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fireflowersims · 5 months

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We haven't learned. We haven't learned shit at all.

My country's wealth is directly linked to the exploitation and colonization of other peoples. We call the violent acts commited in Indonesia after ww2 "police actions" as if it wasn't horrific crimes against people who were (justifiably) tired of being occupied and abused by foreign invaders and colonizing dickhats.

Sure, we "lost" the Dutch East Indies. We are not actively colonizing anymore. And yet, we still haven't learned a thing. That "VOC mentality" was never gone, it's still there. It's that mentality of thinking business above everything else, money makes right, who cares how horrifically you abuse people, who cares about the massacre of the Banda islands when you now have all the yummy nutmeg to use and sell. It's not something to be admired, it's something we have to address and resolve, but we're not. We're not doing that, but we have to if we ever want justice of any kind.

We're ruled by dickheads who think that saying "from the river to the sea" is a hatecrime that should be condemned. "Yeah sure, you would've probably said the same thing about the utterance of "Republik Indonesia" less than 100 years ago, no?" is what I say to that. We have not successfully freed ourselves of this damn colonizer mindset!

The only reason the Netherlands ever stopped the "police actions" is because we were threatened with sanctions. Post WW2, it was stop the "police actions" (read: many war crimes) or lose the money from the Marshall Plan needed to rebuild your ruined country. The choice was easy enough.

But noooooo, we can't sanction Israel to get them to, ya know, STOP BOMBING HOSPITALS, SCHOOLS AND CIVILIANS IN GENERAL!!! They're our friends! Fuck no. I know why those asshats ain't sanctioning Israel (at least one of the reasons): they'd lose access to fucking Pegasus; spyware surpreme. Wanna spy on some journalists? Perhaps the opposition? Scary activists? Pegasus is THE spyware for you! Infect ppl's phones and suck up All Teh Data wihout them knowing. Suspected detection of the stuff somehow? Self-destruct, boom. Fantastic stuff if you're into violating ppl's privacy. I don't see this talked about a lot, but Israel is Scary in the cyberwarfare department. And they sell this expertise.

I support Palestine. I hope to see it freed someday. Hopefully soon

To Israel(is): decolonize ur shit. I know, it's hard, it's painful, you'll have to question and unlearn a lot of things. Heck, it may give you an existential and/or moral crisis for a bit. I still get one about nutmeg sometimes. But just like desinfecting a wound, it is ultimately beneficial.

PALESTINIAN PEOPLE DESERVE LIFE AS MUCH AS ANY OTHER PEOPLE

#non sims #fire flower speaks #palestine #gaza #free palestine #israel #free gaza #what do you even say when you see such horrific things unfolding almost by the minute #I have been thinking a lot about this ever since our public broadcast shared a video of a literal colonist #she was french and colonizing on the west bank. she was ready to 'shoot the arabs' bc 'they shouldn't be harboring terrorists'#it kinda opened my eyes more to how horrific colonization is #colonization is evil #I cannot do anything about what my country did but I can object to such practices being practiced elsewhere #this is bigger than just palestine #even colonizers have to decolonize themselves #if anyone has any good recommendations on things to watch or read on Dutch colonization of Indonesia please share #or decolonisation in general #I am still learning. Please pardon my ignorance #(and pls send resources so I may work on resolving that)

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ember-knights · 7 months

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if you are not pro-Palestinian resistance gtfo we don't serve spineless juice here.

to refuse people the right to resist is to deem them unworthy of self-defense and therefore to unworthy to be alive.

#palestine #free palestine #if you think decolonization is just vibes and debates then keep your mouth shut the grownups are talking #i saw too many butchered children today #and fucking @ me i dare you #gaza under attack #i stand with palestine #that being said .... if you actually wanna learn and asking in good faith then i will be happy to give my time #but in this moment #im expressing my anger at the arguments i have been hearing for years and how long this has been going on #because of the dehumanization of the Palestinian people

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saturngalore · 6 months

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Maybe you’re following the wrong people. My dashboard has been filled with support all day, it was refreshing to see.

it’s nice to hear that your dashboard is filled with support but yeah maybe you’re right anon. i wish i could figure out who is just simply ignoring this shit but i don’t have the energy or patience rn to hunt down who isn’t doing shit and staying silent. i don’t wanna assume that someone isn’t doing something on here and they’re literally in the streets protesting so i hope that whoever is intentionally silent about this and believe in the “two-sides nuance” or other zionist propaganda shit to just know that y’all are going straight to hell. but im grateful for my moots who have been vocal more than once rather than one reblog and then done.

#the old me would’ve tried tracking everybody that’s been silent but that’s wasting my limited energy on superficial acquaintances on here #i would rather focus on my time and energy on actually keeping up with what’s going on learning about lives of those who have been killed #and trying to remember them for the rest of my life so that their memories can still alive #stay alive*#i hope to see palestine free and decolonized in my lifetime and israel punished for their crimes but we will see #asks #anon #🪐 speaking

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mmikmmik2 · 8 months

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I really wonder what the main characters are going to do about the Titan Trappers.

Like... can they really just leave them there and forget about it? I mean, those dudes are stuck on a different Titan for the foreseeable future, but can they really count on that for King's safety? King is going to live for a very long time and it seems, quite possibly, so is Bill. Even if the Titan Trappers live on the opposite side of the planet, they can't count on them never ever again crossing paths with King (...or potentially, King's children).

Kicking the can down the road isn't as bad of an idea here as it would have been for, e.g., throwing the Collector back in jail and hoping they won't escape this time. King is going to keep getting stronger. The Titan Trappers somehow posed a serious threat to Titans in the past, but it doesn't seem like they ever were a cosmic threat on the scale of Collectors/Archivists or an adult Titan, and they seem to have waned in power since then. Bill's weapons are crumbling into dust. It might be fine just to wait for them out? Maybe? Probably eventually they would disband or all die off.

I'm not super confident waiting them out would work, especially since even if King himself quickly becomes so strong they can't possibly seriously threaten him, he's still going to have mortal loved ones. And there's another issue. Those guys are running around with the dismembered remains of King's older siblings. That's not right. That's not fair to him. Is he really okay with that? Is his family really okay with that?

The question of what to do about the Trappers, in the sense of eliminating them as a threat and/or in the sense of trying to retrieve King's family's bodies and possibly some of their possessions, is... difficult. It is certainly an advantage that, uh, the Titan Trappers literally worship King's new bestie as a god. I think this situation would be, er, ethically and emotionally challenging for the Collector on a lot of levels. It's possible they could wrap it up pretty quickly even so, but I also think the Trappers are on a level of cult where actual facts and logic, no matter how indisputable, are not necessarily going to sway them.

Killing them all is certainly... a possibility. Eda and Raine could pull together a formidable strike force, I think. But, uh... that's dark! I don't know if that's something the Clawthornes and co. would be willing to do, especially when they're trying to enjoy their post-Belos peacemaking and rebuilding. I mean certainly fuck Bill and Tarak, but are we really sure that every single one of the dozens of Trappers are knowledgeably and deliberately committed child-killers? Does their community have children and noncombatants? Also, would it even work? With some of the Trappers apparently venturing out on scouting/supply runs/whatever to distant locations - if you can't get them all, you potentially have just created an even angrier enemy with a real justification to hate you. I don't think a massacre is the right solution here.

Here's how I picture it playing out. The Collector sends Bill and Tarak back to their island when he's freeing all the puppets, and everyone avoids thinking about it for a while as King comes to terms with his identity and the Collector comes to terms with their past. A few years after the King-ceneara, Lilith and Amity are going through ancient documents and happen to figure out the Trappers' actual physical location and how to reach them. It turns out the Trappers are sort of like a weird cult or sect or something within a larger collection of communities and political entities. Through diplomacy with the Trappers' neighbors, Collector intervention, and a little violence, the Trappers are almost entirely de-radicalized or killed; the threat isn't completely eliminated which makes everyone nervous as fuck, but it frankly was inevitable that any one person with the power and influence of an adult Titan would have some devoted enemies. They're reduced to a handful of scattered outlaws, no one likes or tolerates them and they've lost access to any unique weaponry or magical knowledge. Great! Everything is all better now! A teenaged King is now left with the grim task of figuring out what to do with the desecrated remains of dozens of his siblings and other relatives! Oh boy.

#the owl house #i like to think lilith really comes through for king here #has been learning about actual ethical archaeology and historiography and the terrible work of dealing with mass graves #(surely an issue that comes up repeatedly while rebuilding and decolonizing the isles :/ )#(the golden guards........)#helps organize + store materials respectfully so he can deal in his own time w/out feeling like he's throwing his dead family in a basement #long post #long text post #king clawthorne

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marzipanandminutiae · 2 years

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how do I grab my computer to work on my WIP and end up, four hours later, googling “indigenous restaurants near me” with 0 new words written

#personal #writing #is it good to try decolonized cuisine from the area I live in? yes #should I still have been writing instead? YES #(on the plus side I learned that a Wampanoag chef has opened a restaurant in Rhode Island so. road trip must-visit clearly. someday)

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solarpunk-0possum · 6 days

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white queers and antiracism

hi hotties. this is my second post written on the thoughts i've been having about the intersections of race and queerness in my community. I'd suggest you go read my first post so you have a little more context.

Since moving to SE Colorado, I’ve had the opportunity to spend time in communities with people that are new to me. I grew up in eastern Iowa. I haven’t had any experience living in a community that isn’t entirely white before moving to Colorado. Where I moved to, on the other hand, is very diverse. White people are a demographic minority here, with 43% of the town identifying as white. I’m thankful for the many opportunities I’ve had to listen to the Brown people I know here. I’ve learned a lot. Like a lot a lot.

Two times since moving here I’ve encountered organizations that claim to be all-inclusive, but end up being filled with white people. The first was a campus queer organization that I quit. The second is a volunteer organization that I’m definitely reconsidering my relationship with. For both organizations, I have asked the question- in a city that’s 50% Hispanic, why don’t our demographics reflect that?

The biggest thing I’ve found? Even after 2020, after the anti-racism work (performative or otherwise) we did, white queer communities still have a racism problem. It’s just more subtle. More than that, most of us (when I say “we” or “us” in this essay, assume I mean white queers) haven’t done enough decolonization work. Many haven’t even started it. We still live in bubbles of privilege, and people who don’t live that way can tell when we do.

What do I mean by decolonization? As a white AFAB person from the midwest, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not the best person to define this. I beg of you, don’t let me be the only person you learn about this from. My experience with decolonization so far has entailed a willingness to learn, a willingness to stare privilege in the face, and a radical humility. The first aspect of my life I really worked to decolonize was my relationship with nature. (I strongly recommend reading Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Anything I have to say on the matter is better said by her.)

The thing about decolonization, though, is that it’s kinda like taking the red pill. (The Matrix was made by trans women. The red pill was intended as an allegory for understanding gender. I do not use this in a bullshit conservative way.) You decolonize one thing about yourself, and through that process, you find a whole lot more stuff to deal with. It’s a slow and uncomfortable process, that requires scrutiny of the most integrated and normal-feeling patterns of your life. It has changed my diet, my relationships with family and friends, my approach to education, my creative process, and much more that I don’t even realize. I’ve had to consider my own relation to race, gender, sexuality, work, ethics, everything! The harms and attitudes created by colonization are still deeply embedded in white American culture. While many white American queers have physically left the communities where this behavior originates, we have yet to decolonize our minds.

Let’s reference the cultural iceberg here. I use this all the time. I love it. It’s a great way to talk about leaving hurtful communities. When white queers leave their hurtful communities, it’s pretty easy for us to change the tip of our cultural icebergs. We start going to pride. We wear new clothes. We go by different names. The surface-level of our lives changes drastically. This is an important part of deconstructing one’s shitty past beliefs. It’s a vital first step, but it’s far from the last one. This is what a lot of white queers fail to understand. Just because you now visually fit into a new group, doesn’t mean you are completely free of the deep culture that you were raised with. While you look different, the shitty puritanical attitudes most of us white queers were raised with haven't gone anywhere. Therefore, there’s a bunch of white queers who are going around taking out their unresolved shit on each other. It sucks.

There’s a lot of ways this manifests in everyday life. Being of that culture myself, I don’t even notice it sometimes. It’s subtle and easy to miss if you don't know what you're looking for. I can only speak to my personal experiences, but I’ve spent a lot of time around white queers. I’m by no means an expert, but I do have pretty good pattern recognition. There’s some repeating behaviors I’ve noticed that I want more white queers to marinate on.

While there’s a lot of incredibly important discussion about the harms of colonization on the colonized, as white people, we need to discuss how it’s hurt us. Colonization, imperialism, and the shitty domination attitudes it brings has caused spiritual, mental, physical, and emotional sickness in white Americans. While we must decolonize for the sake of justice (and that should be reason enough alone), it’s just as important to decolonize for our own sake. In the process of creating a system that gives us white privilege, we’ve given up vital parts of ourselves. We’ve lost our connection to nature, to our pasts, to spirituality, all of it. We’ve sold our souls for the sake of comfort. We must give up that comfort for the sake of our own healing.

White queers need to be far more committed to anti-racism. In both organizations I reference, I have been the person to speak up about the whiteness. I’m one of the younger members of both of these groups. There are people with much more experience in advocacy than I, yet I am the one to speak up. I have a feeling that if I didn't say something about it, things would continue as they are. For people who claim to be so radical, they sure seem ok with the status quo. I’m a little ashamed of it, to be honest. White queers need to do a lot better. If we aren’t committed to decolonizing ourselves, any work we do is going to carry evidence of that, and people will pick up on it.

We really need to figure out how to communicate with each other in healthy ways. I don’t know what it is, but the white queer communities I’ve been in have been notably marked by the most annoying, pointless drama out there. In one org, a lot of people like to joke with each other, but sometimes jokes have gotten mean enough that they’re not funny anymore. As members of an emotionally sick society, we must realize that we’re emotionally sick, too, and we must do the work to be better. We have to take accountability for all of our behaviors.

The definition of “safe space” needs to be fundamentally reconsidered, especially among white queers. I am of the opinion that there is no such thing as a truly “safe space.” We don’t know how to create safe spaces because many of us haven’t experienced one in the first place. We carry unresolved traumas from the past (often ones that are direct consequences of fucked up colonizer behavior, and it's commonly generational) and instead of taking accountability for them we enact them on each other. I’ve been on the receiving end of this multiple times. It is unbelievably soul crushing when a place claiming to be “safe” actually isn’t. In fact, it was places calling themselves “safe spaces” where I have been the most hurt. We say somewhere is a safe space and close our eyes, plug our ears, and whenever someone has an issue we say "BUT THIS IS A SAFE SPACE!" without doing any real work. It's performative. If that's not annoying-ass white people shit, I don't know what is. We need to put our money where our mouth is. Just because a place is safe for white queers doesn’t mean it’s a safe place for others. We really need to figure that shit out.

If we are truly seeking justice, we must understand solidarity. In fact, we must be radically committed to it. My liberation is fundamentally wrapped up in the liberation of everyone else. Even if I as a white queer person can live a life with relative freedom, if someone else doesn’t get that, my freedom is at risk. If one person isn’t free, than none of us are free. Even if we have perceived freedom, what we call freedom is actually privilege. If systems of injustice exist anywhere, than any of us can have our rights taken away. To be the best allies we can, white queers must accept that systems of injustice are still alive and well in our communities. We will not be liberated until everyone is!

We have to do the work. It’s not easy work- like I said earlier, it really does involve a fundamental reassessment of your whole paradigm and way of life. We have to look our privilege right in the face, really sit with that discomfort. That’s not easy. Through that work, we will be able to truly see the dynamics of our privilege. It is not any of our faults that we have privilege, but it is our fault if we are complacent in it. White queers must go beyond being aware of privilege. We must decide how we are going to use our privilege to dismantle the system that creates it. It isn’t comfortable, but it’s worth it, and it’s the only way we can find genuine, sustainable, long-term healing.

I am reminded of a quote from Mindfulness in Plain English, by Bhante Gunaratama. (Total side note, this book is great, the way they teach meditation was the first thing that worked for me!) It goes “Ignorance may be bliss, but it does not lead to liberation."

Ignorance is a privilege that not everyone has. If we truly want liberation, we must understand this an make a radical decision to give it up. It might not be comfortable, but do you know what’s more uncomfortable? Being a Brown person in a room of ignorant white people who think their queerness exempts them from antiracism work. I'd rather deal with the emotional discomfort of decolonization than make someone else go through the discomfort of dealing with my ignorant white ass. It's a privilege to be ignorant. Don't be a jackass.

I think it's good practice to leave some advice on decolonizing yourself, to turn this from complaining about problems yet doing nothing about it, into complaining about problems and doing something. Do your own research for sure. I'm no expert. Just a jackass on tumblr with some big feelings about how my fellow european americans are really failing to be good antiracists. I mentioned Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer earlier, but honestly, just set a priority to learn from Brown people. Read books written by Brown authors. Look for diverse entertainment. Make it a radical priority in your life to seek out the opinions of all marginalized groups no matter the issue. The people who are being fucked over by the system usually have the most valuable insight on how to fix it. Humble yourself, shut your mouth, and listen. You will have time to yap later. People are usually pretty down to share their thoughts with you if you approach the situation with humility and a willingness to learn.

#solarpunk #antiracism #intersectionality #queer #seriously guys it's not that hard #you will learn more and be more effectively challenged by listening to people different than you. always #and know the discomfort this causes is pretty temporary. because then you get the benefits of decolonizing ur mind #and trust me it's pretty worth it #my life is better all-around because i am committed to decolonizing my brain. i feel better

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