#i do not know how to explain to you that structural oppression has both personal and impersonal modalities | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

fairuzfan · 3 months

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Tbh this may just be me but my patience for certain people getting mad at being accused of being zionists, and specifically pointing at how they have said that they want Peace and Freedom and it's important to focus on the Humanity of People has become fucking negative (which is all different from when Bibi says he's securing Peace and Freedom as he focuses on the Humanity of Israelis, I guess. Or any time the US has tried it in Pick Your War).

Either explain your material goals or accept that people will get mad at you when you refuse to elaborate on your puddle-deep statements. Politics is material conditions all the way down and the current material conditions are that Palestinians are being massacred by a genocidal state whose heads have repeatedly affirmed that intent!

Badly paraphrasing Kwame Ture here, but any analysis that excludes the oppressor will blame the oppression. The presumption of a need to make Both Sides Understand And Communicate assumes that Palestinians hold significant structural power here and have the ability to come to some theoretical political table—that they are thus doing this, effectively, to themselves, because they don't prioritize Humanity and Peace and Freedom enough. That's what good vibes politics gets you.

(I am so sorry for this being long, I am just, so furious with it, especially after I learned today that an old classmate was hurt by former IOF soldiers w/skunk spray during the Columbia University SJP protest. Just. Goddamn.)

I think you put it into words really well in that there are no material analysis of actual concrete steps theyre providing or stating that Palestinians haven't already said better and more often and they tend to pass it off as their own ideologies rather than... you know... recognizing Palestinians have been fighting this fight for 3-4 generations. Like a guarantee you any discussion you've had we've already had amongst ourselves. So like actively excluding us from those discussions — which is nothing new btw we've always been excluded from them but this time it's easier to push back — is in fact doing harm and refusing us a way to advocate for ourselves.

Truly I've seen it all — there is no way to "peacefully" live under occupation and subjugation for Palestinians. Like no, man that doesn't exist. Even within Israel, Palestinians aren't referred to as "Palestinians" they are referred to as "Arab Israelis" like we cannot even claim ourselves as Palestinians.

You have to acknowledge that at a certain point you yourself are contributing to the dangerous atmosphere by making everything "too complex" to get anything done. I remember there was a talk with Amjad Iraqi (a contributor to al-shabaka who grew up in israel but is palestinian) and another podcaster who is... peak liberal zionist lol but i listened to it cuz amjad was there — that the Podcaster was saying (paraphrasing) "there's an equilibrium of 'freedom' for Palestinians and 'security' for Israelis, and one side pushes the other side further and further away from the center where they could meet so how to you think we reconcile differences" and amjad responds in a way that I admire (paraphrasing) in that he mentions that from the beginning of this equation, zionism has always had the upper hand in that all their demands have been met and self determination for Palestinians have never been recognized (end paraphrase) so it's not equal to say "well we want peace for both Palestinians and israelis so let's block off Palestinians from discussing definitions for these terms" that fundamentally impact them in ways they will never impact nonpalestinians who would BENEFIT from maintaining the status quo.

Within the article from Alma they say "do something vulnerable and ask the other person what their definition of zionism/antizionism is" as if there aren't very transparent people in this world that want "peace" and don't want a ceasefire. Like that's actually the predominant opinion in the world. They straight up say "the only peace in the middle east is if we get rid of hamas so we can't allow a ceasefire" and people run by that definition and say "sorry Palestinians :( we gotta get rid of hamas :( there's nothing we can do about this.... its for peace :("

So I think you're doing far more harm by pretending there's a cognitive difference between zionist and antizionists that theyre just not communicating, which, zionists are very obvious about communicating (which also, it's necessary to boost Palestinians when defining antizionism in this case because when we point out the very real harm of things affecting us we would like a say in how people define the movement meant for our liberation). But the article never said that throughout the entire thing. It just said "maybe you guys have a cognitive dissonance of words" but like.... at this point, if you still ally yourself under the term "zionist" with literally all we have been screaming these past few months then no, I don't think you're necessarily operating in good faith.

And like I don't think tri*utary is a zionist necessarily but they're certainly a zionist sympathizer and like I don't trust them either.

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olderthannetfic · 4 months

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https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/738837493190934529/httpsolderthannetfictumblrcompost73871242031#notes Oh it's definitely not. Otherwise I wouldn't be looking for a word for it. That's why I explained what I meant, because I kinda knew that author's voice would probably be wrong.

Interesting to find out more about it though. Heard it thrown around here and there, but was never sure what it actually refers to.

Though I wouldn't even say it's an OOC issue, because it happens in original works too, so technically it could be considered "in character." I have encountered it in both fics and original works, and an additional quirk of that writing is that the character/s will have mindsets that don't match the world they're in, or it will be so over the top that it comes across as an unwanted parody just by the tone of the story.

Weird meme speech, pop culture references, dialogue/monologues that sound like the author just copy-pasted from their twitter/facebook rants, and a lot of that superficial knowledge on topics/issues/problems that is key for all that mouth frothing.

There's also often this weird poorly blended mix between ideas they like and the world, that makes it even more obvious. Like if they write a story where they want to show a the backdrop to be this super oppressive world where everyone has base level education to not have an uprising. Our main lead though, for some reason is the one unique individual with all the knowledge of a modern internet user, and has seen right through everything, but the story never explains why. This is super popular with both further on the edge sides of the political spectrum, and it screams mouth piece to the max and a lack of reflection.

Why does this character know everything when the Government is apparently so effective that no one questions anything? Fuck you, I'm the author and I wanted to show how smart I am and how stupid everyone else is. Here's my facebook/twitter rant!

I know it technically is bad writing, but it's such a specific type of bad writing, and it happens so frequently I would love a simple name for it.

Interesting to find out more about it though. Heard it thrown around here and there, but was never sure what it actually refers to.

Re "voice", it's the set of things that make you go "Ah, this sounds like X wrote it", basically. The actual POV might be a specific character, in which case, X is trying to sound like that character, but they still have a particular way of writing that's a little different from other authors trying to write a similar character. It's even more obvious in nonfiction.

Like... on tumblr, I sound like me. Sure, some of it is my actual personality or views, but there's also just the manner in which I write. I could have the same personality but communicate it differently or more poorly. How often do I use big words? How often do I use slang? How many clauses are in my sentences? In my case, I do kind of sound like this out loud too, but that's never a guarantee either. A lot of it is about the writing craft the person has consciously cultivated over time.

I think subject matter can be relevant to voice, like authors who love to describe food in every work or something, but a lot of it has to do with whether the person is funny overall or what kind of sentence structure they tend to go for. It's a broad vibe thing.

(Certainly, horrid PSAs are part of some authors' voices, but you can use the term to describe any general "Sounds like so-and-so" vibe.)

Honestly, the thing where only the protagonist is ~So Special~ that they alone have twitter brain see through the evil government is one of the obnoxious traits readers often brand as a Mary Sue. That's certainly not the term for this whole phenomenon though.

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is-the-fire-real · 2 months

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judío por elección (part 3)

(part 1. part 2. part 2.5.)

"I think," I told my wife the other day, "we're gonna have to use the mikvehs for women."

They made a face--a nose-wrinkly sneer, equal parts anger and tired.

"It's about what I expected," I said.

"Yeah," they said, "but still."

One of the reasons my wife and I chose to convert at this moment is because we want children, and we're about to take that step. As adults, we have both been far too smart for church. They were mainstream Protestant, I was Mormon. They stopped attending. I got my baptism revoked (a real thing that really happened, I have the paperwork and everything).

The one community we've had for the past couple of decades has been the LGBTQ community. We both assumed that queers meant it when they talked about protecting queer and trans children, as well as the children of queers and transes. So we ignored all the microaggressions, hints, signs and omens that we weren't welcome. We told people how impossible it was for us to have kids. They'd cluck their tongues and offer sympathy and support, but only so long as our problems were structured in a way they cared about. In a way that theoretically reflected their own oppression.

Our tales of how we couldn't adopt, do IVF, or "simply" have unprotected sex with a total stranger who wanted no parental rights were restructured as being about institutional homo/transphobia. A cautionary tale. Proof that the listener's antinatalism was justified, for see what befalls those foolish fags who actually, ew!, WANT to breed!

"You guys are dinks! That must be nice," said an asexual friend of mine. She had to explain to me what dink meant. I was privately appalled that someone who knew for a fact we desperately wanted children would talk about how great it was that we were double income... no kids.

No kids.

There's nothing you can tell me about human reproduction that I haven't thought of. My wife and I have put more thought into this than any hundred couples you can name. We have both done therapy, research, and soulful self-examination in the name of Not Passing On The Trauma. I was girled as a child, and so I know all the work necessary for being a parent. We've tested each other for years with "What if the kid's a jock? What if they really like Marvel movies? What if they want to go to church?" kind of questions, and all of the answers we give amount to something like this:

Parentage is the only relationship where the other person in the relationship is supposed to move away from you. Always, they're moving away, and that's how you know you've done it right. The child begins inside someone's body, and they end up their own human person, and that's as it should be. If you perceive being a parent as having a relationship with a really cool person, then you're going to have a good relationship with them. If you want an adorable creature to pour all your unmet needs into, get a fish tank.

Anyway. In the last year, my wife and I have started letting folks know we are taking serious steps to have a child. I'm not getting specific on the details online, because my child will deserve to have their privacy and I don't want to divulge their journey as though it's mine.

But slowly, one by one, as they were told of this intent, all the queer and trans folks we know withdrew from our social circle.

"I'll just pick up a trans kid from the adoption agency if I want one." "I've always thought of fostering queer kids." "Why can't you just custom-build a child genetically with IVF?" "Won't you be angry if the child isn't really, y'know, YOURS?"

As though having a child is a matter of indulging my own selfish whims. As though any fostering or adoption agency has ever been open and happy to let queer or trans folks walk right in and customize who they're willing to foster or adopt. These reactions are, to be frank, cruel and brutal, and they center what should be good news on the recipient's own anger at their own parents. I don't mind providing you support, but it's fucked up how my sharing good news keeps turning into other people demanding support.

It leaves my wife and I feeling like maybe this whole Friendship and Community thing is actually one-way.

"Maybe you keep running into people who are toxic or self-centered," one might suggest, "and that's not the whole community!" And... sure, that's possible. It's possible that the dozens of queer and trans folks I've met are not representative of the community to which they belong. But it's also possible that this hypothetical one is demanding that I offer compassion and understanding to folks who completely refuse to offer it in return, who will argue that expecting them to be compassionate or kind makes relationships "transactional" and something-something capitalist pigs.

The only people we've met who were queers and who were also enthusiastic for us to have children are, like us, rural folks who are not exactly Part Of The Community. They don't go to clubs or surf the internet--there's no signal at their house, and anyway, they're too tired after breaking their backs doing farm labor (or being disabled) to drive for two hours to drink with strangers.

Anyhow. This response has thrown a lot of things in relief for me. I don't want to be around people who despise my child in advance, or me for having them, and I don't care if those who despise me are right or left, cishet or in the community. I don't have time for people who hate me.

I want my child to feel welcome among a community, a group who will embrace them and teach them and make them feel like they're a part of a greater story than one I can tell them by myself.

When we told A we would have to skip a Jewish community event because we were getting IVF, he called us almost in tears. He was happy. He talked about how a community without children is dead. He reassured us that while our children won't be born Jewish, given when we'll get dunked, they will be as soon as possible. That our children will be adored and taught to be sephardim from the beginning. And he insisted that he would pay for the bris, if the child needs one.

This guy I've known less than six months did more to make us feel welcome and safe than folks I've known for decades.

But. But.

The Spanish Jewish community has not recovered from the expulsion in 1492. Then, it's estimated that despite multiple massacres wrought by both Muslims and Christians, the Jewish population was at 100,000. Nowadays, it's somewhere between 13,000 to 50,000, depending on how you count. Accordingly, there are, to my knowledge, three mikvehs in the entirety of Spain.

The one we will have to use is operated by an Orthodox community. I am still pre-everything and my wife does not think medical transition will help them. Hence my telling my wife we'll have to use the women's mikveh. And I've come to slowly realize that in all likelihood no one will give me a bris or a substitute shedding of blood.

And... well. I get it. I'm coming into someone else's house. I need to follow their rules. I am not in a position to shop around. It's not like there's a surfeit of choice for either of us.

So I tell myself this is necessary as a sacrifice for the child. And I tell myself I won't ever tell them about this.

But it would be nice if there were a community where I could tell somebody.

#jumblr #jew by choice #jewish convert #jew in progress #transandrophobia #antisemitism #antisemitism in spain #transphobia #is-the-fire-real original

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aronarchy · 1 year

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person on twitter:

You shouldn’t put your kids’ private info (including details of their personal lives) or faces/pictures online until they both are old enough to be fully informed about all of the risks of being online and, while being informed of those risks, consent to you doing that. 😁

Once you put your kids online, you can never fully take that stuff offline. If they grow up and decide that anything you chose to share about them isn’t something they want to be publicly available for literally everyone on the planet, they have no choice. You took it from them.

We say “the internet is forever” for a reason. Even if you delete all the posts, you can never fully erase them. All the time that the posts were up doesn’t just disappear, either, so it’s already affected them. No other permanently life-altering decision is treated so casually.

Kids have a right to privacy and autonomy. If you care about them you will protect that right, even when it’s boring or inconvenient to do so.

As for sharing anonymized info about your kids online without their fully informed consent: it isn’t actually anonymous if too many details are shared, if not enough details are altered, or if you aren’t fully anonymized yourself. Also, anonymous stuff can still hurt your kid.

Even if it’s anonymous, if you find out someone publicly posted online about a very sensitive private issue like a mental health crisis or an embarrassing experience, you probably would feel pretty violated. Kids, like you, are people, and have feelings.

There are certain things which are anonymous and innocuous enough that it’s probably fine, like “I made my kid a grilled cheese today and he dropped it on the couch” probably won’t do any damage, but you don’t realize just how immensely careful you must be about that stuff.

Things which to you seem like innocent funny stories might be really hurtful to your kid if you share without permission. If you’re sharing online, you can never take it back—if that hurts your kid, it hurts them for life. Every time you post about them, remember that.

there are probably some exceptions and nuance to this but I really think that posting your children online without their consent, whether it be private stories about what they said or did or pictures/video, is a major example of patriarchal youth oppression and dehumanization 🧵

when you think about what parents are posting private details about what kids, it’s usually the disabled kids who have their privacy violated the most, particularly autistic ones

I know so many stories of those kids growing up to be traumatized and horrified as teens/adults

you’ve also probably seen the transphobic/TERF abusive parents who share extremely sensitive and private information about their trans kids without those kids’ consent, often to make public transphobic attacks against them and to reinforce their own oppressive power

I remember one post went viral on here a while back of a 15 year old trans teenager making a reddit post explaining about their TERF mother’s transphobic posts about them, apologizing for the trans kids their mother has hurt and discussing how much it had hurt them to experience.

they mentioned specifically that their internet use was being monitored and so they didn’t have much time to write the post—they did not even have the autonomy to speak about the abuse they endured publicly, to fight back. posting about them was an abuse tactic for their mother.

so, also, was internet surveillance. the oppression of youth is structured so the youth are always being monitored, surveilled—and they are given the least awareness of the world around them possible, caged in to the oppressive environment. this is hugely exemplified online.

the most marginalized kids are made into a dehumanized online spectacle by parents. almost always, when private or sensitive info about a kid goes online without their consent, it’s “look how disabled/queer/weird this creature is, look how good of a person I am for tolerating it”

or, sometimes it’s not even as polite as that, and it’s more like “do not believe my child or people like them when they tell you anything, believe me and people like us, the people who oppress them”

there is a great investment in discrediting the voices of marginalized youth

again, there are probably exceptions to this, but not as many as people probably think—even if it’s not harmful, informed consent should be required from a child before permanently putting their info or face onto the internet, an irreversible and potentially dangerous thing

the reason it’s so hard to talk about this is that the vast majority of people agree with the patriarchal oppression of children, even if they think they don’t—they laugh at the idea of children having rights and autonomy, of needing their consent to do something to them

#repost of someone else’s content #twitter repost #parenting #ageism #adultism #childism #ableism #transphobia #child abuse #parental abuse #boundaries #consent #autonomy #bodily autonomy #youth rights #youthlib #youth liberation #101

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basedkikuenjoyer · 19 days

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A Tale of Two Hannya: Art Imitates Life

These are always kind of a trickier beast to write because by design the comparison casts a more negative light on a popular character. But they tend to be well received. Living near the path of peak totality for the big US eclipse, had me wanting to finish this one sitting in my drafts because well...we have both sun & moon themes as well as a dynamic of "upstaging" each other. Which is kinda cool. I really do think, when taken together, Kiku & Yamato give you one of the most interesting dynamics in this massive series despite the two faces almost never appearing together.

Let's step back a little though. Why? Why would our author structure so much of Luffy's story in Wano through the top two new faces for the arc? Almost splitting Luffy's story in half with mirror opposites; humble and helpful followed by flashy yet flawed. Pitting organic bonding against the spotlight. A very straightforward and earnest trans woman foiled by a deliberately inconsistent and ambiguous character falling somewhere you'd call transmasculine. Our Crane Wife and our Dragon's King's Daughter, forget the plot of One Piece for a moment...what's the reflection of our world they mirror?

As gross as it is to compare oneself to Doflamingo, I promise I'm going somewhere with this. And, to be fair I can think of a few specific people who'd make that type of comparison about me. I like to think I use my powers for good, but anyone with them would say that. Touched on it a little with the Otohime side story but over the 2010s I had my little strings in just about every corner of LGBT activism throughout a region that's now a solid gay haven in a conservative state. For the first half of that decade, it was thrust upon me because people saw how solid a representative a young, cute, well-spoken lady would be at diffusing old stereotypes. An MA in Political Science helped too.

Because it's currently Ramadan still, I'd like to share one story I feel was a high watermark and how it rippled in a way that is gonna shape my outlook here. When I noticed there was a shift. One I felt trepidation about aspects of initially and today feel vindicated seeing how Gen Z views their elders. It was Ramadan a fair few years ago now, while part of a board for something I got to know a local Muslim leader and his wife. They were used to inviting other community leaders to join them for Iftar, the fast-breaking meal. They wanted to show their young progressive members they were listening and respectfully invite someone trans, remember these are often very sex-segregated places. Even if there were some livid hardliners most of the women really liked me and you could tell it meant a lot to some of the older teen girls who really wanted to square more progressive beliefs with their faith.

Late 2010s, so if I told you there was backlash in queer circles guess who. More or less entirely people who'd fit that college radfem to transmasc mold. "I'd have gone to the women's side in solidarity and liberated those oppressed women being soo radical." "Don't you think what Rhea did was you know, kinda problematic? If I have to explain to you how it's low-key cultural appropriation I don't even..." "They only picked her because she acts like a little Barbie doll." Yes, that last one is peak feminism. They can call me wicked if they want; at least I was called to serve while they were all just rabble-rousers who decided they were the only morally pure enough ones to be local leaders. That's what this was all about, politics.

If you ask me personally about the current state of trans movements? It kinda comes down to that. Most Milennials, trans women, men, & even nonbinary folk, tend to use the community as a temporary safe haven but acceptance has come far enough it tends to stay temporary. Gender is but one aspect of our identity, the hugbox and group chats about pronouns only really feel like they're giving you something for so long. The holdout? In my experience that tends to be trans men or transmasc enbies who took a half-step before coming out in the relative privilege of radical feminist spaces offering a little space within. I don't have a whole lot of animosity towards these guys...it just feels like sometimes it becomes all of our problem when that radfem space pumped you full of a distorted vision of "male privilege" and you feel jilted you didn't get that by waking up one day and saying you are now man.

Was Eiichiro Oda going for all that? Fuck no. I was a longtime leader of a local movement, he's a cis author on the outside looking in. Better way these two make sense is more an author being aware enough (Japan had a similar trajectory over the last decade) these two serve well as standins for the extremes of what a teen today sees about this transgender community. Okama type caricatures just don't work anymore. Transmasc nearing 30 who feels like they don't even know what they want? Playing word games that feel like you never stopped and thought how they'd sound to other people? Chasing an idealized version of masculinity? It's not exactly an uncommon sentiment. It's a side-effect of finally getting that long sought visibility...scrutiny goes hand in hand.

It's a Tale of Two Hannya because it's weaving in the story of one community experiencing a Tale of Two Movements. Two movements that are at times diametrically opposed (foes). That's where the upstaging or "eclipse" aspect comes in. The way beats for one influence the other even without trying. Why Yamato's the one trying to find a place and Kiku's already dealing with average pressures of being a woman. Regardless of how you feel about that personally, you have to at least acknowledge this is the general impression teens today seem to have. Hypothetically, you could get the same effect between a more clear-cut trans man and someone kinda like Kamatari.

Ultimately, Wano is about who we are vs the roles we play. We see other places where themes of just saying you fill a role doesn't mean you are. I've said Yamato's a gentle critique of the extreme "you are what you say your are" side of trans movements. I understand why people would want to see things that way, but gender is a social phenomenon. For the record, I do think it low-key radiates dude energy to not care about shit like cannonballing tits out into the main bath, no one should have to act a certain way and all that. But it's a good pair for demonstrating where we're at in general. The emotions they evoke out of readers are a good reflection of where young men are kinda at on all this trans stuff. And both are still portrayed as cool, friendly people. But I do see where it's coming from when Oda shifts that classic immaturity element from Kiku more to Yamato.

#one piece #tale of two hannya #Okiku #Yamato

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kinetic-elaboration · 25 days

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April 2: The Expanse 1x08

I don’t think this was my favorite episode of the show, although I will give it credit for getting interesting toward the end and finishing on a high note. The whole first half was just wandering around the ship, though, which I’m sure was supposed to be mysterious and suspenseful and a little horrific, and I did want it to be, but which struggled to hold my attention. I kept zoning out because I couldn’t really see anything and didn’t know what I was looking at. Also, I feel like this show could really benefit from a ‘last time on’ style recap. The art of the recap has definitely been lost in the age of streaming but like not everyone binges everything all the time. And even if I were binging this, there are details from episodes 1 and 2 that are now coming up again in episode 8 and like… how am I supposed to keep track of all of that?

Anyway. I’m really starting to enjoy the energy Alex brings to the crew. He has the vibe of the tech guy in the heist: he’s not breaking into the bank but he’s out in the inconspicuous van with his super computer and his headset, mic’d into everyone’s ear, saying things like ‘there you go beautiful’ to a lock he’s picking remotely through the use of binary code. And I’m into it. That’s not really the role I thought he was going to have but here we are. Almost makes you wonder if Dr. Feelgood would have become less annoying with time, but here we are.

I do really love Eros and the thought and detail that goes into these sets. It’s another way-way-out-there space station but it feels totally different from Ceres. Like, not just Ceres but worse. It has a different mood, different color scheme, and I definitely got that ‘jewel of the Belt fallen into disrepair’ vibe I think they were going for. The hotel was sort of 70s, the people were sort of all giving ‘secretly in the Mob’ vibes. The shoot out felt like anther genre sticking its head in all of a sudden, like 70s exploitation flick, but not in a bad way. The thuggish security felt oppressive, and notably different from Star Helix, even before Miller’s friend started explaining more about them, right from the landing of the craft. We’ve been teased for a while that this a Really Bad Place and I feel like it’s living up to its reputation.

It’s of course exciting that the different threads of the narrative are coming together: that we’re seeing Miller and the Rocinante crew in the same place, and finding out that they are both looking for the same person. The thing is that I don’t remember enough details to really know what I’m watching here. I can see the structure of threads coming together but I can’t get any more specific than that. They’re after the same McGuffin, but… why again? Absolutely no idea what Fred Johnson wants with Julie or if we’re supposed to understand them as working together or not. I get that the Thing at stake, the thing on the level above Julie, what she was maybe searching for or maybe using/transporting or maybe trying to destroy and definitely killed by, is some sort of weapon, probably bioweapon, and it likes light or warmth or something. But who created it, who has it, who knows about it, who wants it, and how it relates to the reign of terror that’s been following Holden and friends around this whole time is like complete question marks for me right now. It’s like I’m reading a story in a language I’m not quite fluent in: I can get a lot of the big picture and get a general sense of things, but I lack a lot of vocabulary. The noun did verb with the noun to the noun.

Julie is still very mysterious and confusing to me, and I hope that in the next couple episodes we find out more about her. She seems more mystery than person a lot of the time. I’d like to get real answers so she can feel more like a human and less like an object or plot device. But—I hope I’m not sounding mean or harsh because I am still basically just along for the ride and having a good time on it—I feel optimistic that I will.

#the year 2024 #2024: fandom thoughts #2024: the expanse

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femmesandhoney · 10 months

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A migrant from another country isn’t automatically a bad person. Far from. Most are just looking for a better life. But some people flee oppression, not least women. How do we help them by letting them come to our country, if we let the oppressors in too? Which is already happening, and would be a guarantee with open borders.

If you lived in Europe, you would know that a lot of the men that have moved here from African and middle eastern countries hold absolutely medieval views on women’s rights. And also on gay rights. There have been gang rapes. Numeous, systematic assaults on women at swimming pools, or just out on the town. Letting in men, and it is almost only men coming, that think that women wearing a skirt, shorts or a bikini and walking outside without male company, are free reign to do what they want to, that has been catastrophic for women’s safety in our countries.

And frankly as a feminist I think that it’s crucial that you understand this. Women don’t have the same rights that we do in the western world in every country of the world. There are entire continents where women don’t have basic rights. And the only way for us to uphold progressive, equalitarian values, is by having borders. Within which we can decide the law, and be protected by our countries laws.

Girl idk how to fucking explain to you that one can recognize male violence is an issue no matter where you go and who it can come from and that currently most nations border policies are actively harmful and inhumane to migrants and those in need of refuge. You sound like such a conservative shithead, you can reframe your argument as much as you'd like to try and hide that you seem frankily very racist and just don't want immigrants in your country, it really doesn't work.

"I think its crucial you understand this" um yeah, I literally study complex international situations for my degree. I think about complex shitty situations all the time, for a grade, for my future as an educator. I think you're extremely tone deaf to the idea that nation-states are not actually this amazing praise worthy institution you want to say it is and you repeating it as if western countries are the creme de la creme of morality and the most law abiding people ever is just painful to read. It doesn't automatically equal "progressive, equalitarian values" as it simultaneously kills and abuses thousands of people daily. But idk maybe thats just me :/ you can both want to make sure there's structures in place to protect women from any and all male violence while also wanting to help vulnerable people. And don't come trying "wah those men aren't vulnerable" like sure yeah probably, but i still frankily want to see all the migrant women and children reach safety and that means making sure the huge humanitarian crises happening with migrants right now is properly addressed by world governments.

#my poli sci prof would devour you if u tried saying that shit about nation states being the only safe government structure lmao #but yeah theres no fucking need to act like i dont understand how some violent misogynistic men have harmed some women in europe #like its not a crazy situation thats hard to fathom babe men from cultures that are that harsh on women suck #but at the end of the day the solution is never gonna be 'stop helping vulnerable people trying to escape war and death and poverty'#you just sound like a jackass then #there's like a million and ten ways you can aid those problems without coming off as a racist fuck using those women as a scapegoat #thats all im saying

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starberrywander · 1 year

Text

I am once again talking about the patriarchy and feminism. I want to explain why I think my approach to feminism is so incompatible with the approach of radfems, and why they frustrate me so much. I think the best place to start is with describing my view of the patriarchy.

(Warning: this post is going to be very long)

At the core of our culture and society is a strong emphasis on power. Being strong and able to command your reality is seen as the highest priority. I don’t know where this value came from, but having a society where being in control is a core value leads to a lot of corrupt and destructive behavior. This value is at the core of colonialism and imperialism, which is about controlling as much land and as many people as possible. The bigger the nation you lead/defend (control) the more honor, respect, and status you receive. The better off in society you are.

But how can you control the world if you can’t control your own country? This society values power so much that it is taken as a given that a leader has to have control over their people. The leader has to do whatever it takes to ensure their country is operating as a single cohesive unit, which by extension means that anyone getting in the way of the goals of the country (the leader) must be punished.

But people want to do their own thing. They don’t wanna just follow commands, they are their own people and they want to make their own decisions. So when faced with this conflict of interest and outnumbered, how do you gain the control to command these people who don’t respect your authority? The answer is violence. It has always been violence. Combined with strategy, a violent force can withhold resources and destroy essential items to weaken the people who don’t want to follow them. They can beat the people into submission. But if you just leave them alone after that they will begin to rebuild and go back to being independent. So in order for “order” (meaning the whole area as a cohesive unit working for the same goal) to be maintained you have to design systems, both physical and social, to prevent people from having too much control over their own lives. You have to ensure that external controls and force are respected and effective in order to keep people in a line on the narrow path that is society’s road to power. Power must grow. Opposition must be suppressed or else it will decrease overall power. The people must be dominated in order for the country to use their labor for its (state and/or military) benefit.

This type of power hungry mindset of external control rather than internal control (personal autonomy) is present throughout all forms of oppression. Ideas like racism, sexism, and ableism all stem from this same core. They effect different people and in different ways, but they are all expressions of the same domination culture that formed the foundation of the society we live in. Weakening the domination over one group weakens the system of control as a whole. The more people who escape their oppressions and begin fighting against the domination structure the less the structure can control people in general. All oppressions are connected by the fact that they have the same core oppressor, and the more oppressed people who are liberated and made able to fight against the oppressor (which is the core idea of domination and control as a part of society, not any individual person or group) the closer they will get to destroying the oppressor altogether. Destroying one group’s oppressor destroys all groups’ oppressors because they are one in the same. That is the key idea behind intersectionality; all oppressions are connected because they have the same oppressor. You cannot fully liberate one group unless you liberate all groups by destroying the oppressor.

So this is where feminism comes in. Feminism was formed as a retaliation against the oppression of women. It noted the imbalance of power between men and women and set out to correct it. There have been many different types of feminism, many aiming for equality and some aiming for revenge. And feminists have made a ton of progress. They have changed legislation to give women the same legal rights as men (at least on paper, the application is often debated). They have changed culture to make women’s freedom feel more acceptable to people. They have achieved great things.

But the oppression hasn’t ended. Even in cases when there isn’t any legislation that is legally targeting women, women still face discrimination and oppressions from the social sphere. Harassment, objectification, stereotypes. All sorts of disrespect and violence and things that men just don’t face in the same way. The solution for some people is to try to control the social sphere. To punish behaviors that harm women. To create more legislation to punish discrimination against women and enforce equality. And these attempts have led some people to think that feminism is just trying to reverse the roles of oppression because, “you wanted to be the same under the system, and now that you are you’re trying to gain more power? When will it ever be enough for you?! You’re just gonna start oppressing men!” And though that argument usually comes from a place of misogyny at some level, its not entirely unreasonable to be concerned about the direction of this kind of legislation. Like, if you put laws in place to punish discriminatory behaviors and enforce equality yes you will likely reduce the amount those behaviors occur but at what cost? Are you really going to end the patriarchy just by hiding its symptoms? What if people just get pissed that their freedoms are being encroached on and patriarchal actors use that to radicalize people into fighting against feminism and reversing all of our progress? Its not like we haven’t seen traces of that already in right wing demonization of feminism. And even if they don’t, who is to say people will even follow the laws? People break laws and find loopholes all the time.

The problem with this approach, even if it can end inequality between men and women, is that it doesn’t end the system of control and domination. It requires constant maintenance to keep that balance and if you let your guard down it is far too easy for the culture of power to lead to a new form of sex based oppression. Whether the patriarchy reinstates itself or a matriarchy forms that puts women at the top of an oppressive hierarchy, the problem still remains; the lines of sex and gender are being used to express power culture. People are still being controlled on the basis of their sex and gender. The problem is that people are able to control others based on the way they were born or the way they look.

This is where my issue with modern radical feminists is. They oppose only the oppression of women without actually fighting the core of the power culture that causes it. The problem with the patriarchy, in my eyes, is that it uses the idea of sex and gender to force people to behave a certain way. Yes, a lot of radfems are gender abolitionists who don’t believe in gender, but they still uphold the use of sex to control people. If someone who was born male behaves in a way that is typical to female individuals or identifies as something other than a man, radfems will get upset about men infiltrating women's spaces and things like “womanface.” If someone who was born female identifies as something other than a woman, they say that person is delusional and ruthlessly misgender them. Many of them treat transgender and nonbinary people as malicious and evil and mentally ill. As something that is furthering the oppression of women, somehow.

But do you see the problem? It’s the same thing that the patriarchy does; decide for someone which category they should be in then socially punish them for not adhering to the “rules” of that category. It doesn’t allow people to decide for themselves how to live, they have to respect the category they were forced into. Yes they have choice within that category but if they try to step out of that category into another one they are more comfortable with then they are attacked. “You’re invading!” “You don’t belong here!” “Quit oppressing us!” “You’re trying to destroy our progress!” Both the patriarchy and the modern radical feminist movement insist that you must behave in accordance to the biology you were born with. You can’t decide for yourself how you want to look and sound and what words you want to use for yourself. No. You must do what you are told. You must do the things determined by your biology. If you don’t you are sick and dangerous and delusional. If you don’t craft your social existence in accordance with your genitals then you should be punished. Yes patriarchy and radfems are different but at the end of the day they are using the same lines to enforce social rules and control. Neither of them will allow people to choose for themselves what category they are in. Both of them resist attempts to move away from adherence to those categories.

So lets talk about that. The idea that sex is a social construct. I’m not gonna go into all the reasons why the idea of sex used by the patriarchy (and radfems) is not biologically objective and why sex as a concept is flawed in general. If you want to get into that here’s a video to get you started (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcOhfOrz0HM). What I am here to talk about is the point that we shouldn’t be identifying people based on sex to begin with. There is no real reason why society should be divided by sex or gender at all except maybe mentioning what reproductive system you have to your date if you are looking to build a future with someone you can have kids with. Like, even if sex were an objective fact the way they say it is, why the hell does it need to effect our social life? Why should it prevent us from changing our appearance, either with clothing or surgery? What value does that have to anyone who isn’t seeking to control others? If one sex holds power over the other (like in a patriarchy) then the sex lines benefit one and oppress the other. And if the sexes are somehow made equal, the fact that they are still adhered to socially means that people can be punished for arbitrary things simply because the behavior didn’t match their genitals. That is still a form of oppression, because it controls people on the basis of sex.

I’ve scrolled through the “sex is a social construct” tag on here before and there are a LOT of radfems posting on it calling people deranged for suggesting that sex isn’t objective. But what really caught my eye was this post:

The whole post is a strawman argument and I want to address its failings. So the first thing I want to address is the misunderstanding in the first tag. The claim isn’t, “sex is a social construct and therefore evil,” the claim is “sex is a social construct and therefore shouldn’t be used to divide us or dictate our lives.” Sex as a concept isn’t bad because its a social construct. Its bad because it is used by people as a tool of control and domination over others for things they can’t control. The point of bringing up that sex is a social construct isn’t to say that social constructs are evil, its to challenge the idea that sex as a concept is a valuable thing that we cannot and/or should not get rid of. Sex is a social construct because it is a subjective method of categorization. But even if it weren’t, the fact still remains that sex is the basis of all sex based oppression.

The post is making the point that even if we don’t describe sex the biology behind it will still exist and so will the oppression done on the basis of it. It is based on an understanding of the “sex is a social construct” position that is over simplified. The post assumes that the goal of the statement is to prevent people from acknowledging things related to the concept of sex. It assumes that the position is an irrational one that thinks if we stop naming something everything connected to it will disappear, like a baby without object permanence. That is not the point we are making.

The point we are making is that as long as sex as a concept exists and is valued in our society, it will be used to oppress people. Sex and sex based oppression won’t disappear if you just stop naming it, obviously that’s ridiculous. But as long as sex exists sex based oppression will exist, because you cannot enforce a meaningful difference in sexes without forcing people to adhere to those rules and by extension punishing behaviors on the basis of sex. Our point is that if you want to end sexism you have to remove the societal value of sex. And by extension, the fact that sex is a social construct means that not only can we stop valuing sex socially, we can abolish it altogether. We have an opportunity to not only bring sexism out of the public perspective, but to destroy it altogether and move onto something more accurate and valuable.

Yes, the biology people use to justify the use of sex as a concept will always exist. People will always have reproductive systems and chromosomes and hormonal levels effected by that. The difference in a world without the concept of sex is that those things won’t be treated as intrinsically connected. Yes, they influence each other, no one’s denying that. But they are separate and independent things that should be treated as such. The reproductive system and the processes associated with it should be relevant in only two areas: producing children and receiving medical care. It should not be relevant to the ways we dress, what plastic surgeries we are allowed to access, what artificial hormones we want to take to change our appearance, and the words we use to represent us. Those things should be up to the discretion of the individual, not socially or legally mandated. Our culture shouldn’t care about people’s genitals. No one should be asking “what’s in your pants?” to determine how to categorize or treat you. No one should be assuming anything about anyone's genitals or allowing that to change their perception of that person’s social existence.

That is why my biggest problem with Radfems is the adherence to biological sex and the insistence on the relevance of people’s genitals at birth. To me, while feminism began as a movement against women’s oppression, it has evolved into a battle against sexism and sex based oppression in general. To me, respecting trans and nonbinary people is and essential part of the progression of feminism. To me, ignoring gender roles (not reversing them) and doing whatever the hell you want is an essential part of the progression of feminism. To me, the removal of biology from social relevance is an essential part of the progression of feminism.

And because my definition of feminism is a movement to end sex-based oppression, Radfem content frustrates the hell out of me because in my eyes they are just contributing to sex-based oppression by upholding the value of sex. They are replacing one version of sexism with a new one, not actually solving the problems that make sexism bad in the first place.

From my perspective, many radfem perspectives seem so narrow, reactionary, and hateful. They are fighting against the problems that feminists generally do, but rather than removing them it just seems like they are transforming and replacing them with new, equally bad problems. We need to get rid of the patriarchy and not replace it with a matriarchy that does the same thing but this time mirrored and with vengeance. Patriarchy isn’t bad because it favors men, its bad because it is a system of sex-based oppression and domination. Radfems are just advocating for a different system of sex-based oppression. Their problem doesn’t seem to be with the systems of control and force, but rather the fact that they were used without an acceptable justification. But retaliation against past sexist oppression is acceptable justification for sex-based domination because “They deserve it. Look at how they treated us for centuries!”

And like, I get that not all radfems are going to agree with the direction of vengeance and flipping the script on men, but enough of them do that it is a relevant part of the community. Not only are these ideas present in some form or another within the radfem community, but they have made their way out into the world and been used by the patriarchy to try to demonize feminism as a whole. And the fact that people actually believe that and they have actual proof that there are people trying to achieve these things makes their campaign against feminism in general so much more effective.

Its just a problem in general and every time I see a radfem trying to say this kind of stuff, even super watered down, I just wanna bang my head against something. I hate it. I hate it. Why does that community consist of like 90% hate? Why do they only care about their female-born in-group? Why do they feel the need to harass people for not agreeing with them? Why are they somehow always the victims any time anyone does something with their own sex or gender that doesn’t effect them at all? Why is everything sexist to them? Why? Why? WHy?! I hate it. But at the same time it fascinates me. I don’t know why. Maybe its just a desire to know the “enemy,” to understand what is at the core of their worldview in hopes that I can unravel the strings and stop all the hate and harassment. Idk.

I’m sorry for ranting. I just....I really wish there was more empathy. That more people were willing to sit down and actually examine the source of our problems rather than just fighting the symptoms. I wish more people listened to each other, even if they didn’t end up agreeing. Even if no one changed their opinion on the thing, I wish people would take the time to understand each other rather than constantly straw-manning their opponents. I just....ugh I’m tired of it.

#feminism #patriarchy #anti patriarchy #anti colonialism #intersectional feminism #anarcha feminism #radical feminism #nonbinary #sex is a social construct #transgender #trans #rant #im so tired of it #i do my best to keep my patience #but is really hard when people refuse to listen to what you are saying #like not even an attempt #just reading to respond #looking for things to attack #and as a result just completely missing the point #and being both ineffective and irritating #because for fucks sake its all right there #cant you fucking LISTEN #instead of dismissing everything to push your points?#there is more to disagreement than winning #but you also arent going to achieve that if you dont take the time to understand the thing youre fucking arguing against #and i know im not perfect either #i make this mistake #which is why im open to criticism #i don't have dni list because i want to be corrected so i can learn #i try my best

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writingwithcolor · 3 years

Text

Jewish author writing about antisemitism; should I include racism too?

anonymous asked:

Hi! I'm a white Jewish person who's writing a story set in a fantasy world with a Jewish-coded culture. It's important to me to explore antisemitism in this distanced setting, and explore what the Jewish diaspora means to me. I have a lot of people of color in my story as well. I don't know whether I, as a white person, should include racism in a story if it isn't necessary, but I also don't want to erase the aspects of many mildly/moderately assimilated cultures that are affected by racism, and I also don't want to imply somehow that antisemitism is a more serious issue than racism, which is obviously not the case. I was thinking that bigotry might be more culture-based rather than ethnically or racially based, but again, I'm not sure how or whether to write about bigotry against cultures + groups based on cultures + groups that I'm not a part of, and people of color in the story would obviously have their own cultural elements. Is acknowledging bigotry necessary?

It's okay to focus on antisemitism

Other mods have important advice on what exactly might be helpful or applicable to include in your story and how. I want to take a moment with the anxiety you express that focusing on antisemitism and not talking about other types of xenophobia will imply to your readers that you think antisemitism is “more serious” than other forms of bigotry. I hear and honor that anxiety, especially since “Jews only care about Jews” is a stereotype that never seems to go away, so I’m going to say something revolutionary:

It’s okay to center Jews in a story about antisemitism.

There, I said it. But I’m not making the case that you shouldn’t include references to or depictions of other types of bigotry in your story. There are a lot of great reasons why you should, because of what it can do for the complexity of your characters, the depth of your worldbuilding, or the strength of your message about the nature of xenophobia, diaspora, etc.

- How your non-Jewish-coded characters react to the things they experience can affect whether they sympathize over or contribute to the antisemitism at the heart of your story.

- How other types of xenophobia do and don’t manifest in your world can help explain why your world has antisemitism in the first place, and what antisemitism consists of in a world that also contains other minorities outside of the fantasy mainstream culture.

- Including other real-world xenophobia can help you set your antisemitism in context and contrast to help explain what you want to say about it.

Both your story and your message might be strengthened by adding these details. But if you feel the structure of your story doesn’t have room for you to show other characters’ experiences and you’re only considering doing it because you’re afraid you’ll be upholding a negative stereotype of yourself if you don’t, then it might help to realize that if someone is already thinking that, nothing you do is going to change their mind. You can explore antisemitism in your story, but you don’t have the power to solve it, and since you don’t have that power you also don’t have that responsibility. I think adding more facets to your story has the potential to make it great, but leaving it out doesn’t make you evil.

- Meir

Portraying xenophobia

As someone living in Korea and therefore usually on the outside looking in, I feel that a lot of people in Western countries tend to conflate racism and xenophobia. Which does make sense since bigots tend to not exactly care about differences between the two but simply act prejudiced against the “other”. Sci also makes a point below about racialized xenophobia. I feel these are factors contributing to your confusion regarding issues of bigotry in your story.

Xenophobia, as defined by Dictionary.com, is “an aversion or hostility to, disdain for, or fear of foreigners, people from different cultures, or strangers”. You mention “thinking that bigotry might be more culture-based”, and this description fits xenophobia better than most other forms of bigotry. Xenophobia can be seen as an umbrella term including antisemitism, so you are technically including one form of xenophobia through your exploration of antisemitism.

I understand your wariness of writing racism when it doesn’t add to the plot, especially as a white writer. Your concerns that you might “erase the aspects of many mildly/moderately assimilated cultures that are affected by racism” is valid and in fact accurate, since exclusion of racism will of course lead to lack of portrayals of the intersections between racism and xenophobia. I want to reassure you that this is not a bad thing, just a choice you can make. No one story (or at least, no story that can fit into one book) can include all the different forms of oppression in the world. Focusing on one particular form of oppression, particularly one you have personal experience with, is a valid and important form of representation.

You also comment that you “don't want to imply somehow that antisemitism is a more serious issue than racism”, but I honestly feel that doesn’t need too much concern. Much like how queerness and disability are two separate issues with intersections, racism and xenophobia form a Venn diagram, with large intersections but neither completely including the other. A story focusing on autistic characters that doesn’t also have queer rep doesn’t imply queer issues are less serious. Likewise, a story focusing on antisemitism doesn’t imply racism is less serious.

I am slightly more concerned that there might be an accidental implication of antisemitism being a more serious issue compared to other forms of xenophobia. Of course, exploring antisemitism alone is completely valid representation, and there’s no need to go out of your way to try and portray other forms of xenophobia. A microaggression or two, or maybe a mutual bitch out session with a gentile but marginalized friend should be enough to show that antisemitism isn’t more (or less) serious compared to other forms of xenophobia.

-Rune

Avoiding racialized xenophobia

I think one thing you have to be careful with here is racialized xenophobia. Are your characters of color getting disproportionately more xenophobia than your white characters? You might be falling into the trap of racialized xenophobia, which falls under racism, which you want to avoid. An example would be “all Chinese scientists are untrustworthy, but not you, you’re one of the ‘good ones.’” Although this is technically xenophobia, it is also racism.

--Mod Sci

In the case you choose to include even small snippets of other forms of xenophobia in your story, attempting to portray xenophobia without the complications of racism can be a difficult process when they often go hand in hand (especially to a Western audience). So here are a couple of suggestions I have of portraying xenophobia without racism.

First and the simplest method is portraying xenophobia between people of the same race. For example, there is definitely xenophobia against Chinese and Japanese people in Korea, but it would be difficult to claim there is a racial component when all of us are East Asian. (Something you might want to be aware of here is intersections with colorism, where even within the same race, lighter skin and other more westernized features are considered more desirable. I suggest looking through our colorism tag for more details)

Another idea is to include microaggressions for specific cultures rather than something more broad. For example, calling Korean food stinky because kimchi has a strong scent is specifically xenophobic against Koreans, while commenting on small eyes can be directed against Asians in general.

Finally, while antisemitism is a form of ethnicity-based xenophobia, it is also a form of religion-based xenophobia. Muslims and Buddhists and Hindus can absolutely be xenophobic against each other with no racism involved. Should you choose this method, particularly if religious xenophobia is only shown in a shorter scene, I suggest you try and avoid portraying any of the above religions as the Bad or Oppressive ones. As a Christian I will unironically tell you that Christianity is a safe choice for a religiously xenophobic character, as we’re far less likely to face backlash compared to any other religion, and inspiration should unfortunately be overflowing in real life.

-Rune

Other forms of ethno-religious oppression

Here is my TCK perspective as someone brought up in diverse environments where there are often other axes of oppression including religion, ethnicity and class:

Racism and xenophobia can definitely be apples to oranges, so creating a universe where racism no longer exists or has never existed seems doable to me. Perhaps in your fantasy world, structures that buttress racism, such as colonization, slavery and imperialism, are not issues. That still won’t stop people from creating “Us versus Them” divisions, and you can certainly make anti-semitism one of the many forms of xenophobia that exists in this your story. Meir has hinted that your reluctance to declaratively show the harm of anti-semitism indicates a level of anxiety around the topic, and, as someone non-Jewish but also not Christian or Muslim, my perspective is as follows: I’ve always viewed anti-semitism as a particularly virulent form of ethno-religious xenophobia, and while it is a unique experience, it is not the only unique experience when it comes to ethno-religious xenophobia. I think because the 3-way interaction between the Abrahamic religions dominates much of Western geopolitics, that can be how it looks, but the world is a big place (See Rune’s comments for specific examples).

To that effect, I recommend prioritizing anti-semitism alongside other non-racialized forms of xenophobia along ideological, cultural and class-based lines for both POC and non-POC characters. Show how these differences can drive those in power to treat other groups poorly. I conclude by encouraging you to slowly trace your logic when depicting xenophobia towards POC characters in particular. Emphasize bigotry along axes of class and ideology, rather than traits linked to assumed biologically intrinsic features. Ultimately, I think recognizing commonalities between forms of ethno-religious oppression as a whole will help make you more comfortable in depicting anti-semitism with the seriousness it deserves without feeling as though you are trivializing the experiences of other groups.

- Marika

Worldbuilding ethnically and racially diverse cultures

As has been mentioned by other mods, I think it’s completely fine to focus your story on antisemitism and not portray other forms of bigotry if that’s the focus and scope of the story you want to tell. My fellow mods have also offered several valuable suggestions for writing about “culture-based bigotry” in general if that’s what you want to do, while making sure it’s not coming off as racially based. One element I can add is that from a worldbuilding standpoint, it will also help to have your fantasy cultural groups be ethnically and racially diverse. After all, this was common historically in several parts of the world, and depending on which cultures you’re basing your coding on, you could absolutely have fantasy cultures in your world that include characters we would read (according to our modern-day standards) as white, and others that we would read as people of color, within the same fantasy culture. All these characters would face the same culture-based bigotry (such as xenophobia or religious oppression), even though they are read by a modern audience as different races.

As a note, the reason I say “read as” and “according to our modern-day standards” is that the entire concept of whiteness as we know it is very specific to our current cultural context. Who is and isn’t considered white has changed quite a lot over time, and is still the subject of debate today in some cases. Your work will be read by a modern audience, so of course, you need to take into account our current understanding of race and the dynamics surrounding it. However, it’s also helpful to remember that our modern racial categories are fairly new in the context of the many millennia of history of humankind, and that they are certainly not inevitable. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking a fantasy culture has to align itself entirely with modern-day racial categories.

- Niki

#Asks #fantasy #worldbuilding #anti semitism #xenophobia #racism #Judaism #Jewish

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pumpkinpaix · 3 years

Note

Hello! Feel free not to answer this question if it is in any way too much, but I've been wondering about something concerning the "western" mdzs fandom. Lately, i have seen multiple pieces of fanart that use what is clearly Christian symbolism and sometimes downright iconography in depicting the characters. I'm a european fan, but it still makes me vaguely uneasy. I know that these things are rarely easy to judge. I'm definitely not qualified to do so and was wondering if you have an opinion

Hi there! thank you for your patience and for the interesting question! I’ve been thinking about this since i received this ask because it?? idk, it’s difficult to answer, but it also touches on a a few things that I find really interesting.

the short answer: it’s complicated, and I also don’t know what I feel!

the longer answer:

i think that this question is particularly difficult to answer because of how deeply christianity is tied to the western art and literary canon. so much of what is considered great european art is christian art! If you just take a quick glance at wiki’s page on european art, you can see how inextricable christianity is, and how integral christian iconography has been in the history of european art. If you study western art history, you must study christian imagery and christian canon because it’s just impossible to engage with a lot of the work in a meaningful way without it. that’s just the reality of it.

Christianity, of course, also has a strong presence in european colonial and imperialist history and has been used as a tool of oppression against many peoples and nations, including China. I would be lying if I said I had a good relationship with Christianity--I have always faced it with a deep suspicion because I think it did some very, very real damage, not just to chinese people, but to many cultures and peoples around the world, and that’s not a trauma that can be easily brushed aside or reconciled with.

here is what is also true: my maternal grandmother was devoutly christian. my aunt is devoutly christian. my uncle’s family is devoutly christian. my favorite cousin is devoutly christian. when I attended my cousin’s wedding, he had both a traditional chinese ceremony (tea-serving, bride-fetching, ABSURDLY long reception), and also a christian ceremony in a church. christianity is a really important part of his life, just as it’s important to my uncle’s family, and as it was important to my grandmother. I don’t think it’s my right or place to label them as simply victims of a colonialist past--they’re real people with real agency and choice and beliefs. I think it would be disrespectful to act otherwise.

that doesn’t negate the harm that christianity has done--but it does complicate things. is it inherently a bad thing that they’re christian, due to the political history of the religion and their heritage? that’s... not a question I’m really interested in debating. the fact remains that they are christian, that they are chinese, and that they chose their religion.

so! now here we are with mdzs, a chinese piece of media that is clearly Not christian, but is quickly gaining popularity in euroamerican spaces. people are making fanart! people are making A LOT of fanart! and art is, by nature, intertextual. a lot of the most interesting art (imo) makes deliberate use of that! for example (cyan art nerdery time let’s go), Nikolai Ge’s What is Truth?

I love this painting! it’s notable for its unusual depiction of christ: shabby, unkempt, slouched, in shadow. if you look for other paintings of this scene, christ is usually dignified, elegant, beautiful, melancholy -- there’s something very humanizing and humbling about this depiction, specifically because of the way it contrasts the standard. it’s powerful because we as the audience are expected to be familiar with the iconography of this scene, the story behind it, and its place in the christian canon.

you can make similar comments about Gentileschi’s Judith vs Caravaggio’s, or Manet’s Olympia vs Ingres’ Grande Odalisque -- all of these paintings exist in relation to one another and also to the larger canon (i’m simplifying: you can’t just compare one to another directly in isolation etc etc.) Gauguin’s Jacob Wrestling the Angel is also especially interesting because of how its portrayal of its content contrasts to its predecessors!

or! because i’m really In It now, one of my favorite paintings in the world, Joan of Arc by Bastien-Lepage:

I just!!! gosh, idk, what’s most interesting to me in this painting is the way it seems to hover between movements: the hyperrealistic, neoclassical-esque take on the figure, but the impressionistic brushstrokes of the background AAA gosh i love it so much. it’s really beautiful if you ever get a chance to see it in person at the Met. i’m putting this here both because i personally just really like it and also as an example of how intertextuality isn’t just about content, but also about visual elements.

anyways, sorry most of this is 19thc, that was what i studied the most lol.

(a final note: if you want to read about a really interesting painting that sits in the midst of just a Lot of different works, check out the wiki page on Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa, specifically under “Interpretation and Legacy”)

this is all a really long-winded way of getting to this point: if you want to make allusory fanart of mdzs with regards to western art canon, you kind of have to go out of your way to avoid christian imagery/iconography, especially when that’s the lens through which a lot of really intensely emotional art was created. many of my favorite paintings are christian: Vrubel’s Demon, Seated, Perov’s Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, Ge’s Conscience, Judas, Bastien-Lepage’s Joan of Arc, as shown above. that’s not to say there ISN’T plenty of non-christian art -- but christian art is very prominent and impossible to ignore.

so here are a few pieces of fanwork that I’ve seen that are very clearly making allusions to christian imagery:

1. this beautiful pietà nielan by tinynarwhals on twitter

2. a lovely jiang yanli as our lady of tears by @satuwilhelmiina

3. my second gif in this set here, which I will also show below:

i’m only going to talk about mine in depth because well, i know exactly what i was thinking when I put this gif together while I can’t speak for anyone else.

first: the two lines of the song that I wanted to use for lan xichen were “baby, I’m a fighter//in the robes of a saint” because i felt that they fit him very well. of course, just the word “saint” evokes catholicism, even if it’s become so entwined in the english language that it’s taken on a secular meaning as well.

second: when I saw this scene, my immediate thought was just “PIETÀ!!” because LOOK at that composition! lan xichen’s lap! nie mingjue lying perpendicular to it! the light blue/white/silver of lan xichen in contrast to the darker robes of both nie mingjue and meng yao! not just that, but the very cool triangular structure of the image is intensely striking, and Yes, i Do love that it simultaneously ALSO evokes deposition of christ vibes. (baxia as the cross.... god..... is that not the Tightest Shit) does this make meng yao joseph of arimathea? does it make him john the evangelist? both options are equally interesting, I think when viewed in relation to his roles in the story: as a spy in qishan and as nmj’s deputy. maybe he’s both.

anyways, did I do this intentionally? yes, though a lot of it is happy accident/discovered after the fact since I’m relying on CQL to have provided the image. i wanted to draw attention to all of that by superimposing that line over that image! (to be clear: I didn’t expect it to all come through because like. that’s ridiculous. the layers you’d have to go through to get from “pretty lxc gifset” --> “if we cast nie mingjue as a christ figure, what is the interesting commentary we could do on meng yao by casting him as either joseph of arimathea or john the evangelist” are like. ok ur gonna need to work a little harder than slapping a song lyric over an image to achieve an effect like that.)

the point of this is: yes, it’s intentionally christian, yes I did this, yes I am casting these very much non-christian characters into christian roles for this specific visual work -- is this okay?

I obviously thought it was because I made it. but would I feel the same about a work that was written doing something similar? probably not. I think that would make me quite uncomfortable in most situations. but there’s something about visual art that makes it slightly different that I have trouble articulating -- something about how the visual often seeks to illustrate parallels or ideas, whereas writing characters as a different religion can fundamentally change who those characters are, the world they inhabit, etc. in a more... invasive?? way. that’s still not quite right, but I genuinely am not sure how to explain what i mean! I hope the general idea comes across. ><

something else to think about is like, what are pieces I find acceptable and why?

what makes the pieces above that reference christian imagery different than this stunning nieyao piece by @cyandemise after klimt’s kiss? (warnings for like, dead bodies and vague body horror) like i ADORE this piece (PLEASE click for fullview it’s worth it for the quality). it’s incredibly beautiful and evocative and very obviously references a piece of european art. I have no problem with it. why? because it isn’t explicitly christian? it’s still deeply entrenched in western canon. klimt certainly made other pieces that were explicit christian references.

another piece I’d like to invite you all to consider is this incredible naruto fanart of sakura and ino beheading sasuke after caravaggio’s judith. (warnings for beheading, blood, etc. you know.) i also adore this piece! i think it’s very good both technically and conceptually. the reference that it makes has a real power when viewed in relation to the roles of the characters in their original story -- seeing the women that sasuke fucked over and treated so disrespectfully collaborating in his demise Says Something. this is also!! an explicitly christian reference made with non-christian japanese characters. is this okay? does it evoke the same discomfort as seeing mdzs characters being drawn with christian iconography? why or why not?

the point is, I don’t think there’s a neat answer, but I do think there are a lot of interesting issues surrounding cultural erasure/hegemony that are raised by this question. i don’t think there are easy resolutions to any of them either, but I think that it’s a good opportunity to reexamine our own discomfort and try and see where it comes from. all emotions are valid but not all are justified etc. so I try to ask, is it fair? do i apply my criticisms and standards equally? why or why not? does it do real harm, or do i just not like it? what makes one work okay and another not?

i’ve felt that there’s a real danger with the kind of like, deep moral scrutiny of recent years in quashing interesting work in the name of fear. this morality tends to be expressed in black and white, good and bad dichotomies that i really do think stymies meaningful conversation and progress. you’ll often see angry takes that boil down to things like, “POC good, queer people good, white people bad, christianity bad” etc. without a serious critical examination of the actual issues at hand. I feel that these are extraordinarily harmful simplifications that can lead to an increased insularity that isn’t necessarily good for anyone. there’s a fine line between asking people to stay in their lane and cultural gatekeeping sometimes, and I think that it’s something we should be mindful of when we’re engaging in conversations about cultural erasure, appropriation etc.

PERHAPS IT IS OBVIOUS that I have no idea where that line falls LMAO since after all that rambling I have given you basically nothing. but! I hope that you found it interesting at least, and that it gives you a bit more material to think on while you figure out where you stand ahaha.

was this just an excuse to show off cool (fan)art i like? maybe ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(ko-fi)

#Anonymous #asks and replies #art #fanart #art history #christianity #mdzs #mdzs meta #meta #mine #mymeta #cyan gets too deep in the weeds #lmfao this post is a mess ive been staring at it for like a week and at this point im just gonna post it to the wall and keep moving asldfj #hope you enjoyed

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theravenclawrevolutionary · 3 years

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i'm not a frev expert. and you seem to be approchable enough and to have read enough. i had a question, or kind of a question. i just. i think that if robespierre wasn't against all the deaths by guillotine, he wouldn't have written that quote about virtue and terror. maybe i'm getting you wrong, or i'm not understanding the sense of that quote. could you explain?

Oh dang. I'm kinda surprised that people think I have any real authority on the subject of the Frev since I'm not an actual historian or anything and I'm surprised people find me approachable but of course I'll try my best for you Anon! And if anyone else has a better interpretation or anything else to add please, go ahead. I'll also try my best to keep it in as simple language as I can. But I digress.

⚠ This post is quite long so be prepared for that ⚠

First of all, Robespierre has more than one quote talking about terror and virtue. I'm assuming that you're thinking of the one that goes, "Terror is only justice: prompt, severe and inflexible; it is then an emanation of virtue; it is less a distinct principle than a natural consequence of the general principle of democracy, applied to the most pressing wants of the country." since that is the most common one. However, if you're talking about the one that goes "Terror is only justice: prompt, severe and inflexible; it is then an emanation of virtue; it is less a distinct principle than a natural consequence of the general principle of democracy, applied to the most pressing wants of the country." Let me know and I'll write about that one. The former is definitely a quote that, in my experience studying the Frev, gets misinterpreted from what it was originally meant to say fairly often.

To start with, it's very important to know what connotation and definition the words 'virtue' and 'terror' had in revolution-era France. Modern-day definitions may not be the same ones that were used in the past. According to my research, which of course isn't infallible, virtue was used to refer to someone's disposition and the way it would lead them to choose good over evil whereas where terror was seen simply as great fear. At the time there was no connotation of our modern-day terrorism to associate with the word. Nowadays we associate terror with terrorism which brings to mind murder, mindless destruction, oppression, and unchecked authority in which someone's ideals are forced upon large groups of people. Because of this many people assume that this is what Robespierre had in mind when he referenced terror when really he meant to describe the use of intimidation tactics to seize power from those who oppressed the lower class people and the general fear that was felt by the commoners.

Essentially the Reign of Terror meant 'a time period where everyone felt a sh*t load of Fear over all the bad stuff happening at once while the regular people try to overthrow the oppressive ruling class with intimidation tactics.' It does not mean 'a time period where loads of people were purposely committing widespread acts of terrorism to push their agendas'. And really, it was the only way to give everyone the chance to get rid of the old government, the monarchy, and allow a fair democracy that would be beneficial to the future of France to be built.

Next, it's important to know the context in which this quote was originally said. The speech where Robespierre said it took place on Feb 5th (?) of 1794. By this point, the revolution has been well underway for several long years and, as I said, a lot of sucky things are happening at the same time. The republic was in a war with a massive part of Europe and they're kinda getting curb-stomped. The country is in a state of civil war between the people that still supported the monarchy and all the different groups that had different views of how the country should be run. France's economy was complete sh*t too, so all this really radicalized the people and made the whole revolution situation so much worse than it already was.

At the time there were two factions, so to say, in the National Convention that were hella pissed at each other and really at odds. the Hébertists (who, to make things easy, wanted to escalate the Terror, go on the offensive with the military, and the overthrow and replace some of the existing government structures at the time) and the Dantonists (who wanted to sorta get rid of the revolutionary government, negotiate for peace in the war, and chill out on the whole Terror thing). And remember that these groups of people were very loose and like people in today's politic didn't agree with every stance their 'faction' took.

By the time Max made this speech, which was addressing these two groups, the situation between them was escalated big time. The Hébertists, with their views of 'more terror all over! That'll help us win everything,' or 'terror without virtue,' were pushing for a system that would quickly prove fatal. By contrast, the Dantonists with their, 'we just need to kinda chill and things will work out,' way of thinking or 'virtue without terror', would only lead to them (and the rest of the country) getting walked over by everyone else.

Throughout the entire speech, a speech I haven't recently read all the way through, Max comes back to the idea of terror and virtue, stressing that both are necessary. What I think he meant to do was talk about how the revolution couldn't survive without both terror (fear and the aggression that causes it) and virtue (the choice of good over evil) being applied. He's trying to explain to both groups that a little bit of both ideals is the most beneficial way to go about things. In reality, it has nothing to do with whether he personally believed in or advocated the death penalty/ the use of the guillotine. Instead, Robespierre is emphasizing that at that particular moment in time doing what is right and good (virtue) will most likely end up causing some bad things that will make people afraid for a while (terror).

What Robespierre is not saying is that terror, and by extension the violence that is causing the terror is virtuous. There are several easy-to-find sources that prove his personal disapproval of the death penalty from a moral standpoint. As a young lawyer in his hometown in Arras, he became physically ill at the idea of having one of his clients sentenced to death, even though he was found guilty of the crime he was on trial for. He made a speech agreeing with the abolition of the death penalty on May 30th of 1791 (?) arguing that there is no place for the death penalty in a civilized society because the law needs to be a model of what is good. He attempted to save the lives of Georges Danton and Camille Desmoulins, two friends/coworkers that he is commonly charged with sending to their deaths when the opposite is actually true. Additionally, he did the same with other more controversial people including the king's sister of all people, Madame Elisabeth. Even when voting for the death of the king he reiterates his own opinion on the death penalty saying, "For myself, I abhor the penalty of death that your law so liberally imposes, and I have neither love nor hatred for the King; it is only the crimes that I hate…. It is with regret that I utter this baneful truth…Louis must die in order that our country may live." Though it conflicts with his personal views, Robespierre makes the decision based on the needs of France as a country, something that many politicians need to relearn how to do today.

Long story short, he was not supporting the use of the guillotine with that quote, but rather trying to get two opposing factions to realize that both intimidation/fear and making sound, beneficial decisions would keep France on the right track to building a successful democracy for the people. Hopefully this helped and I explained it in a way that was easy for you to understand. If you ever have any more Frev related questions feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer or I'll send you in the direction of someone else more knowledgeable if I don't know.

Also, can someone tell me if I did a good job of explaining this? I can never tell if things I write about the Frev make sense to me because I actually know exactly what I mean to say so everyone else kinda goes along with it or if I actually say helpful things of substance. Thanks guys! And if anyone else knows more about the subject or if I've made a mistake please help me out.

~Dara

#french revolution #robespierre #frev #maximilien robespierre #history #history facts #historical quotes #politics #my idiot explanations #idk if i worded this right #or if i even explained it right #i hope i helped though

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hillbillyoracle · 3 years

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Some Thoughts on Why White Pagans Need to Heal Their Relationships with Christianity

Note: I've been trying to write a piece like this for months and the only way I know how to write this is to be very vulnerable and personal. So just please keep that in mind as you read this. It isn't very refined and it's something I'm still very much in process with, to borrow a phrase from my charismatic Christian upbringing. It's more a diary entry than a finished piece and none of these thoughts are original or eloquent. My hope it's helpful to see someone thinking through these things though.

If you're white and you don't want to further colonization and imperialism in your spirituality, then going back to Christianity in some form is pretty necessary; to do the work of decolonizing it's doctrines and to prevent taking from traditions that aren't ours.

This is just the conclusion I've arrived at after a lot shadow working in and around both my ancestors and my religious trauma. My ancestors aren't all white Europeans. But given that I'm white and I don't have any way to carry on the traditions of those that weren't, I feel like the best way to honor those non-white ancestors is to go back to the spiritual traditions I do have access to and doing the work of reshaping them into something less harmful.

I have read and intellectually understood that culture forms the foundation of spirituality and that when you remove something from it's originating culture, that concept or tool no longer works properly, if at all. In working with my non-white ancestors, I really got it on a practical and emotional level. There was this sense that they'd love for me to know their traditions but that it required an understanding that just isn't possible for me given my upbringing and disconnection - "you don't know the words and there's no way to find a person who can teach you" as one ancestor put it. It was an important reminder that "this isn't for white people" isn't merely a categorical assertion but a cultural and practical one.

They've generally asked I stick to practices I have a cultural grounding in when honoring them, even though it is not theirs - the cultural and linguistic element is that important to them. They would rather an authentic expression of gratitude and care through a ritual that isn't theirs rather than an imitation of one that is or being left out of my practice all together. Which makes sense to me in a relational way I hadn't fully grasped before.

In working with my white ancestors, I've come to more viscerally understand that the present understanding of Christianity is wildly different than other historical understandings. One thing that surprised me was that some of my more recent ancestors have expressed more discomfort around my queerness and transness than many of my older ancestors but both root their understanding in the Bible. I enjoyed one ancestor who, when I explained that I'm partnered with a woman, to mean that I would have a life of service - "no men to distract you from God" - which I mean is not wrong on several levels. It really highlighted for me that Christian doctrine is far more flexible than I'd initially thought. It challenged ideas I'd picked up through traumatic religious experiences. So much of what I'd assumed was Christianity itself seems to be more Christianity right now.

The historical angle is really important me. One of the things that drove my interest in Paganism was trying to understand what came before Christianity, to connect with whatever had been cut off in that process. The more I've come to learn about imperialism within Europe - how various empires conquered and destroyed localized traditions indigenous to parts of Europe - it clicked for me that my white ancestors did to others what had been done to them. It is intergenerational trauma in a nutshell.

It's also striking to me that so many people term the traditions pagans pull from as "dead" religions or at the very least "not living". For years I took that to mean they were "safe" to take from, that I wouldn't hurt anyone by doing so. But I hadn't really understood the weight of what "dead" meant - that there was no one left alive who could teach me, that I can't live in a context where all of the beliefs, tools, and traditions make intuitive sense. And if it was important to my ancestors who had had a connection to their traditions, then what was I missing by reanimating these traditions without that link?

I don't have a full visceral understanding of what I'm missing to be honest. I have a feeling that'll develop as my practice evolves. But that question alone has marked a pretty important change in how I understand myself spiritually.

The living and cultural element to my practice is more important to me now. For me, just given the family, community, and area I was raised in, that means Christianity is the living tradition I have access to and I've been revisiting it. I was reading an interview the other day with someone who is both a Catholic theologian and a practicing Buddhist. I liked the way he put it when he referred to Catholicism as "one of his sources of wisdom". That better captures my relationship with Christianity that's been unfolding over the last few months.

Making sure that intergenerational spiritual trauma stops as much as possible with me is really important. I had mistakenly thought that meant abandoning Christianity all together, that it was the problem. Which in hindsight, is fucking wild - I hugely fucked up there. There's nothing stopping me from just enacting the harm I learned in the context of Christianity in a different context, a Pagan context. It doesn't get to the root of the issue. At the end of the day, I just want to be sure I do not use my religion, any religion, to further the harms of structural inequality and colonial oppression. That's the goal.

In reading around about this, I've come to feel pretty strongly that one of the best ways to work toward that is to strive toward animism. Animism has been a great antidote to the spiritual entitlement that colonial religions cultivate (including white paganism). Animism also builds a relational spirituality rather than a goal/individual centered one. White paganism isn't inherently animistic since white culture teaches values that undermine quality relationships - individualism, competitiveness, and seeking domination of some fashion in order to feel safe. An animistic lens requires you unlearn those values and cultivate new ones - mutuality, respect, and accountability.

So all this is to say that given my current understanding, I think trying to build a practice out of New Age concepts while trying to avoid appropriation sounds impossible and hellish. I also think it doesn't deal with the work that needs done. I'm choosing to take an animist lens to the living traditions I do have to see if that's a better space for both my spirituality and my evolving understand of decolonizing to grow in.

People will rightly question my use of the term "shadow work" given this perspective. Shadow work is a problematic term for a lot of different reasons that are beyond the scope of this piece. Where I'm at with it right now is that most western religious traditions seem to have some understanding of what we might call shadow work which points to it being important and useful. However they all used different terms given their contexts so I'm still unsure of what term might be the most appropriate given where I'm at. So for right now, you might see me use it less in the title or body of work I write from here on out, but I still might use it as a tag to make it findable. There's a good shot this doesn't go far enough and I'm not sold on this approach. Just know it's something I'm trying to figure out.

So that's where I'm at right now. I think white pagans really need to be more serious about animism at minimum and hopefully also looking at the role living religious traditions play in their current practice as well. I think white pagans' unhealed reactivity around Christianity too often serves as a justification for spiritual appropriation and furthering colonial harm. Changes are definitely needed. What that looks like in practice for individuals will likely vary a ton. I'd love to hear from other folks doing work in this vein. What's worked for you so far? What hasn't? Where are you in the process?

#witchblr #witch #magic #pagan #paganism #A lot of this is inspired by working with the Hierophant more closely

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spasmsofthought · 4 years

Text

rough waters (zuko x water tribe! reader)

Inspiration hit at like 3 am early this morning, but I didn’t get around to writing most of this until this evening. Technically, this can be categorized as a Part II to rituals. If you want more context to this pairing, read it first!

If there’s anything off about how I wrote this situation, please message me your feedback so I can fix it! I want to be sensitive.

I don’t know what it’s like to be a minority, or be a part of a group of people that has suffered destructive and violent oppression, since I’m white and American and have only lived in the US. I don’t know what it’s like to be a victim of prejudice, racism, misrepresentation or hurtful stereotyping because of the color of my skin or my background, or race. I took what my friends of color have spoken to me about when they have decided to open up to me and tried to honor their experiences and emotions and spaces in these words. I’m committed to be a safe space for them as I continue to educate myself in order to support them and fight for justice for them.

If in any way shape or form, you do not feel that my writing reflected that, please let me know! I want to write an accurate representation in the small writings I present here in this blog.

With all that said, I hope you all enjoy this piece!

Like, comment, reblog! xo

Next: Raw

While the Fire Nation palace was beautiful and ornate and architecturally captivating, staying cooped up inside had never been a virtue of yours. Especially considering your home growing up had been among the raging ocean and freezing snow.

So, when you found yourself with a break in-between hefty meetings with lecture after lecture on what your life was going to look like as the future Fire Lade, you figured going out to explore the market was a good idea.

Despite traveling back and forth from the Water Tribe to the Fire Nation before your engagement to Zuko, there had been little opportunity to spend much of your time among the common Fire Nation people. Your scarce time with Zuko, what with his duties and responsibilities, was spent in the safety of the Fire Nation palace feeding ducks or taking walks or exploring the library.

It was obvious that to gain his people’s respect and trust as their new leader, and a leader that had recently ended the very supported and celebrated war his grandfather had started a hundred years ago, Zuko actually had to do his job. He was left time for little else.

With the position of being securely part of his future, and the future of the country, freedom was granted to you on more occasions. Advisors had also pointed that it would be better for you to be spotted out and about every once and a while in order for people to see you and get the chance to interact with you. How could the people ever honor and respect you as their Fire Lady, especially one from another nation, if you remained so aloof and distant that they had to guess at almost every aspect of who you were?

Thus, an adventure to the market was in order.

A stall of fresh-looking fruit was the first to catch you eye after about half an hour of walking through the different sections of the city. You were walking down a branched path away from a main road, further away from the Palace than you had ever been before, when you saw it.

When officials had offered you to participate in tours of the country before, they tended to stick to the places of nobility and wealth. This area looked less cleaned up and more familiar to you, a bit more like your previous home in the Water Tribe. Gone were stoned walkways and polished-up homes; you know walked cobbled streets and homes that seemed to be built with less care towards aesthetics and with more mind placed on structure and space equity.

It wasn’t quiet like the upper villages that housed nobles and high-ranking government officials; it was beautifully less sterile. You keep your pace even, but it falters a bit as you see people from their doorways and windows watch you as you pass by. There are no smiles or friendly greetings. You try not to take it personally. You had been told from the beginning that here people choose to be reserved and stoic. Ahead of you, parents usher their children through their doorways and into their homes.

They’re just shy and wary, Your head whispers to you. You’ve never been in this part of town before.

You hear a soft echo of children’s laughter as the breeze ruffles your face, and you smile a bit as you stop in front of the fruit stall you eyed a few moments ago. You turn your eyes to examine the fruit that is laid out in categorized groupings. Apples, oranges, a few tomatoes, and fruit only specific to Fire Nation agriculture.

You pick up a red apple to get a better look at it and don’t even notice the old lady sweeping the ground, positioned more in the shadows, until she speaks to you.

“Those are expensive. And we don’t barter with foreign money.”

Her voice sounds frail, but one look at her betrays what her voice implies. Her skin is weathered, and her eyes worn by time and emotions that aren’t able to be clearly deciphered. For a moment, you figure that the war had to have had an effect on everyone, even those who dwelt in the nation that benefited from it the most.

“I’m sorry?” You ask, trying to get a sense of what she’s trying to get at.

You’re wearing Fire Nation robes, rich in color but otherwise not gaudy, and to the latest style of what’s currently acceptable for ladies in the Capitol. There’s nothing off about how you’re dressed or presenting yourself. You even made sure to put your hair up properly, without your beads just this once.

A show of solidarity, one Fire Sage said to you when they were leaving from the palace a few weeks ago and you had asked for some advice in how to move forward.

“What’s there to not understand about what I said?” The old lady snaps at you, muscles recoiled with tension. “We don’t trade with foreign money.”

The words are like acid to your stomach as the old lady looks directly in the eye. Her eyes drift down, and you inwardly curse; you forgot that you had on the betrothal necklace Zuko had given you just recently. Blue was not common in jewelry or as a color to wear in the Fire Nation, as you have come to know well.

The lady mumbles under her breath and begins sweeping the stall floor again, like she hasn’t even spoken, and you set the apple back down to its proper place among the others. She’s not even ashamed of her tone or at her lack of manners. It’s like she doesn’t even recognize who you are.

It hits you: Maybe she doesn’t want to.

There’s no point in explaining that you only carry Fire Nation money with you now; that all your Water Tribe coins are saved in a box that sits on your nightstand because you don’t know if you’ll ever use them again. You don’t know quite what to do with yourself.

You’ve known that this country has suffered under at least a hundred years of nationalistic propaganda warding people away from associating with any other nation and promoting Fire Nation exceptionalism. You’d known there would be challenges to marrying the Fire Lord as someone from the Water Tribe, but maybe not that you’d have to struggle with changing an entire nation’s perception of your people and culture. That you’d have to prove to everyone here that you are just as equal as them.

It’s obvious that the old lady is not going to speak to you again and wants nothing more to do with you. No one else is around for conversation or distraction either, so the choice to head back the way you came is an easy one.

You’re turning away from the stand when you hear the old lady say something under her breath. At first, it doesn’t register as you walk away, but the further away you walk, the clearer the word becomes.

“Savage.”

It sends shivers up your spine and almost leaves you heaving in the middle of the street, but you refuse to cower to a word. Even if it is a word laced with a century, or more, of malice and hatred and prejudice. Your walk back to the Fire Nation palace is both long and short at the same time.

It is hours later when Zuko finds you at the edge of a pond, watching the turtle ducks swimming around in it and fishing for food. It is secluded and quiet, and he has a few spare minutes he can spend with you without worrying about his duties as Fire Lord.

You don’t startle when he sits down next to you on the grass, but you are surprised he found a few minutes of escape from the constant responsibility and pressure that surrounds him. Usually it’s not until at least dinner time that he’s free.

He moves one of his hands towards both of yours, signaling that he wants to split the loaf of bread you’re feeding to the turtle ducks with him. For a moment it feels almost satisfying to rip something in half. You hand him one chunk while you cradle the other. There are a few minutes of silence as it seems Zuko decompresses and you try to retrain your rage and hurt and sadness from your interaction with the old lady.

Your mother always told you that keeping a calm face when everything is the opposite inside of you is like the ocean trying to be a wave when it’s actually a tsunami. You block the memory out and just try to enjoy the stillness and peace with Zuko. It’s not like he gets much time for either.

“When I was younger, I threw a whole loaf of bread at a baby turtle duck and the mother bit me.”

The thought feels a bit incomplete, like it’s bittersweet, but you don’t press him today. It’s better for him to talk halfway about memories than not talk about them at all with you.

You chuff out a laugh but otherwise remain silent. You rip off a small piece of bread and softly throw it into the water. Soon the turtle ducks are swarming around each other for more, but you pace out the chunks enough for there to be some bread left a minute later.

Zuko is tossing out a few chunks of his own as you begin to speak.

“Some old lady called me a savage in the market today.”

Again, silence greets you. But this time, it’s not about governmental officials rejecting your culture while designing the wedding ceremony. This time it’s about the fact that the person he is going to marry soon is being prejudiced against by the people he rules; the people you will also have a part in ruling in a small amount of time.

“She didn’t exactly say it to my face,” You say angrily as you toss the big chunk into the pond, scattering the turtle ducks, and standing up. The fury can no longer be ignored. “But it wasn’t even what she said, Zuko.”

Your growl at the same time as the tears well up and make their way down your cheeks. You’re tired of crying, but it’s one of the only ways your emotions are expressed. Zuko stays in his seated position as he watches you. Tenderness clouds his expression, but he’s also being observant.

As much as the Fire Nation teaches their people rigidity, your community, especially your parents, taught you that to deny yourself expression is to deny yourself freedom. Emotional expression is where your relationship struggles the most sometimes, due to the polar opposite cultural values and teachings. Silence in his, complete and full expression in yours. Sometimes it’s hard to find a balance. Moon and sun, right?

It’s in situations like these where Zuko really takes time to consider what he says.

“It’s what everyone doesn’t say,” You say, swiping at your eyes, trying to make the cursed water on your face disappear. Anger feels better right now than grief. “It’s the looks and the silence about it all from those here who say they care. Like complicity is the same as advocating. Why should I suffer for the one-sided education people experienced at the hands of those who wished to destroy the world in the name of nationalism and supremacy? It’s not fair and it’s wrong and I shouldn’t have to be stereotyped because of the things other people said!”

You huff as you throw your hands at the sky. There’s also a bit of a yell that comes out, and you’re thankful it’s only you and Zuko in this secluded part of the palace. You sigh as you make you way back down to sit next to Zuko. He glances at his hands before staring out at the water.

“I wish I could say things will be different, but they probably won’t be for a long time,” His time as the Fire Lord has given him wisdom he wouldn’t have otherwise. Although discomfort stews in your stomach, you know he’s right. He’s suffered from this too, in different ways.

“I know,” You say back at him, laying a hand on his clothed forearm. A hundred years of war has left the Fire Nation’s own people divided and prejudiced, never mind the rest of the world. You had gone through your own journey of dismantling your own prejudice about the Fire Nation when Zuko joined you, Sokka, Katara, Toph, and Aang in order to defeat his father.

“There is a long road of healing ahead of us, of me. I meant it when I said it the day of my coronation, and I still mean it now,” Your hand makes its way down to his, clasping it in a show of support. Zuko always means what he says. “There are changes I’m making, and while some of them are already being implemented, it’s going to take time for some of the others.”

“I know,” You whisper again, leaning your head on Zuko’s shoulder as you both stare out at the water. It doesn’t feel like peace that settles in your stomach; it feels more temporary and elusive, perhaps because it’s a foreign feeling to you.

It may not seem be solid, but you cling onto it for dear life. One of each of your hands is clasped together as you breath out slowly; the rage has settled now, but the pain seeps deep into your being. You know it’s going to be a while before it fades away into healing.

“Someday things will be different.” Zuko’s tone is soft as he rests his head against your own.

And you realize what is stirring in you: hope. Fragile and small, but still sitting there in your belly when all else seems bleak. It looks as if undoing it all will take more work than what it took to do all of it in the first place.

But as you and Zuko sit together and stare out at the calm little pond, a little oasis of tranquility, you can’t help but think, hope, that maybe, someday, even if it’s far into the future, things will be different.

#avatar the last airbender #avatar: the last airbender #avatar: tla #avatar zuko #prince zuko #zuko #zuko x reader #zuko x oc #atla #atla zuko #fire nation #water tribe #zuko one shot #zuko imagine #fire lord zuko

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jyndor · 3 years

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Rogue One Meta: Bookends

You know what I love about Rogue One? Well, a lot of things. The anti-fascist message, the characters, the found family trope, the soundtrack, how pretty the whole movie is... there is just too much to like about it. But one thing that really gets me going is how neatly the movie ties in its beginning with its ending.

Let’s do a recap.

So in the beginning, we skip the usual Star Wars crawl and get straight into the action: little Jyn runs to her parents, the family packs up what little they can grab, Lyra calls Saw to alert him to Krennic's approach, Galen asks Jyn to tell him that she understands that whatever he does it is all to protect her. She says she does (she doesn't, of course; she’s EIGHT) and they hug it out. Lyra takes Jyn off to go hide in their little bunker before she changes her mind, she gives Jyn the kyber necklace and then leaves Jyn to try to save Galen, etc etc. I'm not telling you anything you don't already know.

We all know that when Lyra tells Krennic that he will "never win" and is killed while shooting Krennic, Jyn sees it. We know that Jyn hides in the bunker for a long time, long after her lantern dies out, until Saw is able to rescue her.

We know this just as well as we know how the movie ends: Krennic finds Jyn on the top of the tower, she knows she is about to die so she tells him that she brings her parents' revenge, that he has lost and he snarls at her, monologues like a villain always has to do, aims his blaster and-

Cassian shoots him before he can pull the trigger. Jyn transmits the Death Star plans, Cassian stops her from wasting time on Krennic, they definitely don’t make out on the elevator, and then they go sit on the beach and cuddle while they wait for their deaths. It’s very cute and very sad.

We know that Jyn is Galen and Lyra's weapon, their revenge for the violence that Krennic did to them personally as well as for what the Empire has done to the galaxy. It's personal and political, as most things are. Rogue One makes this very clear - the personal is political (btw the radfem who coined that phrase can get fucked tyvm).

It’s actually always been how Star Wars works. We would care about Alderaan’s destruction, it’s a terrible thing, but we feel so much more connected to it because of Leia. The Empire oppresses every day people, but when we see Owen and Beru’s charred corpses (and Luke’s grief) we feel more about their deaths than if we didn’t just see them sitting down for a meal together with our protagonist. The Clone Wars is so effective because we care about the characters and see the war through their eyes. Politics is personal.

At the beginning, Galen is resigned to being taken by Krennic and working for the Empire against his will. It's why he sends Lyra and Jyn to safety, because he knows that they will be used as hostages to force him to complete the Death Star (and Lyra says as much). But Lyra obviously isn't willing to give her husband up without a fight (and she's also not willing to let the Empire get any closer to building a 9/11 times 100). It’s both political and personal.

Lyra’s heartbreaking act of resistance creates the narrative framework for who Jyn will become in the film but also for Cassian. In fact I would argue that Lyra's fridging sacrifice is just as important to the structure of Cassian's arc as it is to Jyn's. Don't buy it yet? Okay, look:

Lyra hits Krennic in the shoulder but it's just a graze, and she gets shot first so whether or not she's any good is irrelevant. Cassian is a soldier and a sniper. She also doesn't have the element of surprise on her side like Cassian does. She's a civilian, he's an officer who grew up in the rebellion.

But Cassian doesn't hit Krennic in the chest or the head, which he clearly could do. Perhaps it's because he doesn't have the time to fuss with his aim because he makes it up to the top of the tower just in time. Or maybe since he's really hurting, like Lyra, he doesn't have the focus that he'd need to kill the motherfucker.

Cassian hits Krennic in the shoulder just like Lyra (although I assume given how Krennic falls on his face it's not a graze).

Lyra walks so that Cassian can run.

None of them - not Jyn or Cassian, certainly not Galen or Lyra - gets to kill Krennic; none of them matters as much to Krennic as Krennic himself does. He's a textbook narcissist, so of course he is his own downfall in the end. It’s infinitely more satisfying to see him regain consciousness, look up at his creation and watch it aim at his head, and it would be to see Jyn or Cassian kill him. Cassian gets to tell Jyn what Lyra no doubt would have liked to tell Galen - "leave it" - and then walk away arm in arm without sparing Krennic another thought, and Jyn gets to finally outgrow this childhood phantom.

So much has been written about how Cassian Andor does not let Jyn Erso down. It's adorable, hilarious and also heartbreaking to see him in full Jyn Panic mode for most of the film. In the novel he's clearly attracted to her (he is a POV character so we get to read about Cassian's fixation on her need~ and how "neither pity nor pragmatism" explains why he's saves her on Jedha, and how when he looks at Galen, Cassian sees Jyn's eyes lmfao okay we get it she’s pretty). According to Chris Weitz and Gary Whitta (in the ign Rogue One commentary) they were originally more romantic but over time that dynamic got dialed back (and they said they're sure some of that got filmed so show me tHE ELEVATOR TAPES MOUSE).

But I don't think Lyra and Cassian mirroring each other has to mean Cassian loves Jyn in the same way that Lyra loves Galen. Love takes many different forms - even romantic love. What isn't up for debate is that Cassian is the only person in Jyn's whole life who does not leave her behind. No one who cares for her wants to leave her - not Galen, Lyra, or Saw; not the Pontas in the extended content, not even the rest of Rogue One - but Cassian seems to comes back from the dead for her.

Which is exactly what Krennic sarcastically says about Lyra when she comes running up to them.

In this case Galen doesn’t think Lyra is dead but he has no idea what she’s dealing with. He hopes she’s hiding away with Jyn, which is why he tells Krennic that she died, but he’s just giving them time to hide away. For Galen, Lyra might as well be dead because he doesn’t think he’s going to see her again. But when she comes “back from the dead” he feels horror because he knows it won’t end well, that she won’t just go quietly.

Jyn thinks that Cassian has left her just like everyone else. So when he comes back, it’s like a revelation for her. In the novel, Jyn thinks that Cassian looks "as beautiful as anyone" she has "ever known" and after she rushes over to transmit the plans, she smiles up at him "like a child." Hell, the minute she sees Krennic get shot, she thinks that “her nightmare is over.” Which makes me think about how eight year old Jyn never gets the chance to smile up at Lyra like that. In her eyes, Lyra doesn't really protect her from the man in white, and neither does Galen. Saw does but then he abandons her when he worries people will use her as a hostage against the Empire. Galen, Lyra and Saw do try to protect Jyn from the Empire, but the steps that her parents take (all three of them) are to hide her, or to leave her.

In Jyn's eyes, that isn't protection the way going on the offense is. That is also the thesis of her speech to the Council - appeasement and hiding away from evil does not stop evil from harming innocents, these are not ways in which people can resist occupation and oppression long term. It makes sense coming from a former insurgent; to her, nothing but direct action is going to make a difference. And she would know - after Saw leaves her, she does take part in some minor actions (according to the expanded lore) but mainly she’s in hiding, looking out for herself and coping with the trauma of being abandoned by all of her parents.

So the one person who not only gets her mission off the ground, but who also vanquishes this monster who has been haunting her since her childhood is Cassian. He ends what Lyra begins.

But Jyn doesn’t end what Galen started. She continues what he started, just like Bodhi (who basically functions as Galen’s adoptive son you will not convince me otherwise). I started this essay talking about beginnings and endings in the sense of a story’s structure, but Rogue One in the larger context of Star Wars is neither a beginner nor an ending - it is just one generation (that of the prequels) passing on the torch to the next generation (the original trilogy). In politics there are no beginnings or endings, there is just (hopefully) generational progress in struggles.

The whole movie can be summed up in one scene:

But just because it can be summed up that way doesn’t mean it should be. Of course, John Knoll got the idea for the movie based on the scroll in ANH so it makes sense that Rogue One’s characters ultimately are just a footnote for the rest of the galaxy. But for us, the audience, when Luke destroys the Death Star... well, now there is even more weight to that moment. Now we understand what got sacrificed to get those plans, who died and how and why. (That doesn’t mean we need to make a movie about these guys getting butchered by Darth Vader. You don’t need to explain everything.)

Like Leia and Alderaan, this family we meet makes it even more personal. Rogue One is just as much about family as it is about standing up to oppression. It's a Star War, those are like the main tenets of any Star War. Not to quote a meme and make it serious, but maybe the real Star War is the family we found along the way.

#rogue one #meta #jyn erso #galen erso #lyra erso #cassian andor #edits #star wars #this is a perfect movie don't even @ me #flashing lights #flashing gif #like lots of violence in the gifs lmao #was this just an excuse for me to quote the novelization?#no it wasn't but... i mean #no living mothers in star wars #shocking that omera is still alive js

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villainsandvictimsalliance · 3 years

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Can you recommend any good movies or shows outside of MHA. Especially if they have a similar vibe bcuz I love the themes of MHA❤ but anything really different thats good could be great too ❤

I mean, I can try skhrndjd but I don't promise anything because I have a certain personal taste so yeah. I'll try and also explain why I pick that certain show / movie and what should be looking at while watching. Let's go!

My personal lists of TV shows and movies similar to bnha / mha to watch :

THE INCREDIBLES (Pixar) :

Is it a kids movie? Yes. Has it yet one of the best approaches related to the legal and social issues of living in a world with people who have powers? Absolutely yes.

Should superpowers be legal? It's like people being born with weapons on their bodies. How can you regulate that? But in denying their powers, you're also denying their existences and freedom to be. So how to balance both people without powers and people with powers living together?

If you look at the structures of the movies (yes, both movies are very important), I can argue this piece of media is priceless when talking about superheroes worlds and concepts. Both villains make valid points about how unfair is living as a simple human while people out there have the privilege of powers, and every hero also make valid points at how unfair it is to be unable to be yourself because everyone sees you as a weapon.

As you can see, I'm a super fan of these movies, (bad pun, sorry sorry).

THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY (Netflix) :

Children being raised as soldiers and having to deal with the abuse their adoptive parents made them go through? Does that remind you of something?

I love this show and the implications it brings, including the idea that we're not free and there are beings outside of space and time controlling us and our movements. Once again, the issues with TUA is that a found family is trying very hard to go past their traumas to work together and save the world.

You'll be able to explore the issues that come with having certain powers, the great division between normal people and people with powers and the complications of being a human weapon, even against yourself and the ones you love.

Also, the soundtrack and the way they use it is priceless. I can't wait for the next season!

KATEKYO HITMAN REBORN! (manga) :

If what you're looking is a found family being chaotic together, then feel free to enjoy this manga as much as I do.

The first 20 chapters are just like a fanfic. Characters being idiotic together for no reason, domestic drama, comfort comedy reliefs. The characters are also more basic and shallow, so you don't have to analyze everything they do in order to enjoy it. The conflict is also not that deep, a perfect read to relax and have fun. The ending is very open and not that progressive so this is not something you're about to see for the plot or the character arcs.

HOWEVER God I love this manga. It sounds so silly, but the way they keep things simple really are a perfect beginning when you want to write meta or study the way some characters, situations and context are written. I can point out many similarities between KHR and MHA / BNHA, starting with the main characters and going forward to villains. And yeah, there are some secret jewels you'll have to find on your own.

If you ever read it, write to me. This fandom is almost dead so I can guarantee no drama. Like I said, perfect for de-stressing.

THE BOYS (Amazon Prime) :

Minors, don't ever watch this. It has full violence, gore, sexual content and explicit issues.

This is a show for the ones who know how oppressive and abusive the hero system can be. They are half cops, half celebrities, but even the government needs to be careful when handing this weapons. But what about people who really want to be superheroes? What about the victims of those heroes? What about the heroes being abused and manipulated? What about the people with powers on the streets being used as weapons and entertainments?

If what the League of Villains criticize about the hero system is not clear for someone, they should watch the boys and understand why we can't talk about "heroes being good" and "villains being bad sometimes".

If what you're looking for is a anti-hero found family trying to bring down the system, go for this one, but be careful and look for content warnings for each episode.

The first and the last recommendations are the ones I use when criticizing hero content. You can also check DC and Marvel, of course, but they are pretty famous on their own. If you do, please go check for stories involving mutants or people with powers who have not the same privileges as normal superheroes. They deal with a bunch of real life issues like misogyny, racism, homophobia, xenophobia, etc.

The middle two recommendations are my comfort shows. I'm a sucker for found families being chaotic together. I've re-read the KHR manga at least 6 times and I quote the Hargreaves on a daily basis.

If you ever watch any of this shows, please let me know. And if you have your own recommendations, please send them to me!

#Shan's asks #Shan's recommendations #Shan's opinions #The boys #The Incredibles #The umbrella academy #Katekyo Hitman Reborn #Tua #Khr

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