Gaza and the United States Ain’t as Different as You’d Like to Believe

I am a Black marginalized person who has grown up in the amerikkkan propaganda machine that continuously distractes me with ridiculous psychological and physical check points meant to assess my willingness to cosign on my own oppression.

I learned from a very young age that to survive this system, I needed to be silent. I needed to be obedient. I should never ask questions and just do as I’m told. I learned that when I was quiet and obedient and people harmed me, it was always my fault. It was my fault for being noticed, for doing what they said, and it didn’t matter whether or not I spoke up about it. My options comprised of carrying the shame in secret or telling others and carrying that shame and their scorn publicly. The lesson: learn to never let it happen again. I was supposed to figure out how to protect myself without making it obvious that I found people dangerous and harmful.

My options for navigating this fuckshit known as amerikkkan culture have always been complete garbage.

Black people who know our history in this violent ass society know that we have been terrorized since our ancestors were trafficked to this land. That every attempt to liberate ourselves, even using their rules, have been met with swift and overwhelming violence. Everything from the tone of our voices to the way we walk is heavily monitored and punished by the settler colonialist dictators for daring to be different from their prescribed norms. We are perpetual victims of violence perpetrated by people who refuse to acknowledge their violence. They truly see the world and every person, place, and thing on it as something that had to have demonstrable benefit to them just to be tolerated. And by tolerate, I mean used to death. If your existence does not benefit them, they will destroy you. This is not hyperbole. This is historical fact – something they keep working to suppress and currently failing to do.

The propaganda machine teaches us from childhood that we owe the oligarchs our labor. That we must work to benefit them and they tie our survival to it as much as they can. We are tracked under the auspice of receiving benefits, but considering how Black people have been intentionally excluded from national benefits, even basic employment, we know those benefits were never really meant for us.

There have always been social rules in amerikkkan society, the classism of their british roots – roots that demand people shed their individuality and embrace a white identity that would provide the illusion of shielding them from violence while granting them provisional access to the benefits that white power manufactured. For people who do not physically match the physicality of settler-colonialists, etiquette is used to separate the controllable from the rebels. Our adherence to these rules determine whether we can get even fringe access to shelter, food, and clean water and those who cannot be obedient are forced under penalty of death. The police are the weapons used to enforce this.

The reality of amerikkkan life is that none of us are free. We are trained to comply from birth. Our parents train us to conform out of hope for our safety. Conforming guarantees nothing for us, but for those who have created a “survive or die” society, it makes the population predictable. Manageable. Controlled. It’s how they can poison an entire town’s water supply but still have the majority of those poisoned people go to work and pay their bills. We are expendable assets in a global game of Risk – a game that becomes less and less risky as we both conform and violently punish those who do not.

So, as much as you want to claim that we are different from Gaza, we are not. Indigenous people were and continue to be massacred by the same western settler-colonialists whose descendants are currently committing genocide in countries all over the globe. We’ve just been taught to accept fascism under the illusion of democracy from a country that used said fascism to become “great”. A people who claimed to represent their residents while abducting millions of Black people. A country that currently enslaves millions of people under the guise of justice. They are the same. The israeli government is yet another violent arm of the united states and they don’t care that we can see what they are because they will use every tool they’ve created over the years to silence us.

They can and will ruin you financially. They will physically harm you. They will murder you. As great a tool as social media is, they are actively suppressing posts supporting Palestine. The news media is using the old school template of refusing to report on what’s actually happening. They are murdering journalists. They have unleashed the police to quell protests supporting Palestine. The united states has openly pushed for genocide of the Palestinian people, going so far as to label any defense of Palestine as anti-Semitic. And they are willing and able to go farther.

It’s been happening in African countries for centuries. It’s been happening in the united states since inception. They punished the fuck out of Haiti for hundreds of years, all for daring to successfully resist. White supremacy drives this shit. That settler-colonialist ideology drives all this. People, white people specifically, literally deputize themselves to enforce the laws and social rules they have been told everyone must follow. When white people step out of line, they often get warnings. When Black people step out of line, we are often punished to the fullest extent of the law.

It has never been about the people – only about those who seek to control us. And control us they do, which you’ll admit if you’re willing to be honest about it.

If you appreciate or learn from this essay, please feel free to compensate me by contributing to my Paypal,  CashApp, or Venmo. You can contribute any amount you want at any time:

Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/TaLynnKel

Cash App: $TalynnKel

Venmo: https://www.venmo.com/u/TalynnKel

I think I've gotten my Only Fans posting schedule to something manageable and sustained for where I am in my life right now - two looks a month.

Now, if I could get back into the habit of posting videos, I'd be golden.

#BlackJoy #BreakingNormal #PlusSize #TakeUpSpace #TBINAA #EmbraceYourCurves #EmbraceYourself

I'm not even faking it til I make it. I'm falling out till I don't have to anymore.

Decolonize Your Cosplay Community

Several years ago, I was part of a close-knit geek community. It was composed of mostly Black people, but everyone was marginalized in some way, be it for their size, skin color, gender, sexuality, or ability, we were all oppressed in some way. We attended DragonCon together and would hang out and do photoshoots together. It was an idyllic time. Then, several things happened that shifted my perspective. I met my significant other, who is white, which put a white person in my intimate spaces – several of which were all Black. It also put me in his spaces, which were definitely all white. I started grad school to get my master’s in public health, which gave me a more nuanced view of how the institutions of this country intentionally sabotaged the lives of Black people to promote the lie of white supremacy and how that directly destroyed our lives. Then came the murder of Trayvon Martin, a murder that too many white people sought to justify. Each of these things strongly pushed me to change and I became much more outspoken about oppression.

Initially, the people in my geek circle appreciated my anti-oppression stance. I primarily spoke out about anti-Black racism but, as any person who begins researching anti-oppression learns, anti-Black racism is just the beginning. Anti-Blackness fuels everything, but it’s not limited to racism. Western beauty standards are anti-Black – pale, thin body, nose, & lips, and flat hair. Ableism likes to label anything Black people do as some kind of mental illness. As many Black and Indigenous cultures did not place limits on gender, sexuality, or family, western culture developed strict limitations on how people were allowed to live. It’s all connected and it’s all negatively affecting our existence in some way.

When I only spoke up about the issues that directly affected them, it was cool. Great, even. They loved when I talked about the way canon was used to marginalize us in cosplay. They loved when I discussed the historic limitations of Black people in amerikkkan comics. I shared any space I had, used my platform to amplify theirs, and shared my resources constantly, but let me bring up sexism and suddenly I was being too pushy. Let me talk about ableism and I was being too extreme. When I said I was pro-Black and was only interested in amplifying Black voices, specifically Black femme voices, I was suddenly “too radical”.

They then began using that “too radical” label to exclude me from spaces. It didn’t take much – the larger geek spaces are predominantly white & male, and they can’t stand Black MaGes (Marginalized Genders) who don’t center or cater to them, so it was great when I could make it happen. It was fascinating watching the Black men in my circle downplay the work I did to get into these spaces. It was frustrating when they tried to soften my message or speak on my behalf. It was painful watching them choose never to correct anyone when they gave them credit for my work. It was disgusting when they started applying to present in these spaces and never included me. The moment I called them on all their fuckery was the nail in the coffin. I’d finally given them the excuse they needed to loudly condemn me.

The thing that hurt most was the number of people who suddenly stopped talking to me because of that. Maybe they had issues that they never brought to me but many people picked a side and it wasn’t mine. Some people pretended to be neutral and tried to maintain a secret friendship with me. Others were more aggressive. I found myself being attacked anytime I disagreed with anyone from that circle – complete with name calling. I was told that I was angry, aggressive, difficult, combative - basically all the shitty stereotypes used to indicate that a Black MaGe is expendable. From ghosting to outright publicly shunning me, people were loudly disrespectful with their shit. And I had to learn to navigate that.

I knew I’d made people uncomfortable because I was willing to sit in my own discomfort, reflect on my behavior, and try to course correct. I had few issues being vulnerable about myself, which also meant that I had few issues with bringing attention to people’s habitual line stepping. I wasn’t cruel about it – I made a huge effort not to be, but it didn’t matter. They wanted to be comfortable in their oppression, especially when that oppression benefited them. So, they aligned themselves with the person who never challenged their fuckery while I left and learned to breathe again.

The thing with the cosplay community is that cosplay itself was divisive. We were a bunch of weirdos uniting under a common banner. A banner that was easier to fit under when there were only a few of us. When there were suddenly hundreds of cosplayers, there was a bigger pool of people on both sides of the camera, which made it easier for people to lean into their “preferences” and privileged identities without pushback. It reinforced the hierarchy that power thrives on, because what is power without people to surpass, silence, and suppress?

People push back on oppression right up to the line where they benefit from it. In geek spaces, this manifested as the white men who couldn't get dates leveraging their white patriarchal power to access women. It manifested as thin, able-bodied, *color redacted* cosplayers leveraging “canon cosplay” to exclude Black, fat, and disabled cosplayers and silencing them. It manifested as able-bodied people openly complaining about disabled people getting any accessibility at conventions. And so on and so on and so on.

People protect their power.

To have power, you need people to oppress. That is why power-centered conversation focus on sharing power rather than dismantling it. Sharing power maintains the hierarchy. Sharing power allows buy-in for people who are usually harmed by that power. Sharing power creates agents of white supremacy, the skinfolk who ain’t kinfolk. It snuffs out progress because no one wants to give up that illusion of safety. Being in that space is a win that makes these beneficiaries deeply invested in maintaining the systems that prey on them. The thing they forget is that there are other spaces they aren’t invited to join and the people in those spaces are whetting their appetites for the moment your presence doesn’t benefit them. Amerikkkan society is predatory and violent. The cosplay community, along with other geek spaces, are no exception. The cosplay community may have begun as a safe space for people with specific interests, but as it grew, it became a tool for people to play out their power fantasies. The homogeneous nature of the groups creating and managing these spaces made it easy for them to espouse these ideals of fairness and equity without ever having to follow through on them. When people of different marginalized identities began joining, maintaining that white supremacist patriarchal capitalist hierarchy was the most straightforward way to ensure those at the top of that hierarchy stayed at the top.  

We have to stop framing all these equity conversations around power. Power is fueled through oppression. We have to stop trying to find comfortable ways to share oppression and start doing the work to dismantle it. It begins with you – your thoughts, beliefs, and actions. This is not the life we were meant to live and dismantling the concept of power will help us figure out what a world without oppression can look like.

These woods are protected.

Didn't quite realize my posts were not coming thru anymore. Thanks zuckerberg.

Your Fatphobic Violence is Actively Killing Me

We’re going to start with some basics: the united states is fueled by oppression. Every aspect of this nation runs on oppression, which means the united states’ institutions run on oppression. The united states healthcare systems and its minions are no different.

The idea of health is based on a white supremacist patriarchal capitalist ideology that there is a perfect human specimen, and that perfect human is white, male, able-bodied, not fat, and is cisgender and heterosexual. Generally speaking, they are not short, preferably blond with blue eyes, of a particular class and nationality, but those characteristics are flexible. When it comes to healthcare, anyone not embodying these traits is “Other”.

Being Other in healthcare means you will be subjected to oppressive violence at every turn. Your race, gender, size, and ability are pathologized and assumptions will be made about you that will affect how medical staff treats you. It will affect whether clinicians will listen to you. It will determine whether they believe you. Medical staff will decide whether or not they will allow you access to care based on their assumptions and will outright deny you care should you not measure up to their biased standards. In many scenarios, they have the power to decide whether you live or die.

These standards are taught in every sphere of health – paramedic training, nursing school, medical school, schools of public health. They have built these biases into testing protocols, medical equipment, even medical clothing. There are cases of paramedics, nurses, and doctors who have refused to help patients, sometimes resulting in disability and death. The lesson for those deemed Other is always, “if you don’t conform to our predetermined standards, you don’t belong here and if you can’t conform, be grateful that you have any access at all.” Because in the united states, anything other than that white ideal is fuel meant to be consumed by that white ideal – especially when it comes to a characteristic that people choose to see as controllable like fatness.

I have been fat most of my life. I didn’t think I was a chubby kid until I had a birthday party and one of the invitees asked for my clothing size. I was nine, so of course I had to ask my mom. When I shared my then size with my peer, her response was, “That’s huge!” It was one of the first times I experienced shame for my size. That moment was so pivotal that to this day, I am hesitant to share what size clothing I wear. By middle school, I was firmly in the chunky category. My mom was a chronic dieter, my dad a habitual yo-yo dieter. He made clear that no boys would like me if I was too fat and reinforced the negative self-image I was developing. In the meantime, my mom was trying every weight loss option available, sometimes with life-threatening results.

I flip-flopped on the whole dieting issue. In college, none of my roommates were Black and all of them were obsessed with their size and weight. They constantly berated themselves for being hungry and criticized their bodies. I was bigger than all of them and decided to try to ignore their fatphobic talk. I would defiantly eat my meals in public, but what few people knew was that sometimes, that one public meal and some tuna fish would be the only things I allowed myself to eat that day. My disordered eating could be traced all the way back to middle school, when I would have a bowl of cereal for breakfast, a pack of cheese crackers and a juice for lunch, and then whatever meal my parents served for dinner. I was an active kid, played sports, but was constantly undereating because I vacillated between hunger and shame for feeling hunger.

When I was 16, I tried a bubblegum diet, where I would only chew gum and drink water. I lasted for 2 days – fortunately, I have a pretty solid shelf-life on extreme suffering. I’ve done Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, low carb and carb-free diets because I tried to believe that a smaller body was worth any cost. Then, when I almost died from another health issue, an issue that required I overhaul my low-calorie eating habits at the risk of my life, I decided to stop.

I’d spent years obsessively focused on what I ate and how active I was, to the detriment of my social life and hobbies. I had no room for pleasure – I didn’t even want my food to taste good because I was scared I’d want more of it. I refused to eat in many situations and sometimes would burst into tears at the thought of figuring out what to eat that week. It was fucking awful and it consumed all my focus. The day I decided I didn’t want to live that way was one of the most liberating days of my life.

It's been more than ten years since I made that decision. I gained weight, but then it mostly stabilized – until the pandemic changed my entire lifestyle. But by that time, I’d accepted that my body size will fluctuate and that my well-being is infinitely more than my size. That regardless of my size, I am beautiful, and I deserve to experience pleasure. In fact, the only impact my size has on my well-being is how other people treat me – which brings us back to the healthcare system where I was recently informed that should I need surgery, the surgeons were “picky” about who they would operate on – requiring a BMI of 35 or less.

BMI has been shown to be a trash metric for decades, yet healthcare systems, private and public, continue to not only use it but defend their use of it. It’s been incorporated into medical technology – the MRI machine would not work without providing one’s weight, as well as just general practice. Using someone’s weight or BMI to decide whether or not to provide treatment is 100% violent. It is a part of white supremacist patriarchal capitalism that demands people adhere to specific physical characteristics under the threat of being excised from society – be it socially or through our actual deaths.

Since I started working to address my health issues, I have been faced with wave after wave of fatphobic violence that is normalized in this society. I’ve been told that I would be refused care. I’ve been coerced to lose weight despite stating that I am not interested in pursuing any intentional weight loss. If there are ways I can supplement my meals that could help, then I am open to those. If there are physical activities that can help with this issue, I am interested in learning those. I have spent decades hating my fat body, even though every single accomplishment under my belt was done while being fat. Some goals I’d chosen were chosen specifically because I was fat. I highly doubt I would have felt compelled to complete a half-marathon if I wasn’t fat. I did that shit out of joy and spite – joy in my body and spite to prove to people who ultimately don’t matter, that I could do it.

It took years to reach a point where I don’t feel the need to prove to the not fat people around me that I am part of this society. It’s taken years for me to believe that I don’t have to prove to the world that my fat self can accomplish any goal I set my mind to accomplishing. It’s hard to keep believing in myself when everyone around me blames my fat for my problems and then blames me for not being willing to sacrifice my emotional and physical well-being to excise my body’s fat.

Why is it so hard for people to respect the body that I have? Why is it so hard for people whose literal job is to care for bodies, to care about my fat body? Why is my being fat such an affront to people? Why do people assume I don’t care about myself just because I’m fat?

I’m currently fighting the urge to defend myself, to list the many things going on with my body that have affected every aspect of my life. Issues for which I have repeatedly chosen not to seek medical help because I know the violence I’ll face. It’s exacerbated some problems. I’ve missed the opportunity for some early interventions that would have slowed down the progression of some things, but to have my suspicions of violence repeatedly confirmed means that I’ll go through this cycle of managing my anxiety in anticipation of oppressive violence to get care yet again. To work through the undeserved shame of being fat and needing healthcare again. To numb myself to the casual cruelty of clinical foot soldiers of white supremacist patriarchal capitalist violence yet again.

To live in an oppressive society is to live in a violent society. The united states was created through specifically violent means. For entirely too long, white society dictated the ways we have identified that violence. They have made it into an invisible norm and created institutions to track it. Having endured that violence my entire life, none of this is new. But like everyone who keeps living, my tolerance for it is reaching its end. I’m trying not to let it kill me, but just like my inability to opt out of oppression, I won’t be able to opt out of its consequences.

If you appreciate or learn from this essay, please feel free to compensate me by contributing to my Paypal or CashApp. You can contribute any amount you want at any time:

Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/TaLynnKel

Cash App: $TalynnKel

OR

If you like my work, you can support me by subscribing to my Patreon which is a monthly payment that helps support my creative efforts and labor.

Birthday Depression 2023

April is my birthday month.

This is my birthday week.

And here I am, avoiding my phone and barely telling people because my brain is lying to me and I don't know how to make it stop except to feel how I feel, continue my routines, and wait it out.

It’s difficult to explain depression to people who don’t experience it. How do you convey how you cannot trust your thoughts? How do you explain that the monologue running through your head is telling you that you are an unnecessary burden and you deserve nothing? How do you verbalize that there is this part of yourself that hates you, hates everything you do, and believes that the world would be better if you weren’t in it? And nothing anyone says, including yourself, changes that belief.

Life has its challenges but I am in a good space considering. I am loved. I have support. I am financially secure at the moment despite carrying too much debt. I’m respected. I have a list of accomplishments that I’m proud of and regardless of all of that, I still feel like the biggest piece of trash this world has ever produced. Trying not to hate myself has become a full-time job and it’s breaking me.

I know these thoughts running through my head are not true. I know it’s all nonsense. Knowing this doesn’t stop me from feeling how I feel. I don’t know why this is a time of sadness for me. Maybe it’s because it’s so close to my father’s passing. Maybe it’s because I’m living through my mother’s experiences with Alzheimer’s. Maybe it’s because I’m currently enduring chronic pain and having to learn how to manage it. Maybe it’s the perpetual revocation of human rights by horrible people in this country. Maybe it’s being forced to navigate a pandemic with people who’ve decided that unnecessary death and disability are acceptable risks. Maybe it’s my ability to survive being tied to a meaningless job doing busy work for an organization that pretends to care for marginalized people while simultaneously playing gatekeeper as it siphons funds away from those people. Maybe it’s my disillusionment making itself known. Or maybe it’s that I’m of an age where I thought shit would be better than it actually is. And even if it is any of those things, the only one I could change is my place of employment and I’m old enough to know same shit; different company.

It's hard to look at this life, with so many manufactured difficulties, and want to keep going while I watch oppressors manufacture the next atrocity to be unleashed on us. As I watch oppressors inflict more mass violence on us. As I listen to monsters explain our harm and demise away because it’s inconvenient for their comfort. As I feel lost in all of it.

When I ask myself whether I want to matter, I cannot say yes. I know what happens when you start to matter. I know what happens when people start to see you and it’s ugly. I want to be and not be at the same time and when my birthday comes around, I don’t want to celebrate. Instead, I want to hide from the world until this day that I seem to mourn is finally past and I can go back to not wondering if I should matter to anyone. Apparently, my birthday brings that question to the forefront and I don’t want to know the answer. Because I’m scared the answer is no.

So here’s to another year of evading my birthday and making it to the other side. Happy birthday to me.

I think this is my favorite shoot from last quarter. Not knocking my most recent stuff but this hit all buttons. Pink and gold are it! #GloriousMediocrity #MediocreAndLovingIt #fae #TBINAA #BreakingNormal #BoldNCurvy #PlusSize #EmbraceYourself #TakeUpSpace #fat https://www.instagram.com/p/CooVcP2sWmR/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

When I tell you the top of that dress was fighting for its life and it fucking won! Lol! That shoot was struggle bus from beginning to end. I even named this set Red & White Mistake cuz there was nothing but hard work and regret. Anyway, new set drops Monday! #BlackJoy #TBINAA #BreakingNormal #BoldNCurvy #PlusSize #TakeUpSpace #EmbraceYourCurves https://www.instagram.com/p/CofmWMDJlZY/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

Do blonds have more fun? Regardless, I'll look good doing it! #28DaysOfBlackCosplay #BlackJoy #BreakingNormal #PlusSize #TakeUpSpace #EmbraceYourCurves #Cosplay #TBINAA #PlusSizeCosplayer #MarvelComics #BbwCosplayer #EmmaFrostCosplay #BlackCanary https://www.instagram.com/p/CoarxjVpQsk/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

Do blonds have more fun? Regardless, I'll look good doing it! #28DaysOfBlackCosplay #BlackJoy #BreakingNormal #PlusSize #TakeUpSpace #EmbraceYourCurves #Cosplay #TBINAA #PlusSizeCosplayer #MarvelComics #BbwCosplayer #EmmaFrostCosplay #BlackCanary https://www.instagram.com/p/CoarxjVpQsk/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

Creativity isn't always linear. Neither is cosplay. That's what makes it fun!

#HarleyQuinnCosplay #LokiCosplay #DominoCosplay #domino #loki #HarleyQuinn #BlackJoy #BlackCreative #TBINAA #BreakingNormal #BoldNCurvy #PlusSize #PlusSizeCosplayer #28DaysOfBlackCosplay

I don't know what massive telepathic wave hit cosplayers over the past 3 years but #Beetlejuice made a huge resurgence and even I did a Beetlejuice cosplay. #Beetlegeuse #EvilQueen #BreakingNormal #BlackJoy #28DaysOfBlackCosplay #cosplay #PlusSizeCosplayer #FatCosplay #CosplayAnyWay https://www.instagram.com/p/CoP4ALWrvbL/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

That time I thought it would be fun to cosplay the whole Scooby Gang... #28DaysOfBlackCosplay #BlackJoy #TBINAA #BreakingNormal #BoldNCurvy #PlusSize #TakeUpSpace #EmbraceYourCurves #velma #Daphne #Fred #shaggy #ScoobyGang #ScoobyDoo https://www.instagram.com/p/CoNxdgVJRV2/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

I was told that I make this look easy. It's not. Good thing I enjoy it. #BlackJoy #TBINAA #BreakingNormal #BoldNCurvy #PlusSize #TakeUpSpace #EmbraceYourCurves #RedVinyl #red #FatHottie https://www.instagram.com/p/CoF8kf8J-pO/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

Here comes trouble...

#BlackJoy #TBINAA #BreakingNormal #BoldNCurvy #PlusSize #TakeUpSpace #EmbraceYourCurves

#red