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privilegeasatoolofresistance · 6 years

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On the Violent Fragility of White Men

It has been a while since I have written a piece about the most recent events in the news, but I want to try to get back into it. Both for myself as a way to process and understand all of the news I am hearing and seeing every day, and to share my ideas with the world to hear insights from others about how these things are sitting with you.

I consider myself a pretty active news follower. I try to read the local paper (or as much of it as I can stomach) every day, I listen to Democracy Now! and other podcasts that get more in depth with news stories from the people. I get a lot of news from the people and organizations I follow on Facebook, and I listen to public radio whenever I have the chance in the car. Though my news sources are mostly from my own biased world, I still have a general sense of what is going on in the world most of the time. I write this to be upfront about where I get my news from and also about what I stand for.

The catalyzing event pushing me to write this piece is the most recent school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas. Let me first say that I am saddened, disheartened, and frustrated to see yet another young white man go into a school and kill his classmates. It has also recently come out that the shooter, Dimitrios Pagourtzis, was motivated to kill his classmates and others, at least in part, by the rejection of a young woman at his school. Democracy Now! reporting quoted the mother of the woman who he attacked and killed:

“The mother of Shana Fisher, one of the victims in the art classroom where police say Dimitrios Pagourtzis entered and opened fire, told the Los Angeles Times that her 16-year-old daughter had four months of problems with this boy. “He kept making advances on her and she repeatedly told him no,” unquote. Sadie Rodriguez said her daughter recently stood up to him in class, and, quote, “a week later he opens fire on everyone he didn’t like,” she said. Rodriguez also spoke to Houston station ABC13.”

This is not the first time that a young, white man (we will get to the race part in a bit) has killed a woman who either dumped, rejected, or otherwise slighted him. This is something that is built into the fragility of toxic masculinity. I feel it inside of myself. No, I don’t have a desire to go out and kill people, but I have felt a desire to blame a woman if I am somehow not desirable or not wanted. In fact, at a much younger age, after my longtime female partner broke up with me, I tried on multiple attempts to get her to reconsider. Thinking to myself, that she couldn’t really mean “no,” and she only needed me to convince her of that. Sure, I could tell myself that I was in love and heartbroken and just doing anything I could. Or I could see the reality that my fragile, masculine ego had been broken, and I could not let them happen. Especially not as a young person (I was around 20 at the time).

While the deeply entrenched nature of domestic violence in our country (and all across the world) is well-documented, the presence of toxic masculinity does not often get covered when talking about school shootings. However, we see it time and time again that the young man (usually white) is out to seek either revenge or in some way, protect his pride against the horror of rejection or dismissal. We saw it explicitly with the Isla Vista Killings in 2014, and have seen it constantly after some investigating has been done in so many other mass shootings. The killings in Sutherland Springs, Texas were connected to domestic violence and militarism. Earlier this year Jaelynn Wiley was killed in Maryland after rejecting a male at her school. And in our local news, there has been coverage of the killing of a young woman in Springfield, Massachusetts with a knife after he broke up with her. She was stabbed more than 30 times.

The reality is that these things happen all too often, and are the deadly result of boys being taught that they can literally have whatever they want, including women. There has been a tweet going around facebook about a young boy never being told to leave girls around after they say no:

While this seems so simple, it captures so much of the violence of patriarchy and the ways in which we teach out boys the fragility that they so often internalize and eventually let out in aggressive and violent ways.

To connect all of this to race, these cases almost always end with either the shooter being taken out in handcuffs (as was the case in Santa Fe most recently, as well as Parkland in February) or them shooting themselves to avoid arrest. So rarely do we see them being shot down by the police or other law enforcement, we have to ask, how can that happen? How can that happen when Stephon Clark was literally in his grandmother’s backyard and shot 20 times, including 8 times in the back?

How can Tamir Rice, a 12-year old boy, be shot after cops pull up and start shooting after a few seconds? How do these white men (including Dylan Roof, who killed nine people in a CHURCH in Charleston, South Carolina) be escorted nicely from their killing sprees, while innocent black people are gunned down on the streets? In order for this to happen our systems, including white supremacy, have done such an effective job at dehumanizing people of color, that we have more compassion for violent, white killers, than we do for black fathers and mothers going about their business. This is also connected to the litany of instances where white people have called the cops on black people, for such benign things as waiting for a business partner at starbucks, having a BBQ in Oakland, checking out of an Airbnb, taking a nap in a dorm common room, and others. All of this while the police getting called to negotiate with a violent killer in Santa Fe, Texas. To negotiate with a violent killer, who has already killed people in his school. I didn’t see the BART officer who killed Oscar Grant negotiating with that unarmed black man. I didn’t see the NYPD officer who killed Saheed Vassell in Brooklyn.

Meanwhile in Gaza, Palestinians are literally being killed at long-range for walking to the edge of the concentration camp that Israel has created for them. Getting shot, for walking to the border with Palestinian flags, and demanding to return to the land that was once theirs. If Israel had half as much compassion as we have for violent white male killers in the US, these killings could be avoided.

And the narrative is always the same for the white police officer in the US as it is for the Israeli state: we were doing it in self-defense. Just how 12-year old children with toy guns are a threat to white people in the US, unarmed protestors with flags and stones are a threat to the existence of Israel. Anything we can tell ourselves in order to keep ourselves safe, except that these young white men are trained to be violent and aggressive by patriarchy and white supremacy.

Fragility is built into systems such as patriarchy and white supremacy and these school shootings are the ultimate expression of that fragility. As men and as white people, we need to do better to teach our boys, our fathers, our uncles, our friends, and anyone else in our lives who will listen, that we are not entitled to anything, and especially not to any other person if they do not want us. We need to teach this from a young age and talk about it often to reverse these devastating effects of socialization that kill people every single day. And as white people, we need to realize just how badly we have been hoodwinked into thinking that those people of color around us, are threatening simply because they exist. Next time we feel this as a white person we really need to meditate on what is truly happening inside of us.

Let’s teach our people how to reject all of the myths that we have been fed for centuries and to raising boys to have a healthy relationship to rejection. We can do better, and we need to if we stand any chance at stopping the violence so embedded into our society.

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pajama-nerd · 7 years

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Part seven of this FNAF dream BS sorrynotsorry

Night 2 post shift

“Dude, I’ve been doing some research on this Afton guy. First of all, there’s some speculation on the fact that he might now be some kind of cybernetic organism,” Louis said, as Jess finished wrapping her hand and put it between the ice bags. She winced at the chill but sighed.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Probably just someone stuck in a theory-spiral, tho,” they said. Jess looked at her ceiling and heavily doubted it. “Anyway, not what I wanted to talk about. Apparently, Afton had kids,”

“What, like heirs to the company?”

“No, like, biological children. A brother and sister. James and Clara Afton,” they said.

“Where’d you find that?”

“...I found their obituaries,” Louis said. Jess felt something tighten in her throat and she shivered. “James was apparently involved in an accident with one of the Fazbear animatronics, and there’s no information on how Clara died, just mention of an upcoming funeral. Jeez, it was only about six months ago, in August,” Louis said.

Jess narrowed her eyes, a vague memory pinging in her head. She opened the browser on her computer and pulled up her history.

No. no. no. no—wait.

She clicked the link.

"In other news: The grand opening of Circus Baby's Pizza World has apparently been cancelled due to reported gas leaks in the building. Sources close to the establishment question the report, saying that the strange activity around the area at night suggest something else is to blame—”

Jess paused the video and looked in the lower right-hand corner, where the date of the report – August 16th – was timestamped.

“Jess?”

“What date was the obituary?” she asked.

“August...20th. Why?” Jess mentally reviewed everything she knew about Circus Baby and her murderous gang of robo-buddies and tilted her head.

“Can you send me all that information about the Fazbear murders?” she asked without answering.

“Yeah, one sec,” Louis said. She could hear him typing and clicking, and her email alert pinged, linking her to several of the pages.

One conspiracy theory message-board registration later, she was looking at all the data.

“So,” she started, once she’d run through it all once in her head. “Someone was killed outside Fredbear’s Family Diner, so they sold the company, and in a complete overreaction by the new owners – probably to avoid future liability – they put facial recognition in the bots for the new location,” she said.

“Yeah. Wild, right?” Louis asked, but Jess was thinking how facial recognition would make it easier to determine who was a child and who was an adult.

“Right. So then more kids died despite this, and the robots started acting aggressive to basically any non-child, so they scrapped that location and started over with Circus Baby’s Pizza World, which never opened because of quote/unquote gas leaks, and now it’s Circus Baby’s Entertainment and Rental,” she added.

“Rough summary, but yeah,” Louis replied.

“And the security guards?”

“Listen, this is why I’m against you doing this job. Almost every night shift guy or girl they’ve ever had has either been hospitalized, institutionalized, or have suffered ‘accidental deaths’ that the company gives no details on and accepts no liabilities for,” Louis told her. Jess conceded that with a slight headshrug.

“I agree that it would be insane of me to go back there,” Jess replied with a nod before straightening as a thought struck her. “Ooh, hey...does your crackpot board have blueprints of Circus Baby and the Fun-Time robots?” she asked. The distorted snort that filtered over her speaker was exasperated.

“You’re not listening to me, are you?” they asked.

“I am hearing you, understanding you, and agreeing with you,” Jess replied. Louis sighed.

“Hold on, let me see,” they said.

Jess kept an eye on the time as Louis delved into the tangled web of the conspiracy theory boards regarding the Fazbear franchise and related entities. Every so often, she’d receive an email alert, and she pulled it up on her screen, scanning through pages of blueprints.

Ballora was the first she received, and she pored over it, studying everything from the limited motion of her arms and legs to the components of her internal structure. Other notifications popped up, but she ignored that, still working on Ballora.

“Have you read this?”

“Which one?”

“Ballora.”

“Yeah, I’m looking at it now. She’s huge.”

“Check out the features,” Jess suggested.

“I don’t swing that way.”

“Louis,” Jess scoffed. “She has Misdirection protocols?”

“Yeah, that’s kind of weird,” Louis admitted, as Jess pulled up one of the other animatronic schematics – Funtime Freddy. She scanned through it and tilted her head at the strange silhouette outlined in the chest cavity before scrolling to the last page for the list of features.

Storage Tank.

Voice Mimic/Luring.

Facial Recognition.

Individual Entity Tracking.

“Louis,” she said, flipping through her emails and pulling up the schematic for Circus Baby.

Ice Cream Dispenser

Facial Recognition.

Individual Entity Tracking.

Storage Tank.

“Yeah?” Louis said.

“I’m pretty sure William Afton designed these robots to kidnap kids,” she told them.

Silence.

“Uh...”

“Yeah. And given the date on the report of Circus Baby’s pre-emptive closing and the obituary for Clara—”

“Holy crap and Christ.”

“—I’m pretty sure that Clara was a victim of the testing process,” she said.

“Oh my god,” Louis said. Jess looked at her phone, where she could see Louis holding their chest and looking sick.

“You okay?”

“Am I— We have to tell somebody!” they snapped. Jess shook her head, eyes rolling slightly. “Jess, don’t dismiss this – you just uncovered a murder!” they added incredulously.

“There’s no way the company doesn’t know,” she replied, shocking them into silence.

“…What?!”

“Six murdered kids and animatronics freaking out on parents, employees, and night guards? It doesn’t make sense for the company not to know what’s up, even in the vaguest sense, and since my employee contract explicitly stipulates that they’re not liable for my death if it happens on their property, they do not care,” she said, shaking her head.

“So, what do we do?” Louis asked.

“Well, I’m pretty sure at least one of these animatronics’ AI has developed to the point of near sentience and they’re unhappy that they’re being used to kidnap small persons to whom they are also programmed to deliver joy, so...I’m thinking rescue mission,” she said.

Louis was silent for a long time, and after a minute, Jess looked over to make sure the call hadn’t frozen or disconnected. Louis was staring at her.

“Are you fucking serious?” they asked. She huffed, smiling slightly, before shaking her head.

“Hypothetical. You are a robot,” she said. Louis leaned back in their chair and wiped their hands over their face. “You are designed to look fun, and have all these things that make kids happy and also want to be near you. You are also designed to kidnap kids. Wouldn’t you be pissed off? Especially since it was an adult who created you? I’d kill all the adults, frankly,” she muttered, going back to her computer.

She pulled up the Entertainment and Rental website, waiting through the mini trailer/booking enticement and then pulling up the booking schedule. With a frustrated frown, she noted that most of the animatronics were booked months in advance.

No Bueno.

She drummed her fingers against the desktop and then looked at Louis.

“I need to ask you for a favor,” she said. They groaned.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 (this one)

#fnaf sister location #fanfiction #timelines are bullshit #RELEASE THE OFFICIAL TIMELINE SCOTT #ffs #anyway #remember #this was all from a dream I had #while my head hurt #so it's completely anachronistic #but so are these robots #also I named the kids #Crying Kid is James #Blondy Green-eyes is Clara

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