another comment i saw somewhere feels relevent here:

"when you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression"

Also, equality isn't just "treat everyone the same", it's "give everyone the ability to achieve the same thing and be treated with respect" If that means you need to mind what kind of braids you wear, then you do it, because in order to be equal we need respect.

ALSO also, to the people saying "most black people don't care, only a small amount do" thousands (if not millions) are upset about it, they may be smaller in comparision, but it's still a lot. And about the "poorer black people" who "don't give a shit", of course they dont care, they're too busy trying to deal with all the other shit white people have done to them.

Final statement: anyone using the excuse "vikings did it first" you're wrong. Vikings most likely didn't braid their hair, if they did, it was to quick get hair out of their eyes, not a fashion statement. Some most likely had dreads that they allowed to grow out to make them stand out from the slaves who were bald (oh yeah btw THEY HAD SLAVES), but even then we don't have much evidence for them having dread apart from a throwaway line from a roman saying they had "rope hair". Overall, egyptians were doing braids way longer than the vikings and they certainly didn't invent braids anywhere similar to cornrows. If you want a "viking hairstyle" get dutch braids.

For the record, on this blog

Black Lives Matter

TERFs, MRAs, Nazis, racists, and other bigots can fuck right off

Pronouns are to be respected & aren't 'preferred'

Makeup & clothes shouldn't be gendered

Reverse racism & sexism aren't real

Western christians aren't persecuted & there's no war on Christmas in the Americas or Europe

Tone policing & respectability politics are bullshit

If 'allies' are turned off by bad language they weren't really allies to begin with

The ace & aro spectrum are under the Queer umbrella

Be accomplices not allies

Cis isn't a slur

Reproductive rights are human rights & that includes abortion

Fat doesn't mean unhealthy, lazy, lacking self control, or immoral & fat people deserve clothes that fit & suit their needs

BMI IS A BULLSHIT "MEASUREMENT" OF HEALTH

Vaccines save us from diseases that killed previous gens

VACCINES DON'T CAUSE AUTISM

Even if they did it's better to have an autistic kid than a dead one

If a child "isn't old enough to know they're [pick queer term]" they aren't old enough to know they're straight or cis either

Respect a person's (especially a kid's) bodily autonomy

Believe victims

Stop expecting Black women to save you from society's white supremacist bullshit and try listening to us instead

Stop using PoC when you mean Black

hogwarts legacy is not a game I'm interested in but one that should exist

reading about and imagining this world was a huge part of a lot of people's childhoods and a game (apparently very well made) where you get to run around and have adventures there is gonna be dope as fuck to those people

I don't think they should have to turn their backs on those cool memories and fantasies because the original author turned out to be a transphobe. the game isn't transphobic and the idea that you'll somehow empower transphobia by buying a game set in a licensed property made by someone who became a transphobe later is just ritual-purity bullshit

and "oh no goblin bad guys that's antisemitism" shut the fuck up, I don't care what you think, you're the one overfitting and reverse-engineering racist stereotypes the same way you went "orcs are violent, and racism says black people are violent, therefore orcs must be stand ins for black people!"

all of this is a distraction from the real crime

where the fuck does this game get off giving you a Dark Souls dodge roll? you're a Hogwarts student, the fucking nerdiest of the nerdiest of the nerds, you fly rather than walk, you don't go to gym because gym doesn't exist because the world exists as a fantasy for kids picked on in gym, where the fuck did you learn how to get iframes when your feet weren't touching the ground?

you have a block/parry mechanic and that's fine because it's a magic barrier you conjure up. great! perfectly suited for the character! why the hell are you gracefully rolling like eight feet away and fluidly getting up instead of just Air Trick teleporting like a cool but lazy wizard?

The "problem with asking pro Palestine people to not be antisemetic" is that you can substitue those two words to black and anti-white and see the ridiculous nature of the question. Black people have historically been brutalized, murdered, controlled and dehumanized by white people. Palestinian civilians are being slaughtered, brutalized, controlled and dehumanized by the IDF relentlessly. Israel's occupation of the Palestinians began over 75 years ago and they've killed and displaced more since oct 7 this year than the whole of the nakba after wwii... The Israeli government is bragging and rejoicing in the destruction as well as many people who live there and many in the USA. They're killing people with white flags waving and bombing all hospitals and ambulances and poisoning the water with salt and scorching the land with fire. They're using antisemitism to deflect from the war crimes they are committing. Just as racist whites use "reverse-racism" to deflect from their actually racist viewpoints. Such viewpoints that actively make life for black people more difficult and dangerous. Hope this helps.

you do know jews have historically been slaughtered, brutalized, controlled, and dehumanized right? for like. thousands of years? that of course does not excuse israel's actions against palestinians but they very much are oppressed all over the world. "reverse-racism" isn't real. antisemitism is. antisemitism, in any context, is unacceptable. racism, in any context, is unacceptable. genocide, in any context, is unacceptable. you can care about jews and care about palestinians at the same time. so again i ask, whats the problem asking pro-palestine activists to check their antisemitic biases?

Basically my big annoyance with fiction vs. reality Discourse(TM) is how the internet is so fucking full of people who are, uh...really on extremes.

You say "hey, guys, it's a good idea to be responsible with the messages you put out there, it's really easy to perpetuate unjust biases even if you only hold them subconsciously" and another person will go "YEAH! We need to BAN HANNIBAL because they'll start to think that CANNIBALISM is GOOD, it's TOTALLY that easy to reverse a taboo like that, people are stupid monkey-see-monkey-do beasts and must only see wholesome goodness!"

To which you can say "bruh, no, it is NOT that simple, this is Video Games Cause Violence all over again, that's been disproven time and time again, I'm talking about shit like racism and sexism, not kicking puppies, what in the Christian fundamentalist bullshit IS that argument?" and whoops out of the woodwork crawls a swarm of people to say "YEAH! Propaganda isn't real, the US military funds movies and video games for fun, and it's totally not racist of me to bash every character with skin darker than a brown paper bag because I just find every single one super annoying for SOME reason, it's just FICTION, bro!"

Alternately, you'll get people who are so fucking DEFENSIVE from people who are on absolute ground level that they'll see your "hey, guys, it's a good idea to be responsible with the messages you put out there" post and immediately go "oh, so what, you think people are just so stupid that if they look at furry art they'll start going out and fucking animals? What, do you want to ban The Lion King next?"

Or someone will see your "bruh fiction isn't fucking reality, taboos as ingrained as 'don't eat people' are NOT that easy to break" post and go "OH so you think we should be airing Birth of a Nation every day for every person ever because it's ~just a movie~? Wanna have a family friendly readalong of Mein Kampf?"

You can never, ever, ever win by just addressing one side of the equation, and if you try to address both, you'll STILL get people swarming all over it thinking their take on how your villain school AU fanfic means you're an evil degenerate who wants to blow up a daycare with a death ray FOR REAL, or how Top Gun is a harmless family fun time with absolutely no propagandistic messages included or intended, absolutely fits into that framework.

And so it goes on and on and on forever.

I agree that the introduction of homophobia in Exandria in fanon is a nonsensical way to add drama. However I understand the compulsion to do it for Candela in particular since it's so close to the real world victorian era period and it does feels slightly odd to have explicitly out queer people in a world that is essentially the 19th century with monsters.

At the risk of being a bit too glib, if you can imagine a turn of the century world with monsters but have trouble imagining it having legalized gay marriage and gender transition? Skill issue.

More seriously, and the post I linked in my post yesterday covers it (and was in conversation with this post which I'd reblogged at the time which also covers the same topic, and in general I would recommend trying to get a sense of that line of conversation before sending anon asks defending behavior for, to be blunt, literally no reason) the problem isn't that people assume the world is homophobic. It's that they assume it's homophobic so that Marion and Sean (in this case) are afraid to confess their love for each other, but do not consider any other ramifications thereof. The homophobia exists to serve as a barrier, but no one seems to be perpetuating it; it just is some miasma. It's like reverse sex pollen. And once it's served its use, the characters do get together and everyone is happy because the homophobia vanished now that it's not needed to explain any character behaviors.

Even more seriously, no one seems to re-insert racism into the narrative, and they rarely insert misogyny, even though Rowan Hall talking about her queer PC in another game explicitly talks about educational access on the basis of gender. No one blinks at Charlotte being a successful businesswoman with ties to a criminal underworld that is distinctly not segregated and who seems to receive no special attention from the authorities. Howard and Jean are both highly educated and well-off and entirely respected despite being visibly nonwhite; I advise you look up statistics for Native American professors or female surgeons (let alone nonwhite female surgeons) in 1907 in the real world. No one ever seems to suggest that the barrier for Sean and Marion could be interracial, despite the US in this era having quite a number of anti-miscegenation laws. And in the context of another, longstanding point regarding fandoms centering a very white queer experience, often to the point of dismissing nonwhite characters' canon experiences and rewriting them as queer rather than (or at least in addition to) racialized (of which Jester, Dorian, and Fjord are all examples within Exandria) or even class-based (explicitly a theme in Candela), that is extremely telling.

This is, at least in Candela right now, something of a moot point in that after episode 2 this line was mostly dropped, both as character relationships developed and because a married same-gender couple was shown onscreen; but it pops up in Exandria pretty regularly as new fans come in, and if chapter 3 of Candela Obscura gets new viewers and there's a popular queer ship I expect to see it again. I in fact expect to see that fan-led insertion of queerphobia and no similar fan-made insertion of (period-typical) racism or misogyny.

i think i've seen someone say it here once before, but i wanted to say louixie's story makes me super uncomfortable. the "white character shunned for not being black by black characters" motif just feels really off-putting. i think the newest amv where crowsong gets picked on/beat up further confirms that.

from what i've seen, crowsong's story more heavily revolves around the fact that crowsong was ostracized for being born albino. i havent rlly followed the story too much but the most i know is that the clan has a rlly strict genetic selection and has a history of exiling even brown, orange, and lighter grey cats, with crowsong only getting caught in the mix bc the clan had never seen an albino cat before

i can see where youre coming from w this bc i felt put off by it at first too but i dont think that was the intention at all nor do i think there was a real motif put behind it. but if anyone else has any thoughts id love to hear them! i just dont know enough abt the story to rlly have any strong opinions on it

-mod ashensky

I actually made a post abt this on my personal blog, and thank goodness I'm a black person because I can talk abt this directly. No Crowsong's family are definitely not supposed to be black people LOL.

Black coding does not mean the character is literally black, you can have a non-human character that isn't black be black coded and vice versa. Crowsong is very clearly from the same "racial" group as the people she's directly related to I have no idea where this is coming from because this takes place within a clan.

You can tell because their fur is straight as hell (joking) but really the closest I can compare to Crowsong's experience isn't racism but colorism and/or that time in history when everyone hated redheads or when europe decided that left handed people have to be "fixed". There's a ton of other forms of discrimination that are more akin to Crowsong's story than racism.

I feel like people get really hung up of skin/fur color but you need to remember that cats don't have a concept of race, Crowsong is directly related to everyone who is bullying her, albinism is a real thing that people can have, black people are still seen black when they have albinism in the real world, colorism exists in every place in the world regardless of race and discrimination against people with albinism also exists, it's called ableism!

So with all that considered Crowsong's story isn't "reverse racism" or whatever, it's a story abt ableism and/or colorism. That's the real thing ya'll should be analyzing/critiquing because one could say that there's some bad tropes in that story still. - Admin Cloudnettle

How are white, thin, nonqueer people not exempt from racism, antifatness, antigayness? The only way they're "affected" is by internalising that shit and then using it against marginalised groups. They don't experience those for themselves.

approaching this ask with the assumption that it is in good faith—

i think the best way to explain this is through the works of foucault. basically, he talks about the idea that society is a structured like a hypothetical prison where there's a guard tower in the middle and all the cells are situated in a circle around it, with the opening facing inwards towards the guard tower. the prisoner has no way of knowing when the guard is looking at them, and so they are always on their best behavior. essentially, they're doing the guards' work for them. technically the guard tower can be empty and hypothetically the prisoners will just stay behaving forever

so, this is a reflection of the real world, where members of a certain society will police themselves to ensure they stay within that society's expected norms, even if there isn't actually a literal cop walking around making sure you're doing the right thing

everybody experiences fatphobia bc of the panoptical nature of fatphobia, leading people to police themselves so they don't have too much proximity to fatness. same with racism and queerness. how many cishet men have trained themselves to suppress their emotions so they don't seem gay? how many people pass up a certain outfit or haircut or vocation because of the perceived proximity to queerness it might bring them? not to mention actual cishet people being subjected to homophobic violence (here's one example of many x)

white people are affected by antiblackness and racism for the same reason. look at everything brother ali has been subjected to! people raised in a certain environment, who have a certain accent, etc are deemed "too black" to be white. (i also want to note that brother ali does not identify as white per se, but since this anon is not allowing for grey areas in their perceived binary of white vs not-white, thin vs fat, queer vs not queer, then i am forced to put that label onto him.) like, i've even had people be racist to me because my service dog is named after a black man, or because i know spanish. there's also stuff about how a lot of racist conspiracy theories are also antisemitic, like with the buffalo shooting. same with queerphobic and fatphobic conspiracy theories. even the whitest, skinniest, straightest jew has had their lives affected by racism, fatphobia, and queerphobia. (see also, the whole antisemitic trope about cis jewish men menstruating)

the whole medical industry is built on anti-fatness, people are denied or withheld medical care because the care may bring them closer to fatness. fatphobic policies create barriers to disabled people, even thin ones! there's also just everything about dieting culture, parents withholding nutrition from their children (including infants!!!) because of this "fear" that their child might gain proximity to fatness

i also would be doing you a disservice if i didn't mention the book fearing the black body: the racial origins of fat phobia by sabrina strings when talking about this. it talks all about how fatphobia originated in racism, and white fat bodies are feared/hated because of this connection to racialization. it also goes into the reverse, thin black people being subjected to fatphobia

these are just a handful of examples of systemic issues. but i hope that this has at least opened your mind to thinking about systems of oppression outside of the binary of oppressed vs not-oppressed. it's not gonna do anybody any help

Cool, so you're fundamentally reactionary:

(AI discourse below, you have been warned)

(the part below it says something about "the torment nexus)

If you think the books from 1984 are the torment nexus, or even a large contributor to the dystopia and not say, extreme censorship leading to those books that are made by machines that have STRICT rules about what can be written and produce NOTHING deemed "unacceptable" then I don't think you actually read 1984.

It's almost as if they have symbolic meaning and "machine book bad" isn't actually the full point.

And don't get me wrong, I don't personally like AI books. But about the only censorship that's occurring is of sexual content, and given that sexual AI text generators exist I think that's a moot point. If you're so concerned about society becoming "literally 1984" though, maybe focus more energy on stuff like Patreon and Gumroad's bans of (certain) nsfw content, on legislation within your state attempting to ban or restrict access to literature on queer identity and racism, and so on?

I'm not saying the people whining about AI aren't also doing that, but I am saying that wasting time on AI that could be used on stuff that actually matters isn't smart, because a world where AI generated texts exist alongside all manner of human-made ones is nowhere fucking close to 1984 and y'all need to either get a grip or keep weeping.

Also bonus:

Cool, cool. How much of your dislike of AI then comes from just having a squick around certain types (especially since as AI tech improves, I highly doubt you're having this reaction to every single image - at least, you're either "reacting" to stuff that ISN'T AI based on a shared art style and a guess that it is AI, and/or you're not reacting to all AI images because there's some you miss and think are not AI) and how much from fundamentally fascist ideas about what "real art" is or culturally christian ideas about how "real art" requires "hard work" or has "no soul" without a human touch.

I really need to filter AI discourse myself because I'm getting so tired of seeing the same indistinguishable-from-conservative-arguments-about-art about AI.

Especially the ableism and leaning into inspiration porn as proof that all disabled people CAN do art without using AI - or if not inspiration porn, insisting that any medium puts on a surface counts as art and people who can't do art in the way they want should just make basic fingerpaintings or scribbles and be happy they created something, which is WILDLY patronizing. There's nothing wrong with fingerpaintings or scribbles ofc, but gods don't act like that's enough for most people or even the reason people are engaging with art.

And for that matter stop moralizing people who engage with art for an end product rather than the process because reacting to "art is always about the end product" with "art is never about the end product" is just the same problem in reverse! It's almost as if the actual issue with either statement is in fact the idea of a "right way" to engage with art!)

Anyway it's not like the squick/trigger isn't valid but like. You clearly have not examined your biases or how your dislike of a type of image informs your reactionary beliefs towards it. Also, your actual issue seems to be that people aren't properly tagging their posts that contain AI images (and listen, I do have some sympathy for not being able to filter just "AI" as it would filter every post that has any word with letters in those order, possibly even that has letters in between judging how "a/e/mogai" filters "accessmogai" for us).

But I mean, people improperly tagging and poor filtering abilities aren't actually about AI. It's about this site's hostility to attempts at curating your own experience, despite being one of the better sites out there for it, and about people not doing anything to get around that.

Mind you, there's a solution that involves AI itself - if AI has a tag denoting that it is such in the metadata, and sites have a toggle that allows you to filter that tag so it's blurred or blocked altogether, much like they currently do for "adult content", then you'd never have to see AI again. Hell, the site could make the toggle only for stuff that had a "community label" or tag of AI and let users determine that - although with how many human artists have been accused of their art being AI, I think that's probably a really fucking bad idea.

Anyway, I'm tagging this as aicourse. I also struggle to filter shit takes like the screenshots above because no one is fucking tagging "ai hate" or "ai discourse" or anything, so again, I get the annoyance at not being easily able to filter it. I just think the latter person is a huge fucking hypocrite for not making their tired takes about AI filterable for everyone too, especially if it's because they think it's all "stupid brainwashed techbros" (wow, that's a lot of ableism*) that are for or neutral on AI.

*The amount of ableism and downright cruelty I've seen even towards people who have fallen for actual scams like NFTs and cryptocurrency, basically treating them the same shitty way you treat people with intellectual and cognitive disabilities with a heaping scoop of the shitty way you treat people who have been manipulated, radicalized, and even survived cults or cult-adjacent groups, is really fucking gross. And as somesys who hated NFTs and cryptocurrency at the height of their popularity, it's certainly made me feel unsafe as victims of manipulative abuse and survivors of cult-adjacent harm, it's made us feel really fucking unsafe!

Do you even actually care about how your rhetoric impacts vulnerable people, or is hating or clowning on a random bit of tech more important to you than that? Well, it's not either/or, because you could literally just actually think critically about the things you're saying and decide to use actual arguments that don't send out shrapnel leaving a bunch of collateral damage in their wake. I'd still disagree with it, but quite frankly even if I think you've chosen the wrong target, I can get behind hating.

Even if it's just for hating's sake, or if it's not, I find hating not related to identity/people to be a perfectly acceptable and even enjoyable pastime for plenty of people. It's just that you kind of fucking need to make sure you AREN'T still hurting people about it, directly or indirectly. Like when I hate on rayon sheets because their texture makes me want to peel my skin off, I'm not making it the problem of people who can only afford that or who like them or who are forced because of fast fashion to keep getting them or w/e.

Idk this has devolved into a personal vent but like. I'm gonna go make a post now about how shitty people are about people who are literally victims of scams and cults and such bc. Y'all fucking suck.

Stop putting human racism on mermaids

*sighs* I'm getting really sick of explaining to people that it's not wrong to cast a coloured person to play a white character and then they retort with "Well if you can make a white character black, then you can make a black character white, because it's the same."

It really isn't. I'm going to explain this as simply as I can, so follow along:

POCs are not on the same playing field as white people when it comes to media rep, so how could you ever say it's the same?

You are refusing to read between the lines, you're refusing to understand the nuance.

There will always be white people in the media, they will always be there, they will never have to fight to be there. They will simply just have their place. POCs, on the other hand, it's not that simple

We either have to fit beauty standards of the white OR let these white behind use us as an excuse to make fun of our culture and use us a shield. We just have to shut up and be okay with it.

and if you think that one day white people will have to fight for media rep, remember this:

For every show/ movie with a primarily POC cast, there will be 20 more with a primarily white cast.

I think the bigger issue we should be talking about is the objectification of POCs in these movie reboots. A lot are simply casting coloured people not because of their skill or what that perspective will add to the story, but because its easier than writing a coloured character and allows them to turn skin tone into a marketing strat. Just capitalism being capitalism.

So while I believe Ariel being black isn't a bad thing, it's just really lazy representation. But obviously, us POCs will eat this shit up, because we are starved from this kind of rep. We will literally defend the bare minimum because we have so little proper rep. We also end up loving characters that are kinda racist because it's our attempt at reclaiming that representation

I'm Singhalese/ Tamil mixed, I will literally never see a character like me in Western media, and that's just something I've accepted. I have no characters to relate to, no mainstream actors to root for. I don't have that.

I don't even need to talk about the amount of white actors there are.

So yeah, tell me again, how is it the same? Oh right, it's the same because you refuse to humanise either "side" and look at them as just that: two options, black and white thinking. And yet you call yourself a centrist. You aren't looking at grey area, you're just refusing to make a choice because it's too hard. You have look at grey area to help you make a decision when two options seem equally matched. It helps you understand that one side is not on an equal playing field to the other.

It's equity not equality, dipshit. We gotta give one side more support because they have been lacking in support for a long time. The "other side" so to speak, already has all the support: THEY DON'T NEED ANYMORE!

Also, to all the people who say it's historically inaccurate to have POCs in historical media, again, it's all about that grey area. There's nothing wrong with POCs in plays and musicals, it has a lot more leeway. Movies and shows, it really depends. We often think the past was entirely white, and of course we do, the white cis straight neurotypical men made sure we look at it that way. But reality isn't like that. Fun fact, most cowboys were black! And there were brown people who where wealthy enough to get pretty portraits of themselves painted back in the 1800s, it wasn't just the white people. Also this whole historical thing doesn't work with the little mermaid because it wasn't really based at a specific time AND Ariel herself is technically a marine species, so obviously the racial issues aren't gonna be the same, so the "black mermaids" aren't gonna be oppressed by the "white mermaids" because they don't have a concept of that, to them it's just colouration and not a big deal.

So just shut up and stop putting our human racism on mermaids, especially considering the fact that humans and mermaids have been separated and so therefore wouldn't even understand our human racism.

"reverse racism isnt real" yeah bc its called racism

Context:

Abortion alone is not full reproductive freedom.

Abortion itself is not reproductive freedom, abortion is one of many technologies that can help make reproductive freedom a reality. Technologies that facilitate reproductive freedom include contraception and treatments that increase fertility. If we mistake abortions alone for "freedom" we could incorrectly conclude that black people, who have more abortions per capita than white people, must be more "free" when it comes to control of our wombs.

The reality is, in fact, the reverse of this.

This essay is, in part a response to discussions about Margaret Sanger and her connections to racism and eugenics. This has been used as a talking point by anti-abortion groups and some people have suggested that the only correct response is to burry the discussion since an accurate and open discussion might confuse black people and lead us to distrust the modern incarnation of Planned Parenthood. This is a condescending and infantilizing perspective. The history is, as history tends to be, complex and Sanger emerges as neither saint nor villain. Black people participate in and interact with organizations with terrible racist histories every day. Planned parenthood will not be harmed by this unsurprising history.

But, even if she is not connected to the eugenics movement other people were, it was a real thing and the history of eugenics has always been tied to the history of abortion access for poor and minority women, and this connection isn't even totally dead.

So, what we really need to talk about are the reasons why so many black people have deeply ambivalent feelings about the "success" (as it is sometimes called) of falling birth rates among black women in the US. This very sudden and drastic decline in black babies being born has happened mostly through increased rates of abortion among black women to the point that black women make of 30% of all women who get abortions every year despite being 12% of the overall population. True success would look more like falling birth rates and falling abortion rates. Abortion is an important tool, but it is not without costs.

Part of this is because many pro-life groups have until very recently ignored black women in their quest to "save" the unborn from abortion. I remember a few years back there were some ads on the train from a pro-life group (one of the more sinister ones that pose as family planning clinics that try to convert women who know they want an abortion in to their way of seeing things) these adds advertised "free help for pregnant women" and pictures of sullen-looking white teen girls. Often, it'd say something like "I just didn't know what to do but ____ clinic helped!" A quick phone call on my part confirmed that they did not do abortions, rather they would do an ultra-sound then show the young mother her "baby" -- show manipulative films and generally make women feel like abortion was very wrong and very bad. They didn't provide any real pre-natal care either not so much as a packet of folic acid tablets. (what a scam)

The thing is these ads that only showed white women were in a city where only 35% of the population is white, and moreover, the young people in the worst economic circumstances are almost universally black and Latino. (the ones who'd nee "help") So, most organizations from churches to free clinics feature very diverse advertisements in this city.

But, no, not these pro-life people.

Now, I don't think that they were sitting there rubbing their hands in a dark room saying "muahahaha we'll only save the white babies!" In fact, I know of a few black women who were bamboozled by them. So, they take all comers. But, I do think that the images that they choose say something about their world view. And it's a reflection of broader social values not just those of pro-lifers. Like the way that missing white children get so much more attention in media than missing black and Latino kids. It is part of the cultural mirror that shows us our values. (and the flaws in those values)

What the cultural mirror shows is this endless destructive drumbeat of a simple message "you are not valuable or important. you are not worth saving." And it's not universally coming from "the right" either.

For example, health care providers can be insensitive about the way that they present options to black women. It can be quiet hard to get help if you are having fertility issues as a black women. I have experienced this indifference myself. Many doctors think the only fertility problem black woman have is having too many kids.

I first found out about this issue reading Killing the Black Body by Dorothy Roberts. It's a really great book that brings out statistics and ethnographic studies to add missing dimensions to this issue.

The fundamental thing however is that black lives (black children) have not been valued in the same way as white children. So some of us wince when the high number of black women having abortions comes up. Too often, black children are seen as a problem. A black woman who is pregnant faces a lot of pressure to have an abortion (along with messages that she is a bad person for having and abortion it's a no win situation, very much like the slut/prude divide women of all colors face.) --This pressure comes from poverty, it comes from media, it comes from health care providers. And a single black mother will encounter outright disdain. What images has media linked to the phrase "single black mother" in your mind? Are any of them positive or beautiful? Most likely not. How dare she have a child! --I have had to work hard to rebuild those image in my own mind. Now I think of all of the wonderful "single black mothers" that I know and their amazing cute kids.

There is a long ugly history:

The U.S began to heavily support population control policies abroad, arguing that population control was vital in the fight against communism. Domestically, the success of the Civil Rights movement in challenging segregation caused many politicians to become increasingly fearful of African American political power. Instead of offering a political argument, they coded their concerns by claiming that Black ghettos would continue to grow, and that a growing welfare class predominately concentrated in inner cities would cause crime rates to skyrocket.

As a result, conservative support for federally-supported family planning grew. Former president Richard Nixon said in 1970, “It is my view that no American woman should be denied access to family planning assistance because of her economic condition.” He established the Office of Economic Opportunity to fund family planning programs, particularly in Latino and African American communities, arguing that such programs would reduce health and welfare costs.

The establishment of family planning programs in mainly Black and Latino urban areas in the South caused a division between white conservatives. On one hand, some whites wanted programs that implemented eugenical ideas about reducing the populations of people of color. On the other hand, a strong portion of the conservative white American population was threatened by the idea of all women controlling their fertility. They were especially concerned that white women would have access to family planning intended for women of color. In clinics throughout the South, white women were actively discouraged from using these services, such as in Louisiana and Arkansas. This split among conservatives over family planning was not healed until after Nixon, when Ronald Reagan helped launched the “Moral Majority” to put conservatives back in power in 1980.

(source A Short History of African American Women and Abortion, Muna Abdullahi)

At the same, time too many black women do not feel empowered enough to insist on contraception with their partners. And access to health care makes contraception such as the pill harder to get as well. This goes right back to a total failure to teach black girls that they are beautiful, special unique and valuable. That their bodies matter. It is very hard for parents to fight the tide of negative images and messages girls encounter.

So, rather than trying to cover up our countries history of eugenics and its decedent modern racism we really need to talk openly about what real reproductive freedom would be.

Real reproductive freedom means never feeling bad about asking your partner to wear a condom. It means easy and affordable acces to birth control such as the pill. It means choosing to have an abortion of you need one. It means having a child if you want to and are ready to care for that child. It means equal access to fertility treatment, and doctors not questioning your desire to have a child. It means no more women who think about what might have been if they had the baby or if they didn't have the baby because they subverted their will to avoid being a "single black" statistic-- or to avoid being a "sinning selfish slut."

How much of the lies/rumors about MJ are due to the general public's insistence that he must be gay, and then their own homophobia about that idea?

Oh, a whole lot - and don't forget the sexism and racism, as they are a core part of it too (reminder to everyone that the "Wacko Jacko" nickname The Sun gave to him was comparing him to a monkey toy, something Michael was obviously mad about).

Long before the drastic changes to his looks, or the wild rumors, Michael was already seen as weird because he did not fit the stereotype of men in general (and black men in particular).

He was kind, nurturing, good with kids, emotional, shy, naive, and his biggest dream was being a parent - these are still largely seen as "female" traits today. Michael grew up in the sixties and seventies.

Even more "shocking", he was a black man that was not really aggressive, and not only was he not hypersexual, he was OPENLY voicing his discomfort with people prying into his business/insisting that, come on, he HAD to be into fucking groupies, strippers and hookers like most guys in the industry, right?

Add in him being a fashion icon and wearing a ton of make-up that gave him a bit of an androgynous look every now and then, and you have people CONVINCED he must be into men.

And once again, homophobes still think gay = pedo to this day. Michael was born in 1958. He was already the target of gay rumors, and treated like a big freak for it, before AIDS was a thing. Before "Don't ask, don't tell." Laws forbidding same-sex relationships between consenting adults had not been deemed inconstitutional in the USA until 2003.

It's crazy to me that plenty of so called "progressive" people today act are still willing to pretend there's any real evidence against him, not just because the freaking FBI was secretly investigating him for 13 years and found nothing, but because the so called "Red flags" in Michael's behavior was literally just a bunch lies to make a (supposedly) gay man look like a predator.

But there's still one more factor contribuiting to Michael being labeled as gay: people not understanding that men can be sexually abused AND be traumatized by it because "guys always want sex."

Before he had even reached ten years of age, Michael Jackson had to sing in strip clubs (and in his own words, see adults acting like animals), had to hear his brothers having sex with groupies in the same room he was in (and it wasn't uncommon for the girls to be treated horribly, which deeply upset him), had to deal with his father cheating on his mom in the next room, and during some performances, while interacting with the audience he was made to look under the skirts of adult women to play the role of "pervy kid" even after he repeatedly told everyone in the Jackson 5 team, including his father, that he DID NOT WANT TO DO THAT.

Seriously, IMAGINE if the roles were reversed and a bunch of adults were making a 7-year-old girl pulled down the pants of grown men to see their underwear/genitals as a "joke."

As Michael became a teenager, the situation only got worse, as all of the adults who never heard the word "boundaries" in their lives were bothered by the fact that Michael was not going around having sex with a bunch of women like brothers were, so they kept paying prostitutes go to "help him out". His older sister, Rebbie, said in an interview that a male relative of theirs paid two women to take the virginity of 15-year-old Michael and locked him a room with them against his will, hoping he'd just "give in." She did not say if the women actually managed to do anything with her brother.

Again, IMAGINE the reactions if an adult man locked a 15-year-old girl in a room with two adult men that were paid to have sex with her, despite both her age AND THE FACT THAT SHE ISN'T THERE WILLINGLY! People would rightfully be disturbed by it and if anything happened, it'd be considered abuse and the relative in question would be a proxy-rapist.

But Michael was a "man" (he was a freaking kid, my god) and "guys always want it", so him not being cool with this was seen as him being weird and a "faggot."

There's a reason bastards like Evan Chandler picked false accusations of pedophilia to extort Michael - they knew people didn't understand nor empathize with the real reason for Michael's "weirdness."

And sadly enough, things aren't much different now.

If Lily were remotely interested in actually combating fandom racism she'd focus on other characters in TOH and not just the white one she hates. If you're complaining about a white guy all the time, that's not progressive, because you're still discussing a white character and making him the center of attention instead of celebrating the stories of POC in the cast.

The only time Lily ever made a video that was start-to-finish praise of any POC was when it was Kuvira, a dictator who ran reeducation camps, created a weapon of mass destruction and threatened to murder everyone who disagreed with her. That was years ago.

It took her ten years to write one black main character.

Until her video on The Princess and the Frog this year, she had never talked about a piece of media focused on black people, even though she claims to be left-leaning. Being willing to watch things centered on black people is such a low bar even most conservatives clear it by accident.

In her infamous writing tips thread, she said that you should only have one cishet white character and a really good writer will have only one cis, one het, and one white character. (This rule is ridiculous for large casts, but I will acknowledge for the core main cast it's a perfectly applicable idea.) She has never written anything that doesn't have a majority white cast. Regularly her writing writes out existing POC rather than center them.

She claims to be Native not even based on blood quantum, a practice the Cherokee people and many others do not believe in, but based upon having thick black hair. She isn't recognized by the tribe. She does not educate anyone on anything pertaining to indigenous issues and didn't even mention Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women until she talked about how if she was murdered she'd be one of them. She has never written a Native character or talked about Native characters in media.

When movies that have a majority black cast come out, she disses on them.

When anything is made by Asians, she will dismiss it, not acknowledge that different Asian cultures exist, and center whiteness (such as only ever talking about Raya and the Last Dragon in terms of Lindsay Ellis, a white woman (who she then straightwashes on top of centering)).

When a POC such as Luz is anything other than cheerful and joyous, they are, to her, totally devoid of worth and ridiculous.

If Hunter were black Lily would focus on Amity instead, because she always, always devalues POC and redirects her attention onto a white person. When she made a black OC, it was in order to beat up some white people, romance a white person, and adopt white kids. She cannot, under any circumstances, create anything that focuses entirely on POC with the sole exception of focusing on a light-skinned WOC dictator whose war crimes and crimes against humanity she not only excused but viewed as cool.

She does not fight fandom racism.

She partakes in and upholds it.

Even if her fans can convince themselves all the people she's abused are liars, even if they're not aware of her past, I genuinely do not know how anyone can look at her work and not see how blatantly racist this woman is. Her only black characters are all tied to slavery, with white characters being the victims of slavery and black people benefiting. I grew up in a racist family and I am doing a lot of work to deprogram myself. It's not easy and I have a lot I haven't learned. But even I, even as a preteen writing stories, never wrote something that messed up, because it simply never would have crossed my mind to reverse victim and offender in the context of slavery.

Watching Stitch is her "I have a black content creator I watch/friend" moment the way many people in fandom/the real world use that as their get-out-racism-accusations-free card, but it's insufficient.

If she doesn't want to be seen as racist she needs to stop being so blatantly racist. It's not hard.

but it's hard for her, because that means admitting that she needs to do work on herself to get ride of all the biases she has and she alreay barely puts any work on her channel.

Autism does not cause racism, Cait.

I got newly blocked by Cait for stating that,

"Made Goodreads accounts to downvote only PoC debut authors' books, got caught, was offered a way out, doubled down, made a really bad Photoshop post with horrible dialogue as an excuse, got caught hating on the fandom she came from. Blamed her mental illness. Blamed now autism."

which isn't really accountability.

BTW, which is true. I didn't at her, just explained to someone above asking what was going on.

Sitting here with Neurodivergence, and telling you straight I deal with some inferiority complex issues, but it doesn't make me go out and try to sabotage other people's works, especially people from my own groups I belong to. Punch up or talk about the complexity of the issues, don't punch down.

(I'm aware I'm like the quintessential red shirt and I tried so hard to deny that part of me. That's what my therapist is for.)

I get Sensory Processing issues. I have that. But what happens when I get overload? I lay down and try to calm my senses and check out with a fucking headache. That's what fucking happens. It's not the sexiest TV moment ever. Sometimes I also get dissociation.

What happens when I get Sensory overload and dissociation? I go WTF, and work it out and then check out of social media, or try to do *other* things. I take responsibility. I forget shit because of the dissociation and I still say sorry, I forgot.

BTW, also my English skills go down the drain and I make a lot of fucking mistakes while on dissociation and sensory overload. Paragraphs will skip or miss parts of sentences. Hers were way too coherent.

I get depression and anxiety episodes. I fuck up. I try to still take responsibility for my fuck ups.

I have C-PTSD, but I've worked so fucking hard to not continue the cycle of trauma to violence–emotional and neglect that it's set me back in my life goals in a lot of ways before I got it compounded. But I've never, ever tried to take it out on others.

What happens when you fuck up? You apologize, you self-reflect, you try to make real amends (say deleting those accounts you have up on Goodreads), try to reverse direction and then leave those people you hurt alone. You don't go back in the middle of Black History month to defend your shitty actions.

To come clean, I have a Goodreads account I forgot how to get access to. Which was under my old name, and my story is reviewed on it. The ONLY thing I ever did with that account was claim the story I pro published and then left it alone with the reviewers.

I have inferiority complexes directed at the outside world. I totally get that, but I didn't upvote the story. I didn't try to talk back to my reviewers. I didn't go to my fellow authors and downvote their stories. Because this is what you all have to understand: Writing at every stage is a battle against yourself, not others.

Shitty people might steal your ideas, shitty people might attack you for no good reason, but at the end of the day it's a battle between you and the blank page/editing what you've got to make it better. The better you are not a shitty person, the more you act like this is a cooperative and respect people' boundaries, the more likely you're going to do better.

The authors not published? They are not worse than me. The people that are published aren't necessarily better than me (This has to do with the market) The person who started yesterday isn't necessarily worse than me. The person who has been at it longer isn't better either—art is an equalizer in many ways as a nebulous form. And the biggest battle isn't with others (unlike what a lot of early reality TV shows on the subject made it out to be). It's a battle between you and yourself. Repeat that until you get it.

That said, remembering that, go support the authors Cait hurt via link. They really need the boost to their self-esteem.