#spiritual gentrification
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Colin Dickey, Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places
#finished this at last! heres my favorite excerpts <3#words#house that eats and pleads and kills#hauntings#cr#ghostland#colin dickey#theres another part im prob gonna post abt tech + hauntings 😌#and there were so many eye opening parts abt women + spiritualism / gentrification + ghosts / history of kkk#generally i found it v interesting & informative so i very much recommend !!#just dont forget to check the content warnings on storygraph bec there are times the book gets into graphic detail of terrible stuff#horror
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“If the colony is a site of extraction, deprived of resources to sustain its contraction, gentrification is a pseudo imperialist innovation, which facilitates domestic racialized inflation and legalized displacement as a New Jim Crowism in this Anocratic nation.”
-Zisa Aziza
#Truths89#poetry#Negressofsaturn#gentrification#spirituality#evolution#energy#zisa aziza#colonialism#imperialism
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"Think For Yourself!" written by Glenn D. Grace
“Think For Yourself!” written by Glenn D. Grace
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Astrocartography Observations Part One: Sun, Venus, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter.
(Disclaimer: A lot of Astrologers use different orbs of measurements for Astrocartography. My limit is 200 km because I have seen lines that have influences up to that point, and depending on the planet, sometimes more.)
Planets:
Sun: Fame, Happiness, Vitality, Children.
Moon: Home, Roots, Family, Nostalgia.
Venus: Love, Beauty, Luxury, Desires.
Mercury: Lower Education, Communication, Knowledge, Friendships.
Mars: Passions, Action, Pain, Anger.
Jupiter: Luck, Higher Education, Religion, Beliefs.
Saturn: Karma, Restrictions, Discipline, Commitments.
Uranus: Unpredictability, Innovation, Rebellion, Technology.
Neptune: Illusions, Dreams, Spirituality, Intuition.
Pluto: Destruction, Transformations, Deaths and Rebirths.
Where your Sun lines are running through are places that you could gain or increase your fame or societal standing. And depending on the Angle of the Sun(DC, AS, MC, IC) it can also tell you what exactly it is that gives you that happiness.
☆ Despite being the daughter of a US Navy Pilot, Priscilla Presley gained her fame from being married to famous musician Elvis Presley. They got married at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. Priscilla has her Sun DC line running through Las Vegas. Sun rules fame, DC rules partnerships.
☆ Blake Lively has her Sun MC line running through London, where she has expressed her love for on numerous occasions, AND where she has made meaningful connections with other celebrities that has contributed to her social status and public persona. (MC)
☆ David Beckham has his Sun IC line running through Miami and although he retired from soccer in 2013, he maintained and even increased his societal standing when he became the co-owner of the Inter Miami CF.
☆ Interestingly enough, Blake Lively also has her Sun, Venus, AND Mars MC lines running directly through London, which is a place that she loves to go and feels happy at (Sun). A few months ago, she and her partner (Venus) bought a house in London to live in while he finishes up his filming of the Deadpool Franchise (Sun MC) which is an action movie (Mars).
☆ Perrie Edwards has her Sun DC line running through London and she gained fame (Sun) from her role as 1/4 of the girl group Little Mix (DC)
Where your Mars lines are running through are places that you could experience or be subject to hate, pain (physical, mental, and emotional), and anger.
☆ Victoria Beckham's Mars AS line runs through Madrid. When her husband David Beckham transferred from Manchester United to Real Madrid, they moved to Madrid. Victoria Beckham was singled out for hating Spain due to her remark of Spain smelling like Garlic and giving off a terrible scent. This one phrase basically ruined her life in Spain as the hate against her lasted for up to 4 years. She has said that it was the most unhappy she has ever been in her life.
☆ David Beckham has his Mars AS line running through Rio De Janeiro. In 2014 he was under a lot of fire from Brazilian locals after being accused of indirectly causing the prices of favelas to increase after buying a "slum-house" for $1M allowing gentrification to ensue.
☆ Charli D'Amelio's Mars MC is going straight through the center of the United States. We all know how disliked/hated she is amongst people in the United States. And with this being her MC line, it makes sense that the hate is largely due to and greatly affects her public persona and the way that she is portrayed by media.
☆ Monica Lewinsky has her Mars DS line running through California which we all know is Fame Headquarters (Hollywood). She was a hot topic in the entertainment industry and subject to a fuck ton of scrutiny and hate for a long time due to her intimate relationship with former president Bill Clinton (DS).
Where Your Venus lines are at, could be potential places that you may meet your life partner or long term relationships, and the lines that pass through it could tell you the circumstances.
☆ Blake Lively has her Sun AS, Mars AS, AND her Venus AS lines touching New Orleans. She met her Husband of 11 years in New Orleans (Venus rules Love) while shooting an Action Movie (Sun rules Movies and Fame, Mars rules Action)
☆ Victoria Beckham has her both her Venus MC and Jupiter MC lines going through London. She met her husband of over 20 years in London. Additionally, the Midheaven or Medium Coeli is the highest point of your chart and represents your Public Image and Success. The Beckham's are known to be one of Hollywood's longest standing marriages and have created a household name for themselves propelling both of them in their careers and future prospects. (Jupiter MC)
☆ (Also, I just thought this was interesting) Victoria Beckham had her start in the entertainment industry as a member of The Spice Girls. Her stage name was Posh Spice (Venus) which defined her Public Image (MC).
Where your IC lines are, could indicate your ancestry, or where and how you grew up or experienced your early life at.
☆ Selena Quintanilla's Saturn IC line runs through Mexico and she is Mexican. Although she became the biggest Mexican-American music artist in her 20's, when she was younger she had no connection to her Mexican ancestry (IC). She had to learn about her ancestry, AND learn Spanish before she was able to be labeled a Mexican American music artist. (Saturn represents restrictions and delays)
☆ Nicole Kidman's Mercury IC line runs through Ireland, and she has openly talked (Mercury) about her Irish ancestry (IC)
☆ Perrie Edwards has her Mercury DS line running through Scotland and she has Scottish ancestry.
☆ Hailey Bieber has her Mercury IC line running through Brazil. She has Brazilian ancestry as her mother is Brazilian.
☆ Charli D'Amelio has her Mercury IC line touching Italy. She is of Italian Descent on her fathers side.
Where your Jupiter lines are, could indicate where and how you experience luck.
☆ Charlize Theron has her Jupiter MC line running through California and it was there that she was discovered by a Hollywood agent while getting into an altercation with a bank teller.
☆ Anya Taylor Joy has her Jupiter DC line running through London which is where she was disocvered while walking her dog.
☆ Justin Bieber has his Jupiter AS line running through Canada which is where he was discovered by Scooter Braun completely by chance as he clicked on the wrong Youtube video and Justin's video came up.
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for a movie that loudly advertised that it is a spiritual successor to Who Framed Roger Rabbit, chip n dale sure did spit on everything it stands for
#you literally made the fbi the hero’s at the end of a spiritual successor to a movie who’s villain is the justice system and gentrification#not to mention the laziness of the animation and story and acting and jokes and references and-#chip n dales message was as far as I can tell ‘reboots exist’
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😂😂😂 fuck off
Indie music has been lost to the middle class & rich. Gentrification is complete. We must immediately detain Damon Albarn, their spiritual leader. He cannot be allowed to operate.
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best books of 2022 rec list:
fiction:
chouette by claire oshetsky
forty thousand in gehenna by cj cherryh
fierce femmes and notorious liars by kai cheng thom
sula by toni morrison
everyone in this room will someday be dead by emily r. austin
jane eyre by charlotte bronte
villette by charlotte bronte
non-fiction:
gay spirit by mark thompson
we too: stories on sex work and survival by natalie west
transgender history by susan stryker
blood marriage wine & glitter by s bear bergman
love and rage: the path to liberation through anger by lama rod owens
gay soul by mark thompson
between certain death and a possible future: queer writing on growing up in the AIDS crisis by mattilda bernstein sycamore
the man they wanted me to be: toxic masculinity and a crisis of our own making by jared yates sexton
nobody passes: rejecting the rules of gender and conformity by mattilda bernstein sycamore
cruising: an intimate history of a radical pastime by alex espinoza
gay body by mark thompson
what my bones know: a memoir of healing from complex trauma by stephanie foo
the child catchers: rescue, trafficking, and the new gospel of adoption by kathryn joyce
the opium wars: the addiction of one empire and the corruption of another by w. travis hanes III
a queer history of the united states by michael bronski
the trouble with white women by kyla schuller
what we don't talk about when we talk about fat by aubrey gordon
the feminist porn book by tristan taormino
administrations of lunacy: a story of racism and psychiatry at the midgeville asylum by mab segrest
the women's house of detention by hugh ryan
angela davis: an autobiography by angela davis
ten steps to nanette by hannah gadsby
neuroqueer heresies by nick walker
the remedy: queer and trans voices on health and healthcare by zena sharman
brilliant imperfection by eli clare
the dawn of everything: a new history of humanity by david graeber and david wengrow
tomorrow sex will be good again by katherine angel
all our trials: prisons, policing, and the feminist fight to end violence by emily l. thuma
if this is a man by primo levi
bi any other name: bisexual people speak out by lorraine hutchins
white rage: the unspoken truth of our racial divide by carol anderson
public sex: the culture of radical sex by pat califa
I'm glad my mom died by jenette mccurdy
care of: letters, connections and cures by ivan coyote
the gentrification of the mind: witness to a lost imagination by sarah schulman
skid road: on the frontier of health and homelessness in an american city, by josephine ensign
the origins of totalitarianism by hannah arendt
nice racism: how progressive white people perpetuate racial harm by robin diangelo
corrections in ink by keri blakinger
sexed up: how society sexualizes us and how we can fight back by julia serano
smash the church, smash the state! the early years of gay liberation by tommi avicolli mecca
no more police: a case for abolition by mariame kaba
until we reckon: violence, mass incarceration, and a road to repair by danielle sered
the care we dream of: liberatory & transformative justice approaches to LGBTQ+ health by zena sharman
reclaiming two-spirits: sexuality, spiritual renewal and sovereignty in native america by gregory d. smithers
the sentences that create us: crafting a writer's life in prison by Caits Messner
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daily reminder that “shifting” is a gentrified concept.
gentrification- upper class, sometimes white people taking certain concepts mainly used by other cultures and turning them into a “white people” thing. for example, some people calling lean which is a drug that is mostly associated with the black community “sleepy girl juice”, is gentrification.
a white girl during the pandemic accidentally “shifted” and gave it the name and terminology as we know it today, including dr, cr, scripting etc.
shifting as a concept has existed way before white people on tiktok discovered it.
in the Buddhist concept of Iddhi (supernatural abilities which can be mastered through meditation), we see the mention of two abilities which remind us of our modern concept of “shifting”.
isn’t it kind of funny how African and Asian spirituality was vastly slaughtered by white colonizers in the name of Christianity, and now they take what is an aspect of that and they take it and rename it to their liking?
this has existed way before tiktok. shifting does not belong to white girls who shift to hogwarts, never has and never will.
#shifting antis dni#shifting diary#shifting script#shifting motivation#shifting community#shifting blog#shifting consciousness#reality shifting#shifting methods#shifting realities
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Kizazi Moto review
Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire is an anthology of animated shorts from studios all over Africa, with the theme of afrofuturism and science fantasy (mixing frequently indigenous spiritual beliefs with the tech, and many shorts are actually about gods or spiritual beings). It's a shame that the project is attached to Disney, because this is one of the best anthologies I've seen in a long while.
So let's review the individual shorts.
Herderboy
By Uganda's Raymond Malinga, this portrays the story of a boy trying to join a band of herders, which harvest kyber crystals from cyborg cows and are under constant attack by spirits (read dark side hyenas). It's a good start to the anthology; the CGI is bright and makes good use of color, and it has a nice twist at the end.
7/10
Mkhuzi the Spirit Racer
By South Africa's Simangaliso Sibaya and Malcolm Wopé, this one bears a bright and joyous 2D animation. It features a half-human half-something boy who struggles with his Zulu identity, and that all comes crashing down in a race against gentrification. It's a delightful short with beautiful visuals and actual incorporation of cultural themes into the narrative.
9/10
Moremi
By Nigeria’s Shofela Coker, this is a pretty bleak looking CGI short not out of place in Love, Death & Robots. Long ago, soul stealing giants forced a woman to construct magical machines by giving her son's heart to the gods; this is about the summary you're gonna get without getting into heavy spoilers. A delight if you're into mythology as there's quite a few allusions to Nigeria's folklore, but I can see people getting a bit confused and the visuals can be grating at times.
6/10
Surf Sagoma
By South Africa’s Nthato Mokgata and Catherine Green, in a future where sea levels rose and mutant octopi lurk in the depths a boy is peer pressured into surfing in dangerous waters. I have to say, while this has a happy ending it is rather bleak and the CGI visuals are not particularly pleasing.
5/10
First Totem Problems
By South Africa’s Tshepo Moche, we're back to 2D, this time more Disney-esque. If I had to describe this, it'd be like a mixture of the first half of Brother Bear and Coco. It's pretty fun, though a bit lacking in substance and the family feuds can get grating.
7/10
Mukudzei
By Zimbabwe’s Pious Nyenyewa and Tafadzwa Hove, an influencer desecrates Great Zimbabwe, only to be taken to a timeline where it never fell to colonialism and became basically Wakanda. The concept alone is amazing, though the story itself is rather generic.
8/10
Hatima
By South Africa’s Terence Maluleke and Isaac Mogajane, this is by far my favourite of the shorts, it features the tragic conflict between merfolk and humans, with a Black Panther 2 reveal at the end. With stellar 2D animation and allusions to Dogon mythology, as well as a good solid plot where the reveal has just the right amount of foreshadowing without becoming obvious.
10/10
Stardust
By Egypt's Ahmed Teilab, I had the highest expectations for this one, being the only Middle Eastern short in the mix. It's an alright story, I really loved the science fantasy twist on astrology by just being handed a "destiny" in a tube with stars inside. The protagonist naturally choses her own fate over the manufactured ones... though getting there is quite spoilerific.
8/10
You Give My Heart
By South Africa’s Lesego Vorster, this is another return to 2D animation and the second one about influencers amusingly enough. The plot kicks off in a competition in which the human contestants can ascend to godhood. Godhood is very much treated like being an influencer, and amusingly one of the previous contestants was demoted by typing in all caps. Overall pretty fun and the animation is gorgeous, though the characters designs can get a bit ugly.
9/10
Enkai
By Kenya’s Ng’endo Mukii, the final short is done in a CGI mimicking stop motion, which combined with the stellar coloration and lighting makes for a stunning visual experience. This too deals with the divine, this time the young Enkai seeking to become a creator deity like her mother. There is a big plot twist that I will not spoil, and recontextualises the whole short.
9/10
Conclusion
I give the overall anthology 9/10; barring a few hiccups, these are wonderful stories from Africa's many creative voices. Again, pity Disney has a grasp on this.
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We got a short article in Retroware!
This article from before we launched our Kickstarter a few years back, gives a good overview of the main elements of the game including it's Hades-like inspiration!
[Midautumn] uses roguelike gameplay to explore themes of Asian diaspora culture, spiritual folklore, and the upsetting realities of your hometown gentrification. The game centers around new in town and recent college graduate Robin Lam and their time spent with their grandmother. It’s set to be a typical postgrad hometown story until the discovery of a basement portal to the Spirit World. The Spirit World is also in need of a new protector, a title passed to Robin.
The everchanging dungeons of Midautumn’s Spirit World are the core of the game’s roguelike gameplay. Each visit will be a fast-paced battle of changing abilities depending on the run. Much like Hades and other familiar genre entries, members of the spirit world will remember and react to your previous visits. With changing abilities as a spirit guardian, you’ll use lunar powers to reflect enemies own attacks back toward them in quick and constantly shifting combat scenarios.
We're excited for more folks to get into roguelikes in the vein of Hades, like ours! And really enjoy the cast of characters, range of builds, and engaging combat! 💜
Buy and play Midautumn in Early Access now on Steam + Itch + a FREE demo!
#indie game#hades#hades game#indie dev#game dev#roguelike#roguelite#narrative game#dungeon crawler#indie games#video games#indiedev#gamedev#hades supergiant#midautumn#midautumn game
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logged back in bc I'm drunk and angry about real estate developers
Reasons they suck-
-Deforestation
-Directly responsible for the housing and homelessness crisis
-gentrification
-emissions from mowers and other lawn care machines worse and larger than automotive emissions
-emissions from heating and cooling n’ maintaining all the empty unsold units they build
-they purposefully build units for the express purpose of sitting empty so ppl will buy them and let them accrue interest
-Build with 0 regard for traffic impact, which also worsens emissions bc driving slower and shittier
-introduces hundreds of invasive plant species for bullshit aesthetics
-mass pesticide use for bullshit invasive plants that is more damaging and widespread than pesticide use for food production
-uses the sexiest fucking machines in the word for pure evil. Literally I cannot look at a crane or backhoe and not feel the collective weight of the harm done to all of humanity and the planet while looking at them fuck you you fucking assholes these are like the spiritual metal successors to megafauna and you've enslaved them. They were meant for MORE
These absolute fucking shitbags are responsible for a wider array of humanitarian and environmental damage than any other enterprise in the world. Tell me I'm wrong. Christ tell me I'm fucking wrong I don't *want* to be right.
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So a correction, because I did in fact make an error and I ought to correct that.
Sociology is a science. I framed it as though it wasn’t. And that was an error that I made and I apologize for saying that it wasn’t because that’s nonsense.
Let me rephrase: cases of endogenic plurality shouldn’t have to need psychology to be considered legitimate. Sociological explanations should be more widely understood and accepted.
As for “you don’t need science to live life”— you’re right, I do, but that isn’t the point. The point is you don’t need to explain yourself to other people who you know aren’t going to listen. Constantly having to apologize or argue for your existence is a horrible way to live and it’s a hell of a lot easier to not give a fuck about opinions.
But I have made mistakes in that post, partially because I wrote it while I was tired and partially because I genuinely do not understand particular syscourse blogs’ obsessions with trying to build a psychological explanation for things that are very clearly sociological.
Why can’t plurality be spiritual? Why can’t it be a cultural part of heritage without needing some big grand psychological framework? Why is psychology the only avenue by which these particular blogs feel singlets will understand?
Why do we have to appease anti-endo arguments of “it’s not psychologically scientific so it’s not real!!1!” ? I don’t understand the preoccupation with looking legitimate to people who don’t care and want to hate you anyway, I REALLY don’t. Genuinely.
Was my post made in error? Yeah. I didn’t word that well and I need to do better. Syscourse as a whole makes us turn into an absolute mess, especially when it’s a stupid reply from Sophie or one of her bootlickers. It’s why we are currently on a soft hiatus— because we have better things to do and lives to enrich outside of this hellsite.
So yes, we’re sorry for a rather lackluster post that implied sociology isn’t a science. Honestly, with the field I studied, I oughta know better. I don’t understand the obsession with looking legitimate to people who don’t care, and that’s what I should have said.
Lastly— I’m pro endo. I don’t expect anyone to believe me or my crew, but we are. We just stand with SEAsian systems who say using tulpa as a word is cultural appropriation. We aren’t against willfully created headmates, we are against using a word whose concept is directly attached to a practice from a vulnerable community without the permission of those in that community.
We are not interested in whether willfully created headmates are real or not; we are concerned with the gentrification of words out of their heritage. We are concerned with people who have had so much taken from them already, that this is an insult to injury. And yes, we can’t speak over them because ultimately it’s their battle, but we’ll still stand with them.
I try not to speak over the voice of people who have the ethos to discuss the issue, but I’ll admit it’s hard to know precisely what I should and shouldn’t say, what I can be upset about and what I should leave to them.
Please stop insisting I’m some anti-endo bastard. I’m not, I just think words have meanings to their original cultures that ought to be respected.
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Hey so I put together a list of trans and Jewish books (books about trans Jews or by trans Jews - or both!) for my synagogue for TDOV. We have been "the queer shul" in our city since the 90s so we have a reputation to uphold here. Anyway I thought I'd share it here for those interested.:
Memoir/biography
1. Becoming Eve - Abby Chava Stein. Chronicles her journey through transition, from ultra-Orthodox Rabbi to transgender woman
2. Through the Door of Life - Joy Ladin. A memoir of transition from the first openly transgender employee of an Orthodox university
3. What We Will Become - Mimi Lemay. Lemay writes about her own journey and that of her child, Jacob, who knew he was a boy from age two
4. Blood, Marriage, Wine, and Glitter - S. Bear Bergman. Essays by Bergman, a trans, Jewish, polyamorous parent
5. Continuum - Chella Man. A memoir of many identities; Man is Chinese-Jewish, genderqueer, and Deaf
Fiction (adult)
1. Sarahland (Stories) - Sam Cohen. Cohen's 10 stories all center on women named Sarah, including a transgender Sarah who marries Hagar
2. Confessions of the Fox - Jordy Rosenberg. Rosenberg re-imagines English folk hero Jack Sheppard as a trans man
3. The Blade Between - Sam J. Miller. A man returns to his hometown to help (no joke) ancient whale demigods and the ghost of a onetime lover fight (again, no joke) insidious gentrification. I've read this one; it's an absolute bonkers joy.
4. The Right Thing to Do at the Time - Dov Zeller. A trans-centered Yiddish-inspired retelling of Pride & Prejudice
5. All the Things We Don't Talk About - Amy Feltman. A family saga about a neurodivergent father, a nonbinary teen, and the woman who abandoned them both
Torah & Spirituality
1. Torah Queeries - Drinkwater et al., ed. Modern, queer readings of the parashot
2. The Soul of the Stranger - Joy Ladin. Reading Torah and understanding God from a transgender perspective
3. Transgender & Jewish - Naomi Zeveloff, ed. Stories of the "first wave" of openly gender nonconforming Jewish people to take places of leadership in the mainstream
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Book Review 10 - The World We Make by N. K. Jemisin
I’m generally a huge fan of Jemisin, so of course I had to read this as soon as I realized it existed, even if I really didn’t think The City We Became needed a sequel on pretty much any level. And yeah, it didn’t!
Like, I’ve already posted about my issues with this book extensively, so will try to keep this relatively succinct. But broadly – there were about twice as many POVs as the wordcount could actually support with their own subplots, Ry’leh and her minions had all the threat and grandeur of a Saturday morning cartoon villain, the broader metaphysics/plot didn’t actually much sense at all , basically every actual problem the characters had was resolved as soon as they actually tried, and, generally, the book’s highest aim really seemed to be more engaging in some cathartic effigy-burning of various political analogues than it did really telling any sort of coherent story.
The book has virtues – the sentence to sentence prose is very good when it doesn’t read like a DNC campaign mailer, and the characters who actually get screen time and internal conflicts are all very compelling (somewhat unfortunate that half of them are the villains). But just – it’s impossible to really feel like you’re rooting for the underdogs when the protagonists start the book in a commanding position with everything they need to win and nothing that happens over the course of the entire story actually puts them on the back foot for a couple of hours? Or I mean, I tell a lie, technically the entire book is a race against the clock of impending universal extinction, as caused by...Fox News and right-wing twitter running a bunch of anti-New York smear campaigns? Which was just so obviously arbitrary and driven by the needs of plot it was impossible to take seriously.
Just, generally, there is a real upper limit to how far you can stretch ‘the divine avatars of quite possibly the richest and most politically powerful metropolis in the world fight proud boys and a no-hope Trump wannabe running for Mayor’ into something that compelling. The literal global capital of financial capitalism, not an easy sell as ‘scrappy underdog’! Especially when the dominant tone used to talk about any of the human opposition is just sneering contempt. Which I mean, very true to life, but doesn’t do a great job establishing a sense of threat. Especially when the sneering contempt is just entirely justified, and every action on the part of the enemy basically just happens to allow one of the avatars to do an incredibly self-indulgent New York-themed bit of magic, probably humiliating an obvious analogue for some prominent right wing figure or archetype (trucker convoy, proud boys, etc) in the process. It’s just, so incredibly cheesy. At one point a city councilwoman is revealed to be a friendly acquaintance with Beyonce and able to call her in to help with her mayoral campaign. Wretched of the earth these are not.
But okay, to try and make this a bit more analytical and a bit less me ranting – I really don’t think the book’s conception of the soul or character of New York really coheres? It’s New York, but, like, the nostalgic fantasy of pre-Guliani New York mixed with the parts of it that modern progressives take pride in. At no point does the book explain in any even close to satisfactory way why the transparent Trump analogue winning would be more spiritually damaging than Bloomberg (or hell, Moses) was – we’re just supposed to take it as read that being the beating heart of progressive America is at the soul of what it means to be New York.
On a similar note – there’s a real ambiguity to what Ry’leh is supposed to, like, be, thematically? Or I mean, not really. She’s gentrification, not necessarily in the social displacement sense (but that too) as in the way that every central business district in every major city in the world increasingly looks the same, in the way that identical chain stores replace local small businesses, the tendency of modern capitalist development to erode the difference between places until a city is a city is a city, no matter what continent you’re on. Local restaurants bought out by numbered holding companies or international franchises and getting their menus and recipes from a focus group in California. Which is a great, meaty association for your villain! But, like, isn’t especially well served by also being specifically alt-right and Trumpist American right-wing politics (very, very much not the same thing!). And as soon as we get into what she and the Ur actually want everything just kind of stops making sense entirely. (She’s also just so, like, cartoonishly evil and constantly talking about wanting to end the world and make things worse that it’s impossible to take seriously and she just ends up one of the most endearing characters in the entire story.)
Anyway, yeah, Neek and Manny and Ry’leh and Aislyn were all great, but otherwise The City We Became really didn’t need a sequel.
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Chapter 1. Human Nature
Haven’t humans always been patriarchal?
One of the most ancient forms of oppression and hierarchy is patriarchy: the division of humans into two rigid gender roles and the domination of men over women. But patriarchy is not natural or universal. Many societies have had more than two gender categories, and have allowed their members to change gender. Some even created respected spiritual roles for those who did not fit into either of the primary genders. The majority of prehistoric art depicts people who are either of no determinate gender or people with ambiguous, exaggerated combinations of masculine and feminine traits. In such societies, gender was fluid. It was something of a historic coup to enforce the notion of two fixed, idealized genders that we now consider natural. Speaking in strictly physical terms, many perfectly healthy people are born intersexed, with male and female physiological characteristics, showing that these categories exist on a fluid continuum. It makes no sense to make people who do not fit easily into one category feel as though they are unnatural.
Even in our patriarchal society, in which everyone is conditioned to believe that patriarchy is natural, there has always been resistance. Much current resistance by queer people and transgender people takes a horizontal form. One organization in New York City, called FIERCE!, includes a wide spectrum of people excluded and oppressed by patriarchy: transgender, lesbian, gay, bisexual, two-spirit (an honored category in many Native American societies for people who are not identified as strictly men or women), queer, and questioning (people who have not made up their minds about their sexuality or gender identity, or who do not feel comfortable in any category). FIERCE! was founded in 2000, mostly by youth of color, and with anarchist participation. They uphold a horizontal ethic of “organizing by us, for us,” and they actively link resistance to patriarchy, transphobia, and homophobia with resistance to capitalism and racism. Their actions have included protesting police brutality against transgender and queer youth; education through documentary films, zines, and the internet; and organizing for fair healthcare and against gentrification, particularly where the latter threatens to destroy important cultural and social spaces for queer youth.
At the time of this writing they are particularly active in a campaign to stop the gentrification of the Christopher Street Pier, which has been one of the only safe public spaces for homeless and low-income queer youth of color to meet and build community. Since 2001, the city has been trying to develop the Pier, and police harassment and arrests have multiplied. The FIERCE! campaign has helped provide a rallying point for those who want to save the space, and changed the public debate so that other voices are heard besides those of the government and business owners. Our society’s attitudes about gender and sexuality have changed radically in the past centuries, largely because of groups like this taking direct action to create what is said to be impossible.
Resistance to patriarchy goes back as far as we care to look. In the “good old days” when these gender roles were supposedly unchallenged and accepted as natural, we can find stories of utopia, that upset the assumption that patriarchy is natural, and the notion that civilized progress is bringing us steadily from our brutal origins towards more enlightened sensibilities. In fact the idea of total freedom has always played a role in human history.
In the 1600s, Europeans were streaming to North America for a variety of reasons, building new colonies that exhibited a wide range of characteristics. They included plantation economies based on slave labor, penal colonies, trading networks that sought to compel the indigenous inhabitants to produce large quantities of animal skins, and fundamentalist religious utopias based on the total genocide of the native population. But just as the plantation colonies had their slave rebellions, the religious colonies had their heretics. One noteworthy heretic was Anne Hutchinson. An anabaptist who came to New England to escape religious persecution in the old world, she began to hold women’s meetings in her house, discussion groups based on free interpretation of the Bible. As the popularity of these meetings spread, men began to participate as well. Anne won popular support for her well argued ideas, which opposed the slavery of Africans and Native Americans, criticized the church, and insisted that being born a woman was a blessing and not a curse.
The religious leaders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony put her on trial for blasphemy, but at trial she stood by her ideas. She was heckled and called an instrument of the devil, and one minister said, “You have stepped out of your place, you have rather been a husband than a wife, a preacher than a hearer, and a magistrate than a subject.” Upon her expulsion Anne Hutchinson organized a group, in 1637, to form a settlement named Pocasset. They intentionally settled near to where Roger Williams, a progressive theologian, had founded Providence Plantations, a settlement based on the idea of total equality and freedom of conscience for all inhabitants, and friendly relations with the indigenous neighbors. These settlements were to become, respectively, Portsmouth and Providence, Rhode Island. Early on they joined to form the Rhode Island Colony. Both settlements allegedly maintained friendly relations with the neighboring indigenous nation, the Narragansett; Roger Williams’ settlement was gifted the land they built on, whereas Hutchinson’s group negotiated an exchange to buy land.
Initially, Pocasset was organized through elected councils and the people refused to have a governor. The settlement recognized equality between the sexes and trial by jury; abolished capital punishment, witchtrials, imprisonment for debt, and slavery; and granted total religious freedom. The second synagogue in North America was built in the Rhode Island colony. In 1651 one member of Hutchinson’s group seized power and got the government of England to bestow him governorship over the colony, but after two years the other people in the settlement kicked him out in a mini-revolution. After this incident, Anne Hutchinson realized that her religious beliefs opposed “magistracy,” or governmental authority, and in her later years she was said to have developed a political-religious philosophy very similar to individualist anarchism. One might say that Hutchinson and her colleagues were ahead of their times, but in every period of history there have been stories of people creating utopias, women asserting their equality, laypeople negating the religious leaders’ monopoly on truth.
Outside of Western civilization we can find many examples of non-patriarchal societies. Some stateless societies intentionally preserve gender fluidity, like the Mbuti described previously. Many societies accept fixed genders and division of roles between men and women, but seek to preserve equality between these roles. Several of these societies allow transgender expressions — individuals changing their gender or adopting a unique gender identity. In hunter-gatherer societies “a sharp and hard division of labor between the sexes is not universal... [and in the case of one particular society] virtually every subsistence activity can be, and often is, performed by either men or women”.[7]
The Igbo of western Africa had separate spheres of activity for men and women. Women were responsible for certain economic tasks and men for others, and each group held power autonomously over their sphere. These spheres designated who produced which goods, domesticated which animals, and took which responsibilities in the garden and market. If a man interfered in the women’s sphere of activity or abused his wife, the women had a ritual of collective solidarity that preserved the balance and punished the offender, called “sitting on a man.” All the women would assemble outside the man’s house, yelling at him and insulting him in order to cause him shame. If he did not come out to apologize the mob of women might destroy the fence around his house and his outlying storage buildings. If his offense were grievous enough, the women might even storm into his house, drag him out, and beat him up. When the British colonized the Igbo, they recognized men’s institutions and economic roles, but ignored or were blind to the corresponding women’s sphere of social life. When Igbo women responded to British indecency with the traditional practice of “sitting on a man,” the British, possibly mistaking it for a women’s insurrection, opened fire, putting an end to the gender-balancing ritual and cementing the institution of patriarchy in the society they had colonized.[8]
The Haudennosaunne, called the Iroquois by Europeans, are a matrilineal egalitarian society of eastern North America. They traditionally use several means to balance gender relations. Whereas European civilization utilizes gender division to socialize people into rigid roles and to oppress women, queer, and transgendered people, the gendered division of labor and social roles among the Haudennosaunne functions to preserve a balance, assigning each group autonomous niches and powers, and allowing a greater degree of movement between genders than is considered possible in Western society. For hundreds of years the Haudennosaunne have coordinated between multiple nations using a federative structure, and at each level of organization there were women’s councils and men’s councils. At what might be called the national level, which concerned itself with matters of war and peace, the men’s council made the decisions, though the women held a veto power. At the local level, women held more influence. The basic socio-economic unit, the longhouse, was considered to belong to the women, and men had no council at this level. When a man married a woman, he moved into her house. Any man who did not behave could ultimately be kicked out of the longhouse by the women.
Western society typically sees the “higher” levels of organization as being more important and powerful — even the language we use reflects this; but because the Haudennosaunne were egalitarian and decentralized, the lower or local levels of organization where the women had more influence were more important to daily life. In fact when there was no feud between the different nations the highest council might go a long time without meeting at all. However, their’s was not a “matriarchal” society: men were not exploited or devalued the way women are in patriarchal societies. Rather, each group had a measure of autonomy and means for preserving a balance. Despite centuries of colonization by a patriarchal culture, many groups of Haudennosaunne retain their traditional gender relations and still stand out in sharp contrast to the gender-oppressive culture of Canada and the United States.
#anarchism#daily posts#communism#anti capitalist#anti capitalism#late stage capitalism#anarchy#anarchists#libraries#leftism#anarchy works#the patriarchy#feminism#sexism
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No. 2 on my list of top animated series for 2023: "Young Love"
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Unlike every other series on this list, this mature animated comedy, a spin off from the short film, Hair Love, aired without much fanfare earlier this year. Young Love comes at a time that many Black-centered animated series are on streaming services. This series centers on three members of a tight-knit Black family in Chicago: a hair stylist named Angela Young (voiced by Issa Rae), an aspiring music producer and partner of Angela named Stephen Young (voiced by Kid Cudi), and their daughter Zuri Michaela Young-Love (voiced by Brooke Monroe Conaway). Their family strains come to the fore, especially when it comes to Angela's parents.
Young Love, like The Proud Family reboot/revival, provides social commentary on many topics such as the sharing economy, sexist beliefs from men, gangs, social media influencers, homelessness, crowdfunding, anti-Black racism, pyramid schemes, video game addiction, gentrification, and marijuana smoking. All the while, comedy is part and parcel of the series, which has a strong slice-of-life vibe, and emphasizes the value of art and the creative process, even with many episodes having warnings for strong or coarse language, and occasional violence. While parental romance, family bonding, and rejecting religious belief in favor of spiritualism are not unique to this series, the next-to-last episode takes a bold stab at marriage itself.
Young Love concludes that love isn't only possible through marriage. This contrasts from the marriage of convenience in Spy x Family, or the same-sex marriage either canonized (or believed as a headcanon) in yuri and yaoi anime or manga. There can be romantic friendships and romances without any legally binding life-long commitments. However, such depictions in popular culture are rare. The idea that unmarried/single people are abhorrent, bizarre, or "suspicious" is promoted instead. I hope that this series gets a second season, giving new/newish screenwriters, writers, and animators a chance to shine once more.
excerpted from "Burkely's Top Ten Animated TV Shows of 2023"
© 2023 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.
#young love#max#black animation#lgbtq#marriage#popular culture#spy x family#love without marriage#unmarried people#single people#adult animation#mature animation#pop culture#reviews#hair love#Youtube
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