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waitmyturtles · 10 months

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Turtles Catches Up With Old GMMTV: TharnType and Gray Areas Edition

[What’s going on here? After joining Tumblr and discovering Thai BLs through KinnPorsche in 2022, I began watching GMMTV’s new offerings -- and realized that I had a lot of history to catch up on, to appreciate the more recent works that I was delving into. From tropes to BL frameworks, what we’re watching now hails from somewhere, and I’m learning about Thai BL's history through what I’m calling the Old GMMTV Challenge (OGMMTVC). Starting with recommendations from @absolutebl on their post regarding how GMMTV is correcting for its mistakes with its shows today, I’ve made an expansive list to get me through a condensed history of essential/classic/significant Thai BLs produced by GMMTV and many other BL studios. My watchlist, pasted below, lists what I’ve watched and what’s upcoming, along with the reviews I’ve written so far. Today, I’ll cover the very controversial TharnType, Asian stereotypes towards queerness, and the very difficult gray areas on how this show has been interpreted by various populations over the last few years.]

TW: homophobic and derogatory ideas and language against the queer community. Critical commentary on TharnType and MAME. This review is NOT for you if you are a TharnType or MAME Big Fan.

(I want to give very special thanks to @so-much-yet-to-learn and @lurkingshan for reviewing previous versions of this post and offering the most insightful feedback I could ask for. Thank you both so much.)

Alright. Deep breaths.

TharnType was a necessary addition to the Old GMMTV watchlist. It was. I had to watch it, for:

- the tremendous IMPACT this show has had on BL culture, along with MAME’s continued influence on the genre; - how this show affected shipper culture, and the rippling effects it’s had since then vis à vis MewGulf; - how this show continued to define “high heat” and “chemistry” in BL, and -- at least for me, possibly the most interesting point to needle on -- - what fans, ESPECIALLY the majority cishet fandom, are willing to compromise and/or equivocate on in regards to our values towards the queer community regarding what we consume in media, and how safe or unsafe it is for our queer family that this content exists in the first place.

I gotta say some stuff first before I get into this review. This is the worst show I’ve ever watched, in my own opinion. I offer this flag for MAME and TharnType fans in advance, as I get quite critical down below.

I am angry at this show, at MAME, at the BL industry for allowing this show to exist, and I unfortunately hold anger against Tee Bundit, who I know has since made shows, like Lovely Writer, that deeply criticized the BL industry (and I am enjoying his work now in Step By Step, even while I don’t hesitate to criticize it). ANYONE INVOLVED in the making of TharnType needs to hold personal and professional accountability for this show even existing. And I also think that fans need to hold THEMSELVES accountable if they defend it WITHOUT thinking about the long-term social implications of the existence of this show.

I want to also say that I need to check myself, OFTEN, as I write this, because I don’t want to be some fucking loudmouth, self-righteous ally-savior. I don’t. [My AMAZING drama friends, @lurkingshan and @bengiyo, have held me down during this watch. (Friends. Thank you. Good LORD.)]

I want this review to be as fair as possible to the nostalgia of the moment that this show aired; to note that this show gave high heat, which fans clearly demanded, and IS a worthy component of some dramas if it works with the rest of what the show has to offer by way of writing; and to note that many fans saw a chemistry in MewGulf that they hadn’t seen previously. I especially note that there may be survivors of sexual assault who related to certain pieces of this show, particularly through Type’s lens and his own anger.

With that very long introduction, I will note that I’m not going to talk too much about the show details itself. I don’t need to unwind on plot. For me -- FOR ME -- the show’s plot was problematic.

2019: earlier that year, before TT aired, you had He’s Coming To Me, which was BURIED by GMMTV, and was a TOUR DE FORCE of intricate storytelling and queer revelation. According to this amazing reblog by @so-much-yet-to-learn (another longtime BL observer who UTTERLY held me down during my TT watch, friend, I CANNOT THANK YOU ENOUGH FOR THE HOURS you spent me with talking about TT and other issues), shipper fans angry at Ohm and Singto went so far as to SHOW UP TO THE GMMTV BUILDING IN BANGKOK and PROTEST against the split of the KristSingto ship. This is why, in this TT review, I talk about fans needing to take responsibility and accountability for the media we consume. I believe TT exists in part because fans have allowed it to continue to exist in the universe of BL, and many even celebrate TT’s existence -- all while, in my own opinion -- much more compelling art existed before TT (Make It Right, He’s Coming To Me) and certainly after its airing.

In discussion with @absolutebl (yet another drama expert who held me down during my TT watch, THANK YOU, SENSEI), ABL Sensei brings up that, besides a natural tendency to criticize and blame MAME for our needing to have conversations about safety towards queer family, that TT does deserve to be criticized as a standalone piece of content.

I honestly don’t know, Sensei, if I’m mature enough to make that separation, but I will try. MAME herself doesn’t exist in a vacuum: she has an industry, from producers, to showrunners, to actors, to editors, to networks -- that join her in the making of her work. I’ll do my best to separate everything, but.

I noted in my review of Love By Chance that MAME traffics in common Asian stereotypes against the queer community. At the same time, I know that often, we talk about the yaoi origins of BL in Thailand. I think, over time, the explanation of the yaoi origination has been used as a means of explaining WHY certain tropes exist, such as abuse of a partner, bullying, etc. I want to note that while I acknowledge those origins, I also strongly note (as I did in the comments of my LBC review) that yaoi origins are themselves problematic, as created by a majority cishet female artist base, and thus I question the accurate representation of queer themes both in yaoi and in early and/or questionable Thai BL that lean into common stereotypes held by Asian nations. (That being said, I do DEEPLY ACKNOWLEDGE @so-much-yet-to-learn‘s point to me that many in the queer community still consumed this media, as the West was producing next-to-nothing by way of queer love and/or queer perspectives.)

Much of what I saw in LBC and TT -- gang rape, cheating, revenge, derogatory language, hurtful stereotypes of top/bottom and husband/wife -- are repeat, word-for-word stereotypes that I heard from my Asian family growing up. Examples of what I saw by way of problematic stereotypes in TharnType include:

- Tharn repeatedly and casually calling Type “his bitch,” - The use of the F word, repeatedly, by Type, - Type attacking his out classmates, and indirectly attacking his friend, Tum, - The assumption that because Tharn and Tar are gay, that they are promiscuous (even Techno assumes this while leaving Type alone with Tharn early in the series), - Techno himself not calling out Type for his homophobia throughout the series, - The use of gang rape as a means of revenge by Lhong to Tar,

and many more. I will also note that I was incredibly uncomfortable by Lhong’s redemption at the end, as if the story demanded that Lhong’s own actions that drove him to order grievous sexual violence against another man needed to be forgiven. That was a paradigm that seemed apologetic to his actions and did not sit well with me.

As I noted to @bengiyo: us international fans may be lulled to think that Thailand is majority progressive and accepting of the queer community based off of the BLs that we watch. It IS a much more progressive culture in SE Asia in supporting the queer community, and I would assume that gay culture is able to flourish in city centers, as opposed to rural areas.

But Thailand has NOT legalized same-sex marriage. And I posit that we in the West don’t actually realize that harmful stereotypes against the queer community absolutely still exist and flourish in Thailand, Taiwan, and elsewhere in Asia -- countries that certainly leverage BL as soft power, but nations in which familial or cultural expectations may STILL make ACTUAL coming out and public existence a dangerous or risky proposition. THIS SHIT IS GRAY. BL is fiction -- it is not reality. It is still dangerous -- YES, INCLUDING HERE IN THE STATES -- to be out in very many towns, cities, and communities around the world.

Now. When I went into TT, I understood, AS ASSUMED FACT, that MAME was a sexual assault survivor, who used this style of writing about queerness and queer love to process her own SA experiences. That equivocation gave me the serious jibbles, which I’ll talk about in a second, but I understood it to be the line that most BL observers have made about her work, and/or justification or explanation for her work existing.

I’ve since learned that this is not necessarily fact: that it is not known if MAME is an SA survivor, and that she is notoriously private and has not revealed much, if anything, about her own past.

So, from there, how do I process this? How do I process that it’s FANON -- NOT FACT -- that MAME may or may not write from a survivor’s perspective?

I also note here, thanks to the wonderful @so-much-yet-to-learn, that many fans who are SA survivors have written in the past about how they related to Type’s anger and/or homophobia after his own assault experience. I also understand that SA survivors have, in the past, had difficulty with strong rejections of TharnType, like the one I have composed here, in reaction to the fear that they cannot tell their own stories of internal anger against their perpetrators and the communities from which their attackers come from.

Thus, I want to note a VERY DIFFICULT PROPOSITION TO WORK THROUGH. What we’re facing here is that there may be people, SA survivors in particular, who related to Type’s homophobia. This is Type’s fictional homophobia -- as written by a very real, assumed-to-be female author. At the same time, I myself very much acknowledge that I still see stereotypes against the queer community, in a very Asian voice that I am familiar with, in MAME’s shows.

Let me tell you why this gives me, personally, the jibbles. Let’s assume that MAME is an SA survivor. As someone trained in the social services, I am not sure that I would advise a potential client to create very public content that is potentially harmful towards a minority community, as a means of their own personal processing. MAME is FAMOUS. Her work is POPULAR. Can we justify the dangers that her work poses -- the stereotypes and assumptions she traffics in against our queer family -- for her own psychological processing?

If I am her therapist, I am guiding her to instead journey map, to meditate, to advise her of HUNDREDS of other therapeutic psychological modalities to process her pain -- all modalities that do not set up a minority community to be stereotyped through very publicly consumed content.

I posit here -- MY OPINION, FAM -- that MAME has leveraged her own personal bigotry against the queer community in her shows for clout with Asian and international audiences that would not quibble about the harmfulness of the stereotypes that the show portrayed. And she’s gotten away with it for the utter control she has over her own content. AND SHE KNOWS THERE’S AN AUDIENCE FOR IT, so she keeps making what I call bigoted content.

I thought TT was a DANGEROUS show for perpetuating harmful stereotypes about queer family. And I am distraught at the BL industry for seeing dollar signs against that clout and investing in it.

The equivocating in support of TharnType certainly exists. There are people who view this show with nostalgia, as there still wasn’t the volume of BL content, with heat, in 2019 as we have today. There are people out there who may very well openly relate to Type’s homophobia as a character, and MAME’s homophobia as an author and as a human. Hell, Foei Patara, who we see in everything these days, shared a very anti-LGBTQ+ video on his Instagram just recently.

I DO have to give a nod to nostalgia. I have to try to be fair here. This is the ENTIRE POINT of the OGMMTVC. BL fans in 2019 wanted a thing. High heat, high chemistry. I know that there are fans that are AWARE of these high-level issues of MAME’s work. And yet, there are many that still look back on TharnType with fondness, because it brought something new to the field.

What I’m suffering from here is the equivocation of MAME’s work by way of analysis against a presumed opinion -- NOT fact -- that MAME is an SA survivor. That seems to open some sort of door to allow us to watch her work, despite the dangers of the stereotypes contained within her work.

The ethics of this. I’m not a strong enough person to go near that equivocation. Because I am not a survivor. I’m an Asian. In MAME’s voice, I hear the stereotypes against the queer community that I grew up with. And that’s where I’m writing this review. I’m hurt and appalled by her proliferating what I term to be dangerous viewpoints against my queer sisters and brothers -- assumptions that I heard growing up in my Indian community.

Fuck. Am I ever glad that I DIDN’T watch this show in 2019. I’m protected by a fortress of past and present works that I can rely on that proves that there are other arenas in which BL is being leveraged for good, for progressive art, for the introduction of ideas that support our queer family, AND that might also offer critical commentary on issues that affect other minority or vulnerable corners of society, à la Moonlight Chicken.

I haven’t even gotten to the MewArt scandal and the problematic nature of the MewGulf ship. All of those are also very important issues, but I can’t bring myself to get deep about them, because just talking about the show itself is a lot. But Mew Suppasit’s past alleged behavior is certainly problematic, and is worth considering if folks were to think about watching this show.

In any case: I’m never watching another MAME show again, ever. And as a side note, MewGulf didn’t do it for me. At this point in 2019, I feel like we’d seen ships with much better chemistry and even heat, like PerthSaint (a MAME ship, actually), OhmToey, MaxTul, and even OhmSingto and their utterly brilliant acting. @he-is-lightning-in-a-bottle noted in the comments of one of my TT late-night posts that they didn’t see the MewGulf chemistry, and frankly, I didn’t either -- I didn’t see that these guys, as the acted characters of Tharn and Type, bodily and ferally WANTED AND VISCERALLY LOVED each other in fiction, the way that actor pairs like EarthMix, OhmNanon, FirstKhao, and others have since perfected in their work as their respective characters.

This post is about the responsibility that so-called “artists” bear when taking up the mantle of created content about a minority community, as well as the responsibility that we bear, as fans, as the majority cishet female fanbase, to consume this content. MAME and the slices of the BL industry that support her MUST understand that perpetuating stereotypes about a minority community WILL HAVE VISCERAL SOCIAL IMPACTS in REINFORCING THOSE STEREOTYPES, among a majority cishet fanbase and across society, to the danger of the existence of our queer family.

THIS IS WHY WE NEED MORE QUEER CONTENT BY QUEER FILMMAKERS.

That is the way in which this paradigm will be broken over time. And us in the cishet fanbase MUST STAND READY to support art -- in the words of dear friend @wen-kexing-apologist -- by queer family, for queer family, about queer family. We in the cishet majority bear a responsibility to break the paradigm of dangerous stereotypes, perpetrated by who create content through their own bigotry, either consciously or unconsciously -- or both.

[I finished TharnType in record time. I needed to get it out of my system. And now I’m fully invested in OffGun and having a DELIGHTFUL time with Theory of Love: I AM OBSESSED WITH THIS SUBVERSIVE, MINDBENDING SHOW. Ooooooooooooooooooh. Right up my alley! Hopefully I can muster my usual Monday review for ToL -- let’s see. I still feel somewhat broken by TT, but ToL and OffGun have been SUCH a salve.

Here’s the list as it stands currently. We have two changes! First, thanks to a suggestion by @wen-kexing-apologist and @lurkingshan, I’m adding a non-BL (!!!!) to the list in 3 Will Be Free. I have a number of separate Jojo Tichakorn priorities to achieve before Only Friends airs, and this is a big one; as this is a show from 2019, I want to see where GMMTV was willing to go in pushing queer content in non-BLs, and this is the perfect time to watch it. I’ll still include a review in this space!

And, per @absolutebl Sensei’s suggestion, I’ve added YYY (2020) to this, to enjoy Cheewin unhinged in what seems to be a disaster of a show -- but an important one for real queer representation (THANK YOU, SENSEI!). I’m excited for chaos. I’m watching it out of chronology with ITSAY and planning it as a mental break. As always, I’ll take any feedback on the list as it stands!

1) Love Sick and Love Sick 2 (2014 and 2015) (review here) 2) Make It Right (2016) (review here) 3) SOTUS (2016-2017) (review here) 4) Make It Right 2 (2017) (review here) 5) Together With Me (2017) (review here) 6) SOTUS S/Our Skyy x SOTUS (2017-2018) (review here) 7) Love By Chance (2018) (review here) 8) Kiss Me Again: PeteKao cuts (2018) (no review) 9) He’s Coming To Me (2019) (review here) 10) Dark Blue Kiss (2019) and Our Skyy x Kiss Me Again (2018) (review here) 11) TharnType (2019) 12) Senior Secret Love: Puppy Honey (BL cuts) (2016 and 2017) (I’m watching this out of order just to get familiar with OffGun before Theory of Love -- will likely not review) 13) Theory of Love (2019) (watching) 14) 3 Will Be Free (2019) (not a BL or an official part of the OGMMTVC watchlist, but an important harbinger of things to come in 2019 and beyond re: Jojo Tichakorn including queer content in non-BLs) 15) Dew the Movie (2019) (not an official part of the OGMMTVC watchlist, but I want to watch this in chronological order with everything else) 16) Until We Meet Again (2019-2020) 17) 2gether (2020) 18) Still 2gether (2020) 19) I Told Sunset About You (2020) 20) YYY (2020, out of chronology) 21) Manner of Death (2020-2021) (not a true BL, but a MaxTul queer/gay romance set within a genre-based show that likely influenced Not Me and KinnPorsche) 22) A Tale of Thousand Stars (2021) (review here) 23) A Tale of Thousand Stars (2021) OGMMTVC Fastest Rewatch Known To Humankind For The Sake Of Rewatching Our Skyy 2 x BBS x ATOTS 24) Lovely Writer (2021) 25) I Promised You the Moon (2021) 26) Not Me (2021-2022) 27) Bad Buddy (2021-2022) (thesis here) 28) Bad Buddy (2021-2022) and Our Skyy 2 x BBS x ATOTS (2023) OGMMTVC Rewatch 29) Secret Crush On You (2022) [watching for Cheewin’s trajectory of studying queer joy from Make It Right (high school), to SCOY (college), to Bed Friend (working adults)] 30) KinnPorsche (2022) (tag here) 31) The Eclipse (2022) (tag here) 32) GAP the Series (2022-2023) (Thailand’s first GL) 33) My School President (2022-2023) and Our Skyy 2 x My School President (2023) 34) Moonlight Chicken (2023) (tag here) 35) Bed Friend (2023) (tag here) (Cheewin’s latest show, depicting a queer joy journey among working adults)]

#turtles catches up with old gmmtv #turtles catches up with thai BLs #turtles catches up with the essential BLs #the old gmmtv challenge #ogmmtvc #tharntype #tharn x type #type x tharn #mew suppasit #gulf kanawut #mewgulf #bigotry in asian media #discrimination in asian media #discrimination in BLs #allyship

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thenixkat · 1 year

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Tolerance | Free Huey by TheStoryteller

#youtube #tolerance #the bigotry of tolerance #queerphobia #asian discrimination #propaganda #respectability politics #media analysis

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slyandthefamilybook · 4 months

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so this is something that's been on my mind for a while. I wish I could make a big magnum opus post on it but I don't have the energy

I've noticed in my travels that antisemitism seems to be one of the only forms of bigotry that's not self-evidently wrong. People may think they think it is, but I don't think they do. Every time antisemitism comes up as a topic, I see Jews sharing posts with twin explanations: one on why something is antisemitic, and one on why that's a bad thing

I've seen this a lot, and have fallen into it myself, although recently I've been trying to stop. On a post about Bibi changing his last name to "sound more indigenous": "Imagine if someone said this about Black people". On a post blaming Jews for what Israel does: "Imagine if someone said this about Chinese people". On a post accusing Jews of owning too many industries: "Imagine if someone said this about Asian people".

There was a post that went around claiming the IDF harvested the organs of Palestinians with very little evidence. (There are some great posts debunking that but that's not what this post is about.) I remember looking through the comments and one of them stuck out to me. I can't remember the wording exactly, but it went something like: "Israel heard about blood libel and thought why don't we just do that?". Ignoring the fact that blood libel is about the accuser, not the accused, this comment played over and over in my head. I thought about it as I went to sleep that night. Here was a person admitting that the thing they were saying has a strong resemblance to blood libel, but saying it anyway. It struck me that the underlying thought here was "it's not blood libel if it's true".

Once I realized that, I was stunned. I suddenly heard right-wingers in my head saying "it's not racist, it's just a fact that on average Black people have a lower I.Q.". And suddenly everything clicked into place. I know it might seem like an elementary idea, but it genuinely had never occurred to me

In the eyes of bigots, racism protects power. Antisemitism protects truth.

I've often said that all conspiracy theories eventually lead back to the Jews, and this newfound realization fit in nicely. A popular neo-Nazi slogan I've seen recently is "the goyim know". This idea that Jews have something to hide has saturated the political spectrum

Antisemitism is itself a conspiracy theory.

I realize that makes it sound like I don't think antisemitism is real. That's not what I'm saying, it absolutely is. But the way people talk about it is unlike how they talk about any other form of racism. The Jews are a shadowy cabal, who meet in secret to deplatform people who dare speak out against them. This is something we see on the right and the left, from Kanye accusing the Jews of destroying his career, to leftists accusing the "Zionists" of controlling social media.

Spouting antisemitism now becomes a moral good, a political necessity. It's the most important thing in the fight for truth

I understood then, why people on the left are so comfortable calling out accusations of antisemitism as "frivolous", "unserious", "over-used". How they think people are using antisemitism to silence them. You can't just say something is antisemitic and walk away. It won't stick. You also have to sit there on your computer for the next 2 hours, looking up sources to debunk their claims. You have to appeal to the truth. With any other form of bigotry, it's understood by leftists that whatever the facts may be, they don't excuse racism. The number of Black Americans who commit crimes doesn't justify saying Black people are all criminals. The number of First Nations people who own casinos doesn't justify playing off that stereotype. But when it comes to the Jews, it's open season. You can say anything you like about the Jews, as long as you think it's true. Being told that it's antisemitic isn't enough.

This is a great example of just that. "Yes it's antisemitic, but it's also true." The accusation of antisemitism becomes an accusation against the truth. So when it comes to people who really believe in what they're saying, it all just bounces off. This is why people never seem to learn. They hop from conspiracy theory to conspiracy theory. As long as someone assures them it's all true, the bigotry doesn't really factor. They apologize not when confronted with their own racism, but when confronted with the facts.

In this way, antisemitism has become baked into society, especially Christian societies. Because why wouldn't it? Yes, the Jew is greedy, yes the Jew is sneaky, yes the Jew is bloodthirsty. But the Jew is above all a liar. They lie about their names, their culture, their history, their victories, their defeats

I wish I knew how to end this post. Some sort of call to action, some idea of how to fix this going forward. But I have no idea. I suspect if I did, we might not all be quite where we are right now

#atlas entry #jew #jewish #judaism #jumblr #antisemitism #bigotry

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socialjusticeinamerica · 1 year

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There are hundreds of millions of southern European white people with an olive (tan) complexion. It’s what happens when white folk live in warm sunny climates. Same is true in South America where tens of millions more of white/white identifying people have been living for generations. Being Hispanic or having a Spanish name doesn’t mean you automatically aren’t white or capable of being a racist.

Fascism held sway in Spain and to a lesser extent next door in Portugal for a good part of the 20th century. Fascism, usually hand in hand with racism, also has a history in South and Central America. Even if someone doesn’t identify as white doesn’t mean they can’t be racist, or xenophobic, etc. Bigotry exists outside the box that young Americans want to fit it in. Only a small percentage of Europeans are pale, blonde/red, and blue-eyed. The overwhelming majority have dark hair and brown eyes, and many more are olive. This simplistic bullshit that someone can’t be a white supremacist because they have an ethnic sounding name is ridiculous MAGA talking points that’s being bought into by Dems. Republikkkan talking points have become so pervasive and so persistent that a majority of progressives buy into them without question or even being aware of it. We’re wasting time debating the perceived identity of a killer that was radicalized for the sole purpose of murdering and intimidating us.

In point of fact the press using the term white supremacist to describe the Allen, Texas shooter is in itself fallacious. He was a staunch xenophobe (and repeated “Great Replacement Theory” tropes learned from Tucker Carlson) and billions world wide don’t like immigrants, it isn’t limited to Caucasian Americans. I’ve said this before, Republikkkans can not generate enough angry white guys so they have been recruiting heavily among “Hispanics” to bolster their numbers. 1/3 of of Hispanics are registered Republikkkans. They have also been recruiting from other groups with much less success. Stop putting people from South America into boxes, that methodical behavior is an Anglo-Saxon characteristic that was transplanted here. Decades of radicalization are bearing fruit for the far-right while we quibble over whether or not the Republikkkans are actually attacking us.

People from South America identify by national origin just like everyone else. They’re Colombians, Peruvians, etc. Terms like Hispanic, Latino, Chicano, etc are inventions of American immigration officials trying to fit people into boxes. Why are we (our media) so obsessed with this when Republikkkans are launching their decades long planned assault on our basic human rights.

MAGAts, white supremacists, Nazis, xenophobe, Aryan Brotherhood, Atom-Waffen, III%’ers, etc can and do find kindred spirits beyond national origin and outdated stereo-types based on appearances. Our enemies are evolving and branching out. We must be aware of their present and historical attempts to spin what they want us to believe. Further you need to know historical context. American racist groups admire fascist dictatorships from South and Central America and wish to emulate them, hence the “Right Wing Death Squad” logos. They admire and learn terrorist tactics from radical Islamic groups as well. Look at WWII, you’d think the “Aryan” German Nazis would have had a problem with the Asian Japanese. Just the opposite, both the Japanese and Germans at the time felt they were racially superior to their respective neighbors and bonded over being kindred spirits. It wasn’t a political expediency. They were too far apart to support each other or have any meaningful trade. They were fascist states that both wanted to impose their own unique fascism in there own sphere. We can’t let history repeat itself either here or abroad.

Not enough people in our society are taking the threat of Republikkkan fascists seriously. If you’re taking the time to read this rant then you were already in the know but the general public, both our side and theirs are not. This threat goes beyond the identity politics so en vogue with young people, not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it’s part of a much bigger war against us all. Republikkkans don’t even realize they’ve been co-opted by Nazi’s and the few that do don’t care.

I’ll keep repeating this ad nauseum but the racists, homophobes, militias, evangelicals, xenophobes, Republikkkan politicians, and even the fascists are all foot soldiers duped into waging war against the rest of us by the billionaire oligarchs and their corporations. It always comes back to money. Yes they share most of the same beliefs and each thinks they are manipulating the others. But the only ones with the power (dollars) to bring this shit storm together in a cohesive fashion are the oligarchs. The Rupert Murdochs, Elon Musks, Koch, Walton, etc are coordinating and funding everything for power and profit. Meanwhile we are fighting a Hydra of Nazis, Confederates, Klansmen, evangelists, and armed militias.

In 2020 we took to the streets to protest the George Floyd execution but that quickly morphed into a widespread national protest of Trump. We can’t only begin massive protests when one of our African-American allies is killed unjustly. We should be doing this for every major issue of the day; abortion rights, disenfranchisement of black voters, gun control, trans-persecution, preservation of Medicare/Social Security, migrant rights, union rights, and all basic human rights that the corporate/Christo/fascist/Republikkkans are taking away from us. They are no longer content to persecute people of color and are coming for us all, at once.

This isn’t an intellectual exercise anymore, we have become a de facto fascist state under the yoke of an oppressive and hostile Republikkkan Party. They aren’t even pretending to disguise it anymore. Their leaders and political spokesmen are openly telling us they are going to strip our rights and begin sending us to death camps. They’re past the concentration camps already and we barely even protested those on the border. Between their control of the state legislatures and the Supreme Court they are doing as they please and will begin overturning election results in 2024. A few more takeovers of state legislatures and they will hold a Constitutional Convention to write a MAGA/Republikkkan Constitution.

Now is the time to fight. Resisting didn’t work and a tidal wave of GQP laws and SCOTUS decisions prove that every day. You can not take the high road with Nazis or anyone who is literally trying to kill you.

Rant concluded. Please bear in mind this is food for thought and not an incitement to violence. Remember John Lewis and his “good trouble.” Also try to refrain from violent comments about Republikkkans in comments, notes, and reblogs. We certainly don’t want any of us to be de-platformed by admins.

✌️

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handweavers · 9 months

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i've gained 150+ new followers a day since making that post about media consumption and im trying to go through as many as i can to weed out fash and other bigots but bear with me cause there's just too many to keep up with and i'm running out of steam

so if you're a new follower you should know that i'm a marxist leninist and a transsexual chronically ill brown asian craftsperson and i have zero tolerance for bigotry including transmisogyny, sinophobia, islamophobia, anti-union and anti-worker rhetoric as well as any support whether explicit or implicit for western imperialist projects and if i see any bullshit in my activity you're getting hardblocked ❤️ peace and love on planet earth

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neotrances · 6 months

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I feel like anime is more popular in the west than ever so there’s increasingly an obvious line between. frankly being a normal fan of things and then orientalist weeb behavior. Most gen z nerds cis or trans have seen an anime by now, you actually don’t need to fetishize asian ppl to alleviate dysphoria. It’s not obscure enough media in the US to claim that weeb-specific orientalism is harmless anymore and nobody believed them in the first place so

exactly and like i said before this is a race issue not a trans one bc cis white women do the same exact thing a large portion of “egirl” stuff is just anime waifus shit and it’s incredibly wide spread in the west it is a huge problem but ppl either brush it off as a joke or unimportant bc they don’t have to deal with the hate crimes and targeted bigotry and sex tourism that comes in response to it, it’s never been harmless but especially now it’s too big to ignore

#✉️

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solarwynd · 4 months

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This whole misgendering thing is also rooted in bigotry and ironically in toxic masculinity too. Because it is reinforcing toxic masculinity to automatically emasculate a man who is comfortable in his masculinity enough to also embrace a bit of feminity. It's just ironic to claim jimin is free of toxic masculinity, which he is but it defeats the purpose to then force toxic masculinity ideas on him by basically implying he's less of a man or isn't one at all despite him being openly secure in his identity as a man because he's non toxic. It shows those people are extremely narrow minded. And jimin being an East Asian man adds layers to it because whether people acknowledge it or not they do not move like this with men of other ethnicities. At least not to this extreme. Those comments are often instigated by people with no understanding of intersectionality or the underlying meaning of associating specific terms and ideas to targeted pocs groups. Even if some don't necessarily have bad intentions it has racist undertones. It's similar to the hyper masculinization black women face. Jimin is a pretty asian man and they automatically use that to force woman leaning ideas on him or even change his identity. Borderline deshumanizing too because the way they speak you would think jimin is some character and not a real person. The anonymity online also gives too many people some sense of power because truth be told most of them can't even hold a proper conversation irl and would never dare say this to anyone's face let alone jimin's. Social media has done damages to some people because the amount of stereotypes they have assimilated and force onto others some even under the pretense of comfort or care is insane truly.

.🎯

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hussyknee · 1 year

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do u really not see the difference btwn writing fanfic on the internet and buying a game whose storyline is actively being written by white supremacists and having the money go directly into the pocket of the most vocal & influential terf in the UK? that's not even touching all of the other racist and offensive bs in her series inc her antisemitism, appropriating first nations cultures, her asian racism, etc? i guess thats why you dont have 'antisemitics dni' on your blog

First, let me be clear – I do not give one single shit about Harry Potter. They are the best memories of my extremely shitty adolescence, I still read fanfic from time to time, but other than that, if I never hear the word "Harry Potter" again it will be too soon. I care about the fact that you clowns are

encouraging bullies and endangering mentally ill marginalized fans

leeching the air from leftist and queer discourse

fuelling a Western culture war that distracts from combating systemic transphobia

making suffering Black and brown communities, who mostly see white and Western trans people, think that trans people don't have any real problems beyond video games

Now, on to your ask:

I said never said not buying the game was the same as writing fanfic on the internet. I said that the furor over buying the game is leading to everyone who had anything to do with Harry Potter, including just writing fanfic, being bullied. I've had to unfollow so many people for reblogging posts attacking people for being in the *fandom*.

Asking people to refrain from doing something to prove that they care, especially demanding that they don't, has never in the history of activism worked. Black people have been speaking out against copaganda shows forever and STILL get harrassed. Indigenous people have been asking people to boycott Avatar and gotten nothing. Some people comply, but more do the thing simply out of contrarianism, and the entire issue becomes a culture war divided along political affiliation. People on the right go out of their way to do the thing, the people on the center and center-left won't really care, and people who identify as leftist divorce themselves even more from the rest of the left as being no better than the right, which eventually devastating results when it comes to actual elections and agitating for political change.

What works a lot better is harm reduction. Pirating is harm reduction, asking the HP fandom to offset JKR's fuckery by making their own merch, promoting indie games and donating to trans healthcare funds is harm reduction. People won't stand for being policed, but they like giving and also not paying for stuff with a clear conscience. You would have raised so much fucking money and promoted so many different things in all this time you've spent giving the game negative engagement clicks and keeping it trending on social media so long after its release.

You keep insisting that people shouldn't be fans because JKR equals her fandom with her own influence. This is called buying into the right-wing narrative. The woman is delusional (I can't think of a non-ableist word atm, and I honestly think that she's not all stable) and you're enabling her and her terf cult. We created the online HP fandom ourselves back in the aughts, before there was any merch, before movie rights were ever sold to WB, a full decade before her advertising machine ever woke up to the fact that an internet fandom existed. JKR has lost relevance for HP fans a long time ago; imagine the slap in the face for her if the fandom starts countering her bigotry by very prominently engaging in trans activism? The JKR terf cult in the HP fandom are a minority, like TERFs themselves (they're only so loud because the right-wing promotes the shit out of them). The vast majority of fans are just the kind of vaguely well-meaning cis people who don't agree with transphobes but are pretty ignorant about trans issues. And I do mean the vast majority, because literally a billion people grew up on her books and only a bare fraction is on social media at all, and even fewer even see the leftist drive to boycott the franchise.

Let's talk demographics. Because of the aforementioned vastness of consumers, the majority of HP fans are cis het, abled, neurotypical Millennials. Because of the way internet penetration works, the majority of HP fans online and even in fandom are white or Western. Leftist spaces mostly attract young and marginalized people, and transformative fandom is full of neurodivergent women and queer people. Which means the majority of people you're reaching are young queer neurodivergent people who have limited economic power themselves. And the people most vulnerable to and impacted by policing and harrassment are trans, Black and brown, Jewish, mentally ill, poor. Do you see the problem? You're policing the very bottom rungs of the socio-economic ladder on the off-chance of maybe influencing a privileged few who might give a damn.

This is literally why we say that boycotts, especially over social media, don't fucking work. Firstly because they penalize the most disenfranchised consumers, it's hard to reach enough people to even explain why they matter, it's hard to keep up with the constant discourse and changing information, and it relies entirely on performance. Someone can stay quiet or nod along furiously to whatever you're saying and then just...go out and buy the thing. Social censure doesn't work when you have the option of not having to face the consequences. Contrary to hellsite opinion, the Fantastic Beasts franchise died because it sucked, and Harry Potter is dying because it's fading from relevance and JKR is being an embarrassment. The wider market doesn't even know y'all exist.

As for the game being racist and antisemitic...you come on my blog, a South Asian who has been in fandom for twenty years, and try to tell me about racism in media???? NINETY-NINE PERCENT OF ALL MEDIA IS RACIST AND ANTISEMITIC YOU ABSOLUTE CLOWN. I'm from South Asia, our children grow up on books written by colonizers! LORD OF THE RINGS is white supremacy! NARNIA is white supremacy! Disney and Marvel is one of the biggest figures in US military industrial complex that razed the Middle East to the ground. It's so ubiquitous that we have to accept the racism and white supremacy as a matter of course to engage with any Western media! And even then fandom is so racist it's hard to even exist in it! We get run out of it when we try to talk about it. You suck on white supremacy every single day you live like it's your Mum's teat! Do you know what it's like to hear whiteys ranting that people who consume this one game they hate are being antisemitic and racist??? While still fawning??? Over cop shows???? And Disney???? And sending Black people??? Death threats??? Over a game???

I don't say "anti-Semites DNI" for the same reason I don't say "racists DNI". Nobody identifies as a racist or antisemite, that's not how systemic oppression works. Radfem and Zionist and Communist are political identities. Radical feminism is underpinned by transphobia and racism, Zionism is currently entrenched in Palestine occupation, Western communists refuse to acknowledge USSR and Global South genocides. See how that works?

Bitch, you didn't just come at me about JKR's indigenous cultural appropriation when I was among the few who were trying to discourage people from supporting Fantastic Beasts back in 2016 and literally got flamed for it. You people did not give a single shit about Natives back then, and you don't give one now. Just like you don't actually care about Jews and never did. I literally never heard about why and how openly alt-right people keep getting this kind of power and position in the gaming industry. Conversations about antisemitism in gaming and antisemitic tropes in entertainment haven't gotten this much traction. No wider revelations about how entertainment media directly funding and promoting social harms. But sure, it's about antisemitism and racism and has absolutely nothing to do with a mess of white queers realizing they can weaponize it like a cudgel against anyone they believe are against them. We know you whites. You care about excuses to take the moral high ground without having to do any self-interrogation or cost to yourself.

Finally, to give y'all one example of where the current discourse around this stupid shit is at:

Fuck you.

#harry potter #fuck jkr #transphobia #antisemitism #racism #fantastic beasts #western leftists #white privilege #white people #imperialism #knee of huss

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ikosburneraccount · 7 months

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okay so

i am fairly new to your blog and understand the anti ts stuff and i just wanted to say that even with all the racism (i only know the recent stuff and im appalled, who knows what has been going on for years) poc from asian countries still love her. im indian and i have SO. MANY. FRIENDS. who absolutely eat up everything she does and follow her blindly even though theyre willing to call out other forms of racism and bigotry by other people and get so hurt if you try and call ts out. they organise ts events and are a really huge and vocal fandom in india as well. their hypocrisy and obsession is so weird and annoying.

I wish I could tell you how many times I read this over Anon. This is INSANE TO ME!! I completely understand why you're annoyed with their hypocrisy, because this is boggling my mind. Like I cannot stop reading this over I am so confused by their actions 😭

I've heard that they're a lot of Asian Swifties but I've never met them IRL or really seen them online either (IS is the only person I can think of), so thank you for letting me know that they do in fact exist and unfortunately in large numbers as well.

I'm also struggling with how PoC Swifties rationalize liking her music despite TS's own explicit racism. Especially since so many PoC Swifties in my life (they are not my friends. I simply know them) are like your friends who aren't afraid to call out racism, sexism, homo/transphobia, etc. yet will openly stream and yearn to TS.

(Although, I will say, ALL of them fetishize white people. Like they only go after and want to date white people. It's the weirdest and most unsettling phenomenon I've witnessed specifically among PoC Swifties.)

I think it's a demonstration of how flawed their own ideological commitments are if they can push aside and ignore racist actions of their favorite artist because their music is just "so good." It shows who and what they're willing to sacrifice to continue justifying their love for this racist musician, and them getting defensive just shows that they know liking her is inconjunct with their proclaimed beliefs.

When I see people act like this on social media, I often question their ulterior motives when they call out racism and bigotry. To what extent does their solidarity apply to, and to who? Why do they present themselves as left leaning politically when their actions say otherwise?

It undermines their actions and commitment and shows their internalized racism that they can continue supporting a racist artist like this. I have dealt with PoC like this, who present themselves as an ally, who say all the right words and right things and yet their actions consistently undermine their actions which led me to distancing myself from them and in my experience, unfortunately reinforcing my skepticism with other PoC :(

It's why people say PoC solidarity is a myth, because your friends are an example of how they would rather continue stanning a racist white artist knowing she's dated someone who's consumed and masturbated to pornographic content that explicitly showed torturing Black women. (here's a link to a reddit post that explains it (sfw)).

It's easier for them to ignore what she did than it is to hold themselves accountable knowing that she dated someone like this and what it means for them and what it says about their beliefs. You're right; not only are they hypocrites, but they display blatant cognitive dissonance by stanning TS.

tl;dr you're not crazy, they really aren't down for their beliefs like they say/act like they are if they continue defending/stanning a blatant racist white woman like her. they should work on their internalized racism and not bother calling themselves allies to other PoC (esp. black women) as long as they stan her.

I hope this is a satisfactory response to your ask, anon (also I really hope this makes sense) 😭 Thanks for sending this in!

#mine #ooc #anti taylor swift #ask

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eretzyisrael · 7 months

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by Zach Kessel

Last week, I wrote about the upcoming Palestine Writes Literature Festival, to be held at the University of Pennsylvania from September 22 to 24. Featuring as speakers noted antisemites, running the gamut from Marc Lamont Hill to Roger Waters, the festival promises to be a veritable cornucopia of hatred of Jews: calls for ethnic cleansing of Jews from the land of Israel, accusations of Jews being subhuman, insinuations that a Jewish cabal controls American media, you name it. If it’s a form of antisemitism, it’s sure to be found on Penn’s campus this weekend. I hope it’s a coincidence that the festival’s last day coincides with Yom Kippur, the holiest day in Judaism.

There’s an update to this story, and for those familiar with the rising tide of antisemitism on college campuses across the country, it shouldn’t come as a surprise. Since the festival began drawing attention over the past week or so, there have been strident responses from the university’s Jewish alumni and supporters. More than 2,000 such concerned individuals signed an open letter sent to the university’s president, Liz Magill, urging her to issue a statement — without equivocating or falling into both-sides-ism, as higher-education administrators often do when they lack the courage to condemn antisemitism — “specifically denouncing the event’s platforming of known antisemitic speakers.” The letter’s authors noted that, had a university department sponsored a festival promoting anti-black or anti-Asian racism, homophobia, or any other kind of bigotry, there’s no question that Penn would immediately distance itself from and condemn the event. Of course, within the academy and progressive intelligentsia more broadly, Jews are themselves oppressors, and antisemitism isn’t a legitimate form of hatred deserving of attention.

Though the University of Pennsylvania does and should aim to foster an environment of free expression, the letter notes, “neither academic freedom nor freedom-of-speech principles prevent the university from using its own voice to speak out against antisemitism wherever and whenever it occurs, especially on campus.” The Palestine Writes organizers have a right to voice their opinions, but they do not have the right to do so on Penn’s land.

It turns out that’s too much to ask of Magill. In a statement obtained by Jewish Insider, she made perfunctory comments about how the university opposes all forms of hate including antisemitism, how Waters has been roundly condemned for his past words and actions, and how she is “personally committed more than ever to addressing antisemitism in all forms.” You’d think part of that commitment might entail disallowing such vile displays from taking place on the campus she runs. Apparently, at least in Magill’s eyes, it doesn’t. She invoked the university’s “responsibility to foster open dialogue and cultural diversity on campus.” But there’s a massive difference between open dialogue and cultural diversity and tacitly endorsing speakers who traffic in this kind of antisemitism.

And then, Thursday morning, something at once entirely predictable and yet bone-chilling for Penn’s Jewish students happened: A student at the university vandalized the school’s Hillel building. As the Daily Pennsylvanian reported, “a regular attendee” opened the building’s doors for a morning service, and the culprit entered:

“When I walked into Hillel, I noticed that the lobby was completely trashed — one of the podiums was smashed, one of the tables was smashed. There was stuff everywhere,” [University of Pennsylvania student Marc] Fishkind said. . . . “He immediately started smashing things, yelling ‘F**k the Jews’ and ‘They killed JC,’” Fishkind recounted from what he was told by someone who was there, adding that eventually, the perpetrator ran out of Hillel as the police arrived.

Make no mistake: As university president, Magill bears responsibility. By allowing the Palestine Writes Literature Festival to take place on her campus, and by allowing multiple academic departments to co-sponsor the event, she has helped foster an environment of antisemitism at Penn that empowers people like the student who vandalized the Hillel building. Magill doesn’t seem to understand that her inaction has consequences and that by building a permission structure for antisemitism, she has allowed antisemitic acts to occur.

It’s insane that we have to keep writing about events such as these. From my May 2022 piece in National Review:

Last month, several student groups signed a statement written by NYU School of Law’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter defending terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians and accusing Zionists of controlling the media, a well-worn antisemitic canard. On April 26, Georgetown Law School’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter hosted Mohammed El-Kurd, an activist who has accused Israelis of harvesting the organs of dead Palestinians and of having “an unquenchable thirst for Palestinian blood & land.” In recent weeks, the Rutgers chapter of Alpha Epsilon Pi — a historically Jewish fraternity — faced multiple incidents of antisemitic harassment. First, activists waving Palestinian flags yelled antisemitic slurs and spat at fraternity brothers. A few days later, vandals threw eggs at AEPi’s house during the fraternity’s Holocaust Remembrance Day proceedings — the second year in a row the house was egged during Yom HaShoah. On Saturday, April 23, at Northwestern, where I am an undergraduate, the Students for Justice in Palestine chapter organized a candlelight vigil and painted messages across Northwestern’s “Rock,” a boulder on campus that student organizations paint for various promotional purposes. By Tuesday morning, alongside the SJP chapter’s Instagram username, the rock bore the slogan “From the River to the Sea.”

Hatred of Jews on campus, of course, didn’t end in May 2022. Antisemitic attacks at American universities have nearly doubled in 2023, and almost 60 percent of Jewish college students in the United States have either experienced or witnessed antisemitism at their places of learning, according to an Ipsos poll. Another Ivy League school, Princeton University, has included on a humanities course syllabus the book The Right to Maim, which claims that Israelis harvest Palestinians’ organs, a variant on the time-worn “blood libel” canard.

The longer academic institutions take to actually address antisemitism on their campuses, the longer they’re allowing it to flourish. By hiding behind rote affirmations of a school’s commitment to diversity, to equity, to whatever progressive buzzwords they like to emblazon on their overpaid and underworked administrators’ doors — and by refusing to act when the time comes, like right now — university presidents like Liz Magill create the conditions in which, for instance, Hillel buildings are vandalized. I’m left with only one question: What did she think was going to happen?

#palestine writes literature festival #antisemitism #university of pennsylvania #campus antisemitism #liz magill

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discluded · 2 years

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I'm so so so proud of Mile for his bravery today.

"I am not gay but I love men too." —Mile Phakphum in 2019

when I found this post a couple of weeks ago, I showed it to a couple of my (queer) friends who are not in this fandom (yet), and we kind of laughed about it together.

"Boy do I have good news for you buddy," I said! The truth is, if you won't grow up with the context that that's even a possibility, you never consider it might be something that applies to you too.

Being queer is hard enough in the west, but often imbued in the context of western media, it's hard to conceptualize how much the intersection of imperialist homophobia has shaped the experience of queer identity abroad especially in the 20th and 21st centuries. Cultures with historically high tolerance or acceptance rates of queer identity retracted to meet the level of intolerance and bigotry exported to them by western colonialism.

Thailand is considered one of the most lgbtq+ friendly countries in Asia, but while it boasts acceptance for queer tourists to come play, the actual lived reality of being Thai and queer is more complicate. It takes less than 20 seconds to find dozens of news articles reporting on this contradiction. Thailand still, as of 2022, hasn't legalized same-sex marriage (they have same-sex unions... but it's about 10 years too late for me to hash out the separate but equal argument).

All this is to say, it's hard. It's so hard. Mile, Mile's family is well known in Thailand, even before KPTS. And now he's a bit of an international celebrity too. There's a lot of eyes on him, a lot of money riding on sponsorships that tie funding from one project to the next.

I'm not that brave. That's all I'll say about myself publically. Now Imagine trying to process your new pieces of identity, your feelings for this guy that's literally been simmering for 10 years, all of this in the context of millions of eyes on you while also being responsible for a production associated with a ton of money?

I don't care what you believe or want to believe, but if you believe he's an honest person and he's been honest with his fans this entire time then please don't demean his bravery today as you misinterpreting it and being delusional. Especially from a man who, at least for all intents and purposes, only realized he was queer in the last couple of years.

He could have chosen to back down from that honesty and the bravery needed for that. But he didn't. Regardless of what you think is going on with his relationship with Apo, please be mindful just what he's done, of himself, is really moving to a lot of queers, Asian or not, who haven't or can't be as brave as him.

#mile phakphum #mileapo #tentatively #PRIDE #they tried to buy my pride #but that just ain't up for sale #lgbtq #queer #mileapo and pride

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bloodpen-to-paper · 10 months

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Nimona's Subtle Racial Placement in a World of Wealth Gaps

The racial placement of Nimona was not lost on me, and its something I'm seeing more of in media, so lets talk about how Nimona did it and why:

The Queen was black, and as a black woman she was the one who chose Ballister, a commoner, a brown kid, to be the next Knight of the Realm. She chose him above all the elitist kids because she saw his merit, and chose not to let the status of the others affect her decisions. And she was killed for it by a white insurrectionist.

For years Ballister was bullied by Todd, a white man, while the other elitist knights did nothing. Except for Ambrosius, an Asian man (presumably since he's modeled after Eugene Lee Yang), who not only stood up for him, but ended up becoming so close to him that they became lovers.

There's a lot of diversity in this movie, both within the wealth classes (the highest position of power being held by a black woman while Nimona, who's whole story is about being oppressed and ostracized, is white), and among the general populace of multi-racial and ethnic side characters. Yet there's still mostly white knights among the Queen's guard, not to mention the original story of Gloreth revolves around a white girl brought into legacy. You could even argue colorism with how Ambrosius has a lighter complexion (especially considering he was originally white in the comics) and is brought up as the trusted descendent of Gloreth over the commoner Ballister.

Despite being a movie about classism that's set in a diverse world, Nimona still has a subtle racial aspect within its character dynamics. It does this for a very important reason: to bridge the gap between art and reality. In real life, we have white supremacy. In real life, we have capitalism. And Nimona uses its racial aspects to further make its point about the class divide and bigotry within a caste system.

Racial supremacy and the dismantling of it is a complex matter. Diversifying the world is easiest to achieve among the working class; you can show people of different skin tones in movies and TV, hire a more diverse racial pool within work environments, etc. But what gets difficult is changing the diversity within the elite spaces, because their place in the wealth gap has made them near impossible to touch from a working class position. Diversifying the space in a local diner? Easy, as long as the manager is willing. Diversifying the spaces within the Electoral College? Harvard alumni? HBO Executives? Good luck, you'd give an arm and a leg just to change maybe one person's position in those spaces. Because the power is so hoarded and privatized that changing anything, like racial diversity, would include upending the entire system that allowed for them to exist as they do. A local diner involves being able to convince one person in a small position to either change their model, or changing out that person with someone with a different model. The systems of supremacy don't have roots as deep within that scenario, but the elitists? They are the system. And to change them is to change the system entirely. You cannot eliminate the racism from elite spaces without dissolving the wealth gap.

Nimona shows this subtly, in that among the common people its super diverse (black news anchors, people of different skin tones occupying the same spaces, etc), but within the elite institutions, the Knight of the Realm was always someone who was from the elite, and had nepotism to get them through. Ambrosius was expected to be the Knight because of his heritage, and most of the knights in the guard along him and Ballister were white and had Old Money. The movie didn't need to include racism in their message against classism, but the creators wanted to bridge that gap between "movie metaphor for real world issues" and actual real world issues. They created "commoner" and made sure the audience knew that represented not just the "working class", but the racial working class. They made sure the implications of racial bias were there and readable for the people who could relate to the struggle of being a person of color in a supremacist society. They even made queer people feel seen, not just with Ambrosius and Ballister's relationship, but with Nimona's entire allegory for gender-queerness. Its a movie that aims to have its art reflect reality for the sake of making people get invested in their own real world issues within our real world society. Many "progressive" works now utilize talking points from progressive movements without actually giving representation to those affected, causing a case of appropriation painted as representation. Nimona aimed to create genuine representation that would be seen by the people who needed it most, not just with the obvious messages from the story-telling, but from the subtle bridges that connect this piece of fiction to the very real world it took inspiration from. And I think its safe to say Nimona achieved just that.

#anyway go watch Nimona #right now #and Sea Beast while you're at it #nimona #nimona movie #politics #wealth gap #racism #classism

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a-picrew-a-day · 9 months

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im kinda new here to this blog, and im sorry if this annoys you but im a harry potter fan and (assuming you dont like it because of jk rowling being transphobic) im not transphobic or anything of the sort, i have lots of trans friends who i love and support. just because we like the franchise doesnt mean WE'RE transphobic too. and in your dni part in your pinned post saying that harry potter fans cant interact i feel like thats not really fair to us potterheads that are decent and fun people that also enjoy the franchise.

again, really if this is an inconvenience, i just wanted to share why i thought that part of your pinned post wasnt really fair, i hope you have an awesome rest of your day

hey anon! rising from the dead to post this lol. I have a whole list of reasons why I have that DNI (listed below) however the short answer is, as an ex-fan myself, I don’t feel safe around fans excusing her actions for the sake of nostalgia, so feel free to simply not follow me! <3

I understand your intent with this. Harry Potter was my first ever form of comfort media growing up, and it’s held a place in my heart for years.

however, looking back, Harry Potter included racism and antisemitism (one of the few canonically black characters being named ‘Shacklebolt,’ Cho Chang, those two Indian girls I forget the names off, pretty much everything about the gringotts goblins and the arc with the house elves that enjoy being slaves, which is literally the excuse enslavers used during civil war here in America), which is reason enough to not want it’s fans to interact.

JK herself is also a terrible person, which you seem to already be aware of, supporting businesses made by people who identify with the terms TERF and feminazi. again, I get that you find enjoyment and maybe even comfort in the stories. but many minorities, not just trans people, have asked for people to stop showing support of her or her series. I don’t have Twitter so I can’t back up this future claim, but I have also been told that jk takes any support of her media, even if those people who like it don’t align with her beliefs, as support of her beliefs as well

I have also been told that JK is using her money to basically be the main financial funder of transphobia in the UK (I am American so feel free to correct me on that, UK followers :])

but overall, here’s the important part: if your allyship (or inter-community support) of black, Jewish, trans, Asian, etc. people (<- at least those are the main four I see asking for people to stop supporting jk or hp) stops when you enjoy something, you are not an ally. you seem to be using your trans friends as an excuse but that does not blind me from the fact you are actively engaging in media made by someone who has harmed many minorities and refuses to acknowledge or change her ways.

I, too, have friends in the minorities effected by JK’s bigotry. I have Jewish friends and black friends and Asian friends and pretty much my entire friend group is trans. plus, I’m trans myself. and all of them that I’ve talked to about this have said pretty much the same thing: we do not feel safe around you guys, and will not feel safe as long as you continue to side with Harry Potter or JK in any way

your fandom allows racist, anti-jew, transphobic people to thrive. don’t blame me for wanting to avoid that (‘not all Harry Potter fans’ and ‘not all men’ are pretty much the same, except you have to choose to be a fan of Harry Potter)

anyways I’m not gonna talk about this anymore, I’m not really made for the discourse side of the internet. I just wanted to share my perspective, as a trans person and someone who used to be a fan since childhood, in the hopes that maybe you were just ignorant (as younger me was) to this stuff. there are a million other posts on this site and others explaining (and explaining better than I probably did) why supporting Harry Potter is supporting jk, and why even if it wasn’t, it’s still a red flag to many minorities. I hope you continue to educate yourself and put your money where your mouth is in terms of supporting trans people

(also literally what was the point of this ask? what were you expecting to happen? /gen)

#not a picrew #tw harry potter #tw jkr mention #tw jk rowling #tw transphobes #transphobia #tw bigotry

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rametarin · 4 months

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That weird phenomenon.

The people running around screaming at non-Asian people that if you like Asian girls, you must be a pedo.

They aren't right wing white supremacists. These are the leftist of the left, "women have curves," "healthy at any size," "it's a CULTURE CRIME to feature a woman in art and media that is skinny because it gives SOCIETY a false ideal of feminine beauty we don't like." believing, progressives.

But just like how progressives relied on the eco-warriors to be eco-terrorists in the 80s and 90s, just to go "they aren't affiliated with us; those are actually eco-fascists and have more in common with the right wing. :^)", mark my words.

5-15 years from now they're going to talk about this phenomenon in sociology textbooks and talk about how it was a bunch of insecure right wing white men and women screaming about how Asian femininity was infantile and the big worry was actually Yellow Panic and fear of miscegenation. When the reality is, the motivation of the people objecting to skinny or fit Asian women in media is because it contradicts the fat and mid to ugly standard they want to be for iconic female beauty.

They'll genuinely try to play this bullshit off as the sort of shit under the same umbrella as Trump and Ben Shapiro and David Duke. And completely abandon any attachment to it to these fat advocates, mad that media won't bend over backwards to put, "more realistic women" in every star slot by preference.

Because they are genuinely using this as an argument for why more slender Asian motion capture and body types are somehow wrong for body models. In Asia, or outside of it. They're unironically saying Asian women have "underdeveloped" bodies and those that prefer them are effectively dangerous monsters.

And then because, "the left is inherently anti-racist, so you can't have racist progressivism," that's the line of thinking that will attribute bigotry and ignorance in the name of their goals and objectives for culture on arbitrary "right wing conservatives" in abstract concept.

Imagine if you could rob someone's house and go, "It wasn't me, I'm a Good Boy. Good Boys don't rob banks, so it couldn't have been me. But I hear Daniel the Bad Boy Bank Robber has robbed banks before; clearly, he's the person that must've done it. Because as a Good Boy, I'm incapable of that.

That's the sort of response you get when you say that certain flavors of leftism have fascistic or authoritarian centralism desiring streaks. They go, "Nuh-uh, that's right-wing. So those are actually right wing, because the left opposes authoritarianism and fascism."

People that will run as far left candidates, aspire to impose far left policies, impose ludicrous policies for principle reasons no matter what reality says. Retroactively, they'll have what's wrong with them get discredited as more problems from the right wing, because, "that's the sort of thing conservatives do."

FUCKING OWN your ignorance and bigotry and accept racism and bigotry and stupid values based on them can absolutely be progressive, left-wing views. Running around screaming that people (specifically, whites. Specifically, men) are pedophiles because Asian women aren't, "REAL women with curves" unless they're fat and average to ugly, is asinine and terrible, and anyone that purports to be progressive at all should feel ashamed of the mental gymnastics and philosophical corruption it took to get here.

They're just clinging to this idea that NOT trying to put fat and average women up on a pedestal in the media as The Hot Girl icons is somehow a disservice to them, that somehow you're supposed to just tokenistically "make" a body type and standard popular because "oppressed." That somehow you can manipulate what society finds attractive by telling them, "society finds this attractive."

It's a pipe dream of autocrats that believe they have, with the stroke of a pen, the ability to rewrite the DNA of their entire populace as if they're objects, and that they have the right to do so. That principle matters more than the reality of DNA and personal choice because, "my principle is RIGHT!"

It's so embarrassing being a westerner that enjoys Asian media, because seeing the intersectionalists try and sneak in to being the rudder of foreign Asian content and top from the bottom on what their media and literary culture is, or is allowed to be, makes me worried they'll see this not as the specific political philosophy it is, but as the west itself trying to sabotage and control their culture, thoughts and minds.

You intersectionalists are every bit as imperialist as you view any other sort of imperiaism, you just do mental backflips to define the imperialism as something limited to wrong people, not good right people with your correct views and values. You determine something to be absolutely true despite having subjective origins and roots, based on the idea nothing objectively matters more than your subjective values and principles, and interpretation of the world must begin and end bowing to those. That is the stubborn source that defines things the way they are under postmodernist social constructionism, and why they're at such odds when reality threatens what they view as civil rights.

It's an incredibly bad faith, dogmatic system of understanding and interpreting the world that you don't even have the temerity to cite singular books from, because you know if you cite the literature consistently, that'd bring debate of and to it, and it's easier just to have your ideological opponents swing at shadows, not know where you're getting your values or political culture to even argue or debate with you on them, unless you own the debate class and the school it takes place in.

So we wind up in this awkward time and space where supposed anti-racist fat activists are demanding censorship and browbeating for female characters to be "realistic and average" (more fat, less attractive/more ugly) to better reflect real women. Because that will somehow bring "justice." That will somehow solve misogyny or make people love fat ugly people because a celebrity received it. Probably the most childish, narcissistic idea a sheltered and selfish person could come up with. Using semantic arguments, subjectivist race science and a demand people accept their supposed authority without question and potential violent consquences for not.

If you didn't live through this era, you'd never believe this was true.

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soupdots · 2 years

Text

GUYS LMAO GUESS WHAT I MADE SNDBF

so i’m a high school student taking AP classes and today i was wishing my AP classes were more interesting and i was like i wish there was an atla AP class…….

…so i kinda sorta wrote out an entire curriculum for said AP class. it’s very incomplete, but it’s what i could crank out in like an hour.

so. uh. let me know if you think anything should be added. i’m sorry for how niche this is lmaoooo

AP ATLA Studies

AP ATLA Studies curriculum

3 terms, sociology/media/history focused

Term 1: S1

Topics:

⁃ Brief cinematography and narrative studies

⁃ Child soldiers and child heroes in ATLA, media and Asian history

⁃ War in ATLA and media (specifically children’s media)

⁃ The definition of genocide as well as its long-term effects, and how its portrayal in ATLA compares with real-world examples

⁃ North American native culture and its portrayal in ATLA and media

⁃ Portrayal of Asian culture in ATLA

⁃ Spirituality in Asian and North American native cultures

⁃ Feminism in ATLA and children’s media, particularly during the early 2000s

⁃ Martial arts in ATLA and media

⁃ Zuko’s motivation, Jet’s anger and Yue’s sacrifice: invisible motivators such as honor, righteousness and duty in ATLA, media, and real life, particularly in Asian cultures

⁃ Character studies on Aang, Katara, Sokka, Suki, Iroh and Zuko in the context of above topics

Term 2: S2

Topics:

⁃ Imperialism in ATLA, media and Asian history

⁃ The history of class division in Asian culture and its portrayal in ATLA

⁃ Disabilities in ATLA and media (specifically children’s media)

⁃ Definitions of “good,” “bad,” “right,” “wrong,” and the portrayals of these qualities in children’s media

⁃ Government corruption in ATLA, media and Asian history

⁃ Manipulation, disappearance and brainwashing in the context of war in Asian history

⁃ Redemption and forgiveness as portrayed in media, specifically Zuko and Iroh’s redemptions

⁃ The role of animals in media and spirituality

⁃ Continued analysis of portrayal of Asian and North American native cultures in ATLA

⁃ Death in children’s media

⁃ Hinduism and Buddhism in ATLA

⁃ Subtle stereotyping and racism in media: the problem of Guru Pathik

⁃ Studies on how Aang, Sokka, Katara, Suki, Zuko and Iroh have changed since S1 as well as studies on Toph and Azula in the context of appropriate topics.

Term 3: S3

Topics:

⁃ Propaganda in Asian history and how it is demonstrated in ATLA

⁃ The roots of bigotry and violence, and child development in the context of global challenges

⁃ The cycle of abuse and neglect in ATLA and in real life

⁃ Negative environmental and social effects of industrialization in the context of Industrial Revolution-era Asia

⁃ Grief and revenge portrayed in ATLA, and continued study of forgiveness as a theme

⁃ Zuko’s redemption: how it has developed over time, its realism, its flaws, its repercussions, its themes both explicit and implicit and their applications in a real life appraisal of crime

⁃ Azula’s breakdown: the subtle abuse and neglect she suffered, where her paranoia stems from, the factors leading to the mirror scene and how these can be examined through the lens of real-life unhealthy perfectionism and projection in parenting

⁃ Azula and Katara as character foils

⁃ Aang’s dilemma: Cultural values vs. “what needs to be done,” continued examination of what genocide means, historical resilience against oppression, Buddhist values as portrayed in ATLA

⁃ How the Fire Nation’s ethics and values correspond with those of historic and modern real-life cultures, and how children specifically are affected by oppressive regimes

⁃ Abusers and abuse victims as portrayed in ATLA and media

⁃ Studies on how all the main characters have changed, including character studies on Mai and Ty Lee, culture studies on any of the four nations, and analysis of the deeper symbolism behind forms of bending.

#atla #avatar the last airbender #azula #zuko #sokka #toph #aang #katara #suki #iroh #atla mai #ty lee #avatar

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