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gemsofgreece · 1 year

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The part of the video about Hades game where the creator himself said that "the Greek gods were called that way because they worshipped by ancient Greeks, but they were not ethnically Greek"....

Wow the disrespect again and how it doesn't make any sense. The Greek gods not only were worshipped by our ancestors (some still do) but they were called that way because they were ethnically Greek too. The same goes to the Egyptian, Norse, Japanese gods and every other mythologies. They are called that way because they were worshipped by the people ot that country.

But it's still frustrating people (especially USians) feeling the need to erase the roots of something that not only it's not theirs, but want to claim it as well. Seriously i thought the game was okay at first, but after that έπεσαν λίγο στα μάτια μου αυτοί :/

This has become the mantra of all people who have baptised Greek mythology a fandom. Newsflash for them: Any god technically has no ethnicity as the god reigns over the world and everyone can be moved by the religion’s philosophy and decide to be initiated in it. This does not just apply conveniently to the Greek religion but to all known religions where deities have power across the universe.

It would be a good moment for some to admit that "racebending" the Greek Gods has nothing to do with whether these Gods have a Greek or other or no ethnic descent or can shapeshift, but it is exclusively a feeling of misplaced right to its abuse for being perceived as a "white religion", "popular with the colonialist West" or even worse "a religion of people who have had colonies at some point a gazillion years back in time", which gives this abuse an element of deserved retribution. These people are in truth well aware of the unethical aspects of it, which is why they consider it racist if done for "POC-originated" religions but almost ferociously exciting when done for the "evil white-originated" one. Furthermore, the potential remnants of ethical concerns that some of these people might have are often overcome by Greece's place on earth, in the Mediterranean Sea, where one can conveniently claim the looks of people are more "open to interpretation" than looks in, say, Scandinavia are. Of course, the concept of considering a person's looks open to interpretation is hugely problematic in itself but this is another can of worms. Besides, it is also very enticing to attempt to argue that this religion / mythology wouldn't be as fascinating if the people's looks weren't open for interpretation (because as we all know in the Tumblr Law, all white people without exception have no indigenous lands or cultures, they landed from another planet just to inflict suffering on others).

Producers, woke creators and obtrusive fans are also equally hypocritical in not admitting that using Greek mythology while trying to modify it to fit in their own reality or a contemporary reality anyway is nothing more than just them liking what the #Western_trends like, coming up with their own little story and trying to project it through the mythology that currently SELLS the most. Trying to change an admittedly famous mythology and squeeze yourself into it instead of finding the one that truly expresses you is a "mimicking the strong one" syndrome accompanied with denial issues. And you know what? It might even be internalised racism for some. Hopefully they will realise it one day as they grow up. This for the “woke”. The producers and businessmen are using the Greek brand and the diversity brand very knowingly to maximise their profit, as they know this is the safest way to attract the trending woke wallets. Idealism, inclusivity or accuracy have absolutely nothing to do with their true intent.

Last but not least, I rarely talk about this and I honestly don’t care as much about it as most people here. Even if a portrayal gets out of typical ethnic Greek look range, towards either the lighter or the darker, I can usually live with it. Some artwork is so beautifully done that I don’t have the heart to be the party pooper. But it’s the self entitlement that gets me and the greediness, the “ I can fix Greek mythology” stance (no dear, you can't, it's a mythology not a car) even though they are AVID readers of it and the “no you don’t know it well, Ancient Greece was like modern USA” no it wasn’t, you just come up with things to prove the validity of your entitlement. And unfortunately when a project is based on so questionable foundations, the creative result is rarely good. It can be, but rarely.

I think I speak on behalf of all Greeks when I say that we don't ask for anything except for the Ancient Greek mythology to be appreciated for what it is. Take it or leave it. For whatever issue in which you personally find the Greek mythology to be lacking, find another one that isn't and also appreciate it for what it is. It's that simple, really.

#greece #greek mythology #mythology #greek representation #ancient greek religion #margaretartstuff #mail

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pizzawendell · 1 year

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Shrek Is Good, Actually

This is not what Shrek is about. Shrek is about superficiality.

The obvious aspect of this is how people judge each other by their appearances. Shrek is judged for being an ogre and people don’t like him. Fiona is judged for her curse and is afraid that Shrek will do the same. Farquad is obsessed with cleanliness and having the ‘perfect’ kingdom, even though he is a little bobblehead man. Shrek says onions have layers because on the inside we’re all beautiful. It’s a classic anti-cinderella story. Pretty simple stuff, if fairly against the grain in 2001. I won’t dwell on this too much because it’s fairly obvious and something that you can get from most post-Shrek kids movies.

However, this movie has layers. Sure Shrek and Fiona are fine just the way they are and we should all learn to love each other despite our appearances, but the movie has more to say than that. This isn’t even a particularly deep reading; this is very much explicitly in the text. The characters in Shrek all use the misconceptions other people have about them to hide from things they don’t want to understand about themselves. They are all afraid to be known- most of all by themselves. The clearest and most explicit example is Shrek himself.

Shrek

Shrek starts off the movie living alone in his swamp. He has signs up all around which declare ‘danger: ogre’ etc with scary pictures all around. As the opening credits roll, a mob of villagers group together to go and kill Shrek because they believe that he is dangerous. He goes on to use their fear of him against them to get them to flee. The first scene of the film is Shrek using what people think they know about him to push people away and stay alone- which is what he tells himself that he wants.

Shrek then meets Donkey, who persistently refuses to accept Shrek’s claim that he wants to be alone.

Shrek: Listen, little donkey, take a look at me! What am I?

Donkey: Ah... really tall?

Shrek: No! I'm an OGRE! You know, "grab your torch and pitchforks!" Doesn't that bother you?

Donkey: Nope.

Shrek: Really?

Donkey: Really, really.

We pretty quickly see that Donkey is right to think that Shrek does actually want to have friends, he just doesn’t want to admit it.

Shrek: Look, I'm not the one with the problem, okay? It's the world that seems to have a problem with ME! People take one look at me and go "Aargh! Help! Run! A big stupid ugly ogre!" They judge me before they even know me - that's why I'm better off alone...

Donkey: You know, Shrek... when we first met, I didn't think you were a big, stupid, ugly ogre.

Shrek: Yeah, I know.

By the time they get to Fiona’s tower Shrek actively goes out of his way to save Donkey. As Shrek and Fiona begin to fall in love, Shrek and Donkey become genuinely close friends. When Shrek overhears what he thinks is Fiona calling him a 'big, stupid, ugly ogre' he reflexively reverts to pushing people away. He hasn't actually unlearned his belief that he is unlovable, merely temporarily put it to the side. This leads to the argument which holds the emotional core of the movie.

Donkey: You're so wrapped up in layers onion boy, you're afraid of your own feelings!

Donkey identifies Shrek's layers as the thing truly holding him back. Shrek knows that he's more than just a scary ogre, but he thinks of that perception as an outer layer which he uses for protection. However, he's so wrapped up in it that he can't actually escape. He has pretended for so long that he has come to believe it. Shrek does not deliberately draw on Frantz Fanon here, but there are parallels which we can draw.

To be clear, Shrek isn't about colonialism or racism (beyond some of its broadest strokes). Rather, Fanon's psychological argument that oppression can be a dialectic which ultimately causes the oppressed to internalise some aspects of how they are perceived by their oppressor is relevant to Shrek's behaviour. His relationship with the outside world has caused him to subconsciously believe things which he thought he was only accepting out of convenience. By attempting to use superficiality to our advantage we weaponise it equally against ourselves.

Love

How then, asks Shrek, do we escape? The answer is emphatic: through love. Only by loving others and allowing them to love us back can we step outside of our superficialities and truly self actualise. We see this when Donkey issues his final refusal to allow Shrek to push him away.

Shrek: If I treat you so badly, then why did you come back, huh?

Donkey: Because that's what friends do, they FORGIVE EACH OTHER!

Donkey offers his unconditional forgiveness for the ways Shrek has hurt him. He does this for no other reason than the fact that he loves Shrek. This forces Shrek to confront the fact that he is genuinely loveable. This makes it possible for him to believe Donkey when he tells him that Fiona isn't disgusted by him and resolve to stop her sham marriage to Farquad. Donkey's love allows Shrek to see himself from outside his warped self perception.

Fiona

Fiona's journey mirrors Shrek's. Rather than keeping people away emotionally with physical and emotional ugliness, she does it with beauty and propriety. Fiona only allows people to see her when she is in her human form (which we eventually find out is not her 'true' form). When Shrek first meets her she acts 'properly' by expecting him to wake her with a kiss and recite a poem. She also offers him a favour, which he uses to wipe away his sweat. All of this serves to stop people from knowing who she truly is, which is her greatest fear.

Just like Shrek, Fiona can only escape the emotional prison she has built for herself by allowing someone who loves her to truly know her. On the journey back to Farquad's castle she starts to believe that this could be Shrek. She starts to open up in small ways. She shows him that she enjoys the same foods as him, that she can fight like he can. However, their misunderstanding causes her to revert to her usual defence mechanism. When he pushes her away and she believes that this is because of her true form, Fiona begins to act how a princess is expected to again. It takes Shek storming the wedding and publically declaring that he loves her for Fiona to accept herself for who she really is. Shrek and Fiona’s kiss is therefore the most literal manifestation of love conquering superficiality, as Fiona transforms permanently into an ogre in front of the whole kingdom while it takes place.

Farquad

There is one character who does not escape his superficilaity and it kills him. Farquad spends all of Shrek tring to hide his percieved inadequacies with appearances. Farquad banishes the fairytale creatures to the swamp because they aren’t perfect enough. He has machines which immediately tell new arrivals that Duloq is not only perfect, but that it has strict rules. When he appears at the tournament he is deliberately positioned so that his height is obscured. Most significantly, he sends Shrek on his quest because he wants to officially be king. There is no reason for him to want this beyond the superficial trappings of the title. He clearly has total control over Duloq and he never shows any interest in having a romantic partner.

The tragedy of this is that Farquad is trying to cover up the fact that he is very short. Compared to every other human we see in the Shrek series, Farquad is very very short. Since this sets him apart from most humans, he is in many ways closer to the fairytale creatures than to his own people. The irony of the fact that it is Farquad who thinks of himself as so much better than people like Shrek and Donkey is repeatedly signalled by people making fun of him for his height. When he banishes the creatures it seems to partly be a manifestation of a degree of self loathing. Farquad clearly hates to see himself as he truly is (he literally threatens a mirror into showing him what he wants to see) and seeing other people who don’t conform to society’s expectations reminds him too much of himself.

Farquad externalises his self hatred by trying to make everything around him perfect, no matter who it hurts. He can only make his kingdom superficially perfect, but this will never make up for the fact that he can never change what he truly dislikes about himself. The villain of Shrek is too far gone. He cannot be saved by love because he has created a political system which prevents anyone from truly knowing him. We see this at his wedding when guests are told how to emotionally react. No one can sincerely know Farquad and love him for who he is because anyone who might can never get close enough. In the end, we see the consequence of this: his death.

Conclusion

This is not a particularly deep reading of Shrek. In fact, I would argue that this is the explicit message of the film. There are more subtextual readings, though. For one, there is the queer subtext which only gets stronger in Shrek 2. Shrek has deeper layers still about fascism, myth and, of course, Disney. Not everyone likes Shrek and that’s fine. You don’t have to like it if it’s not your thing. However, what I will not abide is anyone slandering this film by calling it vacuous. Shrek is a truly delightful story which tells its viewers to revel in who they are, to love and be loved and to know and be known.

#shrek #shrek and donkey #shrek and fiona #lord farquaad

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lo-lynx · 5 years

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Dorne and the sexualised other

TW: Racism, sexism

Long time, no post! Life got in the way, I haven’t really had the time to sit down and write things like this for fun. But here’s some new analysis, this time about A Song of Ice and Fire! In George RR Martin’s world of A Song of Ice and Fire (ASOIAF) the reader can find many aspects that rings true even in our (unfortunately?) dragon free world. Some of those are the sexism and racism that characters face. In this text I want to focus on one such, namely the way characters from the ASOIAF kingdom of Dorne are described. By analysing the sexualised racism levelled at Dornish characters I don’t mean to say that George RR Martin is racist, if that is the case is a whole other discussion, but I want to show how he has incorporated that aspect from our world into ASOIAF. Some day I might write a similar text on how the culture of the Dothraki is described, or that of the Summer Isles. Here I’ll just quickly touch on the Summer Isles, but the main focus will be on Dorne and how characters from Dorne is described in relation to gender, sexuality and race.

Many researchers have studied how colonialist discourse have influenced how the sexuality and gender of people from different parts of the world are viewed (Loomba 2005, 152). Indigenous women from the Americas and Africa were often portrayed during colonial times in art etc as naked and close to nature, while women from the “Orient” were often described as clothed in riches. At the same time “Orient” men were often described as feminine and prone to sexual “perversions (ibid, 156). Loomba writes that one reason for this focus on gender and sexuality was the perceived danger of cultural and racial mixing. By demeaning other races/cultures’ sexuality, the race boundaries and power structures could be maintained. This view on the racial other’s sexuality as both exotic and dangerous was hardly contained to Europe during the 19th century, however. As bell hooks writes about contemporary society:

Certainty from the standpoint of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, the hope is that desires for the ‘primitive’ or fantasises about the other can be continually exploited, and that such exploitation will occur in a manner that reinscribes and maintains the status quo. (hooks 2015, 22)

That is to say, in our contemporary society there is still a white longing for the racial other, a longing to experience that which is considered primitive and exotic (ibid, 27). This sexualisation does not, however, eradicate the very real politics of racial dominance (ibid, 28). Rather, as hooks writes, by fucking the other one asserts one’s power and privilege (ibid 36). So, while black men can be fetichised, described as wild, erotic and strong, their bodies are also subjected to daily violence. Black women have also, both historically and today, been the subject of racial fetishization (Hobson 2003). The black female body has been described as wild, savage, and closer to nature than that of the white western woman. So, on the whole, there have throughout our world’s history (and still today) existed several different ways to describe the racial other’s sexuality that in different ways serve to maintain the power differences of white supremacy.

Now, how is Dorne and its inhabitants described in ASOIAF in relation to this? While we are introduced to some of the Dornish characters in the third novel (namely Oberyn and his paramour Ellaria), the fourth novel A Feast with Crows, brings a whole new focus to the kingdom. This begins in the prologue when Leo Tyrell talks to Alleras about his parentage and says: “Your mother is a monkey from the Summer Isles. The Dornish will fuck everything with a hole between its legs.” (Martin 2011, 10). Leo then goes on to call Alleras a “mongrel” (ibid, 11). In both these comments we can see a quite typical of the sexualised view of the racial other that I described above. Alleras’ black mother from the Summer Isles is likened to a monkey, and his Dornish father is described as promiscuous and willing to have sex with anything. The black woman is described as sexual and animalistic, and the Dornish man is described in the way that “Orient” men were often described; as sexually perverted. By doing this Leo Tyrell obviously means to put himself above Alleras and establish his superiority. This is particularly interesting since Leo Tyrell is from a house and region (The Reach) that has been at war with Dorne for centuries (ibid, 267). By creating a racial division between themselves and the Dornish they are perhaps able to legitimise their hatred of them. The next quote I want to look at is also from the point of view of a Reachman, Arys Oakheart: “In the Reach men said that it was the food that made Dornishmen so hot-tempered and their women so wild and wanton”. (ibid, 271) This is of course also in line with how men of colour are described as wild as strong, and women of colour as exotic and sexual. It’s also interesting in light of how Arys in this very same chapter longs after the Dornish princess Arianne, who is described both as very sexual, exotic and richly clad, thus embodying several stereotypes of racial other women. Arys being attracted to this “exotic” woman can be seen as a case of him wanting this fetichised racial other, someone who is part of a group that has been sexualised by his countrymen in order to claim superiority over them. As bell hooks says, by sexualising the other one establishes dominance and power of them. I’m not saying that is what Arys is consciously trying to do in this instance, but that he has internalised the views of Dornish people that he has been brought up with.I have here tried to show how views of the racial other from our own world seems to be in use in the world of ASOIAF as well. Dornish characters are sexualised and described as wild, almost animalistic. In general characters of colour seems to be described as more sexual, closer to nature, less civilised. This is very similar to how colonial discourses have been used to legitimise racial oppression in our own world. Much more could obviously be written on this topic, but for now this is how I will end this text.

References

Hobson, Janell. 2003. ‘The “Batty” Politic: Toward an Asthetic of the Black Female Body’ Hypatia. 18(4):87-104

hooks, bell. 2015. ”Eating the other: Desire and Resistance.” In Black Looks: Race and Representation, ed. by bell hooks. Routledge: New York. ProQuest Ebook Central.

Loomba, Ania. 2008. Kolonialism/Postkolonialism: En introduktion till ett forskningsfält. Translation Oskar Söderlind. 2 ed. Stockholm: Tankekraft. [This is the Swedish translation of the book Colonialism/Postcolonialism]

Martin, George RR. 2011. A Feast for Crows. Random House: New York.

#asoiaf #tw:racism #tw:sexism #feminism

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sirenakhan · 4 years

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The Burden of Skin

By Sirena Khan

Copper and bronze, earth and sand— all beautiful in their own regard, yet when worn as skin, they are often disdained. This is because skin, the organ that holds our muscles, bones, thoughts and memories together, is a burden. History reveals that it was not always like this, but once it was, it stayed that way. Racism was and still is a contagious movement. Perhaps it will take another movement even more infectious to dismantle the first, something like Black Lives Matter.

With palms lighter than the rest of her body, Sarra opens her mother’s purse and scents of sweet jasmine and spices spill out. Amongst endless tissues and coins is a tube of whitenening cream, nestled like a secret. The lack of an ingredients list is omnious but not as ominous as the cream’s existence, the cream’s purpose.

“Mama used to scold me for playing in the sun, she was afraid I would darken. She tries to persuade me to use such creams but I could never. Do you know what they put into these things? It’s practically radioactive!”

Shame, colourism and racism; all deeply internalised within all coloured and otherwise communities. As tightly woven into the fabrics of society as Sarra’s cornrow braids were with each other. Some day she hopes for the embrace of thorough acceptance, but for now, she forces herself to be thankful for tolerance.

Madhumita is considered the most beautiful in her family. It is not her many degrees and accomplishmeents but her fair complexion which earns her praise from many of the elders. She sorely tells me of the first time she was racially vilified.

“He called me a gypsy, this big, white man,” she says incredulously, “that’s not even the correct slur. I believe that if someone wants to abuse someone else, it should at least be ethnically accurate. He should have called me a terrorist, or curry-muncher.” Madhumita is a lecturer, perhaps it was the teacher within her that sought to educate racism. Perhaps it was humour being one of the few tools she could use to cope. Sara understands. Many people of colour do. Such incidents of racism are not rare, but are also not always as blatant. Victoria Police, although showing a history of racial profiling and vilification in their official reports, assure others that not only is there no racism amongst their ranks, there is no racism dilemma at all within the force and in their dealings with the publlc. Despite their view, they agreed to initiatives to tackle racism such as the Police Accountability Project and the Diversity Recruitment Program, because the burden of skin is real. Whether they feel it or not.

Dania wears a hijab, it is part of her work attire as a counselor at the Islamic College of Melbourne. She feels the weight of this harmless, thin fabric constantly. Yet she recalls a time when wearing it did not feel like anything at all. Adjusting the cloth around her face, she tells me, “everything we feel has been imposed on us because of colonisation.” Dania is right. Things like skin and headscarves— there is a shame attached to them, a bullseye that came with conquering. Colonisers claimed land proudly, leeching nature and cultures of its resources and meaning. Teachings were changed to better fit the western narrative, peacefully matriarchal and equal societies became unravelled by patriarchy, women and cultural practises were sexualised to the point of fetishisation.

Although aware of the internalised racism that comes with colonisation and its aftermath, Dania shows me how she applies a homemade ‘remedy’ to her daughter’s skin. A mixture of lemon, milk and oats that is said to lighten the complexion. As she gingerly spreads the concotion over her toddler’s arms, she frequently compares her daughter to her much fairer son.

“I don’t know how he is so pale, we must have taken the wrong baby from the hospital,” like Sara and Madhumita, Dania tries to seek humour in her circumstances and she cannot be condemned for that. Even with her daughter’s obvious confusion and retaliations, and the dismay in Dania’s eyes. Racism breeds internalised racism and people of colour are the ones that suffer. The burden of skin is a curse imposed upon coloured children by others who idly live in their privilege of never having to carry such a weight. When this burden is noticed by the privileged, it is often skewed into something more heinous. Something succinctly encapsulated when Dania says she “can’t decide what’s worse, being called a paki or exotic. One leaves me angry and the other leaves me disgusted.” When this burden goes unnoticed, racist powers continue to flourish and society is left to deal with yet another George Floyd case. This sounds like a ‘beggars can’t be choosers’ predicament which Sarra, Madhumita, Dania and every other coloured person face.

Another thing that all three women had in common was their understanding that racism was not their problem to fix. The only people wo had the power to dismantle such a system are the very people who constructed it. Yet in order for that to happen, those people to acknowledge the problem. With global Black Lives Matter protests, social media blackouts and news coverage, the realisation of the extent of the issue is beginning to sink in for most but still, not all.

Australia is in a stasis. You will find acknowledgements of racism and colonisation everywhere. In plaques that read “We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the land” or “We acknowledge the Elders and honour their cultures and stories.” Acknowledgement is the first step in dismantling racism but once aknowledgement is achieved, many realise that it isn’t enough to change things. With overpolicing and incarceration rates unchanged for coloured communities, many might argue that these acknowledgements do nothing to actually address the harms that the Indigenous population face each waking and sleeping moment.

Australia has a gruesome colonial history, comparable to that of the United States of America yet there have been more white people protesting against face masks than for their coloured neighbours. Study after study shows the same findings; socio-economic status and social standing bear no weight, racism follows any individual of colour. Moreover, the consequences of racism are not simply hurt feelings. Policing, access to education and healthcare, mental health and employment oppurtunities are all affected. Society can be so adverse to people of colour that Sarra, Madhumita and Dania have all considered adopting ‘whiter’ names on job applications and dedicating hours of practise to gentrify their dialect. This tactic does little to quell racism in the recruitment process and racism in the workplace statistics.

Like an infection, racism has long since spread to all areas of society. The spread is so sevre that universities, governments, organisations, police and media outlets alike have staged multiple outcries and implemented various counterattacks to alleviate the racism and denial problem in Australia.

“There’s a shame around it; even my family don’t like to talk about it, colourism, racism, whatever,” says Sarra, “the denial and avoidance is on both sides.”

The subject is controversial and extremely necessary, but also hurtful. There is a trauma that’s often revisited for people of colour and for others, it can be plain uncomfortable. The discussion needs to be held though, because racism is more hurtful and more uncomfortable and tolerance is not enough.

“I do not want to tolerated, like some kind of annoyance. I want to be accepted and embraced, valued. I want to be respected,” Madhumita expresses.

Indigenous Australians barely make up three percent of the population, immigrants not even thirty, mixed just about twenty. These numbers seem appallingly low yet Australia is commended as being one of the most diverse nations. Some studies find though, that barely half of the Australian population actually appreciate diversity.

Denials, acknowledgements, statistics, protests, initiatives. They all show that Australia is knee-deep in racism, that the country is severely white-washed and that many of the people who have the power to change this do not care to. People of colour should not have to gather in the streets amid a pandemic to beg for equality and kindness. They should not have to politely protest to eradicate an issue that they did not even cause.

“It’s degrading,” Dania shakes her head, “they should be thankful that’s all we’re asking for and not revenge.”

When Dania says revenge, all of the experiences that Indigenous people faced comes to mind. The pillaging and thieving, slavery and assaulting, the unfortunately successful attempts to dilute the native population.

All that people of colour are asking for is the burden of skin to be lifted, nothing more. There is something very upsetting within it all. The idea of marginalised people having to ask to be treated with kindness and the realisation that treating them with kindness is not currently the default but a rare luxury.

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fatenumberfor · 4 years

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been thinking about the usefulness of posters/graphics/statements that say “asians/[insert ethnicity here] for black lives”. maybe “yellow peril supports black lives” is more politically useful cos it invokes the power in asian american reclamation of a term historically used by media/the state to target asians’ presence as a threat to “Western values/democracy” and more generally promote anti-asian racism, because Blackness as an identity is also a threat to the West. it’s kinda like combining forces to dismantle white + Western supremacy (along which comes capitalism + colonialism). I still feel weird about both of them though. do I need to declare my (political) identity before I declare that I support black people?

like I completely understand the usefulness of a political identity such as “asian american” and announcing that your community, under this identity, stands in solidarity. if posters with these slogans didn’t exist in the 60s-80s when the civil rights movement + anti-war protests were happening, then we wouldn’t have powerful statements of which to call our current community to action. but sometimes I wonder if we even deserve to say that our whole community stands for black lives when historically and currently, with many right-leaning asian households upholding white supremacy, we’ve been incredibly anti-black, and many people in our community don’t want to learn. maybe using such slogans is an opportunity to show that there are asians in the US who are willing to defend and fight for and alongside black people, and I can see how that could be empowering for asians in the US to rally behind, and for black people to see.

I guess as long as asian americans who post those kinds of statements examine if they truly identify with the politics of declaring yourself as an “asian american” (or whatever identity) and not just think about “asian american” as a social category, and do more than just sharing around a graphic, then sure yeah it makes sense to use. like are we saying “asians for black lives” while also understanding that sustained (not performative) solidarity with black people is a commitment to erase all structures of anti-blackness- from our internalised beliefs to its pervasiveness in our families, media, curricula, etc to the laws/systems that govern + control us (including neighborhoods, police, prisons, the military, etc)? i’m still wary that “asians for black lives” centers us more than black people. sometimes using it makes me feel like i’m asking for recognition of myself too and that feels kinda inappropriate.

#idk i guess this is a recent thought dump #anyone can reply or ask about any of this btw this isnt just me posting n going... still thinking bout it #sice

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flusteredmountainman · 5 years

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On the insidious hypocrisy of transmedicalism and colonial conditioning

I’m going to slap down a fairly long post about how transmedicalism is Fucking Bullshit today because I’ve been trying to pin down some of my thoughts and feelings for a wee while about it and I finally feel like I’m ready to articulate it.

CWs for use of the word h*mosexual (censored bc i have friends made uncomfortable by that word who ID as gay), conversion therapy, transmedicalism, colonialism, racism, transphobia, homophobia, trauma, violence mention, classism, ableism.

First off: truscum ideology makes no sense. Transmeds will preach and scream about how being trans* has nothing to do with biology; that gender is a psychological thing (which it is) but then will go on to say that if you don’t experience severe dysphoria you aren’t trans. This literally makes No Sense because if being trans has nothing to do with your biology and your physical attributes, then why should every trans person be forced to physically change their biology to fit binarist ideas of how bodies should look in relation to gender to prove themselves?

The base ideology is hypocritical at best and boot-licking/transphobic/cisnormative at worst: the idea that you have to experience (x) amount of trauma and discomfort to be trans only feeds into the cis narractive that trans people are traumatised, disturbed, othered individuals who have something “wrong” with them or that they’re “degenerate” - this conflation of being trans as being a mental illness is literally a rhetoric used by cishets dating back decades in psychology circles to treat being gay/trans/what-have-you as a sickness that can be cured. People used to be diagnosed as h*mosexual to justify putting them through conversion therapy to cure them of what was perceived as moral degeneracy. The same can be said for being trans. By pushing this rhetoric transmeds are admitting that they agree that being trans is Abnormal - that no one could ever want to be trans or be happy being trans because it’s so far removed from everything polite society considers “normal”. To support these ideas is to incite violence against your trans brothers, sisters, and siblings: it is disgusting and ignorant and smacks of internalised transphobia.

Not only that but transmedicalism as an ideology is also inherently racist! Truscum are uplifting binarism as a structure that was introduced into many societies by colonial powers that systematically erased native and indigenous identities that have always existed - by saying that these identities as well as non-binary identities (for which terms were created in response to debunking the idea that you can only be one gender or another in specifically western contexts) aren’t valid you are literally acting as a tool of colonialism. You are contributing to the cultural destruction and ongoing colonisation of indigenous cultures and identities. By supporting these ideas you are inherently saying that you support white supremacist structures of power and oppression founded not only upon race but also gender, ability, class and oppression of LGBT+ people. You are playing into white supremacy and you are actively inciting racist and pro-colonialist violence towards trans and gender diverse people of colour.

It’s also no coincidence that it’s classist: as I mentioned before. The idea that you have to transition to be trans hinges upon the assumption that there is equal opportunity and access for every person to transition: which many people don’t for many reasons including that it’s expensive, in my country only one surgeon can perform surgeries at all (literally inaccessible), many people can’t afford to take time off work, many people have various disabilities or illnesses that literally mean they cannot transition if they may want to: all this not even considering that some people may not want to physically transition. When we consider that combined with the institutional oppression people face for their race that means many, many people of colour are living in poverty due to their families being trapped in the poverty cycle and intergenerational trauma from colonialism, it’s no coincidence that the people impacted by this bullshit ideology the most are trans* people of colour! Plus disabled trans* people and disabled trans* people of colour! It’s disgustingly ableist, racist and classist and just reveals how these people don’t give a single shit about any trans* person who isn’t white and ablebodied.

There is already so much prejudice and oppression that trans and gender diverse people face in our society already it just doesn’t make any sense for transmeds to play the oppression olympics. Your experiences are not universal! Just because you experience extreme dysphoria doesn’t mean that people who don’t are not valid in their identity. Gender euphoria is equally important and besides gender as a construct is a fucked up concept anyway, so why are y’all sucking up so hard to the Cissies TM! Please get over yourself and examine why the hell you feel the need to pull other trans people down with you: you are a deeply sick, sad individual if you see someone else being proud of who they are and feel the need to knock them down a peg just because you’re in pain, and you aren’t above being a transphobe just because you’re trans!

All this to say that if you proudly self-ID as a transmed/truscum you can literally choke and die and you will never in any way be welcome on my blog! Same to Terfs y’all can fuck off too.

Cis people do Not add to this or I will Come for you I do Not want to hear your opnions on this: nothing you say can meaningfully contribute to this conversation so please just reblog to amplify trans* voices.

#transphobia #racism #ableism #opinion #transmed #homophobia #it speaks #long post

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untilourapathy · 6 years

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Navigating a white space as a PoC

This comes after a 7 hour conversation with the lovely Anna @pukingpastilles. Bear in mind that this is drawn from our specific experiences and may not be universal. We hope it resonates with some of you.

Scrolling past this is an act of white privilege.

A lot of people either see race as irrelevant or that we talk about it too much in our ‘post-racial’ age. However, for us, it is our daily reality. We cannot choose to switch off our race, and thus cannot remove the burdens that accompany it. We do not have the ‘luxury’ of ignoring race. Until then, we’re going to keep talking about it. You may want to ‘skip the drama’ but it is a privilege for you to be able to scroll past this. It is our very lives that you are scrolling past. We are attempting to argue for our right to exist in this space. The topic of race is extremely underdiscussed in fandom discourse. Some people either see race as not relevant to fandom or something that they think they’ve sussed because they’re ‘open’, ‘liberal’ or have a PoC friend or something. That’s very different from actively educating yourself on issues that affect us beyond what you see in the news or from history. That’s good, but there’s more. Just because you’re socially liberal does not excuse you from perpetuating the cycle of racism. We have to fight to validly exist, and that is exhausting. Existing is exhausting.

Being a PoC in a predominantly white space is an act of protest as our very existence is politicised.

It can never be just a story of two people, not when we are so burdened. You are never just yourself, race comes first, and you are never not conscious of this. A PoC would be constantly hyperaware of their race because it informs how society treats them in every way. You are always self-conscious about things like not associating with too many people of your own race in case it comes off as threatening or exclusive or discriminatory. You subconsciously make adjustments to blend into the space as much as possible in fear of offending somebody, such as changing your accent or clothes. You feel a constant sense of double alienation. You occupy a liminal space. You are the hyphen in the Asian-American. We are marginalised, Othered. We are never granted full rights to exist independently of a Eurocentric standard.

Frank, outright racism does occur. And it sticks with you.

Whether or not you are easily hurt, it does stay with you subconsciously, and just reinforces this concept of your being lesser. It’s even worse when the target is someone you care about. You never forgot those moments. Moreover, microaggressions, ignorant comments, stereotyping and subtle prejudice can be just as bad. You have to work twice as hard to get recognised, and one thing do wrong completely discounts everything you’ve done. We are gaslighted, invalidated, discriminated against because of our genes…

You are seen as a representative of your entire race.

There have been incidents where I see a fellow person of my race on public transport, or in that room, and silently hope that they don’t do anything ‘embarrassing’ or ‘out of the ordinary’ because it would reflect badly on me. Watching the news, every time I see someone of my race do something awful, my heart drops not only due to what they did, because no matter what, their race is highlighted and I feel like this reflects on me. The onus is always on you, to conform, to fit in, to be as least foreign and Other as possible. However, your behaviour will never eradicate the fact that you will be judged. Or, you will be judged as ‘good for a ---‘. We must make a good impression to offset the automatic prejudice before they have met us.

Internalised racism has led us to believe we deserve our treatment.

Family can sometimes be the worst perpetuators of the cycle, as in their bid to give us a better life, they seek for us to fit in to a certain standard (especially with colourism). The effects of colonialism etc have shaped the way people view the white hegemony, and subconsciously we believe that we are lesser, less beautiful, less valid, less human. Furthermore, we’re grateful whenever an ally joins our cause, because we have got used to seeing our treatment as what we have to settle for. Even as adults, Anna and I still feel uncomfortable with our features because they do not fit the European standard of beauty, despite rationally knowing that it is just a subjective, culturally imposed standard. For example, we are keen to wear glasses because we feel so negatively about our eyes due to that ingrained internalised racism. By sole dint of having European features, the irrational part of me with that engrained white supremacy with never think of myself as pretty enough in comparison to white girls. You feel off-brand, broken and like something is wrong with you, even as a very small child. My friends still have to call me out for hating on my features too much. It makes for a very difficult relationship with your family, your sense of identity, home and how you see others of your own race. The onus is on us to accommodate white fragility.

That’s why representation is incredibly important.

Every time I read a fic with representation, no matter how small or how large the issues are explored, the twelve year old me within me tears up a little because for a little girl growing up assuming every character was white until disproven, I remember hunting library shelves for books with any PoC that weren’t stereotyped, reading those few books over and over again just so I could relate to somebody in the media I consumed. For all the little children, and for the children inside us all, please make an effort to reflect the way society is today. Your work makes a huge difference to us, our self-esteem, how we see ourselves. Every instance of representation is something that sticks with us forever. You will have made such a difference in people’s lives. If you’ve made a difference in mine, you must’ve for somebody else. Please. If your art or fic has helped someone deal with the implications of being PoC in a world of white hegemony, I personally think it’s worth the hate that you’ll inevitably get. Every fic or art that involves a PoC has been automatically politically charged, and there is a meaning and purpose behind it.

Often it’s said that a character is not PoC in canon, and thus shouldn’t be in fic.

Well, lots of the things that people do in fic isn’t canon. White fragility is real; a fic that removes every aspect of the character’s personality, or behaviour, or introduces A/B/O or sex pollen or talking hats or removing magic in the HP universe, for example, is seen as more acceptable than making a character PoC. Saying that a character can be turned into a wall or a pancake but not a PoC is to invalidate our experience as less than valid.

How should I write PoC in fic if I am not a PoC?

Perhaps see this comment I made on @gracerene09‘s post here. I am all here for the normalisation of PoC in fic. It doesn’t have to be tackled in depth in every fic. But due to the dearth of authentic representation in fandom, I think it has to be explored. However, please be diligent about how you explore racial issues if you do choose to. Race cannot just be switched out, you must deal with the implications – your heritage, culture, background, experience of the world all shifts. To lend authenticity to the experience you are trying to convey, please research eg please don’t fall into the trap of white saviourism, etc. Also, please don’t use epithets unless is it absolutely integral to the story. If we know the character’s name, there is no need to write: ‘‘Yes, please’, said the Indian man.’ If you are nervous about representing a PoC character without that experience, ask a few friends or try engage in discourse. It is better than remaining in ‘respectful’ silence, because then you are complicit in the greater systemic problem. To pretend race doesn’t matter is to say that we are all treated equally. The experience of being PoC is being hyperaware of your race constantly and that feeding into everything you do, regardless of how mundane, so there is no conceivable way that a PoC's character's every move in a world with white hegemony would not have been influenced by society's perception of their race. To pretend racism doesn’t exist is to dismiss societal racism and our everyday experiences. To be honest, racial issues are an inalienable part of the PoC experience, and thus I think they should be explored.

HARRY POTTER SPECIFIC DISCOURSE

How would the race be treated in the wizarding world?

There is no canon on this, so this is all my personal conjecture. However, I believe that Petunia’s treatment of Harry could easily be understood as racist as well as prejudiced based on his magic, should you choose to see Harry as a PoC. Harry can be an anglicised name (from Hari, which means Lion in Sanskrit), or Harry could’ve just been named Harry. It’s totally possible for someone to be named Harry and be PoC. Blood purity was intended as an analogy of racism to begin with, and the stigma of being mixed race and that balance between two worlds is not incompatible with canon. Say Harry is desi – the Potters could have gained their wealth from the days of colonised South-East Asia. Also, to say that it is unrealistic for there to be PoC in the Wizarding World is a bit rich, considering as the Wizarding World defies gravity etc. Plus, looking at the census, the nineties had about an 8% ethnic minority population. I think the percentage of PoC characters in HP is less than 1%, although do tell me if I’ve done my maths wrong.

Blaise Zabini: Class, status and race in the upper echelons of the Wizarding World

Blaise Zabini is at a very interesting intersection between various social constructs. He’s chummy with the upper class and the Sacred 28, and grew up in the Wizarding world. He is wealthy, thanks to his mother, and is very posh. However, as a black man, in my eyes he is almost certainly Othered. This is just my personal interpretation, but I think Blaise would have to emphasise his poshness to validate his place in the Pureblood bubble, and yet he would always be subconsciously othered, one’s Otherness can never be erased by looks, class, status, wealth or intelligence. Although race would not be the primary optic that people are discriminated against, I think that it still would be one of those open secrets that blood purity could sometimes be conflated with. I think that is why being both elite and PoC is such an interesting intersection to occupy. In a manner of speaking, I see Blaise to be akin to Othello – accepted because he has his merits but his entire character and experience is so heavily tinged by being black in a white space. This would be especially if the Pureblood set is meant to parallel aristocracy. I doubt the Draco, for example, would say anything intentionally racist to Blaise, but he seems to more the exception to the rule. This social mobility may be because he is a ‘foreigner’ from Italy, and thus his race is ‘excused’ because I very much doubt a PoC family could rise to such extreme heights in medieval England like the Malfoys. Say racism didn’t exist, in an extremely hypothetical scenario, being the minority would still affect you in power dynamics.

Hermione Granger as a Muggleborn PoC

Should you see Hermione as a PoC, she would then be doubly discriminated against. I would believe it to be inconceivable for there to be two parallel societies, of which there is interaction and immigration, existing in the same space where race would not matter in one where it would in the other. Blood purity does not matter in the Muggle World because they do not know of magic. This is not the case with race. Especially given Britain’s empire, it would take lots of worldbuilding for one to believe that the Muggle community at one point owned 25% of the globe but the Wizarding World was a happy little content republic. The twin lenses of blood purity and race is something that cannot be ignored, and that intersection has deep impacts upon a character’s identity. Hermione would be forced to go above and beyond to justify her existence (hence her fear of being expelled) and then would be called out for not fitting in by trying too hard. Being dismissed for the smallest of things is very real because as a PoC, everything is your fault. As a PoC, this behaviour would be normalised for her because she, even at 11, would be so used to accommodating to fit Eurocentric notions.

Cho Chang

This lazy orientalisation naming is another example of JKR being a white feminist. No PoC couple in the 80s would have wanted to draw further attention to their child’s race. To better integrate to make their life easier for their child, they would have not chosen Cho as an extra obstacle for her, I don’t think.

Colourblind casting

Adding onto above, I don’t think we can give JKR credit for being a progressive, intersectional feminist in the books if she retroactively showed love for black Hermione. I love that she did that and could be one now, but a lot of HP does not show due diligence in portraying characters of colour. The thing about a white character being casted as another race is that usually, that is fine because their race is incidental, and was not a defining aspect of their character or experience because white people in white spaces do not face the same institutionalised discrimination. When a PoC character is played by a white person, it complicates matters as their experience as a PoC in a white space is integral to their experience of the world.

by @untilourapathy

#racism #race #poc #representation #diversity #harry potter #hp #fandom #fic #mine

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muneerahwrites · 6 years

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The Rain in Spain

[I was trying to be clever but there was no actual rain - rain meaning my tears LEL. I want to share contents of the lessons too inshaAllah but this will come slowly and surely. Bc there was really A LOT. This post is dedicated to my unsorted-out feelings – an attempt to rationalize and understand why I felt what I felt and to attempt to move forward with clarity of heart.]

Came back to SG from Granada to find myself plunged into deadlines and unfinished work. Grappling with jet lag, acne, a worn out yet, invigorated soul, and an unsettled mind, I dragged my body to work for the past 4 days trying to refocus and get myself into my comfortable SG work routine.

I haven’t had the time to reflect properly on my Ramadan and then, the 2 weeks Critical Muslim Studies – on what I’ve learnt and about myself. Why was I crying so much everyday? I mean, I cry occasionally but Spain was something else. I felt like I was ALWAYS crying lol. I couldn’t speak without tears bubbling beneath the surface. The garden behind the school became a regular witness to my tears (and on one occasion, the whole class but I’d rather bury that in the depths of my mind.)

I did not fully understand it at that time, but I concluded in Spain that it was probably for four reasons:

1. PMS is real.

2. I came to learn about decolonial theory and largely expected “head-work” about Critical Muslim Studies. Instead, there were discussions about dealing with the metaphysical catastrophe of coloniality, the counter to that being weeping and praying (Fanon), embracing other ways of being (the soul as a way of decolonising) and that I’ve been approaching the Qur’an or my faith (something I hold so dear to and I thought was the anchors of my always changing life) incompletely, maybe even self-indulgently. I realized that I usually leave my soul out the door when I enter “secular” spaces. Of course, I hold on to prayer and du’a but the reminder that the soul is there with your mind and body as a way of understanding and communicating was such as shock to my system. As I realise this, my body was so still but I felt so moved. Therefore, the tears.

3. I felt inadequate. What was I doing in this space? Neither activist, content producer nor scholar, I entered the space positioned as a student, only to be overwhelmed by everyone else. I felt that I was not fit to talk about decolonisation or liberation theologies. What limited struggles have I gone through as compared to everyone else in the space? I shut my mouth, I listen, I took in everyone’s pain. I felt so much guilt that I did not have my own pain (or I thought I didn’t). What have I done in my life? I have nothing to share that is important in this space. Bc of these negative thoughts, I brought up all my weaknesses as excuses not to engage. I am not critical enough, not eloquent enough, my heart beats too fast when speaking in front of many people. Anyway, everyone needed to speak so I shouldn’t, whether inside or outside class. I concluded that I shouldn’t be here. I felt even more guilty because it’s Allah’s will and plan that I was in Granada and I felt that His plan was wrong. I retreated. Therefore, the tears.

4. Another level of inadequacy was from the fact that I was from Singapore. I have nothing to contribute coming from Singapore. Who cares about Singapore anyway? Was I even Singaporean, being away from Singapore for 5 years of early adulthood. What does being Singaporean even mean?? *Existential crisis* Other experiences seemed more valid, more pressing, more outwardly violent. The need for social justice in other parts of the world was more pressing because people are constantly dehumanised and stripped of dignity. What is Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo to Singapore’s ISA and prisons? What is racism and white supremacy in the US and UK/Europe compared to racial politics in Singapore? Was my experience not important? Or was it relegated as unimportant? Did I do this myself or was this another power dynamic that is playing out? I was confused but also, I am not a personality who insists that my voice be heard. (WHY MOO? I need to examine this more?) I was frustrated. Therefore, the tears.

As the classes come to an end plus the long trip back home, I realised that I was crying because of all those reasons and then some. I was mainly crying because I was so uncomfortable. I realised through the classes, my reflections, my interactions with the other participants and with my interaction with Granada as a place, that I am still colonised. It’s not just a theory I use in my research or studies. My self, my being and thoughts are so unchecked and it’s suddenly being called out in Granada. The process of decolonisation of the self, that the summer school was pushing me to do, was/is an extremely uncomfortable one. Therefore, the tears.

Colonial domination is often understood as a historical process that has ended with independence of nation states. It is easy to recognise that there are legacies in our political, education, economic systems but I don’t think I understood the far-reaching creeping fingers of coloniality – it is in the domination of mind, body and spirit. But coloniality didn’t end in 1963, when the British left. It is not just concerns of “unfortunate Third Worlders” and diasporic communities in distant lands, battling corruption and poverty because they lacked the vision and the statecraft of a Lee Kuan Yew. The logics, practices and legacies of colonialism disrupted our local/faith/indigenous epistemologies (ways of seeing, being and understanding), our social orders and norms and forms of knowledge.

Singapore was colonised but emerged as “crown colony”. Someone from Guardian even wrote a whole article about how we “benefited” from colonialism LOL: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/04/colonialism-work-singapore-postcolonial-british-empire We’re so good at being a “modern nation-state” with our policies based on race and hierarchies created by meritocracy – but always framed as having the promise or intention of equality. We (or rather, I will say I myself, Idk about other people) just internalised coloniality (the colonial mindset) so much that we became model global citizens. White masks, yellow, brown, black skins. Wanting to be “modern”, to imitate. But as someone who has multiple levels of otherness (global south, woman, muslim, brown, introverted etc), when I imitate, I never feel enough or belonging to anywhere.

Discussions came up about how we should not to compare issues, but to be relative. And that’s when I realised: The logic of coloniality remains the same – whether we are talking about clear individual acts of Islamophobia in the UK or the state control of our asatizah in Singapore. No matter how it is being framed.

So returning back to discomfort in decolonising the self. The solution was not to retreat to the soul or to some pristine, native state of being. I was called to recognise the narrowness of my “broadened” mind: whose standards are you trying to meet? Whose questions are you answering? What are your own questions? What are the standards and values decreed by Allah? Why did I think or feel my personality, skills and socialisation not enough? Why do I think that I could not offer anything when everyone else could (especially those from the West?) How was I reproducing coloniality even in the way I was thinking about myself in relation to others? I was called to take my sensing and knowing beyond dominant ideas of what was natural, true and good.

Also, I don’t think my highly introverted self was ready for how short of a time, intensely close and intimate spaces (physical, mind and heart) I would share with so many diverse women (mostly Muslim WOC from everywhere). Everyone was so loving, embracing, warm, spiritual but at the same time, brave, strong, eloquent, unafraid of their thoughts and femininity, critical and aware of power and power dynamics and so quick to call out BS and violence when they saw it. They are honestly so aspirational and I have so many conversations/advice embedded so deeply in my mind (or heart? Allahu ‘alam). So honoured and grateful to have met every single one. Farid Esack (an absolute legend) advised us: “our interactions with other people are sacred. No matter how you differ, do not pee [desacrilise] on this sacred space.” Jasmin Zine (or was it Amina Teslima?) also read this hadith at the start of class which explains why some souls feel inexplicably drawn to other souls: The Prophet (pbuh) said: "The souls are (like) an army joined (in the world of spirits) whichever souls knew each other (in that world) are attracted towards each other (in this world) and whichever remained distant and indifferent (there) are disinterested to each other (in this world)" (Saheeh al-Bukhaari)

It was truly a blessed group to be around. I regularly got advice and reminders that were so on point and poignant, I wish I had just took out a notebook to write all of it down. One of the ladies shared Audre Lorde’s concept of self-love as a radical act. I found the quote: “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” A few other girls too had a discussion over salty seafood paella haha that self-love requires us to accept our flaws and understand that as Muslim women, Allah is there to forgive us and complete us for anything lacking. Our flaws aren’t meant to be overcome or pushed away, its meant to remind us of our humanity, how everyone is flawed. We can use what we think as “flaws” as strengths. When our life isn’t in alignment or we aren’t what we expect ourselves to be, we shouldn’t blame ourselves. Rather, it is an opportunity to grow and learn, make a change. Listen to yourself, how do you feel. How is your body responding? How is your heart? I need to learn how to cherish my authenticity and forgive the times I forgot my strengths and my power. Rather than treat myself as a blank sheet that can constantly be recreated everyday to be my ‘best self’, I must realise that I have a history, experiences, pains and triumphs that make me complex and valuable, if not to society, then, to God. “Make your voice the clearest and centred in this creative space”, another wise lady told me during the trip.

[Ok I will conclude for now]: Being in St Andrews as someone from “the rest” (from Southeast Asia, Muslim and woman) in a distinctly white space, I never felt fully “integrated”. In a way, I am grateful I didn’t. My sanctuary and solace was being with women of colour after uni and during Fridays. SOAS was interesting for me to dip my feet and see what using post-colonial and decolonial theory looks like in academia. But I think, if I am deciphering my thoughts and feelings correctly, Granada was a proper introduction for me into what a decolonial/liberation/social justice space looked like, it is not only a space for pain to be shared but also one of empowering resistance, love for each other and self-love. It also taught me that decolonising the self as well as histories, faith traditions, etc is going to be a long and uncomfortable process, with a lot of learning, praxis as well as reflection.

what about this theory.

the fear of not being enough,

and the fear of being ‘too much’

are exactly the same fear.

the fear of being you. (@nayyirahwaheed)

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chisimage · 4 years

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Discussion of xenomania in East Asia and racialised migrants (‘foreign bridges’) in Taiwan

Author/ Chi Chu

The phenomenon of xenomania, such as the western dream, is prevalent in Asian. The slang, ‘the foreign moon is much rounder’, is deeply rooted in East Asian (EA) societies. Accordingly, the ‘white’ not only becomes the general standard, but also causes a presentation of self-denial of EA values. Therefore, this reaction paper through perspectives from Houria Bouteldja, Ben Ratskoff, Amira Ekwakil and other scholars will discuss the influence of ‘white patriarchy’ in EA and the racialisation of ‘foreign bride’ migrants from Southeast Asia (SEA). It will feature examples from EA and Taiwan concerning xenomania in cross-cultural romance (CCR) between local women and western men, and xenophobia surrounding transnational marriages between local men and SEA female migrants.

The first discussion is about how white patriarchy increases the perceived inferiority of East Asian males. In 2013, users of the Taiwan online forum (mobile 01, 2013) discussed the results of an experiment , which presented that Taiwanese female users of the Skout dating app have more interest in Western profile pictures than Eastern Asian profile pictures. This is a good example of the faith East Asian females have in CCR. Another case of this reported by Tomorrow News came in 2014 when David Campbell (White American) shared a series of videos of them picking-up Asian females in East Asia on the internet. These incidents provoked a series of arguments and petition #StopDavidBond (Kim, 2015). These cases indeed reveal the xenomania for the West by Eastern females, and the attitudes of white patriarchy and superiority held by a white male.

There are two historical reasons for these social phenomena. First, during the period of two world wars, the world’s great powers (white powers) divided up and colonised Asia and affected the social values of Asians. For example, China, including Chinese, was labelled the ‘Sick man of Asia’ (Scott 2008:9). Such discrimination and racism, as highlighted by Brah (2001), has always been a gendered and sexualised phenomenon. Men in oppressed ethnic groups are classified as ‘feminine’, and ‘the white man imagines the indigenous man as his feminine foil — passive and docile’ (Ratskoff 2018). This direct discrimination informs a sense of superiority for western values regarding Asia. Secondly, the traditional hierarchical system[1]is rooted in national characters influenced by traditional Eastern morality and philosophy. Consequently, Asian individuals internalise the national characters and subconsciously hold an inferiority complex while experiencing the successful progress and economic development of Western society. It is evident that Western hegemony and white patriarchy still affect the pursuit of the West (developed) in contemporary EA society, even though the economy and development of China and other EA countries have gradually taken off in recent years. Moreover, the media renders the West a utopia. Like the film, Pierre et Djemila showed, ‘how detestable our families were and how desirable French society was’(cited in Bouteldja 2017). The internal inherent values of EA present the intersection between the influence of Western hegemony and white superiority, resulting in colonialism that exists in EA until now. Ultimately, it has facilitated the core values of the male in EA, leading to the EA males’ sense of inferiority and xenomania of EA females.

The second discussion will explore the influence of white patriarchy in EA through transnational marriage between Taiwanese men and SEA ‘foreign brides’. Over time, ‘inferior other’ (Hsia 2000, 2018; Cast net 2009) has been a label for SEA migrants in highly developed regions and countries of Northeast Asia. For example, Taiwanese society labels SEA women who get married to Taiwanese men as ‘foreign bride.’ This term in Chinese, 外籍新娘, means ‘external brides (Others)’, both discriminatory and racialised. The reason for transnational marriage is that, for Taiwanese women, Taiwanese men are secondary compared to Western men as the cases mentioned above. As a consequence, Taiwanese men have chosen SEA women to fill traditional female roles in the family. In addition, because Taiwan’s economic development is better than some SEA countries, many SEA women have decided to pursue a better life through marriage with Taiwanese men (APMM, 2007). These observations show that the first comparison is between ‘Western’ (other/ developed/ superior) and ‘Taiwanese’ (self/ developing/ inferior), and secondly, ‘Taiwanese’ (self/ developed/ superior) and ‘SEA’ (other/ developing/ inferior). Furthermore, Taiwanese women, who accept Western values, juxtapose Asian and Western men, indirectly contributing to the sense of inferiority of EA males and the racism and discrimination aimed at SEA foreign brides. For these reasons, derived from the phenomenon of xenomania, transnational marriages racialise SEA foreign brides as ‘inferior others’ and affects the ‘xenophobia’. Hence, the values of white patriarchy directly/ indirectly affect EA and the transnational migrants of SEA.

Overall, as mentioned above, under the multi-faceted oppression of gender, race, class, and colonisation, colonised peoples are restricted to present themselves. As Elwakii (2017) states, the diversity of cultural forms is replaced by gradual homogeneity. The tolerance of heterogeneity has become a social issue faced by Taiwan and other EA regions. However, there are some attempts to reverse this situation. ‘We can never be free while our men are oppressed but also it is imperative to our struggle that we build a strong black women’s movement’ (Bouteldja, cited in Ratskoff 2018). Much literature and many films have portrayed Asian males beat up gangsters and protect Asian female migrants to present their masculinity (Shie 2009:45). Also, SEA migrants in Taiwan have started a Taiwanese new immigrants’ movement to promote the equal rights and replace the name ‘foreign bride’ with ‘marriage migrants’ (APMM 2007). All efforts resist the influence of white patriarchy and intangible colonialization. The continuous decolonisation by Asian males and the movement executed by Taiwanese new immigrants attempt to assist indigenous EA cultures and marriage migrants in rebuilding self-discussion and in the formation of subjectivity as feminist — ‘a thought and a form of resistance’ (Bouteldja 2017). Hence, regardless of invisible colonial oppression by western values and ‘white patriarchy’ in EA or the extensive discrimination of SEA migrants, the most critical social actions of decolonisation in EA need to be carried out by East Asians themselves, to emancipate intangible colonial oppression.

Reference

APMM (2007). Attitude of the Local People to Foreign Brides: A Research Project by the Asia Pacific Mission for Migrants. <http://www.apmigrants.org/articles/researches/research-attitude-local-people-foreign-bride.pdf>.

Bouteldja, H. (2017). We, Indigenous Women. E-Flux, 84. <https://www.e-flux.com/journal/84/151312/we-indigenous-women/>.

Brah, A. (2001). Re-framing Europe: gendered racisms, ethnicities and nationalisms in contemporary Western Europe. In Rethinking European Welfare: Transformations of European Social Policy, edited by Janet Fink, Gail Lewis, and John Clarke, 207-230. London: Sage.

Cast net (2009). The dreams of transnational marriages. [In Chinese] <https://castnet.nctu.edu.tw/castnet/article/1583?issueID=64>.

David Campbell personal website (2014). David Campbell Asian Woman Womanizer from America. <Retrieved from: https://davidcampbellasian.wordpress.com/>.

Ekwakil, A. (2017). Reflections on intersections: Searching for an anti-racist, pro-migrant feminist response to sexual assault committed by migrants. Kohl, 3(1). < https://kohljournal.press/reflections-on-intersections>.

Hsia, H. C. (2018). From Foreign Bride to Taiwanese new immigrants [In Chinese]. <https://opinion.cw.com.tw/blog/profile/65/article/6575>.

Hsiao, H. H. Michael (2003). Taiwan and SEA: South Policy and Vietnamese Foreign Brides [In Chinese]. Taipeo: Center for Asia-Pacific Area Studies, RCHSS, Academia Sincia.

Kim, E. (2015). #StopDavidBond from harassing & sexually exploiting women in Asia. <https://www.change.org/p/stopdavidbond-from-harassing-sexually-exploiting-women-in-asia>.

Mobile 01 (2013). the phenomenon of xenomania of Taiwanese female on SKout [In Chinese]. <https://www.mobile01.com/topicdetail.php?f=292&t=3421428>.

PTT (2019). CCR板、ㄈㄈ尺板、真愛無國界板 [In Chinese]. <http://ptt.cc/>.

Ratskoff, B. (2018). Liberation Utopias: Houria Bouteldja on Feminism, Anti-Semitism, and the Politics of Decolonization. Los Angeles Review of Books. <https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/liberation-utopias-houria-bouteldja-on-feminism-anti-semitism-and-the-politics-of-decolonization/>.

Scott, D. (2008). China and the international system, 1840-1949: power, presence, and perceptions in a century of humiliation. NY: State University of New York Press.

Shie, S. T.(2009) . Masculinity and Desire Economics in Taiwan's Postcolonial literatures [In Chinese]. Journal of Taiwan Literary Studies, 9, 37-67.

Tomorrow news (2014). Hong Kong saw this video of westerners gaming their women and went berserk. <http://us.tomonews.com/hong-kong-saw-this-video-of-westerners-gaming-their-women-and-went-berzerk-2927513>.

[1] The solid social values of hierarchy in East Asia are derived from Five Disciplines (君臣父子), Four categories of the people (士農工商) and traditional Male chauvinism (男尊女卑).

#gendering #migration #asia

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scheherazadean · 7 years

Audio

Context.

A transcript of the poem is as follows.

Jade, traded for Bricks

Yves Saint Laurent had a new perfume to sell

with an Oriental Twist: Haggard young thing lost

among neon Chinese, chasing down dark streets on the hinterland,

wild eyes searching for the next fix:

Black Opium, it was called, packaged prettily by a corporation

ignorant of the history embodied

in the quaint black bottle. The story of an imperial body

faltering before industrial upstarts founded upon sale

of human bodies. 4,000 odd years of tradition cornered by several corporate

nations. Ring around the daisies, wrung about She lost

robes and jewellery, so contemporaries agreed on fixing

Her with a dose of modernity. Yet still Her lands

could not be saved from affliction. First there was England

and its Greater Empire. Four port cities opened to a body

of traders, and gradually demographics

turned to drug trading. Callous of morality they sold

us depressants, so my country was to lose

millions in silver and in corporal

faculties. Poison inhibited livelihoods, poison incorporated

lawful merchants into a prohibited business. Thus British fleets landed

on Cantonese shores; national delegates co-signed Her loss

of dignity; and the French would turn Cixi's abode

into embers, all twelve zodiacs beheaded, their skulls now sold

and auctioned at the price of basic human decency. But to simply re-affix

heads onto marble ruins won't fix

history's mistakes. If their textbooks documented corpses

they've made of other nations, designers today might know not to sell

models all decked out in glorified gores; that my homeland

was once stripped bone-bare, Her body

amputated by subsequent Great Wars - none of this might be lost

on their customers. Yet something tells me they'll capitalise on our losses,

regardless, one-hundred-fifty more years later, so fixated

as they are with the "Orient". And they'll salivate over her image and body,

her edgy litheness masking histories of once living corpses

enslaved to opiates flooding homes on a faraway land.

They'll disregard it all for this bit of fantasy YSL is selling.

In the heartland of Victoria's former empire I have a kindred somebody

who mourns also, for ancestors lost to sales and exploits of the corporate.

But moving here has betrayed our fixation with the West,

like we can never love our history, can never love our own country.

A few notes:

This poem was originally composed in the fall of 2015, in response to a problematic YSL ad a friend had brought to my attention earlier that year. It was written for a module at the Warwick Writing Programme: the weekly assignment had been to write a sestina, which may explain the irregular form of this piece. The original sestina did have breaks between the first 6 stanzas, and that version was ultimately included in the portfolio I compiled for the module’s assessments.

I was never particularly satisfied with the last 2-3 stanzas of that version of the poem, however. Having unearthed this poem again, I decided to revise it a bit. I altered a few words in the earlier stanzas, heavily edited the fifth stanza, and reconstructed the last two stanzas entirely. Unlike the case with some of the other poems in that portfolio, my views on this subject matter - of orientalist fetishisation and sanitisation of colonial atrocities - have not changed in the last 2 years, so it was not too difficult for me to get into that headspace again and rewrite those stanzas.

I do feel like there is a newer sense of postcolonial awareness injected into the last stanza, however. The poem was originally written whilst I was situated in the heart of England - i.e. the ruling country of the British Empire which yes, was the former coloniser of my hometown. But I don’t recall being as conscious of my cultural identity dissonance - and hence the hypocrisy in the criticisms that I was making in the poem - back then as I am nowadays. I don’t think 2015 me would have admitted to internalised Anglophilia, never-mind the disingenuity of my proclaimed connectedness to a Chinese national history, as is implied in the tone of the first six stanzas. Because, even though it is true that the Opium Wars did sever Hong Kong from its motherland at the time, I have grown up in a cultural environment far too detached from modern China to claim that I do identify today’s China as my motherland. And I certainly don’t want to spread false representation of how disenfranchised ethnic groups such as HongKongers relate to the Mainland government - at least, on a personal level, I’m not patriotic like that.

But I do believe that sometimes it’s more powerful to confront our own internalised racisms. They’re perhaps the most poignant consequence of the colonialism our societies have faced.

(On another note: after all this revising and editing I’m still not entirely satisfied with what I have, to be honest. It reads a lot less clumsier and perhaps less repetitive than before, yes, but I may come back to this and edit it some more in the future.)

#poets on tumblr #writers on tumblr #writeblr #poemblr #{audio}#{poetry}#{Eugenia's archive}#{portfolio}

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jaynavcd-blog · 7 years

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The Illusionists, Directed by Elena Rossini

A documentary about the commodification of the body and the marketing of unattainable beauty around the world.

“We see the selling of the westernised image as the badge of modernity in India, Singapore, China, Japan where the notion of how you join globalised culture is taking of the western body.”

Power comes from westernisation. People who are happy and secure aren’t good consumers, they aren’t look for products to make them feel better.

The Birth of a Myth

Beauty lies within the eye of the beholder, but it also has to do a lot with the beholders cultural environment. We cannot understand the evolution of beauty ideals without discussing the rise of consumer culture.

In New York City 1920, people were purchasing products out need. Advertisements were described through illustrations and long explanations about the product’s features and functions (rational side of consumers, got their hard earned dollars). But there was too much supply and not enough demand, recession and unemployment.

Productions to Consumption

Edward L Bernays from Austria taps into people’s subconscious desires, channeling the emotional side of consumers. He jumpstarts consumer culture, by turning products into status symbols (how a production enhances one’s social standing).

Ernest Dictor came to the USA in 1938 (pleasure to consumption, with the idea of “keeping up with the Jones’s” embracing consumer items) expression of pleasure- sexualized way. In the 20th century, the human body becomes a center of consumption.

A myth is born. To be happy, successful, modern, like we fully belong we need to buy products. In the 20th century the body becomes the center of consumption.

Ideal beauty is no longer associated to vanity or narcissism it’s rebranded as an accomplishment- status symbol, Jean Baudrillard (French Philosopher calls the body the finest consumer object.

Susie Orbach, psychotherapist author of “bodies”

Commercial pressures, we need to look like we are on a movie set whatever we are doing, we look at ourselves from the outside and evaluate ourselves. That means our experience isn’t that our bodies exists and we use them and we play, decorate, have joy- our bodies have become a type of project that we have to work on all the time.

Jean Kilbourne, filmmaker, author and activist

There is nothing wrong in wanting to be attractive, but it’s compelled and exploited by the commercial culture.

INSECURITY SELLS

People spend more when they feel sad. The ideal consumer is unsatisfied, addict that needs the product; it’s a craving to them.

Magazine Editors are not the only ones to blame. Many industries have a major impact. Women’s bodies are portrayed to feel gross.

The media act as gatekeepers blocking out anything that is ‘real’ (real people) who don’t fit the official body who is not fit to sell products.

Advertising

Manipulation, digital retouching is common

“Ok this is the body I can have, this is my right.”

1. Censorship

2. Manipulation

3. Saturation

Products that promise consumers a way to achieve this ideal beauty

This is how the cycle is complete; this is probably what women want.

The advertising agencies have conceived women that they should be dissatisfied with themselves and they should purchase more products to look more beautiful- Harrison Pope.

The average person a week spend over 60 hours looking at mass media, in 2020 this will raise to 90 hours per week, which is 80 percent of our lives.

Jean Kilbourne

The American image of ideal beauty has become a great extent of the international ideal beauty so we get Asian women getting surgery etc.

The Official Body

Hala Ajam, Makeup Artist in Lebanon.

In the part 15 years Lebanon has changed, women are either likely to look European casual or like a European movie star if they have the money tpo achieve this look. Appearance is important to socialise and look successful.

Susie Orbach

One of the tragedies at the moment is that we are loosing bodies, just like we are loosing languages. ‘Europeans’ are coming into stand for the great variety of human bodies.

Black and White

Ruchi Anand, professor of International Relations

India, Mumbai. Skin whitening products showed a growth in the 1970’s for fair skin. Indians have internal racism. The westernised image is more superior. India is an ex colony of the British. There is a fascination for the white man and women and how they look. Indians tend to go for the westernised modernised image, as that’s where all the power comes from. The highest paid Bollywood actors/actresses are in skin whitening commercials, which have been digitally retouched. Skin whitening products promise finding love, professional success, civilized, modernised. North India is lighter skinned than South India, so they are seeking to be lighter leading to dangerous products. Why don’t you accept the skin you’re born with, brown and black is beautiful.

Susie Orbach

Internalised racism (imperialism) a form of body colonialism, it is affective as it is driven by huge industries that from their perspective want to make one world to sell these products.

White Beauty commercial had a successful run in Thailand; it has commissioned advertising agencies in India and South Africa to create an identical commercial, which is identical in the most literal sense (never mind the different racial make up in the three different countries in question). The campaign has reached half a billion people around the world. One world, one beauty.

In Paris, advertising in mass media has played a role in this. Everywhere you see black women who are ‘not too black’ so they are accepted by mainstream media. The prominent women in mainstream media today are all have fair skin and have a huge influence i.e. Nikki Minaj, Beyoncé and Rihanna are all white washed at times.

Porcelain white skin has been valued in many parts of Asia for centuries. There is a saying in Japanese where ‘white skin hides your flaws.’ They don’t care what colour your skin is, as long you are insecure about it (west= tan). Ideal is impossible to achieve, but the illusion of beauty can be bought if only people keep consuming.

Forever Young

Lack of Diversity

Never Too Thin

Global culture of beauty circulating through out the world.

Getting Them Young

Aspirational marketing, exploiting children, as they want to act older.

Barbie dolls, Lip Smackers. Turning children into consumers at a young age by sexualizing body images.

Future Bodies

Eri Shibata

Big eyes are so popular in Japan because of the Manga characters. Japanese youth are expose to this at a young age.

Agent of Change

Gail Dines, professor and activist; author of “Pornland”

“At stake here of at terms of who controls the media is what kind of society we live in. The question becomes, do you want to live in a society that is owned and controlled by a handful of corporations who determine the nature of art visual landscape. Do you want a handful of corporations to define what feminity should look like, what masculinity should look like, what sexuality should look like. Or do you think that we as people should have the right to determine our own cultural images, we should decide what type of culture we live in, and our children live in. It’s our basic human right, it is not the right of corporations.”

The choice is in our own hands, public discourse was controlled by a small handful of wealthy individuals, all this changed in the 1990’s with the advent of the internet.

There are plenty of things you can do big and small to affect change. Put you money where your values are.

#week7 #research

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nerobombs · 7 years

Text

Writing Oppression

(Want more? Check out my Writing tag!)

Hope you’re not sick of the Stormblood-induced rants yet, because here’s another one.

I’m sure there’s many Domans, Xaela, and Ala Mhigans getting ready to get back at those darn Garleans and settle into their newly liberated homes. So I’m sure a lot of the player stories that come out of Stormblood will be surrounding that: themes of oppression, of returning home with new experiences, the idea of institutionalised power and how it can be wielded, and so on.

Well, maybe, anyway.

To preface this, my demographic is not what you might call “disenfranchised”. None of the places I’ve lived in or visited are particularly rife with genuine oppression--which I suspect will change when my North Korean visa finally gets approved and America hits its third year of a Cheeto Benito presidency (ooh, spicy political commentary!)--so I’ll admit that I’m approaching this topic more in theory and from logical examination than from experience.

I’ve definitely consumed media wherein oppression is depicted however, and more often than not such things end up depicted more cartoonishly than anything else. You know, really weird and unintuitive racial slurs, mustache-twirling commissars, goose stepping secret police, and so on.

I’d like to avoid that. Oppression in fiction can be a fascinating topic and an environment that provides for a lot of intrigue.

And if you’re worried that this post is going to contain some ol’ SJW bullshit then, well, it’s not.

So if you’re looking to approach the topic of Garlemald’s occupation in your storyline, you may want to read further.

1). Internalisation is a genuine factor to consider.

In short, when you get told something often enough, you’ll probably start believing it regardless of whether or not you cognitively recognise it as false.

For a historical example, a “colonial mentality” is a form of internalised oppression where the colonised people feel themselves to be inferior to their imperialist colonisers. The nuances are complex--thoughts can range from “Well they managed to take over half the world and we didn’t so we must be worse people” or “our economy is so much better now with our new overlords”, and so on--but the principle is relatively simple. This sort of thing happened a lot with the spread of the Spanish Empire and the rule of the conquistadors, particularly with places like the Philippines.

It happens a lot in marketing too: women are told they’re not thin and beautiful enough, men are told they’re not manly and successful enough, and both of these things lead to self-esteem issues. Same mechanism, for the most part.

Weirdly enough, this is something I almost never see portrayed in fiction with oppressed societies. It’s a kind of society-level Stockholm Syndrome. Certainly there will be Domans or Ala Mhigans or Xaela who truly believe that they are inferior to Garleans and that Garlemald is something to aspire to, and breaking such an internalisation takes a lot of work, simply because the information is everywhere.

So when you’re considering why oppressed citizenry might side with their oppressors, consider internalisation. Consider the effect of seeing and hearing “Be grateful to your conquerors for they are better and wiser” day in, day out.

2). Bigotry and intelligence are not mutually exclusive.

Or to put it another way: people can genuinely believe racist shit regardless of their status, upbringing, or intellect.

Let’s write a character, Garlic McGarlemald the Garlean. For all intents and purposes he is kind, fair, and intelligent. He’s a university professor, donates to the poor, loves his wife and children, and also sincerely believes that all Xaela are savage horsefuckers who cut off their enemy’s heads in order to consume their soul.

Wait, what?

One of the pitfalls of writing an oppressive or racist society is the depiction. A lot of these stories depict all oppressive racists as universally dumb, drooling ignoramuses who spend all day teaching their children to play “Lynch the Minority” and “Spell the Slur”. And, well, okay, there are certainly people like that.

But in a truly oppressive society, the dumb racists are not the dangerous ones: the really dangerous ones are people like Garlic McGarlemald who is, for the most part, an ordinary person perfectly capable of critical thinking, yet still inexplicably believes in this shit for reasons no party can really rationalise.

And if that doesn’t seem logical in the slightest, it’s not. But it’s certainly realistic.

People do actually believe in stuff like that. You had scientists in the 19th century seeking “natural, evolutionary” reasons as to why other races were inferior to whites. You had logicians, biologists, and anthropologists huddling around and wondering why whites were so much awesome-er than all those other dirtfarmer races. It was something that was just believed. Maybe it was because it was a cultural cornerstone or it was merely a result of internalisation, but people who by all rights could be considered intelligent and capable believed that stuff.

And while we’re on the subject...

“But my bigot character doesn’t really believe in that stuff, of course he’s smart enough to know that’s all bollocks,” you might say. Garlic McGarlemald is just under social pressure to pretend he believes this stuff, that’s all!

Well, that’s not really valid. For one, from a writing perspective, that kind of argument is a total cop-out; it’s a lazy way to keep your character “clean” for fear of being controversial. For two, lip service has absolutely zero value in this context: unless Garlic McGarlemald is actually willing to take action, he’s still a bigot. A passive and well-meaning bigot, perhaps, but still a bigot. Not only is he a bigot, but he is a hypocrite too, because he refuses to jeopardise the racist and bigoted system that he himself benefits from.

And this is where the “with us or against us” mentality sort of comes from: if your character is part of the oppressors, then he/she is an oppressor unless they’re actively working against it. Being passively racist is still racist, so sayeth the oppressed, because institutionalised power is still power.

3). Prejudice can have layers.

Consider the “double jeopardy hypothesis” which proposes that, for example, a Asian-American woman is not only subject to racism and sexism, but to the combined effects of both simultaneously. And if she falls into the LBTQ camp (or however many letters that camp seems to have these days), then she’s going through triple jeopardy because heterosexism piles on like a big smelly heterosexist frog.

I say that it’s a hypothesis (and from a scientific standpoint it still is) but this isn’t particularly beyond the stretch of logic.

Let’s say your Xaela meets Garlic McGarlemald. Now obviously, Garlic McGarlemald hates your Xaela. But he doesn’t hate your Xaela just because your Xaela is a Xaela: Mr. Garlic hates your Xaela because they talk funny, dress in rags, have a weird pagan religion and because they’re bisexual.

Would Garlic McGarlemald hate a Garlean who was the same thing? Well, we don’t know. But the point I’m trying to make here is that an oppressive society will use everything, and I mean everything it can weaponise against the people they’re trying to oppress.

To go further, Garleans might dislike that Domans speak a weird language, they also hate Domans because they eat raw fish (barbarians!), force their children to kneel on bamboo mats (monsters!), and refuse to export Mother 3 to the United States, in addition to taking eight years to finish a new Persona game (complete heathens, I say!).

See what I mean?

4). People who belong to the oppressor group can have nice qualities.

If you’ll harken back to my intro paragraph, I don’t like it when oppressors are depicted as universally revolting mustache-twirling Nazis with no redeeming qualities.

Like I said, Garlic McGarlemald can be considered a nice guy, excepting the racism. People who are among the oppressors in an oppressive society aren’t universally bad. After all, for a lot of them it’s not particularly their fault that they were raised in a society that encouraged such bigotry. And internalisation happens with things like racism too: even when they become educated, they seek new reasons to justify their bigotry because it’s all they were raised to know.

There is a nauseating amount of self-righteousness that comes with depicting all racists and bigots as unrepentant monsters who hit so many branches of the stupid tree that they’re in danger of accidentally swallowing their own extra chromosome.

So don’t do that. If you’re going to write your oppressors, at least write some of them as mostly well-meaning.

5). Avoid tokenism.

Or, to put it in a more wordy way: either judge every group within your story as a group, or judge every group within your story as individuals.

Let’s say that Garlic McGarlemald is actually not a nice man, and he drinks alcohol and beats his wife.

Edgy, isn’t it?

Now, when being written by a not-so-good writer, Garlic McGarlemald won’t place any stigma upon his group, because he is part of the oppressive Garleans. It’s not that all Garleans are drunken wifebeaters, it’s just that Garlic McGarlemald specifically has that problem.

Meanwhile, Xaela Xaelason accidentally trips and breaks a bottle, therefore all Xaela are clumsy!

No. That can’t fly. And the reason why that can’t fly is because it very quickly descends into becoming preachy.

This happens a lot with poorly written fantasy novels: there is a single named character who is gay or has dark skin, and that single character ends up representing the author’s entire views on gays or black people.

So when you’re writing something like an oppressive society, multiple characters are important. You have to be willing to do the work to portray each side--oppressors and the oppressed--as having complex people who aren’t easily categorised.

Don’t insert a Token Doman or a Token Good Garlean or a Token Evil Xaela and then use that character to make blanket statements within your story. Because that’s just lazy writing.

6). Oppression is hard to escape.

Whether you’re one of the oppressors attempting to open your worldview or you’re one of the oppressed trying not to fall down the same slippery slope, oppression isn’t an easy thing to “win” against.

There’s no magic argument or book that suddenly allows one to instantly widen their acceptance of race, religion, language, sex, sexual orientation, etc. Similarly, there is no Garden of Eden free of prejudice.

If you’re planning to tackle oppression as a theme, be prepared to be conscious of it, for as long as the theme is relevant. You can’t have Xaela Xaelason make it to the land of his people and decide that Prejudice Doesn’t Exist. No, Xaela Xaelason would be judged based on the fact that he was born in a city and doesn’t know any Xaela customs or traditions. He’d be judged for not staunchly supporting the tribal religion. He’s among other Xaela, and there will be prejudice there, too.

It’s a double-sided magnet, and it has some powerful pull. Be aware of that.

#ffxiv #final fantasy xiv #stormblood #rp #roleplaying #writing #writing tips #oppression #honestly the hardest part of these posts is coming up with damn tags #ala mhigo #i hope i don't regret writing this?

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han-nm · 6 years

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AM I “SOUTH AFRICAN”?

The People vs. the Rainbow Nation Documentary

Do South Africans Exist? By Ivor Chipkin

Something I ponder and experience every single day as a person of colour living in South Africa is the colossal question of “how much am I influenced by whiteness?” it terrifies me to answer it to myself, as I am almost one hundred percent under its umbrella; I’d like to consider myself a subject to it, a worker for it, tirelessly bound to it, gripped and thrown around. I am just another one like myself – unwillingly born into a world where the ideology is decided: to be white. Born into a strong Indian culture and raised Muslim, I constantly struggled to grapple with my own culture and whiteness; and only now am I realising how there is something so inherently wrong with this. I feel fortunate. I feel grateful: I am finally free of the shackles of whiteness. I feel like I can say that openly now, but am I really free? Deep down I know this is not true, and I sadden... there is too much depravity: history, politics, power, privilege, ideology, oppression and whiteness.

The question tugs at me: “what do white people know about people of colour?” it is mentioned in The People vs. The Rainbow Nation that our society comprises of soft forms of exclusion. The condition of whiteness is the very evident disengagement with the surroundings which existed before the white world. The profound sense of financial power is evident in the realm of South African universities due to the structures of privilege and therefore the unequal scale of power - historical privilege. The colossal influence from the western world makes it viable for this to be: when you are white and born into whiteness, you are born into power immediately and automatically and the mindless choice to ignore everything “other” around you, is a part of being white - and the privileges that come with it - as you are vehicle of power and form part of the hegemonic superstructure which rules the land: why should you care about anything else? White bodies hold immense power and that power is in play, every day I wake up and live about in the world.

I have been attending institutions run by predominantly white people and therefore white authority has auto-tuned my mind. The years 2005 and 2013, I attended Madrasah (religious school), every day after school. Madrasah was run by Indian Muslims like me – my usual day growing up consisted of these two extreme environments. My identity was a struggle in this country, particularly in my hometown of Durban where I have experienced extreme forms of being amongst whiteness. My identity in South Africa as Indian amongst masses of white people and masses of Indian people is a perpetual question for me: who am I? When the dominant group is white, surely that is who I am, there is a reason why I hear my parents change the way they speak when they speak to white people, surely white is better. When all the magazines I read as a young girl were filled with photographs of white girls, surely beauty is white. In Do South Africans Exist? Chipkin brings about the notion of “the authentic national subject” and citizens. I believe the people of colour in this country are the true, authentic national subject. Victims of years of oppression and today still grappling and struggling through its aftermath; I believe that WE are the history of this country as we are victims of the hegemonic superstructure that governed this land: white supremacy.

Shying away from my culture and skin colour was a common occurrence for me. The literal denial of my authentic existence because of whiteness: I was often grateful that I was fair-skinned like my mom, that way I was one step closer to being white. The reality of South Africa is that whiteness still permeates throughout society. It is something that has been relentlessly embedded within every individual. Looking back at Steve Biko and the Black Consciousness Movement, another question which emerges for me is “what forms does Black Consciousness take today?” the basic psychological effects of whiteness and the metaphysics around not being white – how is this evident today? After 181 years of slavery, 200 years of British colonialism and 46 more brutal years of Apartheid? The dense historical baggage of privilege through structural and intricate systems becomes more apparent to me and moreover the manner in which my life has been shaped by this. I ask myself, “How do you see yourself now, as a person of colour/Indian?” I can comfortably say that I am now very aware of the notion of whiteness and racism and hence am gradually liberating myself from whiteness via a multiple of trajectories. I now think of my fellow friends of colour, my own family, are they still psychologically oppressed? I can comfortably say yes. It is mind-blowing to now witness, hear and talk to people of colour and experience their psychological oppression. More often than not, I find that it is so evidently subconscious and entrenched within their entire being, that they have no sense of individualism - this is heart-wrenching to deal with. I feel like I have been robbed of myself, that my family has been robbed, that we have been born into a society where the bar is already set: to achieve whiteness. The philosophy of the BCM (Black Consciousness Movement) is significant in the manner in which people of colour exist today in this country and globally – it is almost unfathomable to comprehend the idea of dismantling the overbearing superstructure of whiteness and moreover the desire to achieve it. Or rather what should be speculated is the notion of the rejection of the superstructure of traditional white values; and the awareness of oneself and all the authenticity as a person of colour and the culture within. However, this brings me to the thought of whether one would desire this rejection? Would my Indian friend rather be comfortable as they are, living under whiteness and conforming to it? I know I conform to it, but I am aware that I am and the extent to which I am and moreover, the choice to not allow for myself to hold beliefs about my mere existence as a person of colour DUE to whiteness. To reject the imposed ideas thrown at me every day and invoke, embrace and love my being as a person of colour.

Ivor Chipkin mentions the “modernity in Africa” – “modernity” is of course a construct imposed by Western ideology and therefore is almost imperious when situated in the context of Africa. This alludes to the idea of the historical construction of colonies: in particular, South Africa, with both Dutch and British heavy influence, it is with no doubt to say that this country, let alone the entire continent, has been denied every ounce of authenticity. So much so, that the thought of this country without colonialism is beyond comprehension. The notion of the clash of civilisation comes to my mind when I think of the history of colonialism and the effects on the psyche of the colonised – the almost robust need to literally separate humanity into us, them, ours and theirs.

The next question which arises is the rhetoric of “decolonialisation” – is it possible to be fully “decolonialised”? I believe that the answer to that question is the question of whether “decolonisation” exists in the contemporary world, or rather, what forms it takes. Frantz Fanon explains the notion of “decolonising the mind”: the idea of the creation of a “new man” by reconstructing humanity. “In his pioneering 1952 study of the relationship between racism and the colonialism, Black Skin, White Masks (Peau noire, masques blancs), Frantz Fanon relied heavily on the psychoanalytic theory to understand the traumatic sense of inferiority that overtakes those dominating their homelands. Fanon conducted his study during the French occupation of Algeria, in the twilight of European colonialism; his principal objective was to see through the desubjection that colonised people experienced – the process by which normatively divided, self-alienated black subjects internalised their anger and redirected it against them. The colonial apparatus, Fanon believed, successfully manufactures a profound sense of inferiority in the colonised subjects that leads them – actively or passively, consciously or subconsciously – to identify with and seek to serve the colonial agency” (Dabashi 2011: 19). For starters, it is pivotal to remember that white people are responsible for white consciousness in this country. Ignorance itself is white privilege: the mere act of choosing to ignore and evading the realities of being white and the metaphysics and politics around it is a part of the privileges of being white when you are safe from depravity in the context of being a person of colour. There is dire need for perpetual and vehement process of educating, reading and knowledge presently and henceforth toward the future. It is about looking at your life as a white individual and taking responsibility for it and beginning to change it.

ZANDER BLOM’S PAINTINGS AND POSTERS – STEVENSON GALLERY

There has never been an exhibition I’ve attended in my nineteen years that has been as white. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some Zander Blom. I find his work incredibly inspiring and it visually captivated me and engulfed me one hundred percent. I enjoyed the obsessive use of line and shape and the beautiful choice of colour. There were primed and unprimed canvases which I found interesting; the way they both effectively worked in the space.

The space itself as a whole was a bit uncomfortable for me: I liked the manner in which the posters were curated; as if looking and observing at lots of posters stuck on a wall. However, the bigger space created a mundane narrative for me. I suppose that is how it was perhaps meant to be, a simple setup of the works hung around the room. Another thing was that I hadn’t seen Stevenson Gallery painted fully white in a while so being immersed in the white cube space was something I felt I needed to adjust to.

The reason why this exhibition was so “white” to me is because there was a blatant and immediate sense of it; extending perhaps to white masculinity. Zander Blom, being a white South African male, overtly references famous white male artists throughout this body of work. He references particularly Paul Klee, Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. All in their own senses and realms, pioneering icons of their times. What was Blom attempting to say here? Was it just a subconscious or unconscious thing or was there consideration as to what his work connoted? Moreover, the specific reference to these artists alludes to the notion of primitivism and the politics around culture. This begs the viewer to ponder this exhibition and its possible intentions or perhaps the manner in which the viewer perceives the work with its various elements.

Dabashi, H. 2011. Brown Skin, White Masks. Pluto Press, London.

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hannahobee · 7 years

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LECTURE 2

Who sees and who can be seen? Fighting for representation and the politics of identity.

In a post WWII society, women and minorities should supposedly still have been seen as equal within the work place, since they contributed their skills within the workplace during the war. However within the labour market and mainstream politics, married women were told to quit working, and encouraged to go back to being housewives where they would no longer be ‘taking’ jobs from men and returning soldiers. Similarly in America, US african american soldiers were returning home to segregation and racism, and their war effort became completely disregarded. In the UK there was seemed to be a huge contradiction, as the NHS and welfare state were introduced, shaping a more accessible, understanding and empathetic Britain, however women and ethnic minorities were still being seen as less equal in their roles in society.

In 1947 the British empire began to fray when India gained independence. Mahatma Gandhi formed a revolutionary new form of nationalism, away from British identity. Gandhi was very particular in the way he presented himself, after studying as a lawyer in London, Gandhi wore traditional hand made Indian shawls made from Indian cotton. He associated himself with an ‘Imagined Community’, a shared identity where those who identity don’t know the people within the community as it is so large, i.e India. (Benedict Anderson). This way Gandhi represented the people he worked for, and reflected a true representation of what he thought India to be, away from British ideals.

It could be argued that a problem with post-colonial nationalism is the threat of losing religious pluralism. A single nationalist identity across an entire country such as India threatens minorities. Muslims living in India at the time were threatened and felt marginalised. Due to the conflict between Hinduism and Islam, within the Indian Independence Act (1947) ‘British India’ was to be partitioned into The Dominion of India and The Dominion of Pakistan.

In Frantz Fanon’s Black Skins, White Masks (1951), he talks about the difficulty that middle-class black people living in America had with their identity. Fanon explains they had a split self-perception. On one hand, middle class black people were told to imitate and appropriate to a certain white culture in order to succeed. In the media, and within the real life workplace, the most successful were white, due to preconceptions full with prejudice and discrimination. He explains the effect this had on black children was traumatising. The way black people were represented within the media didn’t reflect how they felt about themselves, it objectified black people as hyper-sexual, violent beings, and this representation was fed back to them, to which they did not identify.

The mis-representation of black people within the media was combatted with civil disobedience. For example in 1963, Martin Luther King Jr was a voice for the black community, which began movements such as the Black Power movement and the Black Panthers (Emory Douglas, Illustrator for the Black Panther movement).

Movements such as these were a catalyst for feminist and gay rights movements. Second wave feminism demanded equal pay and reproductive rights. However more radical feminists believed it wasn’t enough to fight the law, change needed to happen within deep rooted societal structures. To truly become equal it is necessary to fight the Patriarchy (the belief that society is male dominated, and everyone has internalised male superiority). Women who looked after children at home, technically aren’t paid for domestic labour since it isn’t seen as ‘work’, however women staying at home was essentially what enabled the labour force to keep going. Here women’s personal lives were being affected negatively by systemic problem (which we still experience today); “the personal is political” (Carol Hanisch). This realisation stimulated women sharing personal experiences, the challenging of the aesthetic of women and girls, and underground movements such as comics and animation (Gilian Lacey).

Pornography became a talking point in the 1980s as some feminists believed it was misogynistic since women were mis-represented and overly sexualised and objectified. However some “sexually liberated” feminist believed pornography wasn’t the problem, but it was the patriarchy that only allowed pornography to be made through the Male Gaze. Gay porn became more wide spread after the Gay Liberation Front questioned societies efforts to restrict sexuality to heterosexualism. Illustrator Tom of Finland started by subtly making homosexual pornography by illustrating fitness magazines. His illustrations were quite obviously for the gay community, however were subtle enough to get past censorship. As homosexuality became more widely accepted, his illustrations became more and more explicit and unapologetically homosexual.

After years of oppression, during the 1960s there was a burst of homosexual pride and culture. Politics began to highlight cultural oppressions rather than that of class. Minorities questioned how they were reflected within society and how they didn’t relate to ‘man kind’ as it assumed universality. However, within every movement, there are also minorities who feel they are not represented. For example within the feminist movement, ethnic and working class women felt misrepresented as they felt the movement only favoured white middle to upper class women. Women who through society’s eyes had more ‘potential’. Women who wanted to work, however working class women already working in factories didn’t only want to work, but also wanted to improve working conditions since there were many incidents of sexual harassment within low income or factory work environments.

THEORY

Who am I? Rene Descartes: “I think, therefore I am”. The process of thinking certifies the doubting of whether you exist. The fact that you are able to question things and have doubts about the world around you includes thinking. Ferdinand de Sausurre believes that language is a structure that speaks us, we do not speak a language. Language pre-exists before we are born, it is not something that we create. Language is a structure that creates boundaries between us such as class, someone brought up in a working class environment will use different terminology to someone bought up middle class, therefore language determines some form of identity. We also find identity in what we are not, Sausurre referred to this as the Langue, for example a man is dependent on what he is no (a woman). Jacques Derrida believed that western culture is shaped by binarism. For example man and woman are opposite binaries. The more dominant binary becomes generalised across both binaries for example ‘man kind’. We also see this when describing the characteristics of someone. Often when describing someone who is white, we don’t mention their skin colour since it is seen as the norm, however when describing someone of an ethnic minority, their skin colour seems vital to their description.

Edward Said theorised the Postcolonial Theory (1978). Here he believed ‘the orient’ was invented as a way of controlling the eastern world, it gave meaning to the West as it was different. However, ‘the orient’ isn’t a true reflection of eastern life. Western culture projected fears and desires onto ‘the orient’ as a means of establishing western superiority. We see similarities between this theory and Islamophobia today. Fears are pushed onto Islam by western media, where consumers believe that Islam is an aggressive and controlling religion, when in reality this isn’t a true representation.

Michael Foucault believed that minds could only be opened through discourse. We can only expand our knowledge on a subject matter through questioning it, or by those who feel they don’t fit into a certain identity enter an open discourse about it. For example when you are asked to fill out a form and there are only two options; male or female. What about those who don’t feel they fit into either box? Who feel they have an identity outside of a certain frame work?

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