#and yes I do not exclude me from this form of racism | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

dracothelizard · 9 months

Note

Hi, could you please clarify what you meant by non-Anglophone fans regarding your critiques of EndOTWRacism not caring about those fans because non-Anglophone means non-English & that excludes a plethora of fans from the Global South that were colonized by the English (like my country South Africa) and that makes me a bit uncomfortable.

Also, antiblackness is a global phenomenon & even happens in majority Black countries (once again, I highly recommend doing some research on South Africa & Afrophobia in that specific country). Being Asian alone doesn't mean someone will wholly support the very specific commitments OTW made in 2020 (where they also cited Dr Rukmini Pande [an Indian, and therefore Asian, fan scholar from India where English is spoken & even a mode of instruction in many of its schools & tertiary institutions - must she & fans like her also be excluded because they are Anglophone fans?] & Stitch without asking these two fan scholars for their consent to be cited by OTW leading to a barrage of harassment towards both individuals).

If you want EndOTWRacism to broaden their scope, you should definitely suggest that to them. But they are following the specific commitments the OTW made. Also, I have seen conversations about OTW not making enough commitments in 2020 to do something about racism on their platform by some of the mods of EndOTWRacism in a personal capacity but the main reason they are sticking to the specific commitments OTW made is because they are avoiding being accused of trying to make OTW do things they never said they would do. By sticking to the specific commitments OTW made, EndOTWRacism can hold OTW accountable for something they publicly made commitments to.

Also, OTW made these commitments in response to anti-blackness. So, centering antiblackness makes sense (and also just on a historical level - when antiblackness is engaged with in antiracist policies - the benefits of that move upwards to other racial groups - see the The Voting Rights Act of 1965 that included pro-immigration legislation that made it easier for immigrants of colour to move into the US (this was made possible because of Black Americans). Or my own country of South Africa that got rid of Apartheid in 1994 (I would be born just 3 years after that when my mom was 30) and Black, Coloured (this is a specific racial category in SA), Indian & Chinese South Africans could vote, move freely & live wherever they wanted in SA. This was made possible by Black South African freedom leaders in community with other South Africans of colour that worked in solidarity.

Anti-asian racism is a huge problem in fandom that has been discussed by fans of colour for a long time (see conversations in the early/mid 2010s in fandom about Lucy Liu's mistreatment by BBC Sherlock fans or Glen's mistreatment from the Walking Dead fandom). And with the increase of East Asian media in fandom since at least 2014, conversations about anti-asian racism are even more imperative. But that should not mean ignoring or hand waving away convos about antiblackness - especially when that was the origin of OTW commitments in 2020. If you personally have a problem with that, by all means ask OTW why they didn't specifically talk about other forms of racism or make any other statement with commitments when the StopAsianHate movement was in full swing. Why was OTW's statement so clearly influenced by BlackLivesMatter and the commitments various individuals, businesses & non-profit organizations were making to this specific movement. OTW will have more board meetings, so if you are a paying member, you can absolutely ask them these questions. I know those questions are things I have thought about.

All the best, H.

"because non-Anglophone means non-English & that excludes a plethora of fans from the Global South that were colonized by the English (like my country South Africa) and that makes me a bit uncomfortable."

I am also non-Anglophone and yes, End OTW Racism explicitly excluding non-Anglophone fans also makes me uncomfortable, because as you say, racism is a global problem.

I am not sure why you are bringing up anti-blackness and anti-asianness as if it is an either/or matter. Caring about anti-blackness doesn't mean not caring about anti-asianness. Caring about anti-asianness doesn't mean not caring about anti-blackness. Some fans are mixed race and are both. Some fans have to deal with other forms of racism (like the anti-Aboriginal slur which still gets used often to talk about Omegaverse)

The OTW's goals did not explicitly mention centering anti-blackness. End OTW Racism's goals did not explicitly mention centering anti-blackness.

If that is what the OTW and End OTW Racism want to center, they can, but they should say that explicitly. But in the case of End OTW Racism, excluding non-Anglophone fans makes no sense, because as you say, anti-blackness is a global problem.

#This EOTWR stuff I guess #Also doubt.jpg at EOTWR taking suggestions from non-Anglos onboard #I've seen how they respond to criticism

2 notes · View notes

blackstarising · 3 years

Text

coming back to this post i made again to elaborate - especially as the ted lasso fandom is discussing sam/rebecca and fandom racism in general. there are takes that are important to make that i had failed to previously, but there's also a growing amount of takes that i have to, As A Black Person™, respectfully disagree with.

tl;dr for the essay below sam being infantilized and the sam/rebecca relationship are not the same issue and discussing the former one doesn't mean excusing the latter. and we've reached the glen of the Dark Forest where we sit down and talk about fandom racism.

i should have elaborated this in my last post about sam/rebecca, but i didn't. i'll say it now - i personally don't support sam and rebecca getting together for real. i believe what people are saying is entirely correct, even though sam is an adult legally, he and rebecca are, at the very least, two wildly different stages of life. for americans, he's at the equivalent of being a junior in college. there are things he hasn't gotten the chance to experience and there are areas he needs to grow in. when i was younger, i didn't understand the significance of these age gaps, i just thought it would be fine if it was legal, but as someone who is now a little older than sam in universe, i understand fully. we can't downplay this. whether or not you think sam works for rebecca or not, even despite the gender inversion of the Older Man Younger Woman trope, whether or not he is a legal adult, i don't think at this point in time, their relationship would work. i think it's an interesting narrative device, but i don't want to see it play out in reality.

that being said!

what's worrying me is that two discussions are being conflated here that shouldn't be. sam having agency and being a little more grown™ than he's perceived to be does not suddenly make his relationship with rebecca justified. i had decided to bring it up because sam was being brought into the spotlight again and i was starting to realizing that his infantilization was more common than i felt comfortable with.

sam's infantilization (and i will continue to call it that), is a microaggression. it's is in the range of microaggressions that i would categorize as 'fandom overcompensation'. we have a prominent character of color that exhibits traits that aren't stereotypical, and we don't want to appear racist or stereotypical, so we lean hard in the other direction. they're not aggressive, they're a Sweet Baby, they're not world weary, they're now a little naive. they're not cold and distant, they're so nice and sweet that there's no one that wouldn't want approach them, and yeah, on their face, these new traits are a departure and, on their face, they seem they look really good.

but at a certain point, it reaches an inflection point, and, like the aftertaste of a diet coke, that alleged sweetness veers into something a lot less sweet. it veers into a lack of agency for the character. it veers into an innocence that appears to indicate that the person can't even take care of themselves. it veers into a one-dimensional characterization that doesn't allow for any depth or negative emotion.

it's not kind anymore. it's not a nice departure from negative stereotypes. it's not compensating for anything.

it's patronizing.

it is important that we emphasize that characters of color are more than the toxic stereotypes we lay on them, yes, but we make a mistake in thinking that the solution is overcorrection. for one thing, people of color can usually tell. don't get it twisted, it's actually pretty obvious. for another, it just shifts from one dimension to another. people of color are still supposed to be Only One Character Trait while white people can contain multitudes. ted, who is pretty much as pollyanna as they come, can be at once innocent and naive and deep and troubled and funny and scared. jamie can be a prick and sexy and also lonely and also a victim of abuse. sam, however, even though he was bullied (by jamie, no less), is thousands of miles away from home, and has led a protest on his team, is usually just characterized as human sunshine with much less acknowledgement of any other traits beyond that.

and that's why i cringe when fandom calls sam a Sweet Baby Boy without any sense of irony. is that all we're taking away? after all this time? even for a comedy, sam has received a substantive of screen time over two whole seasons, and we've seen a range of emotions from him. so as a black person it's hurtful that it's boiled down to Sweet Baby Boy.

that's the problem. we need to subvert stereotypes, but more importantly, we need to understand that people of color are not props, or pieces of cardboard for their white counterparts. they are full and actualized and have agency in their own right and they can have other emotions than Angry and Mean or Sweet and Bubbly without any nuance between the two. i think the show actually does a relatively good job of giving sam depth (relatively, always room for improvement, mind you), especially holding it in tension with his youth, but the fandom, i worry, does not.

it's the same reason why finn from star wars started out as the next male protagonist in the sequel trilogy but by the third movie was just running around yelling for REY!! it's the same reason why when people make Phase 4 Is the Phase For Therapy gifsets for the mcu and show wanda maximoff, loki, and bucky barnes crying and being sad but purposefully exclude sam wilson who had an entire show to tell us how difficult his life is, because people find out if pee oh sees are also complex, they'll tell the church.

and the reason why i picked up on this very early on is because i am an organic, certified fresh, 100% homegrown, non-gmo, a little ashy, indigenous sub saharan African black person. the ghanaian tribes i'm descended from have told me so, my black ass parents have told me so, and the nurses at the hospital in [insert asian country here] that started freaking out about how curly my hair was as my mother was mid pushing me out told me so!

and this stuff has real life implications. listen: being patronized as a black person sucks. do you know how many times i was patted on the back for doing quite honestly, the bare minimum in school? do you know how many times i was told how 'well spoken' or 'eloquent' i was because i just happen to have a white accent or use three syllable words? do you know how many times i've been cooed over by white women who couldn't get over how sweet i was just because i wasn't confrontational or rude like they wrongly expected me to be?

that's why they're called microaggressions. it's not a cross on your lawn or having the n-word spat in your face, but it cuts you down little by little until you're completely drained.

so that's the nuance. that's the subversion. the overcompensation is not a good thing. and people of color (and i suspect, even white people) have picked up on, in general, the different ways fandom treats sam and dani and even nate. what all of these discussions are converging on is fandom racism, which is not the diet form of racism, but another place for racism to reveal itself. and yeah, it's uncomfortable. it can seem out of left field. you may want to defend yourself. you may want to explain it away. but let me tap the sign on the proverbial bus:

if you are a white person, or a person of color who is not part of that racial group, even, you do not get to decide what is not racist for someone. full stop. there are no exceptions. there is no exit clause for you. there is no 'but, actually-'. that right wasn't even yours to cede or waive.

(it's also important to note that people of color also have the right to disagree on whether something is racist, but that doesn't necessarily negate the racism - it just means there's more to discuss and they can still leave with different interpretations)

people don't just whip out accusations of racism like a blue eyes white dragon in a yu-gi-oh duel. it's not fun for us. it's not something we like to do to muzzle people we don't want to engage with. and we're not concerned with making someone feel bad or ashamed. we're exposing something painful that we have to live with and, even worse, process literally everything we experience through. we can't turn it off. we can't be 'less sensitive' or 'less nitpicky'. we are literally the primary resources, we are the proverbial wikipedia articles with 3,000 sources when it comes to racism. who else would know more than us?

what 2020 has shown us very clearly is that racism is systemic. it's not always a bunch of Evil White Men rubbing their hands together in a dark room wondering how they're going to use the 'n-word' today. it's systemic. it's the way you call that one neighborhood 'sketchy'. it's how you use 'ratchet' and 'ghetto' when describing something bad. it's how you implicitly the assume the intelligence of your friend of color. it's the way you turned up your nose and your friend's food and bullied them for it in middle school but go to restaurants run by white people who have 'uplifted' it with inauthentic ingredients. it's telling someone how Well Spoken and Eloquent they are even though you've both gone to the same schools and work at the same workplace. it's the way you look down at some people of color for having a different body type than you because they've been redlined to neighborhoods where certain foods and resources are inaccessible, and yet mock up the racial features that appeal to you either through makeup or plastic surgery.

it's how when a person of color behaves badly, they're irredeemable, but a white person performing the same act or something similar is 'having a bad day' or 'isn't normally like this' or 'has room to grow' and we can't 'wait for their redemption arc', and yes, i'm not going to cover it in detail in this post but yes this is very much about nate. other people have also brought up the nuances in his arc and compared them to other white characters so i won't do it here.

these behaviors and reactions aren't planned. they aren't orchestrated. they're quite literally unconscious because they've been lovingly baked into western society for centuries. you can't wake up and be rid of it. whether you intended it or not, it can still be racist.

and it's actually quite hurtful and unfair to imply that concerns about racism in the TL fandom are unfounded or lacking any depth or simply meant to be sensational because you simply don't agree with it. i wish it was different, but it doesn't work that way. i'm not raising this up to 'call out' or shame people, but i'm adding to this discussion because, through how we talk about sam, and even dani and nate, i'm yet again seeing a pattern that has shortchanged people of color and made them feel unwelcome in fandom for far too long.

coach beard said it best: we need to do better.

#ted lasso #sam obisanya #ted lasso spoilers #fandom racism

316 notes · View notes

sometimes-men-need-help-too · 3 years

Note

What does modern feminism do that you don't agree with? This is genuine btw

A couple things before I start:

- This is not meant to bash all the feminists out there unless they fit into what I’m saying. I know there are good feminists out there

- When I say ‘you’ I’m not meaning you, I’m saying it in a general way

-I hope I get my point across and it’s clear. I sometimes struggle with that

Also I’m sorry this is so long and it’s in no particular order and I hope none of this comes across as being aggressive or anything

A lot of my issues with the movement boils down to attitudes. To me, that is very telling of its true colors. And I do try not to necessarily judge an entire movement from just the bad people because I know that isn’t fair, although I do feel like the bad feminists have taken over the movement and end up drowning out the good voices and that’s why we hear more negativity than positivity.

One thing that I have issue with the lack of respect towards those that disagree whether it’s with the movement itself or it’s a particular thing. For a movement that preaches about a woman’s choice, I don’t feel that really happens like it should. I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong here but depending on what the topic is I get a general impression like you’re not really supposed to disagree with what’s being side. You do and you might have someone lash out at you (that’s another point I have). Or if you say you’re anti feminist, you have people coming up with these reasons why they think you are; one being internalized misogyny and you get called a pick-me which I find a bit insulting. I should be able to have an opinion without someone assuming I’m trying to get a man’s attention or I can’t think for myself or I hate other girls. That isn’t it! Wouldn’t you think that is misogynistic?

And if it’s not internalized misogyny, then there are other factors; her being white (which usually then goes on to sound racist) or it’s because she has money or internalized racism or whatever they come up with. And it sounds condescending and that just bugs me. Hey, maybe instead of some underlying reason, we just don’t agree.

or you have people try to stick the label on anyway.

‘If you believe in equality you’re a feminist’

The label means nothing. I don’t understand why some will focus on this so much. I don’t want to be called a feminist. I don’t need to. In the same way, it’s not necessary for me to refer to myself as an MRA (men’s rights activist). And yeah, I know this says it’s an “MRA blog” that’s what I had when I started. But ultimately, the label isn’t important. I’m all for equality. It’s cool, it’s great. But I see this sort of thing (online that is) being forced on people and the thing is, with that wording it makes it sound like the movement is all inclusive when it’s not. You have to have certain politics and for the most part (unless you’re a religious feminist) you have to be pro choice otherwise you’re not a ‘real’ feminist.

My next issue is all the aggression. You can just tell sometimes with how people respond online or if you catch a video that someone posted. And not only that, but how quickly people fall into name-calling or just all around acting like a child. And for the most it seems pretty acceptable to some because it keeps happening. It’s not hard to find on this site or otherwise. If you can’t communicate your opinions about something without having a fit or blocking someone (excluding if they just keep harassing you) then you’re not mature enough. That shows me you don’t really care about having a real discussion. And some can say that it happening on here is probably done by teenagers and to an extent they’re probably right. But it happens on other sites and in real life as well and it’s more than just teens. It’s people my age and older and that’s not cool.

And then we have how some like to ignore the differences between men and women. Sure, yes, there are many things a woman can do just like a man but we also have to acknowledge our differences. I don’t see a lot of that with some forms of feminism. STEM, for example, is something I would attribute the differences more to just how men and women tend to be rather than sexism. Could there be certain circumstances where it is sexism? Sure, I suppose you can’t rule it out entirely. Otherwise I would say it’s just what they’re happy doing. I know girls who are doing science stuff or business things but I also know girls who are going to be teachers or psychologists or nurses. It’s not that they're actively being told by everyone that they can’t do it(I suppose unless they live in some other country like that). That’s just what they want to do, you know, their choice. Just like how some men go towards a job like with computers or farming or they’re pre-school teachers or gynecologists.

I found an interesting fact (source will be posted below) that said women are actually preferred over men two-to-one for faculty positions. The study was done by psychologists from Cornell University with professors from 371 colleges/universities in the US. It also noted that: “recent national census-type studies showing that female Ph.D.s are disproportionately less likely to apply for tenure-track positions, yet when they do they are more likely to be hired, in some science fields approaching the two-to-one ratio revealed by Williams and Ceci.”

Yet, we need to ask ourselves honestly, how often do facts like these get passed around vs the idea that women are suffering from misogyny and therefore are unable to fully represent in STEM jobs?

The next thing I want to address is misandry. Now there are a good portion of people who don't think it exists or if it does, it's really not much of an issue because of the "power" and the "privilege" men have within society. And to me, I have a problem with that. If feminism is supposed to be for men as well, I would think they would want to combat misandry as well as misogyny. If someone really doesn't think it exists, I would suggest that the person really take a look at what goes on in real life and online that's directed towards men.

There's the whole "male tears" thing which is on coffee mugs and t-shirts. There's the kill all men/yes all men thing. All of which are supposed to be jokes and if a man says something about it he gets mocked for his "fragile masculinity"

That's just not okay. They're being immature and a bully which they usually try to justify (men have done this and that throughout history to women) but you just can't.

I found this article, this really really atrocious article. It's one of those open letter things and found on this feminist website (feminisminindia) and I almost believed it to be satire with how.... stereotypically Tumblr it was. I did research and looked at the info regarding the site and nope, it's a serious site. I'll post the article below but I'll also summarize it:

Basically this woman is telling the men in her life that she will not stop saying "men are trash or other radical feminist opinions." She's saying it because women and others have suffered so much at the hands of the patriarchy because they're not straight white men. She goes on to say:

So let’s establish: misandry isn’t real. Just like unicorns and heterophobia, misandry is a myth because it isn’t systematic or systemic. Unlike misogyny, cis men don’t face oppression purely based on their gender. While they may encounter instances of racism, homophobia and ableism, they are not dehumanised as a function of their gender identity (read: cis privilege).

That is wrong. Absolutely wrong. Misandry is real. "Cis" people do face oppression purely based on their gender. Anyone can. To deny that lacks understanding.

And the rest is just saying that: It is time to start hating on men-as-a-whole and starting celebrating the men that you are.

And: Because at the end of the day, feminists need men. Whether it’s because you wield structural power or because we genuinely value your existence, we need to band together to destroy ‘men’ because men are trash, but you, if you made it to the end of this, are probably not. Prove me right.

I would imagine this is a common viewpoint. And it's not a good one. If you genuinely think a whole group as a whole is bad you need to reexamine your thoughts. It's not "men" that are bad, it's the sexist people.

To wrap this up (I'm sure you might be tired of reading this lol); like I said, the attitudes play a huge part of it. Modern feminism, in my opinion, is just not good enough for me to say I agree with it and want to identify as one. I just can't

Here is the link to the feminist article: https://www.google.com/amp/s/feminisminindia.com/2020/09/23/men-are-trash-and-other-radical-feminist-opinions/%3famp

And here is the link for the STEM thing: https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2015/04/women-preferred-21-over-men-stem-faculty-positions

#mens rights #answered asks #i might have overdid this a bit....

23 notes · View notes

permets-2 · 4 years

Note

Your tag that says why do we have to say this, I get it's a hypothetical question but JFC this is the most racist fandom I've ever been in. I can't conceptualize why, but it is. It's the epitome of white queerness and feminism, and is just tiring.

Okay I’m so sorry this is probably a longer response than you wanted but I’ve been thinking about this for a while now and yeah. Let’s talk.

Why is the Les Mis fandom so racist?

(Disclaimer that this is based on my own experiences in this fandom, I don’t speak for all Les Mis fans of color, obviously. Also that this is not a post to “prove” the Les Mis fandom is racist. If you need that before you wanna know why, you’re part of the problem.) (There’s a tl;dr at the end)

It’s because at the end of the day, anon, no matter how many Black Grantaires are drawn and no matter how many Asian Cosettes we get, Les Mis is media primarily by, for, and about white people. I mean, on a factual level, Hugo was white, and let’s not forget he had some wild thoughts on race - saying that white people were “the highest type which the human race has so far reached” and talking about the “inferior races,” saying that Europeans would “civilize and cultivate” Africa in the letter he wrote to The London News regarding slavery in America and John Brown. Also, obviously, all the characters are canonically white. That’s part of why content of the Amis as involved in BLM protests is so harmful imo - no matter the surface story you’re depicting, no matter how you draw them or write them, these are characters who are rooted in and steeped in whiteness, and The Black Lives Matter movement is not for or about them as white people. And, however you rewrite this story, it doesn't change the fact that you'd be imposing a narrative created by a white supremacist on a movement against white supremacy. This is not to say headcanoning/drawing/writing characters as whatever race you want is wrong, or that there isn’t power in artists of color reclaiming stories that have excluded or erased us for so many years! Lord knows I live and breathe for Amis of color, especially when they’re culturally well-represented. But it would not only be naive but also factually inaccurate to pretend that Les Mis is a story for People of Color, or a story that contains acute discussions of racial dynamics, let alone actively dismantles white supremacy.

Also, anon, the culture surrounding Les Mis source material is steeped in whiteness and exclusion. Musical Theatre is one of the most financially exclusive forms of art - tickets are often upwards of $100 each especially for a big name show like Les Mis. I could talk forever about the ways theatre is used as a tool of classism and racism, but in this instance, it boils down to People of Color are directly and indirectly denied access to the world of musical theatre, as audience, writers, directors, performers, etc. We basically see only white people playing the characters of Les Mis in professional (and non-professional) theatre, which is another less tangible barrier to communities of color. You’d think the brick would be more accessible, and on a factual level, sure, most people can find a copy for $9 at Barnes and Noble or get it from the library. But by God, the amount of academic elitism in high school essays to tumblr posts about the brick is off the charts - classic lit has a long history of pushing out People of Color. Why is Hugo one of the most well-known names in all of literature and not Hurston? Baldwin? Du Bois? (This is rhetorical. We know why.) There’s a lot of reasons why the brick and musical alike have been kept away from people of color (that i could get into, starting in 1619, but honestly we’d be here a while)- making this, once again, a piece of media by, for, and about white people.

Which is not to say there aren’t people of color in this fandom, or that we don’t belong here. I know so many Les Mis fans of color in our online community (myself included) who love it here and are so grateful for this space. It’s just harder - we have to write things off all the time. Why is almost 100% of cosplay white people? Why are most all the most popular creators white? Why, when characters are drawn/headcanoned/written as POC, does it play into stereotypes- why are Joly and Combeferre (the doctors) and Cosette (the woman who does not get much agency) the ones depicted as Asian, why are Eponine and Grantaire (the characters who Hugo explicitly calls ugly) the ones depicted as Black? (My broski @everydayatleast as a great post about that here) Why are we so set on blond Enjolras, no matter what ethnicity he’s depicted as?

And here’s the kicker: because of the plotline of Les Mis, we tend to ignore any issues of injustice in our own fandom. We think that because Les Mis is about equality and revolution, we’re automatically culturally and politically progressive. We think that because “Enjolras says Eat The Rich” and “books like these will never be useless”, we have achieved Wokeness. We think that when we stan these activist characters, we’re checking our activism box. We think that because we’ve got a diversity of genders and sexualities we’ve checked the box of representation but that’s another can of worms I will not get into. And this is almost always unconscious, I don’t think any of us are actively and maliciously trying to be racist! There is nothing wrong with having a background of whiteness! There is nothing wrong with being factually or culturally white as a piece of media (or, like, a person)! It is when we fail to be critical of the ways this whiteness affects others that we create racist spaces. (Which, as you said, anon, is how we get White/Non-intersectional Feminism.)

This is not directed at anyone in particular in the slightest, and this is in no way intended as a callout - I have so much love for this online community. And no, I don’t mean every single one of you is actively and aggressively being racist on Tumblr every single day. But yes I do mean the collective us as a fandom contributes towards a culture of racism every day, myself included. We as a fandom can do so much better. As Moose said when we yelled about LM racism for a hawt couple hours today, “In a fandom that purports to be about equality and social justice, we have to live up to our own ideals”.

(tl;dr - the Les Mis fandom is racist because it is a piece of white culture and writen by/for/about white people, Broadway and classic lit is rooted in exclusionism and there’s a lot of forces keeping people of color out of our original source materials, and because of the narrative of Les Mis being about revolution and social progress, we feel like we’ve achieved that and aren’t critical of our own shortcomings)

(phat thanks to my bro moose @everydayatleast for editing and contributing and Yelling with me!!)

#Les miserables #les mis #les amis #fandom racism #sollie speaks #if you feel hurt offended ashamed bitter guilty targeted while reading this post #maybe its time to do some thinkin #Things i did not include in this bc i have self control: the complexities of Black Javert and White Valjean #White Enjolras with a raised fist (aka BLACK POWER FIST?)#how i see almost no art of latinx/hispanic amis and even less indigenous amis #i think once i saw a middle eastern feuilly #how i looked through the faculty of prestigious univerisity classics departments and found 2 people of color out of hundreds of total facult #white people dont clown on this post challenge #other people of color would Love to hear your thoughts on this #seriously lets chat #would also love if yall (poc) have thoughts for you to message me instead of publically vibe checking me #plz im doing my best here #A series of disclaimers #first op is a person of color if that wasnt clear #listen to black creators and black voices especially for issues around BLM #second i have not read all of hugos letters #but i read this one on slavery a while back for apush and it stuck with me #hugo was racist #and im not saying like hes cancelled or some shit #because fuck cancel culture #just please can we be CRITICAL here #third PLEASE dont come for me about saying cosette has no agency #this is not what this is about #you are missing the point #fourth seriously this is not a callout

843 notes · View notes

uthseikoashx-inflamedme · 3 years

Text

Summer of 1899 fanfictions: with Philosophy, ancient Greek and Latin, foreign languages and a bit of Literature

(note: by “Summer of 1899 fanfictions”, I refer to the summer of Albus Dumbledore and Gellert Grindelwald’s meeting as teenagers)

(note: I am not a native speaker, so I apologise for the mistakes, inaccuracies, truly bad use of tenses and wrong phrases. I hope it won’t be too unpleasant. Let me know if something is really not understandable!)

What about philosphy, Latin, etc, but in 1899 fanfictions? (dark academia vibes, I know)

There are already quite a lot of fanfics about it but not enough - because it's so great, let me detail why it is (and expose my headcanons)

(the [1] and [2] are notes, check the end of the post to read them)

(tiny disclaimer: i am not at all an advanced scholar on any of the following topics, just studying that kind of subjects and loving to draw parallels with hp. i hope i won’t say too many wrong things, etc.)

Philosophy :

Moral philosophy

The theories and questions throughout the history of moral philosophy (as far as I know) fit so well with the concerns of our revolutionary boys.

Is there any moral duty? Knowing wizards and witches could solve an amount of muggles' problems, is this immoral for them to stay in the shadows? What about the means of the revolution - is this ok to kill for the Greater Good, to initiate injuries, doom and destruction to build a better world, which cost is acceptable? What about consequentialism, utilitarianism, moral of virtue, deontological philosophy, idk? What's good? What's fair?

More touchy question: the maj-people are able to perform marvellous things, so are they consequently more important than maj-people? Because of their capacities, should they be praised - considered as superior beings - as gods? But if yes, should they treat muggles differently than they would treat wizards? If wizards shouldn’t be considered as superior beings, are they equal to muggles anyway?

And what about the Hallows - is this moral to possess them, considering they mirror Gyges’ ring? Should Albus and Gellet keep them for themselves, use them for the Greater Good (yes they want to, it’s clearly exposed in DH)? Is the Quest important enough to justify sacrifices?

Also, what about Aristotle’s virtue system - being moderate and all, use our reason to be in the middle? Because I’m sure as hell Albus and even more Gellert would reject this idea: isn’t it a form of passivism? (no, but through their pov and situation, they might think that)

(by the way they both read passages of Bentham's and Mill's and Kant's and Plato's and Aristotle's books nobody can convince me otherwise)

(I never read Nietzsche’s extracts and haven’t even merely a define idea of his theories to be honest, except for a few uncertain glimpses of his philosophy - he disagrees with religious morality and is quite vehement about it, and praises an idea of a free human being, released from this moral of the weaks. And as far as I know, I’m pretty sure Gellert would agree with him.)

Political philosophy

I do have a headcanon: Albus and Gellert both read the Republic of Plato (initially because it’s well-known and they didn’t want to be ignorant about it and they surprised themselves being enthralled by Socrates reflexions) ; and quite a lot of their discussions about a perfect society instituted by themselves (and about what’s fair and what’s good) were underpinned by the book.

Is this ok to rule the world? Which system is the best - tyranny, democracy, oligarchy? Are the wizards just like the philosophers and, thus, are righteously meant to be the aristocrats at the top of the government? And are all the wizards as legitimate as Albus and Gellert to rule the world (no)? What’s the acceptable extent of power they should have on civilians? What’s the necessary authority they must be allowed to have on civilians? What about the freedom of the press, of speech (those themes are explored in the Republic and well-), of maj-people and non-maj-people?

Philosophy of desire, joy, pleasure, beauty, etc

Have you ever heard of Plato? (sorry, again, yes.) Well in several Socrates’ dialogs, themes of love and desire are developed (I particularly think about the Symposium) and Albus and Gellert could be convinced by it: the praise of relationships between men, of intellect, of beauty… but also by the myth of Aristophanes (people are halves and search their soulmate (more or less)). Besides, I’ll be quite curious about what Albus and Gellert may say about Alcibiades’ eulogy of Socrates and what they may think of their dynamics.

(long story short, Alcibiades is young and handsome and desires the ugly Socrates, is fascinated by his intellect and considers him as the most interessant man he knows, and can’t help but feeling inferior facing him and being deeply humiliated because Socrates rejects him (on top of that, Alcibiades is drunk and jealous - the parallels to draw between them and our revolutionary boys are bloody interesting but back to the point))

Also, I totally see Albus and Gellert as hedonists during their youth - justifying their immoral and unwise chase of pleasure and complaisance by an artificial sentiment of moderation, temperance, so not true hedonists, like they are not epicurean at all - and this is again something quite compelling, I must admit.

Ancient Greek and Latin :

Latin and ancient Greek at Hogwarts

Throughout the 19th century, the civilizations of antiquity increasingly fascinated the intellectuals - a phantasm around the topic grew and influenced artists and erudite persons, and was furthermore a mark of the cultural capital and level of education of somebody.

Although we haven’t any clue about the fact that Hogwarts changed the disciplines provided through the centuries, we know it is possible : Dumbledore himself almost dismissed divination studies and depending the demands of the students, 7th years can study alchemy (most likely thanks a teaching offered by Dumbledore himself).

And I do have the headcanon that Hogwarts was in the past not that far from studies dispensed in english colleges - or at least, proposed classes of British (magic) Literature, maybe Law (like an elitist subject but necessary to enter in the Ministry and consequently pure-blood kids are always following that course) and, of course, ancient Greek and Latin classes.

And it was necessary, because Latin is the language of spells and most of the magical essays written back in antiquity were in ancient Greek - furthermore, the more complex, ancient and ruthless spells and rituals were based on ancient Greek and not on Latin, more used in everyday, ordinary, common magic (it is again an hc).

(by the way, Arabic and Hebrew could be as well considered as ancient languages used in magic (again an headcanon, but it would underline how magic is complex and has multiple forms and is not just European-centred), but I have the slight feeling that the ideologies and culture of European countries combined with xenophobia and racism have excluded the study of those languages even though they are also vital in the history of magic you know)

Yes it’s based on nothing, but it would be so great and ask so many things about the Wizarding World back in the late 19th and early 20th century - especially about social and political struggle between the population - pure-blood families vs muggle born students, etc [1]. (And it would satisfy my dark academia aesthetic. But quite irrelevant here.)

What about Albus and Gellert then?

Durmstrang could also dispense Latin of Ancient Greek class, in my opinion, but I think (again, imo), it is a bit unlikely. But it does not change the fact that Gellert had always been attracted to Dark magic; so he could have learned the basis by himself in order to decipher ancient Dark ceremonies, etc.

That’s why I think both of them had learnt ancient languages. Maybe Albus took an interest in Celtic dialects (Merlin’s language?), and Gellert was familiar with Vicking Runes. It obviously helped them regarding a lot of their magical and academic performances. Indeed, the boys were able to understand old papers about the Hollows, but also ancient rituals, etc. And thus, had a wide access to a more dangerous, unstable, raw and primeral practice of magic: it was not like the average spells in Latin, but an intricate way to unleash their potential [2].

Besides, only few people - erudites - were as interested as the boys were in these old ways to use magic, and needless to say that neither of those persons were as powerful as Albus and Gellert were. Furthermore, the boys were able to keep a balance between the complexity of the enchantments and the instincts they both have regarding the expression of their magic. They accordingly thought of being more powerful than everybody else.

Foreign languages :

The languages in the schools

It is clear that Hogwarts is exclusively Anglophone. The school is quite small: 40 students per year, so 280 students in all, coming from Great Britain - England, Ireland, Scotland, Yales, so the isles. We could also think that the wizardkind living in the CommonWealth during the colonial age also studied in Hogwarts. (again a hc, but Henry Potter and his son Fleamont were both born in India, fight me)

Durmstrang, on the other hand, could host quite more nationalities. I imagine the school having three main languages: German, French and English. But in fact, English and French are more “officials”, used by administration and in some classes (French was quite important at the time, right? then it was English?). So the students most likely speak between them in German (Germany had been formed in 1871 and I think the Austrian-Ungarian Empire was also Germanophone?), Russian, Hungarian, Lithuanian… well, all the languages spoken in Easten Europe.

(and just to mention it, I believe that Beauxbâtons is a huge school, bigger than Hogwarts and Durmstrang, because we need logic at some point - anyway)

What about Albus and Gellert then, again?

Gellert was probably speaking German, English (obviously, he wrote letters in English, spoke in English with Albus and Aberforth…), maybe French, and maybe another language depending on his mother country. I headcanon him coming from the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, but he might as well come from Denmark (the country of Mikkelsen?) or a Balkan State (there were wars here at the end of the 19th century, it could be an interesting theme), etc.

However, I doubt that Albus knew Danish or Hungarian, but he definitely spoke French rather well (he exchanged letters with Nicolas Flamel) and perhaps the basis of something else (Italian? German?).

I do not mention magical foreign languages they could have been familiar with - we know Albus is fluent in Goblegedook and Mermish in 1994, but I doubt he already was in 1899.

(Also, Albus’ mother came from America, so she might be originally from the Native American community and thus know an another language and let Albus know as well, but the fact that she is Christian (most likely, regarding what is her epitaph) let me doubtful; but I’m not enough informed about the Native American history to build meta, headcanon and theories, so I won’t explore this idea more.)

All in all, they are quite familiar with a lot of languages, and they certainly had a few conversations in what was not English (a mix of Latin, Ancient Greek, German and French, perhaps?) to infuriate Aberforth and not let him know about what they were talking about. (headcanon, again)

Literature :

We do not have a lot of clues about fiction - novels, theater or poetry - belonging to the wizarding universe - except Beedle’s Tales, of course. But we can imagine it exists.

Nevertheless, I am more interested in what Albus and Gellert might have read in the muggle literature. Besides, I think it is funny to consider that some writers or playwrights are known by muggles but are in reality wizards and witches - especially Braham Stoker, Mary Shelley… maybe Poe and Shakespeare as well.

So, I imagine that Albus and Gellert would have heard of Goethe, Heine, Novalis for German literature; maybe Hugo, Baudelaire, Flaubert for French literature… most likely Dante (definitely Dante). Though I honestly do not think they were fond of novels and literature, they could have been interested by it sometimes, when it echoed to something in them - Shakespeare, but also the story of Verlaine and Rimbaud, or Oscar Wilde’s story and unique novel.

There is also the theme of Oscar Wilde, homosexual writer, and his trial at the end of the 19th century, which are recurrent topics in 1899 fanfictions - a quite interesting one, imo. Have you ever read the Preface of the Picture of Dorian Gray? Definitely Albus and Gellert vibes.

All in all, I don’t think they may have been interested in literature for literature itself, but rather for the political aspect of it. (except for Shelley, Shakespeare and Dante which are a witch and two wizards, and are interested by the references to magic in the works themselves, again hc)

To conclude :

Even though 1899 fanfictions are great - and I thank you, 1899 fanfictions writers, you are amazing - I quite love the idea of all of this aesthetic that could developed. It is somehow prompt ideas.

(also I an studying humanities so it might be why I see those themes in 1899 fanfics so well, yes)

Thanks for reading! :)

Notes :

[1] : I wrote about the conservative Wizarding World and pure-blood families here: Why are the Weasleys poor? (eng&fr) (theories about pure-blood families, inheritance, etc) / How can everyone find their true-love and still be in love after years in HP? (”magic-soulmates” theory and conservative society)

[2] : I wrote about Dark magic and rituals in 1899 here: What if Antonio (Gellert Grindelwald’s chupacabra) had been created in 1899? / What about a dangerous, complicated and a bit gore alchemical experience tried by Albus and Gellert secretly?

And I posted quite a lot of things about GGAD, check the Table of contents if you are interested! :)

72 notes · View notes

icannotreadcursive · 3 years

Text

Sometimes, people have different--very different--sets of headcanons and sets of ships etc for a given piece of media and cast of characters because they have basically different understandings of who those characters are.

A lot of times, that’s just because every fan as their own unique life experience to apply when engaging with and interpreting a work, so they see different things reflected back.

But when it comes to what I call Legacy Characters--characters that have had their story told and retold, adapted and readapted, reinvested and reset time and again; such as comic book characters--a huge part of who a fan understands a character to be is determined by what versions of that character they’re familiar with, what aspects of different versions have coalesced in their brain to form their sense of that character in general. Usually, the biggest influence there is which version of a character that fan encountered first.

I see both knock-down drag-out fights and casual disrespectful disparaging comments within some fandoms--especially big comics fandoms like Marvel--that on the surface of them are more of the typical dumb “my interpretation is the only right one and anyone who disagrees is wrong and Doesn’t Understand The Media” stuff, but that I am SO SURE mostly boils down to this issue of having very different but all equally legitimate senses of the characters from having familiarity with different appearances of the character, or in a different order.

For instance--using what I find to be the most glaring case as an example--the Marvel shipping wars amongst Steve/Bucky, Steve/Tony, Sam/Steve, Bucky/Natasha, and (increasingly) Sam/Bucky shippers. Sometimes the Pepper/Tony, Pepper/Natasha, and Bruce/Tony shippers join the fray.

These conflicts get so nasty. Even a lot of the more chill shippers, when prompted, have very ugly things to say about ships other than their own and the people who support them. Allegations of racism, misogyny, fetishization, and general toxicity run rampant and are often talked about as though they are the only possible reasons someone could ever have for shipping or not shipping a given pair.

I want to make it clear that I personally do ship or have shipped several of the above, including ones that mutually exclude each other. There’s a few I’m neutral on up there, and one that kinda squicks me--we’ll get to that later.

Every single one of them is a perfectly good ship. None of them are inherently fucked up in any way and I will not hear any argument to the contrary.

Do some supporters of these ships get overzealous and obnoxious? Yes, that’s kinda why we’re talking about it, but that’s not a problem with any of the ships themselves.

I’ve noticed some patterns around people being into particular ones of these ships and their personal histories with various Marvel media.

Steve/Tony: mostly comics fans at this point, either were into the comics before the MCU became a thing or the early days of the MCU got them into the comics and they’re now more into the comics than the films. Because there’s a LOT of material in the comics to support the ship! There’s so much! Including the fact that in one comics reality where Tony is a woman, she and Steve get married!

Now, there was a ton of this’ere Stony fic that got churned out in the early days of the MCU, a lot of it from fans getting into this world for the first time through the phase 1 movies, at which point other potential partners for these guys either hadn’t been introduced as characters yet, or hadn’t been fleshed out. A lot of film-main (as opposed to comics-main) Stony shippers moved away from the pairing as the MCU continued, Bucky became the counterpoint of Steve’s Character arc, Sam got brought in, Pepper and Bruce each got more screen time, and the dynamic between Steve and Tony in the films got increasingly adversarial in a way that’s less sexy more fucked up.

The battle cry against Stony from other factions, especially from the Steve/Bucky camp is usually “but they’re so toxic!” and, I mean, yeah--if your sense of these characters is primarily based on how they are in the MCU, they are. But in my experience, even if they’re working MCU events and settings, the Steve and Tony being imagined by Stony shippers aren’t really that Steve and Tony.

Steve/Bucky: look, Stucky is an MCU thing. Articles have been written and published about the fact that the dynamic between Steve and Bucky in the MCU follows the beats of an epic romance to a T. The basis for this ship is all there on screen--throw in a little bit of history nerd mojo and you’re in deep.

By my observation and estimation, most new or formerly-very-casual Marvel fans who came in via the films and remained film-mains, and who are inclined to not-strictly-heteronormative shipping at all went the Stucky route. Folks who initially shipped Stony then switched to Stucky are pretty common. People starting with Stucky and then switching to any other ship with Steve to the exclusion of Stucky? Very rare. And while for a lot of people Stucky is their OTP in the strictest sense, I do see a lot of Stucky shippers who are here for other ships as well, either in an alternate realities kinda way or an amicable exes/polyamory kinda way.

The only people I’ve seen who have a problem with Stucky as a ship (other than “my ship is a different ship, therefore this one is bad and wrong”) are comics-mains whose sense of Steve and Bucky is heavily informed by runs of the comics in which Bucky is significantly younger than Steve and kid sidekick type figure. For them, the dynamic between the general forms of these characters leans mentor/student or protector/charge, so the inclination is to read the MCU relationship as fraternal, because it being romantic is squicky based on their sense of the characters.

Sam/Steve: comics-mains, film-mains with significant comics familiarity, film-mains who just aren’t into Stucky for one reason or another, or film-mains who are just really into Anthony Mackey which is a perfectly valid reason to get behind a ship. People who know Falcon from the comics seem much more likely to be into this ship and also more invested in this ship. I’m not qualified to say much about support for this ship from the comics themselves because my personal familiarity with Marvel comics doesn’t include much of Sam Wilson at all, but I am absolutely qualified to say there’s support from the films, especially CA:WS.

The worst vitriol against this ship tends to come from overzealous Stucky OTP shippers who really need to remember that fandom is supposed to be fun, and flat out racists. That must be acknowledged and needs to be addressed. Fandom racism in general, and against Sam in particular is a thing and it can absolutely be a factor in shipping.

However it’s not inherently racist to just not ship Sam/Steve because you see them as bros, or because Stucky is your OTP, or because you ship Sam with someone else, or whatever. Worthwhile to take a minute to examine why you don’t ship it, if you don’t, and check that for racial bias in how you view and treat Sam as a character, especially if you’re white.

Sam/Steve and Stucky are the two ships I see coexist the most! A lot of people ship both of them separately and exclusive from one another, but a lot of people also go ether the OT3 or the “Steve and Sam were definitely a thing for while there but now they’re not” route.

Bucky/Natasha: comics-mains or film-mains with significant comics familiarity, particularly for the comics worlds in which Bucky and Natasha are a couple, which seems self explanatory as to why that correlates. Not a lot for it in the films, Nat and Buck don’t interact much in the films that we see, and they’re kinda trying to kill each other in much of what we do see. But, like I said, they’re a thing in some of the comics so there we have that.

This is the one that squicks me. Clearly it’s a super valid ship; depending on the canon it’s a canon ship. Frankly, they make sense together, canon or not--their individual backgrounds as spysassins and with brainwashing etc means they’d be able to understand one another in ways no one else around them really can. But my personal amalgamation of these characters from the films and what comics I’m familiar with has Bucky having been Natasha’s teacher when she was a kid in Red Room. So I cannot ship it, I can’t do it.

The fact that I personally am squeaked by it has absolutely no impact on the fact that it’s a good ship, and the fact that it’s a good ship cannot and does not negate the fact that it squicks me.

Bucky/Sam: okay, there’s not a lot of this out there yet, but what there is seems to mostly be coming from film-mains who either don’t ship or co-ship Stucky and/or Sam/Steve, and who really liked the dynamic between these two in Civil War, and I guarantee you we’re about to get so much more of this ship with Falcon and Winter Soldier premiering. I’ve already seen some hate directed at this ship from the same places Sam/Steve gets hate. I predict, though, that this one will also get co-shipped alongside Stucky by the less strictly OTP of those shippers and I’m curious to see what the dynamic ends up being between Bucky/Sam shippers and Sam/Steve shippers as this camp grows.

In conclusion, I guess, note that not shipping a ship doesn’t have to mean attacking that ship (and it shouldn’tI) and not liking a ship, even being deeply uncomfortable with a ship for your own reasons doesn’t mean that ship is bad. We’ve all got our own individual sets of experiences both in life and with the characters in our fandoms that can dramatically change how we see those characters and their relationships to one another. This gets especially complicated and diverse with Legacy Characters like those from sprawling long-running comics multiverses. Someone’s understanding and interpretation being different from yours does not make either of you wrong!

As long as no one is an asshole about it it, it’s actually really interesting and cool to compare interpretations and see how your understandings overlap and differ, to think about what bits of canon have been formative for you and what personal experience may have made you inclined to interpret certain things certain ways.

Fandom is supposed to be fun. Shipping is supposed to be fun. You can and should hype up and express love for your own ships without tearing down others.

#long post #meta #fandom etiquette #marvel #shipping #stucky #stony #sam/steve #bucky/nat #bucky/sam #squick is a useful word #don't be an asshole

20 notes · View notes

rumandtimes · 3 years

Text

Does Cultural Appropriation Apply to Natalie Portman?

Sean Ezersky

Assoc. Fantasy Contributor

Does appropriation apply to the worst parts of European cultures?

Today, I want to discuss cultural appropriation. Yes, the issue of the times. But what exactly is cultural appropriation? Well, nobody knows. Starting at the first word, it claims to be some kind of appropriation. And it has something to do with culture.

Firstly, it should be said that this article has nothing to actually do with cultural appropriation. That is because cultural appropriation is essentially defined by racism. The term first appears, so it goes, as a description of how racist citizens of England marginalised and exploited the peoples of the Caribbean, and attacked sections of the working class schtick, for fun. Sounds evil enough.

The term cultural appropriation cannot be used as a mild term or played around with much, because it is by definition a form of misconduct. The term cultural appropriation is defined by the words “inappropriate,” “racist,” and “commercialist.” There is no redeeming quality to cultural appropriation because cultural appropriation is used to describe exclusively irredeemable activity, markedly opposite to cultural exchange or respect.

Consider the worst perpetrator in the United Kingdom and the United States: hip-hop / rap music, curly hair, or a summer tan. Racists always attack these music genres and human characteristics un-European, placing them into the same box on the fringes of their minds, but at the same time view themselves as ‘cultured’ for dipping into the same music, view themselves as ‘interesting’ for factory curling their hair, or view themselves as ‘unique’ for getting a spray-on tan. There is a murderous and delirious sense of bad irony, that racists altogether marginalise, demonise, and lust after perfectly normal traits and human practices, which the racist calls exotic, for fear of being labelled as freaks themselves. That is cultural appropriation.

Another bad actor is the billion-dollar yoga industry in Western nations as well, which attempts at every corner to steal Indian culture then mutilate the original concept, taking the yoga gurus off the cover and planting in some body-bleaching whores, or some wavy Italian guy, to appeal to the racist American, à la youth female target audience. All the while, Hinduism, inextricable from yoga’s origins while not necessarily the same as yoga in any way, is viewed as a false and inexpiable religion by most people in the West. Yoga was not learned from the Hindu, it was looted, and replaced with a shallow, cruel, commercial, and disgraceful attempt to Europeanise and trivialise the hobby while selling it the crude sex markets. That is a form of cultural genocide and religion-sacking. That is cultural appropriation.

But this article is not about cultural appropriation, in a way. The distinction was only added to please those offended by the comparison. This article is about movies, as part of a series of Star Wars critiques, and it’s about Natalie Portman.

Long have I harboured a question about Natalie Portman’s career, as it is so vapid yet so prolific, so vain yet so ubiquitous. This is just the opportunity. Natalie Portman got her start in acting as a 16-year-old leading actress on Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. She returned three years later as a 19-year-old lead on Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, where her character dies. After moving on from the Star Wars prequels, she used that resume to enrol at Harvard University to study psychology.

She has actually commented on this, as all Harvard associates eventually do, saying she and her peers felt she was only enrolled because she was in Star Wars, and this insecurity led her to push harder than her friends in her classes and challenge herself by picking ‘harder-than-necessary’ classes. Still, psychology is the most common undergraduate degree major among women, so hardly original. Whether or not Natalie invites the assessment or feels it is correct, this is undoubtedly true; She, as most people, never would have been looked at by Harvard if she did not have some kind of bank of riches or wealth of limelight that could be mined by the admissions board. Natalie might want to be viewed as a genius of “Hebrew literature” who stood out among the crowd, but that is just impossible parlour speak. Not that she deserves to go to Harvard any less than anyone else, no one deserves to go to Harvard, as Harvard in the 20th Century existed for the sole purpose of excluding people who were not rich, famous, or connected: not academics, so Natalie’s lie to herself merely parrots Harvard’s lie to the world.

But I want to go back just a second. Yes, Natalie Portman said she studied Hebrew at Harvard, even if not intensely enough to double-major in it. That is because her name is not actually Natalie Portman. Her name is Neta-Li Herschlag, and she is Jewish. So, studying Hebrew isn’t impressive knowing she speaks fluent Hebrew at home. That is not to undermine literature, as English-speakers still study English literature, but it’s hardly extraordinary. Hershlag, as I will now be exclusively referring to her, is using her association to Harvard, Judaism, and other, lesser, things to seem smart, yet all of those were gifted to her by either birth or Star Wars.

Now comes the question of cultural appropriation. Neta-Li started her acting footprint as an understudy for the part of Elle Woods in Broadway plays. Yes, that Elle Woods, aside Britney Spears no less. It hardly seems like the right role for a good Jewish girl. But lo, there are some who might point out that Hershlag is an Ashkenazi, and therefore not actually Jewish, that is, not a Semitic person. This is a touchy subject for the Jewish community, particularly since the establishment of Israel: Who actually is Jewish, by means of ethnicity or heritage, and not just language and religion? Is there a meaningful distinction between the Semitic Jewish culture that remained in the Levant, the Sephardic Jewish culture that emigrated to Africa and Iberia, the Mizrahi Jewish culture in Iran and Arabia, the Yiddish Jewish culture that stuck around in Germany, and the Ashkenazi Jewish culture that settled Eastern Europe? Really, who knows, and that is a deeper question; a question, perhaps, for a student of Hebrew literature, wherever we should find one.

Nonetheless, Hershlag is most certainly not British. That Israeli-American nuance is fine for the world of “Naboo” in Star Wars, which ideally would defy every concept of the term “ethnicity,” but works less congruously for Elle Woods. In Star Wars, Hershlag was a doppelganger of Keira Knightly, a dyad which has persisted the entirety of Netali’s 30-year-long career. Here too, we find questions.

Netali gave an interview, which I discuss almost on a daily basis among my social circle, where she firmly wanted to establish herself as a kind of British legacy. She said, of herself, “I iron out my Jew curls” and bleaches/dyes her hair, for no particular reason other than she wants to, and thinks it will make her fit in. Netali also went on to say that no one has naturally yellow hair — which is true, they don’t — implying that a non-Jewish, European actress would not face the same questions about her hair she did. Because the concept of hair straightening and hair bleaching are Nazi holdovers in British and American culture, and as someone who personally hates Nazis, this endlessly infuriates me. All the more so because Hershlag identifies as Jewish!

If Hershlag thinks modifying her hair to make it look ‘more European,’ or, more correctly (since almost all young Europeans have brown hair), to make it look more Hitlerite, more ‘Arianised,’ is acceptable, then she must either view herself as European first and Jewish second, or just care very little about the legacy of antisemitic racism. Why else would a person who calls herself Jewish want to alter her appearance so drastically, in order to look like a posterchild for one of the Hitler Youth?

Many Jewish-Americans feel pressures of Nazi antisemitism and colonial racism in the United States, and many Ashkenazim respond to that by changing their names, Nazifying their looks, and abandoning the Jewish religion. Netali retains a veneer of her Jewishness on the inside, within her own self-perception, while turning into the Arianised version of the Elle Woods archetype on the outside, for the world to see. Is she just playing a part? Is there a real difference in the personality and values of Netali Hershlag vs. Natalie Portman?

People don’t treat her as such. Keira Knightly, for instance, is an Englishwoman. Knightly claims she is ‘British,’ not English, but she is definitely English. Intriguingly, Knightly never went to school, reportedly a dyslexic, while Hershlag, in the Jewish stereotype, went straight to Harvard College. I wouldn’t say Hershlag seems like a nice person, she seems like an ordinary person. Remember that she is part of the Star Wars pantheon of small-time actors who were lifted by George Lucas to notoriety, like Mark Hamill (despite him being my favourite Star Wars actor, I can never remember his name), Harrison Ford, and of course, Sir Alec Guinness CBE.

Jokes aside, with all the classically-trained, upper-class, heavy-hitters from Britain — Peter Cushing OBE, Sir Christopher Lee CBE, and Sir Alec — not to mention the affable nobodies from Hamill to Ford, most Star Wars people are considered likable, especially by fans of nerdom.

That is not to say anyone was struggling, as every lead character in Star Wars was already documented as rich and famous by the time they were cast, but they were “nobodies” in the sense they were not household names until after the film became one of the first Hollywood summer “blockbusters” in history.

Most of all, it is undeniable that, other than Lucas, no one defined the Star Wars films as much as Carrie Fisher, if not for a want of contrast. Fisher was the only female character in all three of the movies, and both the predecessor and counterpart to Hershlag’s character in the Star Wars prequels. Does Hershlag meet the comparison?

The two are very different, both personally and on-screen. Fisher at the age of 19 had sex with numerous middle-aged members of the cast, often the only female and only teenager in a room of dozens of men, forbidden to wear a bra or choose her own hairstyle but allowed to partake in the rumoured plethora of drugs on the set. Hershlag, part of Star Wars from 16 to 19, was entirely unremarkable, both in life and profession, not a very impressive actor or much of a hoot. Again, the good Jewish girl. Some blame Netali’s poorly role on the weakness of the prequels compared to the originals, just as some blame Carrie’s bipolar diagnosis for her eccentricity. Both of these are half-truths, as personality and talent can never be substituted for anything other than what they are. Nonetheless, Fisher and Hershlag were both made rich and famous. While Hershlag is the lesser in terms of her performance, she probably got in the end a much better long-term deal.

A boring role meant Netali would not be immediately typecast, though she went on to play exclusively the girl-next-door leading female interest for a male protagonist, much the same as in Star Wars: Episode II. Coming into acting younger meant she could largely leave acting after childhood, then return to it later as an adult experience. Moreover, we never got to see teenage Netali chained to a bed in a gold bikini.

Our good, Jewish girl.

So, if Hershlag is playing roles given mostly to British, or Hitlerite, actresses, is she not taking away from the British actor? There are too many actors in the world. They are overexposed and over paid, seen too much and given too much, as they are in the same camp as clowns, entertainers, and comedians. But, people like to be entertained, and in the world of capitalism where only money is worship in lapse of dignity, anything people like sells, and anything that sells can make people rich, and riches are a substitute for class, if only a thin one. Just as the weak-minded can be fooled by the Force, so are they easily bought and sold. The British or American actor suffers for nothing, and there are too many of them as it is.

But, does Hershlag have a place in displacing them, or moulding in to become one of them? And would it be cultural appropriation? Undeniably, Netali is conforming to something objectionable when she plays simple roles as sex objects and Hitlerite women, embracing if not embodying the racism and problematic nature of Hollywood casting. But then again, it is with her very body that she represents this trend. One could defend Hershlag, saying she is made to do these things, that she is not so much appropriating Western culture for her ends, but more so that Western culture is stifling her true self, at least if she wants to continue to have a role in acting.

An interesting counter-point, but undermined by Hershlag’s particular brand of coy self-promotion, and eagerness in taking on such roles. And are the Jewish people entirely exploited by Hollywood? In many respects, so-called Europeans are exploited by powerful Jewish moguls in media more often than the other way around, even if they are Jewish Europeans themselves. Harvey Weinstein, a Jewish millionaire who sexually assaulted non-Jewish Western women in order to get them roles, his Jewishness hardly made a ripple.

The biggest names in Hollywood: Steven Spielberg, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jerry Seinfeld, Paul Rudd, Marta Kauffman, J.J. Abrams, Scarlett Johansson, Harrison Ford, John Stewart, Louis Szekely, Mila Kunis, Daniel Radcliffe, Rachel Weisz, Gal Gadot, Roseanne Barr, Judd Apatow, Marcus Loew, Lauren Bacall, Adam Sandler, Amy Schumer, Larry David, Daniel Day-Lewis, Cassidy Freeman, Stanley Kubrick, Jennifer Connelly, Richard Dreyfuss, Samuel Goldwyn, Julia Garner, Elijah Allan-Blitz, Kirk Douglas, Ellen Barkin, Ingrid Pitt, Darren Aronofsky, Eva Green, David Geffen, Lesley Ann Warren, Paul Newman, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ben Stiller, Louis B. Mayer, Alison Brie, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Chuck Lorre.

As Conan O’Brien jokingly stated: “The Cash-ews run Hollywood.” Almost every major production in Hollywood has a massive Jewish section of development. The United States, for whatever reason, is a majority “Christian-identifying” country, but Judaism plays a much more massive role in the culture than Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism combined. Even most of the agnosticism in ‘progressive’ Hollywood values comes largely from material secularism, or Jewish incredulity of Christianity, not an ideological pull towards atheism. Is this cultural reproachment why Jewish people are pulled towards media and entertainment, theatre being a known haven for outcasts and oddballs? The Judeo-Protestant alliance of the Hollywood ilk would seem to disqualify the established Jewish community — rich, interconnected, secular Jewish communities of New York, Los Angeles, and DC — from being an oppressed mass.

An important editor’s note is that the actors listed are: Jewish people who adopt non-Jewish appearances or non-Jewish values to a borderline-racist degree (i.e. Eva Green: Jewish actress who plays roles bookmarked for non-Jewish Europeans), thoroughly Jewish people who refuse to identify as Jewish (i.e. Julia Louis-Dreyfus: Jewish billionaire heiress who plays Jewish characters on TV), or regular observers of Judaism who are really, really famous (i.e. J.J. Abrams: co-director of the controversial Star Wars reboot).

More often behind the scenes than on-screen, but usually leading the show when taking a starring role, the Jewish imprint is inseparable from American movies, media production, television, the comedy scene, finance, and screenwriting. Is Jewish not the ruling order of Hollywood? And then would Europeans be the group on the margins? But why, if Jewish people write, pay for, and put on the shows, are there so few Jewish actors, and of those who are, why do they not look Jewish, or a better question would be, why do they try to avoid looking Jewish, and actively attempt to look Western European? That gives the impression that Jewish people are still marginalised in media, even if they are overrepresented in media, and generally more affluent, interconnected, and educated than those non-Jewish counterparts. Why do Jewish people go out of their way to appeal to racist audiences, and in the process erase their own Jewishness.

Maybe it is because the Hollywood Jewry isn’t actually Jewish. Nothing about their jobs or their behaviours embodies the Jewish religion. Most people in Hollywood in general consider themselves as nonreligious, yet that too, might be an influence of a markedly Jewish trait. Non-Christians in the United States are much more likely to turn to atheism and agnosticism on the one hand or fanatical extremism, likely due to being outcast by the mainstream Protestant dialogue, with liberal Jewish people often going agnostic and conservative Catholics often going supercharged while Muslims live on somewhere off in the shadows of public perception.

Yet nonreligious Jewish people still identify as Jewish, separating the religion of Judaism from the ethnic mark. Faith has nothing to do with appearance, and appearance is the base of antisemitism. Enter non-Jewish-looking Jewish people, usually women with heat-flattened hair, like Netali Hershlag and Gal Greenstein Godot. That is not to say they don’t look Jewish, as in an equal measure they all do and at the same time no one does, since what a Jewish person “looks like” is a narrow heuristic based on problematic cultural expectation. That is not to say they are or aren’t Jewish. But are Jewish people like Natalie Portman being forced to conform to racist society, or are they jumping on the bandwagon of racist society and using it to their advantage? Is there actually a difference between the two?

There is a deeper question lying beneath the surface here: The questions of “Jewish complicity in racism?,” “Jewish participation in neo-Nazism?,” and “If ‘Jew’ is a ‘race’ and ‘White’ is a ‘race’ then why are there ‘White’ and ‘non-White’ Jews?,” which other people have asked before. This article is not to address those questions, but they are acknowledged.

Certainly, there are some Jewish people who attach themselves to racist tendencies and Hitlerite habits out of personal advantage in the racist countries in which they might live. In this narrative, the notional collaborator Jewish community would blame the Europeans for racism and cast themselves as convenient survivors. That is not a uniquely Jewish trait, it is a flawed human trait, bystanderism, which defies religious teachings. Why there is such a prevalence among rich, secular Jewish people, of racism mixed with liberalism, is a concern. It could be as simple that, at a certain point, the trait “rich” might start to cancel out the trait “religious.” Old guard antisemites would be unforgiving regarding hatred towards ‘ethnic Judaism,’ and contemporary racist sentiments would reject Jewish people from the points of heritage and beliefs, but it is not immediately clear if Western neo-Nazis would target non-religious Jewish people who, quote, “pass” as Euro-Christians.

If Ashkenazim, Sephardim, and Mizrahim join Western cultures, ideals, and appearances while abandoning the Jewish religion, are they functionally Jewish at all? In the absence of different brands of generational antisemitism, what is holding back an atheist Ashkenazi from becoming a Nazi themself? The Jewish community and Israel critics have been ablaze with debate about the Eurocentric, Ashkenazim-focused account of Judaism in the West, drawing attention to the issue of inter-Jewish racism and inequality among the diaspora of the Jewish faithful. This question is debated separately for Jewish communities because unity is their faith. Followers of Christianity have always cut one another down over heresies and infidelities, but discourse and diversity have defined the post-Rabbinic tradition. The notion of one Jewish diaspora being more powerful than another, based not even on secularism such as in Christianity, but based solely on racism and adjacency to Christian empires, causes non-Ashkenazi Jewish communities to question that proximity in values and appearance Western Ashkenazi populations have with the goyish counterparts. Even the terms Ashkenazi and Mizrahi have taken fundamentally racist connotations, particularly in the advent of Zionism, to separate the ‘European Jewish’ from the ‘Arabian Jewish,’ in a kind of wartime apartheid of academia; a conflict emblematic of larger paradoxes in modern Israel.

This is not the focus of this article. Obviously, Jewish people living in Western Europe and urban America are more “Western” than people who live somewhere else. And obviously, Western nations have a serious and prolonged issue with racism. However, welding those two facts together, then conflating them with Judaism in some sense, would be a mistake.

There are some racist people in Hollywood who identify as, or are identified as, Jewish. That is not the question. The question is: How does the concept of cultural appropriation contribute to that complex dynamic, of conformity and exploitation in Hollywood, even amongst the big names?

This all comes back to the perceptual balance of power. Just as the term cultural appropriation is defined as a group being in a oppressive position and exploiting something that that group itself has made derogatory.

Is Netali Hershlag appropriating Western culture? In a way, yes. As a rich, powerful Jewish actress, she could hardly be said to be put at a disadvantage to Keira Knightly (Harvard versus dropout, remember), or the millions of aspiring brown-haired actresses who are shunned from Hollywood castings. And yet, she decides to look more like them. Obviously, as an ordinary woman herself, she has been victim to the usual sexism and obsessive demands of producers and directors concerning appearances, but that is hardly so say she is a victim. At any moment, she could deign to take a different part or produce her own movies (I would balk to call them films), rather than be typecast as the sexy and innocent girl-next-door. She lives the life of the good Jewish, girl, but never takes on those types of roles, opting instead for Princess Amidala, ballerina Nina Sayers, valley girl Elle Woods, comic book Jane Foster, or Englishwoman Anne Boleyn. Hershlag could at any moment leave acting to climb the ladder a Harvard A.B. clears the way for. How could Harvard Law School, or subsequently the California Democratic caucus, say no? Who wouldn’t pay for a doctor’s visit with the woman from V For Vendetta?

This is not to say that Jewish people are appropriating or imposing themselves upon Westerners, but it is to say that there is a distinct group of Jewish people who draw from Western or Hitlerite practices while entirely avoiding ‘Juden-haus’ or ‘Euro-trash’ rhetoric that hampers people on both sides of the racist conflict. Portman is Netali’s grandmother’s name, so she does have some kind of loose claim to it, if her cousins are still go by that name and she is close with them, while Natalie is a form of the name Neta-Li, and plenty if not most actors use stage names. Many people do racist or questionable things because they are in fashion. But altogether, one must ask the question why the self ascribed curly-haired Netali Hershlag is appearing is French wig and makeup commercials. Is it raw, unidealistic money? Is it Maybelline? Or it is fake hair, fake lashes, and a fake identity?

Natalie Portman is hardly an inspiring figure for women, playing roles subservient to men, often murdered by her lovers or terribly afflicted herself. This is true in Star Wars, Black Swan, Thor, V For Vendetta, and when she played the wife of wife-killer Henry VIII. Where is the liberty in being bedded by an uxoricidal maniac, be it a tired British period piece, or the obsessive Anakin Skywalker? Body modification of any type is not the product or respect or exchange, and can only be looked down upon as unnecessary and insecure. Acting is lying, but that does not mean the actress must change their looks or change their self to read some lines to a camera.

#Natalie Portman #Hollywood #Judaism #Cultural Appropriation #Star Wars

5 notes · View notes

dramionediscussion · 3 years

Text

I honestly believe that antis don’t know what dramione is actually about, and believe we just ship a bully with his victim–and refuse to deviate from their reasoning.

But dramione is NOT about that, because literally NO ONE in the dramione fandom (except a few bad apples) would ship a childhood bully draco with hermione. We understand that yes, doing that would make it toxic/abusive.

draco’s racism was taught to him, just like the weasley children were taught that muggles and wizards and muggleborns were equal. the first eleven years of his life, he grew up with lucius malfoy as a role model–one of the chief blood supremacists. we know that canonically draco worshipped his dad. he learnt that muggleborns were scum of the earth. why would he question that? when we’re kids, we don’t question what our parents teach us–we just assume they’re right and that’s how the world works.

the same concept applies to his classism. the first thing he said to ron was “red hair. hand-me-down robes. you must be a weasley.” now, keep in mind that this is the first time draco is meeting ron. how is an eleven-year-old who’s never met the other child before, know exactly who the child is, and how the child would look?

again, the parents. lucius malfoy worked with arthur weasley in the ministry. he would obviously go home and complain about the “blood traitor and his poverty” to narcissa, and draco would probably overhear, and assume that that’s how you treat the weasleys, because they’re “bad people” in his father’s book, and by extension, his.

the second book: at the start, lucius puts draco down because his marks were lower than hermione’s. draco is obviously put off, but he understands why–he’s a pureblood. he’s a malfoy. he’s supposed to be doing better than the muggleborns, because according to his father, they don’t deserve to attend hogwarts. later, he calls hermione a mudblood–again, where would he learn that type of language? definitely not the internet, because that didn’t exist. that takes us to his parents.

now, the question probably is why wouldn’t draco see other non-racist people in school and change? because he didn’t hang out with other houses. slytherins are very isolated, and usually pitted against the rest of the school. draco’s friends, children of death eaters, were probably raised in the same way he was. if his parents taught him pureblood supremacy, and his friends’ parents taught them the same thing, why would he think to question it?

draco malfoy was taught right from wrong, but those values just happened to be the opposite of what everyone else, like the weasleys, was taught. but just as the weasleys went in knowing that draco was wrong for believing in them, draco went in knowing that the weasleys were wrong for believing in theirs.

in the third book, I think the whole buckbeak incident was realistic. if a child provokes a dog, and the dog bites it, the dog is the one that’s put down no matter what the child did. I’m not saying it’s “right”–I definitely thin draco 100% deserved to be punched by hermione–but it’s how the world currently works–maybe it will change later but for now, it’s reality.

and as for the slytherins’ hatred towards hagrid–I’d say it was justified, because hagrid himself was no sweetheart to them. don’t get me wrong–I love hagrid, but he didn’t like the slytherins–you can see this when he talks about them in the first book. again, the books are from harry’s pov, so even if hagrid didn’t like the slytherins and said something about them, it would be biased. but yes, the slytherins often took it too far.

the fourth book–draco’s bullying wasn’t even that bad. he actually warned hermione to get away at the world cup, in his own twisted way. he accidentally hit her with a curse meant for harry. he made “potter stinks” badges–juvenile things.

now for the fifth. let me get this absolutely straight: I hate umbridge. I hate the inquistorial squad. I hate that the slytherins joined them.

but we have to go back to slytherin inequality for this. the slytherins are booed at quidditch matches. the whole school, including most of the teachers and their headmaster, are against them. in fact, I could say that the only teacher that favoured the house was snape, and have canonical evidence. it’s basically the slytherins vs the rest of the school.

now, comes along a lady that actually seems to favour slytherins. for the first time, they’re made to feel important. she wants to form a little group to catch their worst enemy in an illegal act. who would say no?

but again–the golden trio was no less. they purposely excluded the slytherins from the DA. forget malfoy and his cronies. not EVERY slytherin would be devoted to umbridge/malfoy. but the trio didn’t invite ANY of them–and not all their parents were death eaters.

now, put yourself in their place. imagine your school formed a club excluding your house. why would you protect them, instead of catching them? they had no reason to protect the DA, so they didn’t.

in the sixth book–I think at this point, draco’s grown out of his blood prejudice and realised that it isn’t a game. his father, probably the person he expects the most to protect him is in azkaban. voldemort has his mum, and will kill her if he doesn’t murder the wizarding world’s most powerful wizard. but why did he continue his discrimination?

do you really think that draco malfoy, bully and blood supremacist for five years, suddenly stopped bullying muggleborns, that word wouldn’t reach his house? his friends/housemates would tell their death eater parents, and somehow, it would reach his father, or worse–voldemort, who would just find it an excuse to kill his mum.

but admittedly, he didn’t bully the trio that much that year, and I think he called hermione a mudbblood only once–at the top of the astronomy tower, when he was trying to kill dumbledore.

also dumbledore KNEW that draco malfoy had been ordered to murder him. he knew who had been making those attempts the entire year. and then five minutes before the death eaters got them, he offered protection. draco was expected to make a life-changing, life-threatening decision in five minutes? when he didn’t even know whether he could trust the order? for all he knew, they could hold his family hostage to draw voldemort out.

but even then, he began to lower his wand, but it was too late.

IMHO, I think draco only referred to her as “mudblood granger” at that time as a last-ditch attempt to constrain to his father’s beliefs–which would be VERY advantageous to him at that point, because then he would be able to find a reason to murder dumbledore. but we all know he wasn’t able to do it.

in the seventh book, he refuses to identify harry, even though it’s obvious he recognises him and his family could gain EVERYTHING–but that’s a flimsy redemption arc at best. he stands by while hermione’s being tortured, yes, but that’s because it’s bellatrix lestrange–probably the most feared death eater of all time. would you do anything? I think not.

draco malfoy was brought up in a different way, having different beliefs ingrained into him. do you actually blame a child for doing what his father said, when the child should have been old enough to make his own choices? do you still blame that child for having been exposed to only one sort of right their whole lives, and having a biased opinion because they were never taught to see from a different perspective? and do you still blame that boy, despite everything he’s faced, that he never went through with it?

people who say “draco had a choice and he made the wrong one” are just wrong. what kinda choice would they make if a genocidal maniac was sitting at their dinner table, holding their mum hostage, until they killed the president of their country?

to me, I think draco and ron were both very insecure people, though for different reasons, and just had different ways of showing it. ron cut people off when he thought they were going to succeed without him, and draco made comments about the other person’s insecurities, probably to make himself feel better. ron was insecure about harry’s fame, but since he was harry’s best friend, he just had to put up with it (until the 4th book). draco had no such obligations.

and to say that draco malfoy isn’t redeemable, is saying that people who mess up when they’re kids, will remain that way for the rest of their lives. it’s sending a message to all young people out there telling them the consequences of making a mistake–no one will like them.

I’m not “excusing” draco’s racism. he was a piece of shit, plain and simple. but I’d say 98% of that is because of the way he was brought up.

also isn’t it the whole point that we want people to wake up and realise their mistakes? half of america would have LOVED for donald trump to get up one day and realise that he’s a racist misogynist. ofc it wouldn’t change the past, but it would change the future.

now, onto the dramione argument.

first off, saying that hermione wouldn’t forgive draco for the past is going against every aspect of her character. she had a soft spot for kreacher, the house-elf that grew up in a racist household and was therefore racist and called her and ron “mudblood” and “blood traitor” (quite similar to draco, actually). she understood where he was coming from, and why he was the way he is, and ultimately didn’t care. after that, how can you say that she wouldn’t forgive draco for having beliefs and values ingrained into him from when he was a child?

second, who is the real enemy in HP? yes, you could say voldemort, but it’s more about what he represents, which is prejudice. having draco, a former blood supremacist and the son and nephew of death eaters, getting together with hermione, a muggleborn girl, would show that he’s thrown his beliefs out of the window. it’s his character growth and how he matures through the war and its aftermath.

putting draco and hermione together as kids without any change to their characters is toxic and abusive, no doubt about it. but that’s not what dramione is about.

even in hogwarts fics like isolation, what the room requires, and clean, the authors make sure that he repents. they make sure to explicitly write his character arc, and to show that he is no longer a bully or blood supremacist.

hermione is NOT draco’s redemption, since canonically he shows signs of awakening, if not actual repentence. she’s the conclusion of his redemption. it’s officially showing the world and society that he is no longer a blood purist.

dramione isn’t about crazy fans thinking it’s adorable for a bully and a victim to fall for each other.

dramione is about change. and if you believe that people can’t change, that’s on you.

———-

Edit:

I agree with most of the points you’ve made except for the second paragraph. The majority of Dramione fans do indeed ship Hermione with redeemed Draco, but there’s nothing wrong with reading fics in which their relationship is toxic (I do that every once in a while) because neither Hermione nor Draco is a real person and you can put them in all types of circumstances. They’re both fictional characters and thus can’t be hurt.

- AgnMag

#dramione #HP Fandom #submission #injailoutsoon12

18 notes · View notes

floatingbook · 4 years

Text

The place of lesbians in women’s liberation and lesbophobia (1/2)

- Reading: Tales of the Lavender Menace by Karla Jay (part 2 here) At Karla Jay’s first Redstockings gathering:

“I would have never dared to question the leaders of a group I wanted to join. But after the [Redstockings] manifesto had been handed around, a woman named Rita Mae Brown, whom I knew slightly from NYU, pushed into the center of the room from her position in the doorway to take issue with Redstockings, even though it was her first meeting. Why, she demanded, didn’t Redstockings have a position on gay women? She began to argue that lesbian relationships were as important for a feminist group to embrace as the struggle to change men.” p. 43-44

The Redstockings completely forgetting to mention lesbians or to even have an opinion on the subject ready to be shared show how much of an afterthought we lesbians have always been in women’s liberation movement. We might only represent a fraction of women, but we still are women, and as such deserve liberation as much as any other straight women. The “struggle to change men” means having to interact, having to implicate oneself in reforming them. And what of women who would have nothing to do with their oppressors? What of women who do not want to spend all their energy and strength on the thankless task of making men understand that women are humans too?

“Rita [Mae Brown] alone had the courage to speak up at that Redstockings’ meeting, long before anyone else in New York’s feminist circles dared to be openly gay. Back then, apart from early activists such as Phyllis Lyon, Del Martin, and the other pioneering women of Daughters of Bilitis (DOB), few dared to admit in a public setting that they were lesbians. It was one thing to hang out in a gay bar where anyone simply assumed similar sexual proclivities or to be open in a gay student organization. It was quite another to announce one’s lesbianism and then demand it take center stage in a room full of straight feminists who were likely to be heterosexist (the word “homophobia” came later) and who had just issued an ultimatum to keep on sleeping with men as part of a program to mend the oppressors’ ways. Rita’s sharp challenge made Redstockings’ program seem quixotic to the point of being delusional: Were these women the oppressed or the oppressors?” p. 44

It’s a shame that being a lesbian had to remain a secret, on pain of being discriminated against. As lesbians, we have a unique outlook on the world around us and on men especially. We have way less interest in maintaining the status quo or in retaining any kind of ties with men. Our outlook on relationships with men are less tinted by the rosy lenses of the patriarchal promise of a happy-ever-after made of marriage and a brood of kids. Our very reasoning when it comes to women’s liberation is often less reformist than separatist; and as such our ideas are despised. Straight women wishing for romantic love cannot accept our conclusions that women would be better off independent from our oppressors.

“The leaders of Redstockings were disturbed and threatened by Rita [Mae Brown]’s behavior. They turned the conversation back around to men as our oppressors. Still, they looked uncomfortable. After all, Rita was calling them her oppressors when they were insisting that women like them (and us) were the most oppressed on earth. One of the main tenets of the “Redstockings Manifesto” was, “We identify the agents of our oppression as men… All other forms of exploitation and oppression (racism, capitalism, imperialism, etc. ) are extensions of male supremacy: men dominate women, a few men dominate the rest.” Although the group’s members identified with “the poorest, most brutally exploited women,” they would have found it counter productive, to put it mildly, to be forced to contemplate the ways that working-class women, disabled women, or Third World women (as we called women of coloraturas) were far worse off than someone like Kathie [Sarachild], who had attended Radcliffe College. By formulating a Marxist class analysis that emphasized unity among all women and foregrounded sexism as the tool to analyze other oppressions, they had hoped to quell demands by other women that double and triple oppressions receive priority.” p. 45

This kind of behaviour is obviously one of the reasons that led Kimberlé Crenshaw to pen down her vision of intersectionality in feminism. The founders of Redstockings and writers of its manifesto were mostly white, straight, university-educated women who had never and would never be oppressed on account of their sexual orientation, skin colour, social class or disability. As a result, the conclusions they draw in their theory can only be flawed and short-sighted. Their conclusions might be insightful, but only for a specific type of women. And according to Karla Jay, they seemed reluctant to widen their scope or take into account the experience of women different from them. While Rita Mae Brown (and other lesbians that later spoke up) offered them the opportunity to reflect on what they had concluded and make their reasoning better, more pragmatic, more adapted to the various circumstances of the women around them, they stood on their positions and dismissed lesbian concerns.

“Lesbianism was a more widely discussed issue than clashs and labor. Rita Mae Brown’s vociferous arrival in Redstockings had sparked discussion in Group X [the founding Redstockings cell], although reactions were mixed. Irene Peslikis, for one, was emboldened to admit to a long-term lesbian affair that Group X knew nothing about. But other members of Group X, echoing Betty Friedan’s assertion that lesbians were a “lavender menace,” began to blame gay women for causing dissension in the group and accused them of being “antifeminists.” Katie Sarachild wrote in Feminist Revolution that “many lesbians complained that they were excluded from the movement in the beginning often by simple virtue of the fact that the women in it spent so much time talking about such boring or irrelevant or disturbing to them subjects as sex with men, getting men to do the housework, and such related problems as abortions and childcare.”

What she and many other heterosexist Redstockings overlooked was that lesbians had been raised in families with men, had usually had sexual relationships with men, had worked with men, and sometimes lived with male roommates. Several lesbians I knew had children from previous marriages. What the straight women couldn’t see was that many Redstockings talked about men all the time the way dieters obsess about food. There were times when some of us, including a few of the heterosexuals, felt it would be more productive to focus on ways in which women could interact with one another positively.

The current of homophobia made many new members, including me, reluctant to mention homosexual experiences to the group. “ p. 65-66

Some straight members of Redstockings dismissed lesbians experiences as irrelevant to women’s liberation under the assumptions that because lesbians are not attracted to men and therefore would not engage in relationships with them in an ideal world, and so were not interacting with the male oppressor. In our world, this is a completely delusional assertion. Even in separatist communes, lesbians still have to deal with the law of the land, which has so far mostly been written and enacted by men. Lesbians too have fathers and brothers; lesbians too get sick and need to go to the hospital; lesbians too go out and use the amenities offered by society; lesbians too can be harassed and attacked by men. So women’s liberation concerns us as much as it does straight women, and our experiences with men and of sexism should not be dismissed as irrelevant.

And our experiences as lesbians tell us that straight women concerned with women’s liberation are most likely wasting their energy when they focus on trying to change men. Yes, these kind of discussions should take place, especially between women who do not want to renounce relationships with men; but lesbians are right to wonder why such subjects often take center place in women’s liberation movement.

Continued here in part 2.

#the place of lesbians in women's liberation #lesbophobia #karla jay #reading #tales of the lavender menace #women's liberation #homophobia #dismissing lesbian voices #still a familiar experience today

23 notes · View notes

gothic-discourse · 4 years

Text

About/FAQ:

Basic Info:

Name: Heidi

Gender/Pronouns: Female

Sexuality: Bisexual

Age: 19

Race: Mixed German, Native American, & Latina. “White Passing”

Relationship Status: Engaged to my Fiancé

Job: House Wife

Religious Beliefs: Secular Humanist & LaVeyan Satanist

Political Stance/Leaning: Centrist-Independent-Moderate-Libertarian

Moral Stance: Pacifist, & Egalitarian

Voting for in 2020: Either Bill/William Weld or Donald Trump. Not voting blue.

My Pros & Antis:

Pros:

Constitution and Ammendments ( Pro- Basic Human Rights )

LesbianGayBisexualTransgender (Gender Dysphoric people aka ftm & mtf )

Science

Health

Transmedicalism

Brain Sex = Gender

Genitals = Sex

Vaccines/Vaccinations

Abortion & Choice

The Big Bang & Evolution

Recreational/Federal/Medical Marijuana

The idea that ALL drugs, yes ALL, should be legal. Clean needles and safe injections as well.

Provable Facts over Unrealistic Feelings.

Exclusion. Not everyone belong everywhere. We don’t have to be inclusive. No one does. Not to spare the feelings of people who want to feel special.

Anonymity for Speech ( This excludes Anonymity for Physical Violences )

Gun Control/Restrictions. -NOT GUN BAN- I believe people should be mentally evaluated, have a back ground check, and have a license.

Equality for everyone of every race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, disability, etc. AKA EGALITARIANISM

NACAB or Not All Cops Are Bad/Bastards.

Capitalism. Though, I do not believe it to be a perfect system, I also believe we should not abolish it nor replace it with anything else. Just change a few things up but, NEVER replace it.

Age Of Consent Laws in AMERICA of every state in AMERICA. Do not bring up or ask me about other countries. I do not know their laws nor do I agree with any laws outside of America’s.

Breastfeeding in public.

BDSM & Kinks

Sex Work and Workers of Both sexes/genders

Teaching kids about safe sex at a young age.

Death Penalty/Sentence.

The idea that all PROVEN Pedophiles and Rapists should be hunted and killed on spot.

Antis:

Any and All people/groups/etc that are Anti-Science. Including but not limited to; Tucutes/MOGAI/TABs/Trans-Trenders, Flat-Earthers, Theistic or PolyTheistic religions, Anti-Vaxxers, TERFs/TEHMs/TERDs/Transphobes, People against Global Warming existing, Creationists, ETC.

HAES/Healthy At Every Size Movement. Promoting Obesity or Anorexia.

Self Diagnosing- Claiming to be Disabled or Mentally/Physically Ill without proof or A Doctor/Psychiatrist diagnosis.

Tucutes, MOGAI, TABs, TERFs, TEHMs, SWERFs, TELFs, Transphobes, Feminisms of every wave, Radical Feminists, LGB-Phobic people,

Any and All Radicalism. Radicalism of EVERY form. Radicalism from the right or the left. I don’t care Radicalism is dumb and violent.

Herd Mentality.

Nazism.

Fascism/Authoritarianism.

Communism/Socialism.

The Alt-Left/Radical Left/Lefists

The Alt-Right/Radical Right/Rightists

Radical Progressives

Inclusionists

The Supremacy of ANY Sexuality, Gender, or Race.

The Violent and Fascist, Antifa Movement and Community.

Violence or Abuse and Threats of ANY kind for ANY reason that isn’t self defense. ( Physical, Emotional, Mental, Sexual, etc ) War, Fighting, Assault, etc.

Anonymity to Incite, Endorse, or take part in Violence and Assault of any kind or any reason other than Self Defense.

Neo-Pronouns or “New Pronouns”.

Racism of ALL & ANY Races- Yes this includes white people.

Sexism of BOTH Sexes/Genders- Yes this includes males. Misandrists’ and Misogynists’

PETA- Fuck PETA.

ACAB or All Cops Are Bad/Bastards.

Anyone against any basic human right, the amendments, or constitution.

Asexual & Aromantics being LGBT- THEY ARE NOT.

Trans-Racial/Age/Abled/ etc

Ableism

CisHet-Phobia- The hate or dislike of a person just because they are either Cisgender, Straight, or Both.

Other Kin, Kinning, Kin(s), etc. Its dumb as fuck.

PANSEXUALITY- No/Maps/Pedophiles, Child/Adult Molesters, Rapists, Incest, Zoophilia/Beastiality, Necrophilia, Objectophilia, and anything revolving those things.

ANY Fake “Gender” or “Sexuality”. If it’s not Male & Female or Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, & Straight; Then it’s Bullshit and I don’t believe in or support it. Only Two Genders & Only Four Sexualities.

Ask Me Anything!

#about me #faq #faq post

32 notes · View notes

writedisaster · 4 years

Text

rules

DON’T INTERACT IF:

You endorse any form of bigotry, including but not limited to racism, colorism, antisemitism, ableism, transphobia, homophobia, biphobia, lesbophobia, aphobia, etc.

You actively write topics such as sexual violence, including incest and statutory rape. (If these topics are part of your character’s backstory but not actively written, I will be selective in following back, and I will expect you to properly tag all mentions of these topics.)

You are 16 or under. (If you are under 18, please understand that I will be much more selective in interacting with you, and please block my “n.s.f.w. text ///” tag.)

Content:

TRIGGER WARNINGS: Content on this blog, both text and images, may deal with: physical violence, tooth horror, unreality, disordered eating, addiction, abuse, and other potentially upsetting subjects. I will be doing my best to tag these things, but still- If any of these things are dangerous triggers for you, you may be better off not following this blog. No hard feelings.

Again, I do my best to tag triggers where appropriate. If there’s anything I’ve missed or anything you need me to tag for you, please tell me about it and I will make it happen. I tag in the format “[trigger] ///”.

I tag instances of the word “queer” as “q word ///”. I will not tag it as “q slur,” and I ask that you don’t ask me to do so. I understand and respect that seeing this word without warning is harmful to some people. I ask others to understand and respect that me calling my own identity and my own community nothing but a “slur” would be harmful to me. Different people have different needs, but coexistence is possible.

Mun and all muses are 18+, but there will be no smut on this blog. (I have a separate sideblog for writing such things, but that will only be used with writing partners who are 21+.)

There may, however, be occasional discussions or mentions of sexual topics, which will be tagged as “n.s.f.w. text ///”. I apologize for the inconvenience, but I’m not trying to get picked up by the censorbot.

Interactions:

This blog is mutuals only, with the exception of OOC memes. I don’t at all intend to intimidate or exclude, but having my interactions open to anyone in the past put me in some pretty uncool places. Thank you for respecting this boundary.

If you follow me first, please give me at least a week to check out your blog and decide if I want to follow back before you assume that I don’t want to be mutuals. (I know this sounds like a long time, but I’m most often on mobile and don’t like to follow anyone if I haven’t had a chance to read their pages first.)

If we’re mutuals and you decide you’d like not to be mutuals with me anymore, that’s completely fine, but please give me a courtesy soft-block so I’m not confused. (Follower count and mutual checker have… not been reliable for me.)

All that being said, if I am following your rp blog, it’s because I want to interact with you! I love writing and talking to people, and I’m genuinely interested in everyone I choose to put on my dash. If we’re mutuals, feel free to hit me up anytime!

My open starters are open to all my mutuals - yes, even if someone else has already replied. I like to see all the different possibilities of where a thread can go from a single starter, and my open starters are written to be as, well, open as possible.

I do only rp with other rp blogs. Sideblogs of personal mains are fine, but please tell me what your sideblog / mainblog is so I know who’s what.

Please don’t reblog rp threads you’re not in. It’s fine if you like them, but reblogging them gets confusing for me and my partners.

I may not be able to respond in a consistent or timely manner. I apologize in advance, and ask you not to take it personally.

In addition to Tumblr, I also have a Discord. Although I’d prefer not to throw it around in front of strangers, if we’ve become acquainted here and you’d like to add me on that platform, message me. I do like to chat OOC.

Please refrain from godmodding. If there’s a particular direction you’d like to steer an RP in, message me about it OOC and we’ll see if we can make it work. If you try to force something unreasonable in RP without prior discussion, I will be disappointed, disgruntled, and disinclined to continue.

If you send in an IC ask meme and I answer it, you’re more than welcome to turn it into a thread if you so desire. These days I usually answer asks by copy-pasting and @ing the sender in a new post, so if that’s the case, you don’t have to worry about starting a new post to make it a thread.

If we’re mutuals, I’d really appreciate you taking the time to fill out my interest checker!

Formatting:

I use full-sized text in my rp posts, and occasionally single-small text for OOC purposes. Smaller text is difficult for me to visually process, and there’s only so much that I can zoom in on my tumblr dash before it all goes to hell. If you personally use smaller text, that’s fine, but I may make it larger when I reply to it. This is a matter of accessibility.

I do not consider fcs or icons to be obligatory. As of July 2020, none of my muses here even have official faceclaims. If you prefer to use icons in your replies, that’s fine, but I will not be doing the same.

The Mun:

You can call me Swid. I go by they/them/theirs pronouns. I’m over 21 years old and in a committed monogamous relationship.

Thank you for reading!

#long post ///

6 notes · View notes

swanlake1998 · 4 years

Link

(cw: blackface, racism, orientalism)

dance magazine article - article author: dana nichols

“On Instagram this week, Misty Copeland reposted a picture of two Russian ballerinas covered head to toe in black, exposing the Bolshoi's practice of using black face in the classical ballet La Bayadère.

The post has already received over 60,000 likes and 2,000 comments, starting a long overdue conversation.

Comments have been pouring in from every angle imaginable: from history lessons on blackface, to people outside of the ballet world expressing disbelief that this happens in 2019, to castigations of Copeland for exposing these young girls to the line of fire for what is ultimately the Bolshoi's costuming choice, to the accusations that the girls—no matter their cultural competence—should have known better.

I am a black dancer, and in 2003, when I was 11 years old, I was dressed up in blackface to perform in the Mariinsky Ballet's production of La Bayadère.

I fell in love with ballet at an early age. I remember watching my cousin's ballet class transfixed by the effortlessness of a grand allegro combination.

This was my first exposure: seeing the art form capture and elevate the beauty of my cousin's black body.

I spent the next 12 years studying classical Russian ballet at the Yuri Grigoriev School of Ballet in Los Angeles.

Because our teacher refused to speak English, I grew accustomed to having a feel for what was being said, but at the same time, no idea. I really learned ballet, abstracted from the context of American history and culture.

All importance was placed on movement quality and the technique. The wall that separated ballet from the real world in my mind began to crumble when I was selected to be a child extra in the Mariinsky's performance of La Bayadère.

When ballet companies tour, they can't bring minors with them, so they find young dancers locally to fill roles in their ballets. When the Mariinsky came to Los Angeles, they tapped our studio to participate.

As students secluded in the world of Russian ballet, the chance to dance in La Bayadère was a dream came true.

We would be feet away from superstars like Diana Vishneva, watching from backstage as they danced under the stage lights and amidst the most intricate sets and costumes our hearts could imagine!

Somewhere deep in the Hollywood complex of the Kodak Theatre, we learned an angular dance in second position.

We hopped around with flexed feet, waived our arms and periodically folded into kowtows. In hindsight, it's obvious that we were performing caricatures of the "Orient." I don't even think it occurred to me that La Bayadère was set in South Asia because everyone was white—until dress rehearsal. Our preparations were overseen by women designated to coordinate the child extras and interpret for us.

Our parents were not allowed backstage. They fitted us in dark unitards with hoods to cover everything except our faces. Later, the makeup artist instructed us on how to apply our makeup. She handed each of us a palette of dark brown grease paint, pausing to do a double take after she handed me mine. It wasn't until I received all of the pieces of my costume—a mahogany colored bodysuit, dark brown face paint and bright red lipstick—that I discovered I was to wear blackface.

I must have been the only dark-skinned person to have been in a Mariinsky production. The women in charge weren't sure what to do with me. I saw the white dancers around me covering themselves in the brown paint and distinctly remember being at a loss for words because it was so bizarre. It was especially the red lipstick traced around the mouth that disturbed me. I remember looking down at the paints and trying to figure out what they had to do with me. All I could manage to say was, "Do I need this?"

I became that thing in the room that no one had ever had to confront.Our chaperones exchanged glances and finally responded with an uncomfortable "Yes." One woman laughed nervously as she indicated that I still had to wear the makeup because my brown skin was many shades lighter than the color of the bodysuit and the paint selected to cover our skin.

Of course, it was quickly forgotten in a production of this magnitude involving hundreds of people. During dress rehearsal, I found out that we were not the only characters that had been darkened. Many had on light brown paint on their arms and faces. The experience was jarring, but I compartmentalized it a way even later that night as I scrubbed my face raw trying to get the paint off.

Only years later did it dawn on me that I had played a primitive Indian caricature. I don't think any of us really understood. Even as a black girl who grew up in a segregated Los Angeles, with some cultural awareness, I didn't do much better than the girls in Copeland's post. I had even seen the movie Bamboozled, but my real racial awakening and then subsequent outrage, began much later, around age 15 after reading Assata. Until then, I lived in ignorance, accepting the discomforts in exchange for access to the art form I loved.

Around the age of 17, by the time my dance peers were beginning to commit to conservatory programs and full-time pre-professional tracks in ballet, I was fully immersed in issues of diversity and social justice. Ballet had my heart, but by then I knew that the magic couldn't cover up its ugly contortions of body, beauty and culture.

I watched as dancers of all kinds were silenced and diminished. In my 20s I found refuge in the world of black modern dance, a place where many fallen ballerinas can be found.

I understand Copeland's frustrations. This ballet, and many others, are set in mythical ballet worlds, where people of color are dehumanized into caricatures for white enjoyment, to be seen, made to dance, but not heard.

It could not be more ridiculous to have a young black girl (or anyone) wear blackface to depict dark South Asians, as they were imagined by nineteenth-century French, Russian and Georgian choreographers.

Yet the Bolshoi and the Mariinsky still use blackface in their productions today.

Even without the black and brown face in La Bayadère, the setting, the characters, their Indian "inspired" garb and much of the music and movement are prime examples of orientalism.

So many classic works of art, literature and performance are tainted by the attitudes of the era in which they were born—dance is particularly evocative as it is real-time reenactment.

So do we kiss the off-color ballets goodbye—including America's favorite, The Nutcracker? Or do we just modernize them, as many have already begun to do?

Truth be told, La Bayadère is one of my favorite ballets. The Shades act embodies the spirit of ballet.

In my opinion, the best part of ballet is its otherworldly qualities—the interpretations of spirits and reveries, the manifestations of creatures, swans, etc.

The more theatrical village and party scenes that are full of colorful caricatures serve as a contrast to make the ethereal that much more powerful, but they don't need to be offensive to accomplish that.

Nor does ballet need to exclude people of color in order to achieve the ethereal. In 2019, there is no need for a perfectly uniform lily-white corps de ballet.

We need new mythical worlds, new characters and stories—made of the imaginations of different kinds of people. Ballet is the same as any other field with institutional racism.

We can express outrage at the players: those two Russian girls, the makeup artists, the costume designer, or even me and any other complicit party.

But as Copeland's original caption guided us to do, we must be critical of the whole system, too. Petipa had a good run. Thank goodness Copeland is using her platform to begin the dismantling process.””

[ https://www.pointemagazine.com/i-am-a-black-dancer-and-was-dressed-up-in-black-face-to-perform-in-la-bayadere-2641583903.html - article date: december 12, 2019 ]

#article #dana nichols #ballet #dance magazine #dancemagazine #racism #blackface

20 notes · View notes