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nullset2 · 1 year

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On Diversity in the Tech Industry

"Write every day", lest the thoughts consume you. When you write, you think. Even more: when you write, you're actually doing it to organize your mental cabinet, rather than for the benefit of other people (even though people will be reassured that they're on the right path once they find your footsteps on their journey). "Writing = thinking", my previous employer used to say all the time, which is a principle that I incredibly value even though there are a lot of other things about their culture that I don't appreciate.

Let me preface this by saying that the matter of diversity is an issue at large in the tech industry, and not something specific to any particular company or segment in it, and it's something that I think people are honestly, earnestly doing their best about, and there's a lot of people that I'm infinitely indebted to, powerful mentors in my way who have made me a better person. Even though sometimes the path to hell is paved with good intentions, I still abide by this paragraph. By and large, the industry is comprised of just good guys and gals and non-binary pals, you know what I mean?

However, we live in incredibly bizarre times, and sometimes it gets the best of me and that's why I want to jot these things down.

The prevalence of technology and the quasi-autistic state of alienation it fosters is leading to this state of being where the Other is eradicated and the Self is regarded as the All there is to be.

How does this fit with the tech industry? Well, the spiel paraded by the activists in the regard of Diversity claims that "races and profiles have been systematically excluded off of certain echelons of society" like the tech industry. Thus, there's a mechanic of oppresion moving the threads of society like its puppetmaster, there's a glaring generational debt which should be reparated back as soon and as efficiently as possible, and therefore, affirmative action should be taken to get those profiles back into the tech industry. Affirmative action is, basically, to take it easy on the, supposedly oppressed types (it already feels horribly demeaning to me to write this) and to provide them with positive affirmations and validations. Thus, quotas of intersectional profiles, based off of criteria like race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, et. al., should be rigurously applied to hiring, delegation, assignment of responsibilities and formation of teams.

(Another disclaimer before we go on: there's a kernel of truth in this. Imagine that you were designing a website for a Muslim locale, and, lacking knowledge of the sensitivities there, you decided to put a picture of a big, fat, beefy burger with strips of chunky, crispy bacon on it. Egad, pork meat is haram there, but you never knew. If you had a muslim colleague, however, that kind of stuff would had popped up earlier. It does help to have multiple life experiences and sensitivities in your team in ways more succint than we realize. I am convinced of this being true.)

Now, carrying on, the problem is that, on paper, of course it's true. Everybody knows it to be true. That which fits the collective-unconscious pre-conception of a techie is good, and that which doesn't is to be eradicated and this has a racial skew. Work, dating, neighborhoods, HOAs, relationships... everything in the modern world is subjected to one or many heavy biases. I'm writing this essay in English for goodness' sake. The die have already been thrown centuries ago. The hands have been dealt and we're sort of trying to pull forward as-is, awkwardly as it is. The tech industry is vastly, grossly majoritarily Caucasian and Asian (and by this I also mean Indian), and those profiles form a techno-elite caste that mostly exclusively hangs out and disseminates information among itself. This technoelite caste is fast-tracked into colleges where there's literally classes where they teach them the very same problems that they get in technical interviews, which they get to learn and rehearse at leisure, ergo fastracking them into the industry too.

Now, the naive explanation to this would be to assume that the reason why this happens is merely racial, which is what those types posit, but I actually think that's a lie. Every good lie is partially true though. To assume that it is only racial disregards the matter of competence.

"Affirmative Action" or "Positive Discrimination" as I've heard it called, is the proposed solution to this problem. "So, there is a very obvious skew in the population --thus, what we're going to do is that we're going to strongly encourage you to hire and integrate people into the industry who don't fit this standard.". It's weird because in a way it feels as if the answer to racism is more racism, but I see what they're going for --a fair shot across the board. But when that fair shot seems to be predicated on you being given a crutch because apparently you have a historical handicap because of who you are... well, you can probably infer how that feels.

Yes, my parents got fucked by the machine, I lost a lot of prospects in my earlier life, and I was sort of assumed to be a loser, my parents giving up any hope for me after I failed to breed around 18 years of age. They sort of... never actually understood what I was up to, and they left me to my devices to commune with the 2001 space oddysey monolith. Everyone else also did. My high school friends sort of thought that I was some weirdo loser that was damned to irrelevancy, and when I developed techincal skills and I managed to come up in the world, everyone did a 180 on me and went "holy shit", and either started asking me for money, or cut off contact out of the shame they felt that someone like me was doing like I was (to this day, this process of alienation from my original kin continues to happen btw).

And all of that is because, again, of all of these preconceptions and mechanisms in place --so the Diversity argument does hold up again. I am not saying that the Diversity spiel is wrong. But the problem is that, again, every good lie is partially true. To be prioritized as a profile feels as demeaning as to be actually discriminated against on the same basis (to me, at least. I guess a lot of people are happy in their stations as long as they have a weekly pizza and Netflix to amuse themselves to death, but I personally go insane if I cannot produce anything new). It discounts my competence, right? It's a catch-22. Fucked if I do or if I don't. If I take the step and try to play in the big leagues, people are going to take the piss because I don't talk in Californian Fry and use the same dogwhistles that the techies use among themselves, but if I don't, then I get to stay in a ghetto and make nothing of my life.

I argue, my friends, that whoever is most competent rises in the hierarchy. As corrupt and dirty the hierarchy can be sometimes, this principle is something that I know to be true, and It's been taught to me by the power of the black star, and I feel it in my very bones, in my very marrow. But the problem is, if you come from a fucked up world, how can you effectively develop competence if everyone around you is constantly assuming that you're a loser? It's just horrid. It takes a ridiculous, massive, insane amount of effort that most people are not willing to undertake. I know I suck. I am not really anything when compared to the most competent people in the industry (you know who you are: if you're reading this, I'm sorry that things didn't work out, but maybe in better circumstances we'll do alright).

I fumble my way through things. Yet, I still get things right sometimes.

On a personal level, also: what happens when you decide to go for it, then, and break away from the expectation of your caste and class? It isolates you. It alienates you. It takes you away from your hive, like a bee, and made to wander. When a bee is taken away from its hive (I've been thinking a lot about bee symbolism lately), it will try to find and join other hives, if it can find any before it dies. It is literally a matter of chemistry at that point: if the bee has a compatible chemical signature, it will be accepted and taken in; if not, it will be expunged by the female bees of the hive. The hivemind is a powerful force.

It's even worse when half of the populace out there thinks you're part of a ploy to change the demographic distribution in a negative way, and thus you must be eradicated as soon as possible, but I am not going to go there right now. I'm just going to mention that some neighbors were very happy when a tree fell on my home a bit over a year ago.

What to do at this point? My friends, the answer resides in the Jungian archetype of the Fool. Even though some people would argue that the appereance of the Fool is a sign of the erosion of our societal bonds, the Universe has a soft spot for fools. Sometimes you have to do the most stupid fucking bullshit you can think of. A man has to be a bit stupid sometimes. Be a troublemaker. Be shameless. Dare. Of course, don't be an asshole, but put energy into it. Step into the abyss even if you get fucked by it --because that's where the great things happen. These days, sometimes I do things that I'm not even aware of, which make other people mad. I'm literally oblivious to them. All of a sudden, people react to them and they hurt me, projecting their shadows.

A friend (the only senior Mexican engineer I ever found at my previous employer, who was in a team where I actually performed pretty well once I had the advantage of, egad, lo and behold!, an actual mentor, mind you) told me once "well, at some point you just got to steal it", and then he grabbed an implementation of something off of github, and that's when it hit me. This is the archetype of the fool at play.

Still disgruntled by the whole affirmative action thing and the idea that the best way to integrate me into the industry is to give me a kindergarten gold star and a Chipotle gift card (... though I sure could go for some fucking Chipotle right now because I'm very hungry) every time I post a PR, I also have to offer that the only way forward is through, and that through is going to hurt. At some point, it's all become a function of sacrifice. You literally are going to have to burn the midnight oil many, many, many, many years, and you're going to get fucked by alarms at some point, and you're going to have to work out like mad and you're going to walk around with sore muscles every day. You're going to have to see many people rolling their eyes at you. You're going to have to put up with being laughed at.

Again, it's the appereance of the archetype of the fool.

Parentheses: I've found that being in good physical shape and literal fucking muscle memory and rote memorization (kata-style repetition of phrases) is actually better for developing skills in tech than actually having a degree from some 30 grand a semester school, so it literally means that you need to lock yourself in a house in the forest for three years and attend to a boxing gym like mad if you want to break through the current insane state of things.

At some point, I realized that no matter how much fucking adderall I'd take or how much I did, or how many hours I put at Amazon, I'd still be getting laughed at and punked on and tortured at the end of the day, and my friends, that's when the archetype of the fool, chthonically, rose from the depths of my soul, and it made me turn into something else. I sort of realized that if what I did didn't truly matter and people were going to throw shit at me no matter what, then I was truly free to pursue what I wanted. It unleashed this roaring energy that powers everything I do now.

It renders you alone, too, but (not being melodramatic here) at some point you sort of Accept your loneliness (not making it about me here, but you do really sort of Accept it). There's a part of me that thinks that this whole fetishism of the rugged individualist life that we're currently undergoing is vicious, sick and depraved, but it does feel better than the contrary. It still makes me unhappy, but the mature kind of unhappy, you know? Like there's an inner angel that sees everything through the eyes of the Logos, of eternity, inside me, and he's in command.

I've been reading "The Labyrinth of Solitude" by Octavio Paz and it's fantastic how he gets it all down perfectly. The Mexican is de-facto schizoid, an in-between worlds, a pariah that has to stick together to survive, a race whose divine Mother has abandoned it. It's better to be alone than to be in the company of Jezebels and Nimrods anyway. And things do actually change at some point. Nothing ever stays the same, you know, and there's a lot of people who really do care about you and who are fun to be around out there for you (as trite and platitudical as this sounds).

In the meantime: keep doing stupid shit. You'll be amazed at the results one day. Things are not going to change at large. Just do the most with the hands you've been given.

#works

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olivieblake · 3 years

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As a writer or even just a consumer of media do you find people are less willing to accept “flaws” in characters and stories? I’m not talking like this character is a murderer he’s evil no one should like him type stuff, though as someone who started off writing dramione I’m sure you’ve seen your fair share of that but just like when characters are ever short of perfect. Like when a strong female character is kinda insecure or a couple isn’t communicating well or has a heated fight everyone gets mad that it’s a toxic relationship or bad writing. I once read a review of a book where someone stopped reading it after two chapters cause it had bad therapy practices, ie. the character still had shit to work through and therapy isn’t magic therefore they weren’t always doing the healing right and it’s like? that’s the whole point!! it’s an arc the character is gonna grow! It’s also made clear early on that the therapist didn’t agree with the coping methods (overly controlling their life) so it wasn’t like they were trying to portray it as a good thing. I know you’ve mentioned people have ✨opinions✨ about your DFS Hermione for having flaws and staying flawed and her flaw is just that she kinda thinks she’s right a lot and maybe isn’t the most self aware nothing even serious lol. I’m not saying don’t be critical of media but it’s kinda overwhelming reading think piece after think piece about why this thing you enjoy is actually the literal worst™️. Like am I toxic for having some of the same flaws ? Am I a problematic creep for enjoy stories where everything isn’t always sunshine, I don’t want to have a train wreck of a relationship but sometimes reading about one can be kinda fun? Is that terrible?

there’s a lot here that I’d like to discuss and I’m thinking about how I’d like to do it (I’ll inevitably chat about it in a video because it’s interesting and complex but I think I may have too many topics for this monday)

let’s see I think I will start by saying: in general, critical discourse about media (books, tv, film, fanfic) is a good thing, but it has definitely gone awry from what I consider to be its origins. I think the whole point of viewing media critically and making observations about what we are portraying via fiction is crucial for amplifying/protecting marginalized stories and reducing harm—specifically, the harm that minorities and women face by being inundated with bigoted, prejudiced, hateful, or ignorant tropes, caricatures, or relationship dynamics. I definitely believe that we should consider what we consume and how we consume it, particularly when it comes to the marginalized voices who do not see themselves represented well or fairly in white male dominated media

that being said, I do think it has led to the expectation that fiction cannot have ANY problems, which is absurd and counterproductive. it’s also extremely reductive, particularly when it comes the Strong Female Character™ thing you mention, where a woman STILL only has value if she’s strong in the “correct” way. I mentioned in one of my other posts and also last week’s video that there’s some kind of disconnect between the VERY GOOD intentions of things like #ownvoices or the movement to empower female characters and the actual outcomes, which make it so that any flaws in a marginalized fictional character are magnified to represent the entire group. the very reasonable request to see ourselves in fiction has somehow become an exponentially convoluted demand to see ourselves a certain way in fiction, where any character who does not reflect our personal experience is bad and wrong. previously, the expectation was that white male stories were universal whereas everything else was only for that specific group, and now, ironically, everything that is created still has to fit that universal quality and please everyone, despite that not being the point. the problem is when you only have ONE movie about this topic or ONE book about this ethnicity, then of course it hasn’t done enough to exemplify an entire subject or culture. there has to be an entire body of work the way there is with white-dominated media, where no single film or book accurately represents the experience of being white

plus we have twitter which is a horrifying hellscape where you get rewarded by the algorithm for making loud, obnoxious points so add that to the list (yesterday I saw that one of the top 3 reviews on Beloved by toni morrison is a 1-star review written by a white man and I was just flabbergasted by the lack of self-awareness)

but anyway that’s like, more of a macro look at what I think is going on but you’re right that people are not very forgiving of flawed characters. to some extent, I get it; the one thing we don’t want our characters to do is annoy us, and that’s fair. but I also think people have lost the sense that “oh, this thing isn’t for me” and thus can’t successfully identify the difference between critical failure and personal dislike

now. as for Divination for Skeptics. let me start by saying it’s not like I don’t understand why people find hermione in Divination for Skeptics annoying, because I get it. if you’re taking the story very seriously then sure, maybe you want her to change her behavior and it’s frustrating that she doesn’t. fair enough! to that I say it’s a comedy and if you don’t find it funny you’re perfectly welcome to dislike it, it’s not a big deal to me if I don’t make you laugh. however, I DO take issue with people who claim she’s too flawed or doesn’t grow, because they almost always do it in a very specific way: they say that she doesn’t show enough empathy, aka how dare she not read draco’s mind and simply alter her personality and behavior to suit his. it genuinely infuriates me that in my opinion, people who voice that particular “criticism” have seemingly internalized the belief that women should be emotionally perceptive; that for them, hermione’s “flaw” is that she does not take on the emotional labor that draco refuses to perform. (her actual flaw is that her survival technique/coping mechanism is a hyper-rationality that incorrectly assumes she has perfect information; i.e., that everything she knows is accurate, and therefore all of her decisions must be sound.) whereas draco knows this about her—knows and acknowledges it—and yet cannot bring himself to voice his feelings out of a fear-based desire to hedge his own emotional risk. who, then, is more flawed in the context of the story?

I don’t really have a conclusion yet so I’m going to pause for now and we’ll revisit this; I think mainly it’s that the more media diversifies, the more people will struggle with the preconceptions they have and the presumption that everything they consume is for them, and therefore that they are the metric for whether something is “good.” I think good art, good media, will reflect the world as it exists, but it will still only be the world according to one tiny fraction, a sliver of the actual human experience. does bad representation mean bad art? when it harms people yes. but when it speaks to a deeper truth (the truth of “we are all given to vice and imperfection even if it is not this specific version”), no. but that requires quite a degree of sophistication and self-awareness to identify, hence the discomfort of continuous vitriol or bad takes

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gascon-en-exil · 4 years

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yeah I’m gonna have to hard disagree with you. Dedue solely exists as a plot device for Dimitri. The Tragedy of Duscur isn’t about Dedue’s feelings it’s about Dimitri’s. The genocide of a group of brown/black people solely exists so Dimitri can have some white boy angst. I don’t think people not liking the Dimidue ship is because they don’t want Dimitri to be anything but straight. It’s uncomfortable because of the racist white savior bullshit and I honestly can’t see how you don’t see that.

First of all, the term “Tragedy of Duscur” in game refers to the assassination of Lambert and his knights by the Agarthans and their co-conspirators, while the genocide of the Duscur people was a separate second event performed in retaliation by Faerghus and spearheaded by House Kleiman. Fandom seems to frequently conflate the two, but it makes sense both in-universe and out why Lambert’s death would take precedent. It plunged the Kingdom, one of Fòdlan’s three large nations, into political instability for nearly a decade, and it’s narratively more significant because of how it plays into the plans of Edelgard and her allies to conquer Faerghus by weakening it from within.

Relatively speaking the Duscur genocide matters only to Dedue, and because he lacks plot armor past Part 1 of AM (at which point he’s killed off by default in service of self-insert romance, i.e. Dimileth - again, interesting that the racist undertones of that writing choice are never brought up...is the game’s most popular ship too big a target?) that can’t extend much beyond his supports and endings. That prioritization is just how lord/protagonist privileges work; Edelgard being experimented on matters more than the same thing happening to Lysithea, Claude’s perspective on Almyra matters more than Cyril’s, Byleth’s reaction, such as it is, to Jeralt’s death matters more than Leonie and Alois’s. That part isn’t even a quirk of FE’s writing like the plot armor and permadeath issues, but standard storytelling - characters that are more important to the plot (and here also gameplay and marketing) get more focus.

The Tragedy hit all of the Lions except Mercedes with some kind of trauma from the people who died or disappeared in its wake, and it is reductive and obviously wrong to suggest that all of Dimitri’s grief comes from the genocide and not also from the deaths of his father (and presumed stepmother), his friend Glenn, his estrangement from the childhood friend trio, and the resulting strife and turmoil this threw the Kingdom into for years afterward and for which he feels responsible...and then the knowledge that his stepsister who doesn’t remember him has allied herself with the people who arranged the assassination in her own bid to seize power. It also ignores why saving Dedue was so important to him in assuaging his considerable survivor’s guilt, making him not so much a plot device as an emotional crutch. The feeling is mutual however, and you can see through their interactions across the game that Dedue is just as emotionally codependent on Dimitri as Dimitri is on him. That’s why he goes on a quest for revenge in VW/SS (alluding back to Finn doing the same for his beloved late lord Quan in the Jugdral games) and is willing to throw away his humanity to protect Dimitri in CF - but just as willing to die peacefully with him should the player defeat him before he can transform ignoring of course that the player kills both of them either way by propping up Edelgard’s conquest - CF is so much more fun if you own the villainy. Calling them a white savior pairing is still a misrepresentation that ignores their actual dynamic and the substantial amount of development they undergo.

(It also presumes the insertion of US racial politics into a game by Japanese developers set on a pseudo-European continent. Tropes derived from colonialism thus poorly capture likely creator intent as well as more likely analogues for Duscur in any number of indigenous European ethnic/cultural minorities. My own headcanons come from my knowledge of such communities in France because Faerghus is loosely pseudo-French, but as it’s also pseudo-Russian with a bit of Celtic flavoring there are other directions one could take it.)

#Fire Emblem #FE16 #Fire Emblem Three Houses #Dimidue #Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd #Dedue Molinaro

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mikhalsarah · 3 years

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RIP Open Orthodoxy, eaten alive by parasitic “Wokeness”...

There are already three streams of Judaism where women can be rabbis (Conservative/Masorti, Reform, and Reconstructionist), I should know, I belong to one of them. I’ve never entirely understood the Orthodox commitment to sidelining women in this day and age, but the simple fact is, people who are unhappy with Orthodox halakhah in this area have other places to pray, and the stubborn refusal to pray in any of “those places”, yet fighting tooth and nail to make their own shuls become just like them, smack of a weird sort of snobbish attachment to the word “orthodoxy”....even though the rest of Orthodox is but a hair’s breadth from considering them a treif liberal “fake” Judaism like the rest of us already.

As difficult, but possible, as the issue of female rabbis would be to bring about, (seeing as it is a rabbinic prohibition based largely on cultural attitudes no longer in play in western society), the issue of getting the Orthodox to accept gay couples is another matter. Again, not an insurmountable issue, Centrist Orthodox Rabbi Schmuley Boteach has written quite openly about the need to find a place in Orthodox shuls for gay and lesbian Jews. However Orthodox culture is never going to let them hold hands during service or kiddush, for the simple reason that public displays of sexual/romantic affection, even between heterosexual married couples, are frowned upon everywhere from the sanctuary to the grocery store, due to the strong feeling that sexuality should be put aside, or sublimated, when encountering certain kinds of holiness (engaging in prayer etc). Of course, that does not mean that in Judaism sex is the opposite of holiness in some way, or else it would be forbidden to have sex on Shabbat. Since marital sex is a mitzvah (commandment, meritorious act) on Shabbat, better to understand it as a different kind of holiness, one that is not compatible with some other mitzvot (like prayer) or with public life in general. Sexuality itself is a sort of holiness surrounded by taboos and necessitating the utmost privacy in Judaism, so this is ironically probably the hill Orthodoxy would die on, not figuring out how to tolerate the gays.

I heartily agree that it’s time to stop being racist to the Palestinians. Strange though that a “Woke” rabbi still can’t bring himself to call them what they call themselves, and in typical Israeli/Zionist fashion emphasizes their Arab otheness, rather than their indigenousness...thus making it seem rather like a favour being granted to them out of the goodness of his Woke heart, rather than an acknowledgement of their intrinsic belongingness. (This kind of stuff is typical for Woke social justice, which consistently cares far more about virtue-signalling and screaming at “white people”, or whomever else is deemed an Oppressor in the situation, than listening and paying attention to those who are actually oppressed.)

I spent decades of my life as a vegetarian, years of that as a vegan. Even though for medical reasons I had to adopt a diet which relies on meat for sufficient protein, I still try to limit my meat consumption. I am very pleased that so many people are seeing the value of vegetarian and vegan diets, and that even regular omnivore folk are adopting “meatless Mondays” and so forth. I’d be even better pleased with governments helping to encourage it by working to make it less expensive if/where possible. I’d nod my head approvingly if rabbis suggested meat-eating be reserved for Shabbat, if one didn’t feel able to give it up entirely. However, even when I didn’t practice (Judaism) and was secular it would never have occurred to me to ban it wholesale. I’m just not Puritan enough for banning things, I prefer the Quakerly ways of “convincement”. The Woke, on the other hand, are full-bore Puritan, convert-the-heathen-masses.

This is perhaps the strangest part of entire essay. This newly minted “rabbi” is publicly expressing the desire to not just overhaul a big chunk of halakhah in order to make Judaism less restrictive and bring it further into line with the mores of the gentile world... a process that has been going on forever, whether excessively quickly (Reform) or excruciatingly slowly (Haredi)... but is calling to make Judaism more restrictive in other ways, by banning things permitted by halakhah which happens never or so infrequently that I can’t recall an instance offhand. And he’s willing to use secular governments to achieve it by force.

I recall hearing conservatives decades ago saying “Inside the heart of every liberal is a fascist screaming to get out” and laughing derisively at how they could think that. I laugh no more, though I contend that it is a particular species of illiberal liberal, known as the progressive activist, that is to blame rather than liberals in general. Still...there it is, and the regular liberals are generally no help opposing their own extremists because deep down they harbour that intrinsic liberal guilt that they are never doing enough or being enough to be truly authentic and useful. For authenticity and “real change” they look ever to the fringes, on the assumption that the more wildly opposed to society in general an ideology is, the better it is, if only they weren’t too cowardly and comfortable to join up and suffer like the “real” activists.

I have to add here, how nice it is despite not having set foot in any shul in over a year, to still have something of the religious Jewish mindset, which makes impressive demands on your time, money, and moral fastidiousness, but at the same time reminds you constantly that you’ll never be perfect and will never accomplish everything you want or that God asks of you and God already accepts that as a given. “It is not yours to complete the task (of repairing the world), but neither are you free to desist from it.” -Pirkei Avot 2:21. Despite the reputation Judaism has for being guilt-inducing, at least we are free from the overwhelming and psychologically destructive levels of guilt induced by secular liberalism, which now has decided, via Wokeness, that merely existing in a society that is imperfect is a damnable offense, even if it is, on balance, one of the least imperfect societies around. This is how Jews like me know that Wokeness is not just a new religion, it’s an offshoot of Christianity, where just being born damns you to a state of perpetual sin.

This authenticity-of-the-extremists mindset blinds them to the fact that while the fringes are the birthplace of some excellent critiques and paradigm-changing ideas that have been of great benefit, those benefits most often only come when those ideas are tempered by counter-critiques and more pragmatic people who can tolerate the loss of ideological purity required to make them work in practice. Also invisible to the liberal mind are those historical moments when progressives have backed ideas that were...well, the term “clusterfucks” springs to mind.

Progressives less than a century ago were enamoured with ideas ranging from Eugenics to Italian Fascism (less so with Naziism, but even that had its adherents until the war and the atrocities of the camps coming home to roost). They backed Communism to such a degree that it took Kronstadt to shake most of them loose, and they still idolize Che Guevara, the gay-hating, probably racist, illiberal who put people to death without trial and “really liked killing” (his words) and can’t hear a word against Communist China (”That’s racist to the Chinese!”) or Islamic extremists (”That’s Islamophobic!), despite the fact that Communist China is “re-indoctrinating” the Muslim Uighers and using them as slave labour (in part for the profits and in part because keeping the men and women separated prevents them breeding more Muslim Uighers), and despite the fact that the Islamists throw gay men off roofs in public executions. When you do get a left-liberal to admit something on the Left has gone wrong at all, they immediately shift to rationalizing it as somehow really being the fault of conservatives all along...even in a case like Eugenics where religious and other conservatives were fighting it tooth and nail.

(NB: This is not an endorsement of conservatives, who have their own sets of problems but who, when they finally do change their mind on an issue, don’t try to rationalize their former wrongheadedness by claiming it was really the fault of left-liberals that they ever believed such things in the first place)

And that brings us back to Zionism and the Woke. The Woke cannot for the life of them admit that it was secular, and often quite far left, Jews that birthed Zionism directly out of the leftist “liberation” traditions of the day (albeit with a healthy side of pro-Western colonialism-admiring fervour for being “an outpost of the West” shining the light of rationality on the barbaric, backward, religiosity of the Middle East). They don’t want to see it. It disturbs their comfortably simple narrative, which prefers to maintain that it was the “whiteness” of the original Zionist Jews and their early followers that was the problem, not their politics.

But Zionism is merely the predictable result of what happens when you take an oppressed people and tell them that their oppression entitles them to do whatever they need to in order to end their oppression and that violence is not violence when perpetrated by the oppressed. That the world owes them, and their descendants, something in perpetuity for having oppressed them, some sort of special treatment, and that it must never withdraw that special dispensation because that itself would be oppressing them again. The fact that what the Jews would feel like they needed to do was ethnically-cleanse their former homeland of people who had once shared it with them (both Jews and Palestinians can be traced to a shared ancestry in the region going back about 50,000 years) and necessitating a whole new liberation movement to free them was an unintended consequence of th\e liberation movement, but a consequence nonetheless.

The Woke cannot admit that Zionism is, in large part, a direct consequence of the leftist liberation project, and Woke Jews (who are almost invariably “white”) can’t admit that the rest of the Woke movement hates them. They truly deserve each other.

Ah, well, at least this “woke” rabbi isn’t trying to qualify for the cognitive dissonance finals by being Woke and a Zionist at the same time like the current rabbi of my (rapidly sinking) former synagogue. We’ve had rabbis that horrified the congregation by being too right-wing (mostly on halakhic issues rather than politics), and we’ve had rabbis that horrified (the older portion of) the congregation by being too left-wing and running off to march in Selma. Thanks to this rabbi haranguing the congregation daily about LGBTQ issues to the point that even the LGBTQ Jews got tired of hearing him (our sexuality is NOT our whole fucking existence...no pun intended) and marching around the Sanctuary with the Israeli flag on Shabbat (an honour reserved for the Torah even by the most fervently Zionist among us, none of whom are yours truly) we now have the dubious distinction of being a congregation horrified by a rabbi being both too left-wing and too right-wing simultaneously.

Apropos of nothing, there is now a “For Sale” sign on the front lawn of my former synagogue and the membership at the Orthodox synagogue has grown with astonishing rapidity. We can extrapolate from this that in 4 years time, should the U.S. Republicans run any candidate remotely sane, they will sweep the election.

#judaism #woke #wokeism #zionism #sjw nonsense #sjws ruin everything #open orthodoxy #militant vegans #woke is a religion #puritan #vs #quaker

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girlactionfigure · 4 years

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Trump Gets it Right about Antisemitism (Updated)

Note: since this post was written, the order was issued, and it was not precisely what was expected. Nevertheless, I think the post is still interesting, if not relevant to the same degree. See the update at the end for a full explanation.

***

President Trump is expected to issue an executive order that Jews should be treated as a “nationality*” as well as a religious group. This means that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bans the use of federal funds for programs or activities that discriminate on the basis of “race, color, or national origin,” will now apply to antisemitism. And an administration official has said that the government would use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which the State Department adopted in 2016, as a working definition of antisemitism (a previous working definition in use from 2010 is similar in relevant respects).

This is a big deal, because the extreme anti-Zionism (misoziony) that characterizes the discourse on many Western colleges and universities clearly falls under the IHRA definition, which specifically mentions

Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.

Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.

Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis.

Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis…

which are all the bread and butter of Students for Justice in Palestine, as well as countless other anti-Israel organizations. Of course, antisemitism in the form of assaults, discrimination, and other more subtle forms of harassment in the guise of “free expression” – incidentally, things that would never be tolerated if their object were other minorities – also will be able to trigger a shutoff of federal funds.

Naturally, the usual suspects are outraged. Some of the outrage comes from those who would be outraged if Trump were to issue an order recognizing motherhood and apple pie, because he is Trump. Halie Soifer of the Jewish Democratic Council of America accused Trump of “hypocrisy,” blamed him for “emboldening white nationalism, perpetuating anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, and repeating stereotypes that have led to violence targeting Jews.” Even if these accusations were true (I am convinced that they are not), they are irrelevant to the reasonableness of this executive order.

But there are more substantive objections. They either deny that Jews are a nationality, or they object to the IHRA definition, usually saying it limits free speech by conflating “legitimate” anti-Zionism with antisemitism. Let’s take the issue of nationality first.

One group that objects to the idea that Jews are a people or a nationality, of course, is the PLO and the Palestinian Authority, who have always insisted that “Jewish” refers only to a religion, not a nation. They have therefore refused to accept the “two states for two peoples” formula or to recognize that Israel is the state of the Jewish people. This is one of the main reasons that the Palestinians have never accepted any of the generous offers of statehood proffered to them. Interestingly, there is also a strong current of “nationhood denial” among liberal American Jews. Some seem to think that attributing nationhood to the Jewish people would mean that they would somehow be “less American.” But of course nobody believes that granting this status to Italian-Americans would make them less American, or that Title VI doesn’t apply to discrimination against them.

This prejudice in the diaspora against the idea of Jewish nationhood goes back to the late 18th and early 19th century when Jews were first beginning to acquire rights in newly-enlightened Europe. The spectre of their “dual loyalty” to their country of residence and to the Jewish nation quickly arose. In 1789, the French Count of Clermont-Tonnerre, in a speech about the treatment of minorities in the new Republic, said “[w]e must refuse everything to the Jews as a nation, and accord everything to the Jews as individuals.” Let them have their religion and their quaint customs, but their national loyalty can only be to France.

Many Jews were happy to agree. In Germany, the newly-created Reform Movement adopted the idea of being “Germans of the Mosaic Persuasion,” nationally identical to their neighbors of the Lutheran persuasion. In America, the 1885 Pittsburgh Platform of the American Reform Movement included this unequivocal statement: “[w]e consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community, and therefore expect neither a return to Palestine, nor a sacrificial worship under the sons of Aaron, nor the restoration of any of the laws concerning the Jewish state.” By 1999, their platform refers to the Jews as “a people.” But many liberal Jews, uncomfortable about the possibility (and often the actuality) of accusations of dual loyalty, take pains to insist that they do not see themselves as anything other than Americans (or Canadians, or Britons). Their Jewishness is only a matter of religion, ethnicity, or some cultural artifacts.

They have a right to say that if they wish, and to distance themselves from the Jewish nation, but they do not have the right to say that there is no Jewish nation. The Jewish people, in fact, are the paradigm case of a nation: if you want to know what the characteristics of a nation are, look at the Jews. The Jewish people have

A common geographical origin and a connection to their aboriginal home.

A shared genetic heritage.

A unique ancestral language.

A unique religion.

A shared culture.

A shared historical experience.

Self-identification as a nation.

It’s ironic that the Palestinian Arabs, who have multiple origins, a relatively short period of shared history, no unique language or religion, a culture based entirely on opposition to the Jews, and who have only self-identified as a nation since the mid-1960s, have the chutzpah to deny nationhood to the Jewish people!

What about the argument that the IHRA definition conflates antisemitism with anti-Zionism and thus limits speech that is critical of Israel? Despite what some say, it is actually quite easy to distinguish between legitimate criticism of Israel and antisemitism. The criteria were provided by Natan Sharansky, who called it the “3D Test of Antisemitism.” I’ll quote him:

The first “D” is the test of demonization. When the Jewish state is being demonized; when Israel’s actions are blown out of all sensible proportion; when comparisons are made between Israelis and Nazis and between Palestinian refugee camps and Auschwitz – this is anti- Semitism, not legitimate criticism of Israel.

The second “D” is the test of double standards. When criticism of Israel is applied selectively; when Israel is singled out by the United Nations for human rights abuses while the behavior of known and major abusers, such as China, Iran, Cuba, and Syria, is ignored; when Israel’s Magen David Adom, alone among the world’s ambulance services, is denied admission to the International Red Cross – this is anti-Semitism.

The third “D” is the test of delegitimization: when Israel’s fundamental right to exist is denied – alone among all peoples in the world – this too is anti-Semitism.

I call irrational, extreme hatred of Israel misoziony. Misoziony is a form of antisemitism, the traditional Jew-hatred raised to a higher level of abstraction. And there is no better test for misoziony than Sharansky’s 3D criteria, which are implicit in the IHRA working definition of antisemitism. There is no reason to oppose the IHRA definition, except to enable antisemites to disguise their poison as legitimate political speech.

The growing phenomenon of antisemitism in Western universities – where it usually takes the form of misoziony – has given rise to a great deal of consternation and hand-wringing on the part of university administrators, who have in general done nothing practical to reduce it. Yet again, Donald Trump has come along and cut what appeared to be a Gordian Knot, just as he did when he finally fulfilled the promise of the US Congress to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state.

And just as they did last May, Jewish progressives displayed their remarkable ability to cut off their own noses to spite their faces.

Update [12 Dec]:

This post was written on Wednesday morning in Israel, after news reports indicated that President Trump was going to issue an order that, among other things, would treat Jewishness as a “nationality” as well as a religious group.

It was thought that this would broaden the applicability of Title VI to prohibit discrimination against Jews, as Jews.

Apparently the reports were wrong. The final version of the order says nothing about treating Jews as a nationality, and reemphasizes that Title VI applies only to discrimination on the basis of “Race, color, or national origin.” It does note – something that the Justice Department already recognized back in 2010 – that belonging to a “group sharing religious practices” does not disqualify someone from being protected against discrimination on the basis of the initial three criteria.

This means that the applicability of Title VI has not been broadened.

However, as Prof. Avi Bell has noted (correspondence), the incorporation of the IHRA working definition of antisemitism into the order is important. The examples in the IHRA definition, in which Sharansky’s 3D criteria are implicit, clearly show what kind of “criticism of Israel” constitutes antisemitism. Therefore a university (e.g.) will not be able to excuse its inaction on complaints of antisemitism by groups like SJP on the grounds that they are “just” engaging in “criticism of Israel.”

The official text of the order can be found here.

______________________________________ * It should be understood that “nationality” is used in the older and broader sense of belonging to a people, or nation, and not in the narrow modern sense of citizenship in a country.

Abu Yehuda

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princejaron · 4 years

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It’s Not Easy For Gen Z

"They are perhaps the most brand-critical, bullshit-repellent, questioning group around and will call out any behavior they dislike on social media.”

- Lucie Greene

Born between the years 1997 and 2012, Generation Z is described as being more racially and ethnically diverse than any previous generation. Moreover, it is said that they are on track to be the most well-educated generation yet. I believe that this is proven true with the following statistics:

77% of registered U.S voters ages 18-23 do not approve of Donald Trump’s presidency. Gen Z is not afraid to speak up about a corrupt government that does selfish political acts. Similarly here in the Philippines, a huge percentage of the Gen Z population do not approve of Duterte’s presidency, especially with how he handles the present pandemic. I’m proud to be a part of that huge percentage as I do not like to be politically ignorant with how the Philippine government is acting despite the drastic increase in COVID19 cases quotidian. Implementing the Anti-Terrorism Bill, shutting down ABS-CBN, allowing foreign nationals to enter the country starting August 1, and not implementing mass testing still are only few of the actions that prove his incompetency as president. #OustDuterte

Gen Z are less likely to drop out of high school and more likely to enroll in college. Despite the implementation of the K-12 program, Gen Z are still pursuant of their education. Even presently, despite the pandemic, they are doing online learning (if they have the resources they need to be able to do so) just so they can continue attaining their education. I am among the students who are currently doing online learning despite its newfangledness.

Gen Z are more likely to say blacks are treated less fairly than whites. Police brutality and racially-motivated violence was and is happening in the U.S. Racial discrimination is an issue that we still face up to this day, and many members of Gen Z are fighting in support of black lives. I personally am an advocate of #BlackLivesMatter as well, so I’m included in this fight against racism. ✊🏽✊🏾✊🏿

Roughly half of Gen Z approve of same-sex marriage. Moreover, they think that society is not accepting enough of those who do not identify as a man or a woman. Gen Z fights for the equal rights of members of the LGBTQIA+ community, and does not tolerate the injustices that the community face quotidian. I’m included in this fight for #LGBTQrights as well, especially that I am a member of the community itself. 🌈

These are only a few, but you can deduce from these statistics that Generation Z is not just smart, but truly a “woke” generation as well.

For myself, I’ve observed that the aforementioned characteristics of Gen Z are all applicable to me. By knowing the social issues that I stand for, it helps me to understand my strengths and weaknesses. What are relevant social issues that I’m unaware of or simply ignorant about? This allows me to be more socially aware of my surroundings and of the world, because I believe that today, we have this sort of innate responsibility to help others and fight for equality and justice.

However, despite all of this, Generation Z is facing a lot of challenges in today’s world. In fact, they have it hard and truly, it is not easy for Gen Z.

The COVID-19 caused a huge decline in employment rate among Gen Zers. It is said that the group’s eldest members are graduating into a labor market that has been devastated by the global pandemic; there are fewer jobs and internships available for them. Resolution Foundation suggested that the pandemic could affect young people’s pay and job prospects in the long-term. Moreover, from another research, they also said that those who leave education for work during recessions suffer from lower employment rate and pay for years even after the event. All of this could mean that Gen Zers are highly prone to experiencing financial instability today and in the future. If this is the case, Gen Z will have to take alternative courses of action in order to survive in the expensive real world. They may resort to freelancing, or even doing business themselves. Nowadays, there are businesses that require little to no capital to operate, thus it is an option that members of Gen Z can take into consideration as their livelihood.

Resources, especially housing, are only growing more limited and scarcer everyday. Economics says that resources are scarce, thus it should be used optimally. In our case, we can’t even truly optimally use those resources because they are hard to obtain. This fact is made a laughingstock by Monopoly when they made the “Monopoly for Millennials” with a tagline that says “Forget real estate. You can’t afford it anyway.” If millennials are experiencing this problem, what more for the younger generation, and the other generations to come? Our population is only growing every second, and cost of living is following suit. This is our reality now, but nevertheless we have to make do with what we have been given. Measly as though it may be, Gen Z will just have to be very resourceful.

Generation Z has to live on Earth in its current state - warm, polluted, and destructed by human activity. Did you know that in 2016, the World Health Organization said that 92% of the world’s population is breathing contaminated air? This is a scary situation to be in for the younger generation. It makes you wonder: what kind of Earth is in store for them? Will there even be an Earth for them and the next generations in the future? It is alarming, truly, that the younger generation is peering into an uncertain future because of how we are sucking the life out of Mother Earth for our own selfish gains. 🥀All of us should work together to conserve the planet that we live in. Even simple things will have a snowball effect, such as reducing our plastic usage and maintaining the cleanliness of our surroundings. Heck, not using plastic straws is still essentially a big help. #SaveTheTurtles 🐢

Generation Z receives a lot of discrimination from older generations because of the differences in opinions. Generation Z are often told that they are still too young to be vocal about rampant and prevailing social issues, and that they are still inexperienced to say and feel certain things. Despite having already proven ourselves to others, our potential and capabilities are still being limited and underestimated by the older generations just because of our young age. But age is just a number, and it mostly does not prove anything at all. Moreover, Gen Z shouldn’t be trifled with. We have the passion to ameliorate the world, and to make a better life for everyone in the future. We are going to continue proving others wrong. We will show that we are a generation of hope.

Lastly, because of their very technology-based lifestyle, it is mostly Generation Z that has to face the negative effects that social media brings. It is indubitable that social media is practically a part of their life; it is an important platform for them. However, social media can also be used as a medium for spreading misinformation, cyberbullying, harassing, etc. And these can cause damages to the life of a person that may even be permanent. That is why we have to be very careful with the things we say online, and never encourage and tolerate nefarious acts like those aforementioned. Let us try to make social media a safe online platform for everyone.

So what are my five key takeaways from these challenges? It is that the call to action is imperative; the time to act is now, and we need to take responsibility for effecting changes in the things that need to be changed. We have to make a better world materialize, and it is up to us to actualize it.

1. Consider diving into the world of entrepreneurship. If we cannot find a job, let us be the one to provide jobs through operating a business. More businesses means more workforce needed.

2. Be resourceful, and look for substitute goods if possible. Moreover, never forget to use the resources that we have optimally and not wastefully. We are a very innovative generation. Let us use our brilliant minds to come up with ways to reduce the scarcity of resources.

3. Participate in environmental advocacies, and help take care of Mother Earth even if it is just through simple things. Mother Earth can survive without us, but we cannot survive without her. That is why it is important that we do not take her for granted before things are too late. Let us preserve the place that we call home for the future generations to come.

4. Do not mind the discrimination that we receive from older generations, and focus on what we can bring to the table instead. We are on track to be the most well-educated generation yet, and the older generations can’t ever dispute that fact. We have a lot to offer to the world, and we can be a beacon of hope for the future. We don’t have to keep living up to their standards, because sooner or later, we will be the standard.

5. Social media will never not be a part of our lives. It is pretty much a need now because of its versatility and functionality in helping us with almost anything and everything. So we can use social media unsparingly, but let us never forget that we also have to use it wisely.

But ultimately, I think that the most important takeaway from this is that although life is not easy for us Gen Z, we have to embrace the hardships of it all and use it as a weapon of hope to fight against inequality, injustice, and hatred. As Lucie Greene described us, let us be “the most brand-critical, bullshit-repellent, questioning group” the world has ever seen.

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empirebridalhair-blog · 4 years

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zithjen · 5 years

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Some Core Issues of this World

Before we dive into the execution of a revolution we should probably address why change is necessary and why it is so important that it happens soon.

The issue that has always bothered me personally the most is that of the exploitation of the worker. To think that the t-shirt I was wearing was sewn by a girl my age or younger, in a run-down factory, breathing in poisonous gases, continuously working her hands bloody (literally) because she has no real choice but to let companies exploit her, just to ensure that her family can afford the barest necessities of life. It is one of the most disgusting things I can think of. She doesn’t have the option of doing something with her life that fulfils her. She has to sell her labour at a wage that is no where near enough to provide for her loved ones. And to top this off employers could not care less for their employees’ safety and thus the working conditions are often insecure and endanger the workers. Phew, all the topics that come to my mind when thinking about this. Apart from endangering their workers, big companies and employers take away people’s means of living by for example pressuring them to sell their farmland which has been their main source of food and income for generations or buying up a vital fresh water source, bottling it up and selling the water these people used to get for free straight from nature for money which they simply do not have (not to mention the pollution created during the process if plastic bottle-making and then the shipping of the goods (I tip my hat to you if you also immediately thought of companies like Nestlé who are one of these monsters)). Or, which I might find even worse, such factories polluting their environment with chemicals either out of self-servitude or ignorance. Excuse me, I get carried away. Awful things that we let happen.

Now, as for the reason why this is an issue that could and needs to be ended by a system change is that this exploitation is the absolute base on which capitalism is built. Capitalism relies on the means of production getting cheaper and cheaper and the market to continue expanding. And seeing as we as consumer ship expect less expensive products the money we do not want to pay needs to be taken from somewhere. I can guarantee you that CEO’s will not part with a single penny which means that labourers (this includes office workers as well nowadays, contrary to Karl Marx’ time where this particular class struggle was first properly studied and where Marx’ oppressed class, the Proletariat, was made up by all workers (meaning factory and manual labourers) of the world) will have to deal with worsening working conditions and even less pay.

Instead of having only a handful of people in a company call the shots, make most of the money and not care about the people doing the actual work, anarcho-syndicalists as well as communists suggest self organisation and the complete abolishment of hierarchies, as well as a reconnecting with the work we are doing. The people working in a factory deciding how, when, and what they want to do that is, however, just a small part of that change.

While we are on the topic of exploitation, something else that is grossly being exploited is our earth and her resources. I don’t know where or when people got the idea that the earth is a 24 hours unlimited all you can eat buffet but it isn’t. Get that idiocy out of your heads. On the bright side, not all people are completely unaware. So there have been multiple trends in recent years such as a ban of plastic bags in supermarket chains all over the world and the most recent trend of refusing plastic straws. While it is admirable that some people are doing something it is hardly enough. What needs to change is again the system. 100 companies are responsible for 70% of emissions and although I do not know the numbers for the responsibility of ocean pollution I’d wager our plastic sins, while despicable and under all costs needs to be reduced, if not stopped, are nowhere near as harmful as that of big companies. Now, more important than continuing to reduce the harmful ways in which we impact our planet as individuals, is that we pressure big companies to either do the same or make sure they disappear forever. Aside from harmful emissions and plastic, in order to make profit, companies destroy enormous amounts of forest (especially in South America) for mono cultures of plants such as soy and palm trees. I have to admit geography is not my area of expertise, however, if I’m not mistaken then the hummus layer (which is the layer with most nutrients) in the ground in the rain forests is rather thin and can only be used for a short amount of time before yield is close to non existent without massive fertilisation. As though removing a big chunk of our planet’s lungs, our oxygen provider, wasn’t bad enough, using such amounts of fertiliser is incredibly harmful. And eventually these big stretches of land will have to be abandoned and by then the ground is so exhausted of nutrients that the forest struggles to reclaim the land. I can not even express my disdain for such reckless and stupid actions. And again we have only scratched the surface of these atrocities. We have yet to address the massive loss of life and habitat during deforestation. But I’ll leave that to organisations such as WWF and Green Peace.

Another topic close to my heart is discrimination. This will take me some time to cover as we are talking about discrimination against different ethnicities, people in the LGBTQ community, women, and, tied to the discrimination against ethnicities, xenophobia, and I’ll scrape the topic of the absolute brainlessness of borders and keeping people out of a country.

As a foreigner who grew up in the central European country I quickly learnt how normal discrimination is. As a child I got harassed and called slurs due to my origins. I wasn’t alone in this. If you didn’t absolutely adapt to the predominant culture you would have a though life. While this can be rather traumatising it is nothing compared to what prejudices for example black people in Europe as well as the US have had to live with. Shot at, killed, unjustly taken into custody, wrongly imprisoned. To name a few. I can’t believe that I am explaining this because the only right thing, on which I will not argue with anyone, is to judge a person based not on their skin colour, clothes, physical appearance, piercings, tattoos, hair colour, headscarf, burka, or anything like that, but on their actions and their capacity to show kindness. Back to the topic at hand. While there may be a lot of minorities, such as black people who live in poverty, which in no way represents their laziness or inferiority, they are not given the same opportunities as other people because of their skin colour. Prejudice and decades of oppression has forced them into impossible situations, where for many survival is their biggest concern. Being denied access to education or having to “sit with the brown kids” at lunch is what keeps them imprisoned in a lower class. This struggle is exceptionally painful as black people freed themselves of slavery mere decades ago just to be continuously mistreated.

Unfortunately, discrimination is not limited to people of colour. Modern women’s rights movements, which have been going on for over 100 years also still struggle and have to fight for each scrap of equality. I will not delve too deep into the topic. I will say though. My body. My choice. You can fuck the hell off if you tell any woman who did not specifically ask for your opinion how she should live her life. This is regarding clothing choices, choices regarding children, or how many or few sexual partners she has. Aside from that, many people see equality between men and women as achieved when plain and simple it has not been. The pay gaps being the smallest issue. Women are denied jobs for which they would be the perfect candidate for the reason of being female. The annoying thing about this is that many are not aware of their own prejudices, which makes it that much harder to battle. Women are naturally assumed to be the stay-at-home parent and are pressured into the “right” gender role. This applies to both men and women of course and the issue of bigenderism will be another point of discussion in the future. DISCLAIMER: Just because you do not do one of these things that does not automatically make you a non-sexist. It just makes you not quite such a sexist. Treat women as equals and there you go. Now actively say or do something for equal rights for women and you’ll be a feminist. This includes all women; white, black, Muslim, Christian, trans, etc. (We will discuss feminism and the fears connected to it at a later point as well.)

Speaking of trans (great TRANSition). Acceptance towards the lgbtq community is lacking as well. Not only is there a lack of acceptance but people actively hinder lgbtq members from being happy and living their lives the way they want to. I will try to make this very clear: they are not harming you by loving who they love and fucking who they want as you are. Who do you think you are, attacking them when they do nothing to harm you. Instead of complaining or hating queer people you might want to judge people based on their morals, as I have said before. A gay guy that’s rude is just as much of an unlikable person as a straight guy. He is, however, not an unlikable person because he’s gay. Never. Let people do what they want as long as they don’t harm anyone. And no one has a right to harm them for being who they are. Not civilians, not police. We just passed pride month, which, apart from reminding us to love who we love, should remind us of those who have fought for the rights of lgbtq members. It should remind us of those who were crushed and prohibited from loving and those who were suppressed by their governments and their police. Hatred will not stand against love.

And it is in these times, I believe, that we need love for one another more than ever before. We have reached a certain standard of living in western society that we do not have to fear for our lives. Unfortunately, not all people are that lucky. People flee from their home countries, whether it’s because it’s at war, or they can’t provide for their families. For whatever reason they flee, they are looking for a better life for their families and themselves and they need to be given a chance. Of course the problems in their countries need to be solved, but until they are these people need a home. Instead of pretending that they are all evil you could get over yourself and get to know some of them. Yes, there may be a cultural difference but it might be interesting to get to know it, broaden your horizon. Everyone is a human as you are. Some where just more or less fortunate in where they were born and how their country has been or is being governed. They have worries enough. Be kind to them. There is no need to put them in concentration camps, build walls to keep them out, separate children from their families, or be scared of them altogether.

Speaking of concentration camps (aka ICE). Many anarchists will agree that we hold no love for the police. I only briefly mentioned police brutality in the paragraphs about discrimination. I did not even scratch the surface of the disgusting things they do. They have been given the power and the right, by their government, to use force when they deem it necessary. Keep in mind they choose when they want to use force. It is no coincident that there are more black people being shot than white people by police, or that more lgbtq members are beat up than cis men. There is an imbalance in the distribution of power. We are governed from the top down and it is all we can do not to submit and accept this injustice.

If you take anything from this, let it be that we are all human beings, who deserve to live our lives as we choose, without fear for survival. Assuming we are different from one another because we are born in different places marked only by an imaginary line, or the colour of our skin, sexuality, or gender (which is also an ide constructed by our society).

It is not a coincidence either that all the oppressed are not white, straight, old men who sit in positions of power and assure that these few named injustices continue. It is our duty to ensure that no innocent is harmed and every moment we fail to do just that, is one moment too much. We need to fight this. Now.

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sucrefm-blog · 5 years

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hello , family ! my name is uchis , she / her pronouns & am over eighteen ! i stumbled across this group last night & couldn’t resist the desire to bring my angel in human form , jameson , into the mix ! i've skimmed through the intros already in the tag & absolutely adore what i've seen thus far , so i'm VERY excited to be lucky enough to write & develop our characters with each other ! i am a big fan of chemistry & organically creating plots / connections opposed to just assigning them , so if you'd like to discuss possibilities & get some things goin' , hit the ♥︎ & i'll find my way to your messages !

𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐂𝐓𝐄𝐑 .

a nicola peltz lookalike just rolled into new york city in their 2019 mercedes g-class . jameson “james” béllerose just had a birthday bash for their twenty second birthday . i doubt they’ll make it here in new york city since i hear they tend to be fastidious , but on the other hand they are magnanimous .

𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐓𝐒 .

full name : jameson victoire béllerose . nicknames : james , jamie . gender / preferred pronouns : nonbinary , she / they . sexual orientation : pansexual . romantic orientation : undecided . date of birth : 5 october 1997 . place of birth : paris , france . hometown : gold coast historic district ( chicago ! ) , illinois . nationality : french , american citizenship . ethnicity : caucasian / french . tattoos : a moderate amount of tiny tattoos placed sporadically but surprisingly cohesively along her body , details tbd . piercings : upper & lower lobes , right & left nipples , vertical hood . character inspo : pat mcgrath , mary - kate olsen , gigi hadid , monica geller , sloane peterson , amy santiago & lauren conrad . style inspo : victoria beckham , alexa chung , gemma chan , olivia palermo & meghan markle . distinguishing features : midriff length thick blonde hair , deep mouth corner dimples , petite but curvy~ stature , seamlessly straight & bleach - white teeth , full pouty lips , perfect & tiny beauty mark placed on her left cheek .

𝐀𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐓𝐈𝐂 .

glossy nude pink painted lips , the scent of yves saint laurent’s mon paris eau de parfum surrounding her aura , absurdly silky , platinum blonde ( depending on her mood ! ) tresses cascading past bare shoulders & dancing along her backbone , the gorgeous contrast of bleach - white teeth & naturally bronzed skin , a red silk robe strewn across the chair of a vintage gold french vanity , an endless & self - indulgent makeup collection large enough to double as cosmetics store , the satisfying sound of the six inch heel of custom made heels clicking against a marble floor , a walk in closet that could house a small family of four , having a wardrobe in which 95% of it consists of curve hugging dresses , the ability to conjure up any makeup look at a moments notice , using makeup to cover up both her internal & external secrets , pouty pink lips curving to speak honeyed words laced in a french accent , a golden heart worn loosely on her sleeve .

𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐃𝐂𝐀𝐍𝐎𝐍𝐒 .

born to a family who are essentially #brangelina without the drama , her parents are both retired a - list actors who now commit their time to charity organizations & humanitarian aid abroad . she grew up in a melting pot sort of family , with four blood siblings & three adopted siblings . over the course of her entire life , she's traveled around the world with her family , the belleroses being known primarily for their philanthropy & altruistic nature . born in paris , france with a long list of places she's called home ( london , beverly hills , uptown new york , etc. ! ) her family permanently relocated to gold coast history district , an affluent neighborhood in chicago , when she was fifteen .

she always had a large interest in makeup artistry & cosmetology in general & ended up attending school for it after graduating early @ seventeen . worked as a MAC cosmetics makeup artist in congruence with school for two years & originally had humble aspirations until a look she did on a customer , that contained latex petals stuck to the client's face , went viral . she quickly rose to prevalence as the footage made its rounds on the internet & went from a local favourite for the store to a highly sought out artist , people traveling all the way to chicago just to visit the store to get their makeup done . she capitalized on this & made an instagram to document her looks on herself & others & caught the attention of various photographers . her first offer came from steven meisel , jameson traveling to new york city for one night to assist in applying makeup to the models . her photoshoot with steven wound up being a #major move for her career , opening the door for more photographers to reach out to her until she made the decision to quit her job & make the big move three years ago . in three years , she's become a force in both the fashion & cosmetics world , working primarily with big name photographers , designers & models , her makeup artistry being featured in harper's bazaar , vogue , w , as well as fashion show seasons & couture . she released a cosmetics line the same year she moved & it was groundbreaking , making $79 million in revenue its debut year & in january of this year , she announced she'd be releasing a fashion house with LVMH after teasing looks on various celebrities in november & december .

she , just as her parents , is a humanitarian . she regularly attends & hosts charity benefits & galas , volunteers whenever possible & speaks out about the causes she cares for ( the protection of animals / animal cruelty , #blm , politics , women's health , mental health , body image , etc. ) . in everyday life , she is exceedingly gentle & polite , soft-spoken & patient with others . in spite of her more affluent upbringing & privilege , she remains humble & tries to use her position of power for positivity . it's very important to her to leave a lasting impression on others . she is very outgoing & open , able to make friends with most people , but being so has definitely gotten her taken advantage of in the past as she's a people pleaser above all . however , having it happen so much has bred a no nonsense side in her . as kindhearted & easygoing as she is , she has no issue asserting herself when necessary . business wise , she can be intimidatingly preeminent & fastidious & it's spilled into her own personal tastes .

more headcanons tbd !

#wealthyhq:intro

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thanatos5150 · 6 years

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On Heritage and the Sins of our Pasts

There’s been some murmurings from the political spheres I follow recently about Elizabeth Warren’s little stunt where she had a DNA test to prove she is of Native American heritage. None of them are full of particularly nice things to say about the woman, and I’ve been sitting out on weighing in because my feelings are big and complex and don’t fit neatly into a tweet or a toot, and as soon as I get the thesis out of my mouth I’m feeling relatively sure that somewhere, somehow, that’s going to be read first and I’m going to spend so much time replying to tweets/toots in response that I’m not going to be able to get into the complex details.

And, because this is, apparently, the only thing which gives anybody any sort of weight or importance in their takes, I have to establish these up front: yes, I actually have a dog in this fight. One: I am a resident of Massachusetts. Warren is my Senator. I’ll be voting November 6th on whether or not to re-elect her. Two (and this is the big one): According to family lore, I am also of Native American heritage.

And I want to be very nuanced about that second one, because it’s where all of my complex feelings are coming from. As a child, my mother made a great and big deal about my brothers and me being what she called a weijo, a “half-blood”. She said that she was part Native American, and thus, we, too were Native American. And, as I was a child, I believed her implicitly. I believed her completely and totally and for a very, very long time. Well into adulthood, even. Now, I simply don’t believe pretty much anything she says or has said to me. That’s why I said “According to family lore up” there. I also said “Of Native American heritage,”. Please note that I’m not actually claiming to be Native American. I’m not saying I have any tribal affiliations or connection to Native American culture (despite Young Me desperately wanting to form such connections).

You know how, when filling out job applications, they have you tick the little boxes for diversity info about your ethnicity? Well, the first one of those diversity things I filled out, I filled out under the watchful eye of a US Navy recruiter. Of course, since I genuinely and truly believed I was of Native American heritage, I checked the little box next to Native American, and the recruiter made a big deal about it. Lots of “Are you actually...”s and “That’s so cool”s in that kind of weird, racially biased, but not necessarily negatively prejudiced lilt to the other recruiter in the office. Mostly, it was just dehumanizing, openly talking about how I was “his” recruit and how “bagging one” was so rare and this was going to make him look awesome.

A year or so later, in Japan, I would, for the first time, see the little line saying that by ticking that box, I affirmed that I maintained Tribal affiliations, and quietly file an update to that form with the Native American box unticked, amongst a few other minor changes that I honestly don’t remember what they were. Only that having something else to change was important to me, because it would smokescreen away the fact that I was no longer claiming to be Native American on an official government form.

Years and years ago, somehow, I don’t remember the specifics exactly, but some time after 2010, during the Obama administration, somebody got Elizabeth Warren to admit that, when she was in her youth, she used to claim Native America heritage on diversity forms because she thought it would help her get hired, and she clarified that she halted the practice a long time ago.

Warren is about as white-presenting as I am, so I shrugged my shoulders and carried on with my life, because my story is very, very similar. A bunch of racist assholes, however, did not. calling her an out and out liar, somebody who abused the “privileges” of Native Americans for her own gain, and she had to know she wasn’t actually Native American, and she had to be consciously lying about her heritage, because look at her. She’s obviously white.

And, sometimes, three or four years later, when I would sometimes tell the story about how I was raised to believe I was of Native American heritage, invariably, I would get interrupted. “Ha, just like Elizabeth Warren,”

And that’s when the very first, interrupting thought out of sombody’s mouth was not saying I should “get some of that casino money”.

Fast forward to the wake of the 2016 election, where one of those racist assholes that won’t let go, like a dog worrying a bone, is Donald Trump, the current, sitting President of the United States of America. Trump acknowledges Warren as a political rival, even if he won’t come out and say it. And, because he’s a racist asshole, he preemptively attacks her character, calling out the Native American things she admitted, with shame, to doing in her past, and she stopped doing because she isn’t attached to the culture. Because she doesn’t maintain tribal affiliations. For the same reasons I quietly updated that form back in my first year or so of US Naval service.

Trump leaned into it, because it’s a thing his base loves. He saddled her with a racist nickname (”Pocahontas”), and pressed the issue. He challenged her, on national television, during a rally, to release a DNA test proving that heritage, and he’d give a million dollars to a charity of her choice. And it’s then, and only then, in response to what feels like, to me, over half a decade of taunting and scolding and racist attacks and accusations, that she finally releases a DNA test affirming only her heritage. She still does not claim affiliations with tribes. She still does not claim cultural connections. She does not claim a stake in reparations from the government. She does not even lay claim to the identity. Just the genetics that racist assholes -- and Donald Trump in particular, are pressuring her for in order to score cheap political points. In essence, she did nothing but call Trump’s bluff.

And liberals, of all people, are blowing up about it. While the GOP cronies are scrambling to call her a shameless liar, it’s liberals who are scrambling to call her an enemy of Native Americans and a lying, racist shit. For admitting to something she did in the past. For calling a racist asshole’s bluff. For seeking atonement to a sin in her past. She is not claiming cultural connections. She is not claiming tribal affiliations. All she’s claiming is genetics, after being asked to show genetics, and the GOP is calling her a damned dirty liar while liberals are calling her a racist shit.

And Trump is smugly laughing his ass off. Because he played all of you like fiddles.

#prose #essay #personal story #elizabeth warren #politics #native american #american politics

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armeniaitn · 4 years

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Excluding Turkey Caucasus is the key to peace in the Caucasus – Armenian President

New Post has been published on https://armenia.in-the.news/politics/excluding-turkey-caucasus-is-the-key-to-peace-in-the-caucasus-armenian-president-63137-16-10-2020/

Excluding Turkey Caucasus is the key to peace in the Caucasus – Armenian President

Excluding Turkey Caucasus is the key to peace in the Caucasus, Armenian President Armen Sarkissian said in an interview with The Critic.

He said all international pressure—including from the UK government, from prime minister Boris Johnson—has to be directed at Turkey with the message that it has to get out of this conflict.

The full text of the interview is provided below:

Kapil Komireddi: Russia brokered a temporary truce on Saturday. It was violated within minutes of its signing. Who broke it?

Armen V Sarkissian: Factually, it was the Azeris. At 12 o’clock the ceasefire was announced, and immediately after that there was shelling of the civilian population of Stepanakert. That’s the fact. And if you’re looking to understand why they shelled, well, it’s all logical, because the Armenian side did not start this war. The Armenian side is fighting for their homes. A victory for Armenians means protecting your home, your house, your children, your grandchildren, your grandparents, your heritage, the life you had there for thousands of years—not hundreds of years, but thousands of years—and protecting your religion. And that is why, if you look at the military structures in Karabakh, all military units are always away from the villages and the cities. You know why? Because they worry that their presence could jeopardise the safety of the civilians. They don’t want to give the enemy the opportunity of harming the civilians by using the excuse that the military was the target. The civilians are their families. Armenians did not start the war and they do not have any intention of continuing it. It’s Azerbaijan that started it with the aim, they claim, to “free” Nogorno-Karabakh from the Armenians, who are the majority there.

KK: A missile struck the city of Ganja in Azerbaijan. Ganja is outside the disputed region. What possible justification can there be for striking it?

AVS: I can speak as president of the republic, on behalf of the Armenian government, and on the basis of the information that I’m provided by the ministry of defence of Armenia. The ministry of defence, and the foreign minister in his interviews the day before, clearly stated that it was not Armenia that hit Ganja. So, if there is a question, I think that’s a question to the defence army of Nagorno-Karabakh. But let’s look at it in context. How on earth is the Azeri side expecting to fight a war—from the first day of the war, the 27 of September, as you spoke to our prime minister, they started hitting Stepanakert. If you look at Stepanakert today from a drone it will look like a city after the Second World War—all destruction. Not one, not two buildings, but half of the city is gone. Now somebody shells from Nagorno-Karabakh maybe—I don’t know because I do not have any information about that—and it’s a big, big issue. How on earth—you want to start a war and you break all of the rules, start shelling civilians everywhere, and then you are surprised that somebody has shelled you once.

KK: So you’re saying that—

AVS: I don’t have information that the army of self-defence has done it, but I am analysing the outrage. When there were thousands of times of shelling here and one there, you are putting them on some equilibrium?

KK: If you’re speculating that this could’ve been a retaliatory shelling for the shelling on Armenian civilians by the Azeris, would it not imply that the army of self-defence—

AVS: I don’t think so, I don’t think so. That’s why I have doubts. There is nothing that you achieve by shelling and destroying one building or two buildings. What Nogorno-Karabakh will get out of the Ganja event is negative PR. So why on earth would they do that? That’s why I am not very sure that Nogorno-Karabakh did it. And they have said they haven’t done it. I know for sure from my minister of defence and my foreign minister that the Armenian side—the republic—has not done it. Regardless, any loss of life, for any side, be that a young soldier’s life or civilian life specially, I regret. Because it’s a loss of life.

KK: There are two possibilities that stand out. One, this could be a rogue element who chose retaliatory shelling because the civilian areas in Nogorno-Karabakh were struck. Or this could be a false-flag operation by the Azeris themselves. If it’s the first—

AVS: Well, you said that, I didn’t. I leave it to you to speculate on it because the president cannot speculate—

KK: But the first part of it is rather troubling, isn’t it, because it would imply that you are not in control?

AVS: It’s also troubling that our focus today is on this one shelling. Right now, as we speak, they are shelling Stepanakert.

KK: I understand that. I just want to—

AVS: When what is happening there is the ceasefire announced and brokered by—they are not keeping the ceasefire.

KK: I just want to get one thing across: are the self-defence forces under your control?

AVS: My control?

KK: Are the Nogorno-Karabakh forces—are they defying Armenia? Because if they are shelling without your knowledge, aren’t they defying you?

AVS: First of all, I am not involved at all there. Absolutely not. They are the self-defence forces and the army of an independent republic, and those people have voted. In fact, they have this year had elections, quite democratic compared with some of our neighbours, and they have a democratically elected parliament and a president. They have their own army and they run it. It’s a different story that there are volunteers from Armenia. There are a lot of them there and you cannot stop them because, well, they are the same nation. If Erdogan is saying that the Turks have “ethnic” connections with Azerbaijan, well this is more than a “connection”—these are Armenians. And it’s not only Armenians from Armenia. These are Armenians from all over the word. And I know as the president of a republic, but also a nation, that there are queues of thousands of Armenians—be that in Russia, in California, in New York, in Argentina—that want to fly in fight as volunteers because for them this war is a reminder of the genocide that happened 105 years ago. The Turkish involvement and the rhetoric, the aggressiveness, the usage of its resources—starting from aeroplanes, drones, military equipment, military advisers, officers, even Islamic terrorists. Turkey has brought them all in—all remind Armenians of the events that happened 105 years ago.

KK: As the president of a nation that became dispersed and was sought to be liquidated by Turkey a century ago, how do you suppose the world ought to look at this spectacle of Turkey coordinating, as prime minister Pashinyan put it to me, the war against Armenia?

AVS: You can have different perspectives on how to look at an issue. Let me give you a couple of different perspectives. For Azerbaijan, this is a war in which they want to exercise ethnic cleansing. They want to show that this is about their piece of land, to prove that even under the Soviet Union they had rule over this region for 65 years. They want to “free” Nagorno-Karabakh from the Armenians living here. And that purge is ethnic cleansing. That’s the war that Azerbaijan wants to run.

What is there in it for Turkey? One is to teach a lesson to Azerbaijan: you guys cannot [defeat Armenia]. See how we can help you to do it. You are our brothers—our ethnic brothers—but you cannot do it. You need us: you will need us today, you will need us tomorrow, and you will need us forever. Second: to teach a lesson to Armenians: if you are hoping or expecting or thinking that we are going to recognise the genocide, forget about it. Because we are here and we will continue what we started a hundred years ago and make another [genocide]. To the international community—to be honest, they don’t care about the international community and its opinions. They don’t care that countries like Russia, Germany, France—and even the Senate of the United States—have recognised the Armenian genocide. Turkey is bluntly refusing to acknowledge that.

What is there in this for Armenians the world over? It’s a reminder of the genocide—and Armenians would never allow it to happen again. What is there for the people of Armenia in Armenia? Karabakh was always a part of Armenia. We didn’t recognise Nogorno-Karabakh for a simple reason. Because the approaches of Armenians and Azeris are always different. We could have easily recognised Nogorno-Karabakh in 1994. Even the Soviet Armenian parliament had recognised it, but we stopped it. In 1994, after the first war, which the Armenians won, we were free to recognise it, and there’s no way either Turkey or Azerbaijan could have objected. But because the Minsk process kickstarted the peace negotiations, the Armenian side decided not to recognise it unilaterally—thus giving a chance to negotiations for a lasting solution to the problem. Recognition would have complicated that.

That’s been the Armenian approach. But if the pressure keeps rising in Nogorno-Karabakh and the prospect of negotiations dies, then of course Armenia will have no choice but to recognise Nogorno-Karabakh. Let me give you an example of what we face. The second biggest city near Stepanakert is Shushi. There was in that city always a large Armenian community and a small Azeri community. There were Armenian churches and one mosque. After the first war, the Armenians restored the big cathedral, Christ the Saviour. Three hundred metres from the cathedral is a mosque. And the mosque was also restored by the Armenians in Nogorno-Karabakh. What’s one of the first things the Azeris hit in Shushi? It was the church. The Armenian approach is restoring a mosque. The Azeri approach is destroying a church—a church in which children and elderly people were taking refuge. These are two very different approaches.

KK: You say the Turks don’t care about the international community. We often hear the phrase “never again”. Given the history of the Armenian people, should the international community care about Turkey?

AVS: There are two answers. One answer is based on our history—our genocide. For the international community, allowing the Turks to do it again, in the 21st century, after a hundred years—in the middle of which you had the Holocaust and Rwanda and so much bloodshed—says these hundred years were wasted and we learnt no lesson. And so, we are going to allow the same guy to do the same thing again and again and again. That’s one dimension.

The second dimension is Turkey’s interest is also to occupy Azerbaijan by staying there with slogans of brotherhood and so on. The moment they are there—and regardless of whether the conflict here is over or not—they will stay. They will use preposterous excuses—ethnic brotherhood, PKK fighters, protecting oil and gas—to stay. But they will stay there exerting enormous influence over Azerbaijan. They will define the future of Azerbaijan. And they will control the energy sources from the Caspian to Europe. Once they are in Azerbaijan, they are not recipients—they are the ones who control the pipelines. All those on the Caspian, the central Asian republicans, and extending all the way to Europe will become hostages once Turkey assumes real control of energy sources from the Caspian.

KK: Turkey hasn’t been demure in its support for Azerbaijan. It has said we are “two states, one nation”. Russia, on the other hand, has been somewhat coy in throwing its support behind you—despite Armenia being a member of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation. Are you disappointed by Moscow’s response?

AVS: I am disappointed on many counts. I am disappointed that NATO is allowing their member state to become involved in a third-party conflict with which Turkey has nothing to do. A NATO member is using the most advanced NATO-grade weapons—F-16s, drones—and soldiers without a mandate. I raised these issues with the head of NATO. I am also disappointed that there is not enough pressure from the European Union. I am disappointed there isn’t much pressure from America, but I can understand. The timing was well chosen: America is busy with the presidential elections. I’m also disappointed particularly that Israel continues supplying Azerbaijan with weapons. I am disappointed because I have a lot of Jewish friends and I am close to Jewish communities. I travelled to Israel to mark the 75th anniversary of the Holocaust. I know that the majority of Israelis—like Jewish people everywhere—want the Armenian genocide recognised. But the current government refuses to do that. In fact, what the government is doing is selling what they call “defensive” weapons to a country that is engaged in an offensive against the Armenian people. They should have stopped supplying when the war began. They did not. I am not alone in my disappointment. My Jewish friends—from Israel to New York to Moscow—are profoundly unhappy with this.

Now, coming to Russia—Russia has conveyed that if there is an attack on the Republic of Armenia, they will honour all of their agreements, bilateral and multilateral. They will stand with Armenia if there is an attack on the Republic of Armenia.

KK: And you are satisfied with that assurance—

AVS: That’s what the Russian side has said. Now the Russian Federation also has good relations with Azerbaijan. That’s no secret. It maintains good relations with both the Republic of Armenia and Azerbaijan. That means Russia is uniquely suited to be an honest mediator. Turkey cannot play that part. Turkey has taken a side openly. I don’t buy their nonsense about “two states, one nation”, of course. By that logic, Turkey can claim other central Asian republics. Russia’s good relationship with Azerbaijan means it can be a broker of a ceasefire. Both sides would trust Russia.

I would like to see more pressure from all of our friends, including Russia, on Azerbaijan. But I would like to see much more pressure from everybody on Turkey. Turkey is the key negative factor in this conflict. The moment you take Turkey out, I assure you the war will stop in a day or two. Turkey remaining will make matters worse by sucking others in. It will be disastrous. We will end up with a huge conflict in the Caucasus that could be much worse even than Syria. Excluding Turkey is the key to peace. All international pressure—including from the UK government, from prime minister Boris Johnson—has to be directed at Turkey with the message that it has to get out of this conflict.

KK: Prime Minister Pashinyan described the conflict to me as an “existential threat” to Armenia given Turkey’s involvement. I spoke to him a day after the outbreak of hostilities last month. Many have died in the intervening weeks. Do you fear the Republic of Armenia is now in peril?

AVS: The war has intensified. It has grown in scale. The number of lives lost is now in the thousands.

KK: Thousands on the Armenian side?

ASK: On both sides. The Azeri side don’t announce lives lost. On the Armenian side, every day on television the names of the departed—both in Nogorno-Karabakh and of Armenian volunteers—are announced. They are announced the moment they are identified. Hundreds of names have already been officially announced. The problem is the ceasefire was not honoured by Azerbaijan and there are a lot of bodies lying on the battlefield. Then there is the aggressive rhetoric of Turkey, growing every day. If there is an event or an announcement from the Armenian side, the first to react is not Baku. It is Ankara. They have just identified themselves with this conflict. Their fight is with a small republic of 150,000 people in a beautiful country where you will find remnants of Armenian kingdoms starting from the first century BC up to the churches from fourth and fifth centuries when there were no “ethnic brothers” of Turkey—neither them or their “ethnic brothers”—in that area at all. This is a small but proud nation that has seen Genghis Khan and the great Timur come and go. But when you look this huge empire—Turkey—fighting this small republic, what you are seeing is a people fighting for their lives, for their history, for their heritage, for their children, their grandchildren, their religion. They are also, in a broader sense, fighting for the security of Russia, Iran, and even Azerbaijan. They are also, indirectly, fighting for the energy security of Europe. If Turkey and its mujahideen stay here, they will be a threat to the Caucasus and beyond. This small nation, fighting for its survival, is also putting up a line of defence for others.

KK: President Macron of France spoke recently in terms that favoured Armenia’s position. Britain, however, has limited itself to a somewhat bland joint statement with Canada. You were one of the longest serving ambassadors to Britain of any country. You have closely studied Britain as a diplomat, academic, and politician. And I know you maintain a deep and affectionate interest in Britain. How do you explain the indifference here to what’s happening there?

AVS: For us, this is an issue of national survival. And since Armenians are everywhere in the world—from Singapore to Argentina and Brazil, and of course America, Europe, and in Manchester—I ask all Armenians and friends of Armenia and friends of mine to pay attention. Britain, being out of the European Union, controls its own destiny now. If Britain has decided to be out of the EU, and that referendum is honoured by the current government, I ask it to think about those people whose democratic choice in a referendum to secede from Azerbaijan brought them war and death and displacement. For the UK, becoming independent from the European Union and working hard for its economic recovery and political presence, this is the appropriate time to raise its voice as an independent state parallel to the EU and stand up for the human rights of the people who have chosen to make their own destiny. What is happening in Nogorno-Karabakh may seem distant, but it is not. The moment Turkey takes over this region, God help us all.

Read original article here.

#Armenia #Armenians #Caucasus #Karabakh #Politics

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outlyingthoughts · 4 years

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My mom was right, or a story on my privileges and microaggressions: Jul 20

Sometimes, your thoughts appear to meet at a cosmic intersection, everything coinciding and suddenly unlocking another level of understanding about your reality.

The start of Summer 2020 was a cosmic intersection for my reality. From populations around the world finally leading global protests against racism and police brutality, the escalation of Police-state-like situations in France and reading more books like « So you want to talk about race » by Ijeoma Oluo; everything confirmed an uncanny feeling I grew up to have an increased acuity for: my Mom was right, the world around me, despite how privileged I had seemed to be so far, was viciously racist and being blind to the racism I suffered from didn’t make it unreal.

Growing up in France with the myth of colorblindness, « because we are all one, indivisible and equal » in the eyes of the Republic and the Laïcité, makes it easy to deny the existence of institutionalized racism. French secularism, as the central pillar of our civic culture, provides a logic for our republic to conceal its racism under the soft blanket of a republican model of integration.

The French government officially rejects both censuses and data collection based on ethnic, religious or linguistic nature of groups. As such our national social cohesion is solely relying on the idealistic dream that from the moment that we have a French nationality, it grants us all an absolute equality in treatment, legally ensured by our all-mighty constitution.

Don’t get me wrong: I loved this principle that the state should be outlawed from seeing race and obliged by the law to treat us all equally. I loved attending my civic education classes and having a program that preached that we were all included because what mattered was that we were all French before anything else. I loved feeling like it was true thanks to my already existing privileges. I’ve had the luxury to believe in this illusion, all of it, until I had to navigate the « adult world » on my own, face racism with my own eyes and discovered how facts were radically different from our nicely designed civic education program.

My privileges allowed me to swim in sweet denial of the social reality of our country. But what happens if you're not French? What happens if you’re not perceived as French by the rising extreme right wing and populist political parties, by the people in the street, by a large portion of the voters in local and national elections ? What happens when the social reality doesn’t match those beautiful principles of equality and both the public discourse and authorities turn blind to systemic injustice ?

The problem is that not every French kid of color has the luxury to feel included and valued within the French society. When adults outside of your house are biased towards people that look like you, whether it be in the street, in fancy shops or even teachers at school; when politicians and people in the news are framing people from your ethnic or religious group or even from the neighborhood you come from as dangers, criminals or frauds of the system; how can you feel French before all, equal and included ?

Unfortunately, when sociologists and researchers are interested in studying this phenomenon, it is virtually impossible for them to do so since such data and measures are deemed inherently illegal in the government’s eyes. Even minorities asking for acknowledgment of systemic discrimination and inequalities through ethnic and/or religious demographic statistics are thus called out for being separatist and/or communitarist, all of this based on the adoption of the Law on « Informatique et liberté » in January 1978 which prevented public authorities from collecting data based on racial, ethnic or religious criteria.

Since then, even laws aiming at allowing the study of diversity, social integration and discrimination have been deemed anti-constitutional. As such, there is no way in France to account for socio-economic inequalities of ethnic and religious minorities, which -of course- makes it easier to deny their existence since they legally cannot be accounted for and studied.

This lack of acknowledgment does translate into French society and the way many French people think -regardless of their skin color and religion, even though more regularly among people of caucasian appearance-. Since I started growing more and more aware of the insidious racism around me and calling it out, I received backlash on many topics like cultural appropriation or reversed racism and a lot of denying of racial issues in our country.

In France, like in many Western countries with large non-white populations, many people refer to the existence of a so-called « reversed racism » when minorities start to call out systemic racism in our societies. So much that even some of my own relatives have thrown this term in my face when I started arguing against them on institutional racism in our country.

Sadly, in France the inability to account for discrimination, inequalities and even violence against minorities makes it virtually impossible to prove with numbers how rare what they refer to as « reversed racism » is compared to the urgency to address the too common racism against people of colors.

In the context of social justice, the goal is to highlight the institutional character of racism in our societies. Reversed racism in this context does not exist because white people in Western societies do not suffer from systemic inequalities and discrimination. Because last time I checked, Caucasians looking people in France do not risk institutionalized racial profiling and violence by the police or discrimination in employment because of « reversed racism ».

To have family members, who can witness how racism plays out in my everyday life and still believe in reversed racism comes to me as a denial of the experience of people of color when facing racism. It is like turning the cheek to the other side and say « yes you may suffer because of racism but please let’s not focus on your pain because I found a concept that fits me and all my unchecked privileges and allows me to deny the experience of a whole part of the population justifying it with a form of racism that does not impact my everyday life and doesn’t exist on a systemic scale »: News flash this is extremely insulting.

These forms of insidious white privileges in people’s discourse; to be able to be blind to racism and deny its existence because it does not affect your everyday life are microaggressions to people of color, denials of our pain and prevent a fruitful debate on how to solve the issue of institutionalized racism in our societies.

On my own privileges

My mom was right, in the tender years of my childhood I was privileged enough to virtually not see a difference between me and the other white kids (apart from the hairstyles I couldn’t do or that I was tanner than them regardless of the seasons).

My paternal grandfather was white and mayor of his town, I loved going to his workplace as much as I could, always showered in compliments and candies. Sometimes I would look up at the portrait of the current president hung in a big ceremonial room in the townhall and despite knowing that my parents didn’t approve of him, still I felt so at home within the bounds of our republic.

And while such privileges didn’t lead me to be « colorblind », it did make me blind to a large part of the discrimination I suffered from when I finally old enough to face it myself. I was convinced to be living in a post-racist society, convinced that only a minority of uneducated countryside freaks who had never seen a black person could be racist. I was convinced of all of this because I lived in a country with such beautiful laws and principles on equality and republican inclusion that it seemed unimaginable that the contrary could be real.

When my black mother was trying to make me notice micro-aggressions and subtly racist situations from our everyday life, I was denying everything (“it’s not racism mom, it’s -enter whatever excuse I could make up for them-). Sometimes I’d even make fun of her for being so imaginative and overly sensitive. Worse, I would go crazy with my democratic propaganda when she’d tell me she couldn’t be bothered to go vote because she did not feel included or represented in the elections. While I still condemn not voting because (forgetting the debate on whether it is rational or not) it is both a right and a privilege that isn’t respected by the autocratic leader in my maternal country, now I also understand my mom’s stand, feeling ignored and not included in political debates.

Today, I’m calling myself out for blindly believing in this integrative republican lie despite my own mother’s truth. When first generation but also second, third or even fourth generation immigrants are massively deemed as frauds of the system, it is logical that they have a reluctance to waste their time and resources on getting informed and involved in a system that pisses on them while still exploiting with joy their labor for the benefits of the national economy.

On Microaggressions

After reading a couple books and many essays on race like « So you want to talk about race », I felt discouraged as the wanna-be essayist I am. I didn't want to become yet another mixed essayist since we all apparently had the same stories on the way our bodies had been shamed, fetishized and sexualized whether it is our big butts, big hair, the same stories on exceptionalism and belittling compliments we receive, either making us exceptions of the group we identify as (« you’re pretty for a black girl ») or even categorizing our successes solely as a result of affirmative action (when I was applying to one of the top universities in Political Science in France, a friend of mine who was also a person of color told me that I was sure to get in because I was a great and lucky token black person).

Such discourses are so normalized and internalized that as I entered adulthood, I found myself sharing with my Caucasian father my deep fears of making it in life only because I was very often the only black or person of color in the circles and institutions I evolved within. Luckily, after a year of attending university abroad, I recovered confidence in my intelligence and abilities; but still had this fear when writing about my experience to not want to be seen as yet another angry black woman. But now the cosmic intersection struck me like a truck in my face: we all have the same story, not because we are whiny individuals and all the same but because everywhere people of color are suffering from the same discrimination and/or micro-aggressions.

What I had interpreted as my non-originality which would make me unable to succeed as a writer is just yet another proof of the systemic nature of racism and the discriminating ways of thinking and standards in our societies which we all suffer from.

Somehow, I found myself wishing at times that I had been an outcast like Ijeoma, but sadly I was socialized to match and please people’s expectations. When puberty and reality hit, I found a way to fold away myself and straighten the black out of me to fit the mold: whether it be in school, in my mostly white friend circles, in my behavior or appearance.

For the longest time from the start of my teenage years, I began internalizing all the ways societies and people told me that my “blackness” was ugly. How my hair was too big or deemed disgusting, how my fellow classmates saw me as a milking cow for starting puberty earlier than most girls. It came to a point where I genuinely believed that I could never be seen as beautiful if I let my natural bouncy curls and curvy shapes out. I was in denial of how much daily microaggressions had destroyed my self-esteem and standards of beauty.

Micro-aggressions are actions or remarks that are received as subtle or non-intentional forms of discrimination against minorities and/or marginalized group. An example of micro-aggression is someone telling you that you’ve never been arrested by the police because “you’re not that black for a black person” or that your hair is “impractical” and annoying because African hair requires more time and care to be maintained.

The problem with such remarks isn’t necessarily the intent or the way the person who made it thinks about the micro-aggression but rather the way it is received and hurts the receiver. Often times, when we do dare to stand up for ourselves against a micro-aggression, we are being told the same things I use to tell my own mother: that we are too sensitive or easily offended (especially if you’re from my generation I’m convinced you know the pleasure to hear older generations complain that we’re “a generation of offended sheep”) and only now I can understand how disrespectful and unsensitive my privileges made me towards my mom. Because I was so blinded by legal formalities and public discourse on the way society was supposed to be based on our laws, I was completely disregarding my own mother’s experience and struggle and some of you still do. That’s what unchecked privileges do.

But the violence of micro-aggressions generally isn’t rooted in the action or statement or its intent per say. Rather, most of the time, it’s in the way they are enshrined in wider systemic discrimination as repetitive and accumulated attacks on an individual across different moments and perpetrators. It turns an action which might appear inoffensive to the perpetrator (like touching someone’s hair) but will be taken as something extremely disrespectful to the receiver.

Growing up in France, hair on TV ads and the hair products on supermarket shelves were different than mine, the same way my friends at school could all have those flowy ponytails which I felt very sad my hair type didn’t allow I couldn’t have (until I begged my mom to relax my hair and she agreed when I was 7 because being a kid of a divorced couple she couldn’t take care of my hair for the whole month of summer at my father’s). But in any case, my relationship to my hair was the first instance where I felt part of a “minority” let’s say.

Getting into middle school and puberty, of course everybody gets criticized, shamed or made fun of for their difference: it’s part of teenage years. But when minor teenage bullying cross-cuts a subject which society marginalizes you for (as futile as hair and physical appearance can) and which throughout your life you’re going to get comments and/or random people’s opinions on all the time. All of this tends to weigh on one’s mind and if all the while, it is being deemed unattractive by the male gaze, then this innocent teenage bullying suddenly makes you, from a young age, internalize racism and hatred towards your own self, with the courtesy of mainstream western beauty standards.

(And yes, still today some men that I’ve frequented have dared to tell me they “didn’t mind my hair curly but they preferred my hair straight because they think I’m much prettier with” DID I ASK YOU FOR YOUR OPINION ON MY HAIR?)

I hope now it is pretty straightforward, why when my relatives tell me that my hair is impractical, I go bonkers. I’m simply sick of society, of men, of my teenage years, everything that made me internalize white beauty standards and told me that my natural appearance was not enough, not practical or not fit for them. And don’t even get me started on the ones that feel entitled enough to touch a part of my body without asking for my consent (here, only, my hair but still): Don’t touch my hair nor feel entitled to give me a judgement on my appearance.

Lastly, to put it all perspective, would you go around touching people’s ass and telling them: “well I don’t really like your butt, I'd rather you wear shapewear to change it” ?

Sources:

https://theconversation.com/how-french-law-makes-minorities-invisible-66723

https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichCodeArticle.do?idArticle=LEGIARTI000026268247&cidTexte=LEGITEXT000006070719

https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2019/03/19/la-difficile-utilisation-des-statistiques-ethniques-en-france_5438453_4355770.html

Oluo, I. (2018). So you want to talk about race. New York, NY : Seal Press

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musicrunsthroughmysoul · 6 years

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How do You Say “Mixed Up” in Spanish? At Least I Know how to Say It in English...

My conflict about wanting to meet my father [and actually know who he is] and not wanting to try to meet him comes up less often than you might believe. I’ve only been thinking (and crying) about it lately because, well, taking two creative nonfiction writing classes will open up that sort-of-not-really-there-but-also-very-there wound.

I’ve talked to my therapist about this, too - about how one thing I’m afraid of with trying to reach out to my father is that, first, he doesn’t know I exist, and second, whether he is truly my father or not, a fairly dark-skinned Mexican man will take one look at me and go, “HAHA, sure, you’re my daughter.” I don’t know what kind of person he is, so I don’t know if he’d even consider a DNA test. But one thing my therapist recommended to me was to try finding out about other people’s experiences, and to try researching my heritage - the one I really don’t know anything about.

So I did. Sort of. I’ve started with researching the experience of being mixed race, for one thing because I don’t know if I may even be able to accurately classify myself as that, and two, because it’s an experience that’s so seldom highlighted and talked about, so why not be curious and try to be considerate of it? So far I’ve just done a basic Google search, but reading this article really resonated with me:

Not only that, it is a bit polarizing to not look like your family. Mixed people, more often than not, have a hard time fitting in and so people are constantly telling us how and where we fit in as if they govern what we identify as.

The stress that comes from being mixed often comes hand-in-hand with our appearance. If we do not look like the stereotypical mixed person or we do not fit the appearance of the race we identify as, it's extremely difficult -- and almost impossible -- to justify our very own existence.

Well, that certainly addresses at least one issue for me: not looking like my family. And I don’t even just mean my White Irish/Scottish, Cherokee, American maternal family - obviously I don’t look like my Hispanic paternal family, either. A source of guilt with this whole concept, too, is that I don’t have issues with anyone trying to tell me what or who I am - I’m pale as paper, so I’m definitely fuckin’ White. Of course, this guilt overlooks the fact that I’m mostly guilty about not knowing my paternal family, much less his heritage and culture (though that’s certainly part of it). With the second paragraph, of course, here’s another big thing: I don’t feel I can justify even identifying as Mexican/Hispanic, much less half-Hispanic, because I didn’t grow up with that side of my heritage. I know nothing personally of their culture, although I’ll eat burritos and tacos faster than any White As Hell Washingtonian and yes, give me that spicy salsa donotholdback. I started trying to teach myself Spanish with Duolingo, but I haven’t had time to continue it in months, so I’ve surely forgotten a lot, and I’m always too shy to try ordering my burritos in Spanish from the Mexican food vendor on campus (mostly because I’m really not that good at speaking Spanish yet, although I’m even too shy to say “Sí” or “Gracias” AND COME ON, I AT LEAST KNOW THOSE WORDS).

Basically, a lot of it is feeling like a fraud - I feel like, just because you may be something, doesn’t mean you’ve lived it and can thus say, “Yes, I am entitled to that title/identity/whatever” - plus White privilege is very much a thing that comes into play that I must always acknowledge. I mean, it’s my White privilege that would theoretically give me the option to openly declare that I am half-Hispanic without being afraid of persecution (by White people, I would imagine; I have wondered if it would be a different experience, as I once already mentioned, with Hispanic people). But if wanting to understand and learn about the other genetic side of me is my reasoning for this, is it even justifiable then? And to what extent?

So, you know, it’s a constant confliction. Mostly the conflict I have always struggled with, that greatly overshadows my ethnic identity, is just having grown up without a father figure in my life ever. As I will defend my mom, a single mother who raised me (her only child) on her own, she did the best she could in spite of her own personal struggles. I have been blessed (lowercase, hi, I’m not religious) with knowing and being able to reciprocate unconditional love, so I will acknowledge that I have that experience to carry me through hell and all this conflict, and I could never take that for granted. Still, in pursuit of my greatest challenge - learning to love and accept myself - I feel a big part of that is learning to somehow embrace the other half of me I’ve never known. So I will continue to do research, write, and be considerate toward those who both understand my struggle and those who don’t. Being thoughtful shouldn’t be selective - it’s learning to appreciate both sides that should eventually lead to the ultimate revelation: we are all the same, in our humanity, even within our differences. And why shouldn’t we realize that? Why shouldn’t we prioritize being tolerant and considerate toward humankind? Especially when the world seems to need that most? But maybe that’s for another blog post.

#me #writing #personal post #heritage #ethnicity #identity confusion #single parent household

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lovethisskin · 6 years

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In Conversation: Destiny Birdsong

We are beyond excited and honoured to start 2018 talking to acclaimed American poet, essayist and editor; Destiny Birdsong. Destiny has won the Academy of American Poets Prize, Naugatuck River Review’s 2016 Poetry Contest, and Meridian’s 2017 “Borders” Contest in Poetry. She’s had fellowships from Cave Canem and Callaloo among others.

She openly speaks to us about her experience with albinism, her family, writing out her fears and her hopes for young people with albinism

Photo: Hunter Armistead. Makeup: LaRisa Jones

We work in African communities and mostly have an African audience - Your background is different from that of our readers, tell us a bit about your community and how you grew up.

I grew up in the American South—Shreveport, Louisiana, to be exact. It’s not a big city, but it’s also not a small town. I haven’t lived there in many years, but it’s a place I love deeply. There’s something about the miles and miles of flat land, the pine trees, and all the waterways that will forever be a part of my concept of home, even though there are other places that share that moniker for me. Shreveport is an interesting place; it’s not in the part of the state most heavily populated by French-speaking Acadians or French Creoles (whose cultures Louisiana is most famous for), but it is definitely influenced by them in terms of food and other forms of celebration (like Mardi Gras), as well as in how the people around me thought about race and color. I grew up in an African American family where people were a range of colors, and my albinism never made me feel out of place in that regard. There is no general phenotype for us; I was just one color of many. So many of my family members’ nicknames are based on appearance, and particularly color. I have an uncle called “Fat Ear,” another called “Black Boy,” and yet another called “Red Boy.” When I was a baby, my uncles nicknamed me “Honey,” which they thought matched the color of my hair. I spend most of my life away from my family, and something in me starts to heal from the world when I walk into a room and my Uncle Carlos yells: “Honey Bunny!” I love my family for taking one look at me and naming me after something carefully made and harvested, something precious and sweet.

Of course, people outside the safe space of my family still said and did mean things during my childhood, but I was rarely—if ever—made to feel “less black” than others. And, while I was certainly made fun of, I felt physically safe in most of my environments. I do have one distinct memory of being bullied, however, and it was in pre-school. I’ve worn glasses since I was three years old, and this girl who had been hassling me on the playground one day smacked them off. Apparently, that was the last straw: somehow, I got a hold of her finger and bit down to the bone. She was rushed to the emergency room, and I was sent home. I love that story, especially since it’s the one time I got in trouble in school, but didn’t get in trouble at home. My mother knew the girl had been picking on me, and she understood why I retaliated. My mother never condoned violence, but she did give me space to stand up for myself, and she and the rest of my family made me feel like I had the right to do so. I also use this story to remind myself of something that I apparently knew then, but sometimes forget now: I matter, and no one has the right to treat me poorly simply because they feel like they can.

Do you remember when you initially became aware of your hyper-visibility?

There are two distinct moments that come to mind. The first happened when I was perhaps three or four years old, and I overheard my mother tell her best friend that, when she was at the grocery store, shew saw two children who looked like me. I wasn’t there with her, but I remember understanding that, when she said that, she also meant that we didn’t look like everyone else. The other time was a bit later—five or so—when I drew a picture of an imaginary friend named “Samantha.” Samantha had yellow hair and wore glasses, and my mother was touched, but also a little tickled; she showed that picture to everyone she knew. Although she understood better than I did at the time, we both knew who Samantha looked like, and why: I needed to see someone else who looked like me.

How have you navigated your albinism in your writing, what are some issues/aspects related to having the condition, feature most in your work?

This is a tough one, because, like everyone else (I imagine), this condition is one part of my identity, but doesn’t encapsulate the totality of my experience. I write about a number of things: love, sexual trauma, mental and physical health/illness, my family, my belief systems—so, whenever any of those things comes to the page, I let it come. I’m not sure if I ever developed a strategy for navigation. I do think, however, that in recent years, I’ve been more forthcoming about my fears and insecurities in my work, and albinism is certainly a part of that conversation, so I write about it more freely now. But, as I was recently telling a friend, I don’t come to the page with intentions so much as I come with questions, and if I am interrogating something about my experience with albinism and I feel like writing it out, then I write it out.

Oh! Ok, so I do have a caveat. I recently started writing fiction, and I deliberately made my main character a woman living with albinism. My decision was based on a few things. First, my best friend writes urban fiction, and we once had a conversation about how some writers in the genre create heroines who are cookie-cutter tropes: fair-skinned, long-haired, thin—very traditionally beautiful by some cultural standards. As such, these characters easily attract the interest of lovers and they are the darlings of whatever space they inhabit. I can’t speak to the motives of those writers, because I don’t know them or live inside their heads, but my first thoughts were: if these writers create such characters because they believe that a specific kind of beauty is more palatable for readers, and more believable, then that’s unfortunate for us as the audience, but also for the writers themselves (especially if they too don’t fit into that paradigm). There is a certain kind of trauma in never seeing yourself depicted as beautiful anywhere, not even in your own work. So, when I started writing fiction, I made a decision that my narrator would have albinism, and she would be desirable. She’s also really regular-degular (shout-out to Cardi B): she has no superpowers aside from code-switching and humor. I wanted her to be unique, but also just a person—someone you could imagine being friends with and commiserating with and understanding. I rarely see people with albinism depicted as such anywhere. And, of course, since I’m a hopeless romantic, her love interest falls in love with her. Well, eventually—I haven’t written that part yet.

There’s often a struggle between being vulnerable in talking about one’s experience with having albinism, and protecting yourself; how have you balanced being open and willing to educate others, and not feeling too exposed?

I practice one rule in this regard: people can ask me anything, but I reserve the right to refuse to answer. That’s my general rule about most things, and I try to offer that to others whenever I ask them questions about any subject I perceive as sensitive. I think that, as relational beings, we have all, at some point or another, fallen into the trap of assuming that, because we know a person who is privy to a particular experience, then they are conveniently available to provide the narrative of that experience for us. I’m certainly guilty of having done it in the past. However, I’ve learned that I don’t have the right to anyone’s body of knowledge, and they don’t have any right to mine if I don’t want to make it available to them. There are other ways to learn a thing, and to be informed.

There are some people who feel PWA should always self-advocate, what’s your view on this? Should we always carry the responsibility to help educate others?

Absolutely not. For instance, in public spaces, I often get the question: “Are you related to [insert the name of some other person they know who has albinism]?” Sometimes, I want to say “No, because not all of us are related. This is a complex genetic condition that spans ethnicities, countries, and cultures.” However, that is emotional labor, and I reserve the right not to perform it if I don’t want to. Sometimes, I just want to be doing whatever it is I was doing before I was interrupted: shopping for groceries, dining with friends, or taking a walk in a park. To be called to step out of the normalcy of my life to explain something to a person who perceives my body as abnormal, and thus demands that I explain this to them, is intrusive, and I don’t owe them anything. It can also take a toll on my emotional equanimity—especially if they prolong the conversation with follow-up questions, which they often do, and which are almost always deeply personal. I reserve the right to choose when to subject myself to that.

Do you have anyone in your family/community/role models of people with the condition, how did you find this experience?

No, I didn’t, and I was about to say “unfortunately,” but that’s a difficult thing to gauge in hindsight. I also don’t want to detract from the legacy of the people who were there. I was raised in a family of talented, innovative, and fiercely loving black women who have taught me a great deal about how to be a woman; and yet, whenever I hear the following words from Lucille Clifton’s “won’t you celebrate with me,” I always think of coming into womanhood as a person with albinism: “i had no model…/what did i see to be except myself?” In Clifton’s words, I made a lot of it up. I just did my research and/or figured it out and/or kept trying until I got what I needed. In so many ways, I am still doing that.

What words would you like to share with parents of children with the condition?

I don’t have any children, so it’s hard for me to tell any parent how to raise theirs, but I can say that it was—and still is—important for the people I love to give me space to feel what I can’t always articulate, and what people without the condition cannot always understand. There is something about my being hypervisible for every moment of my life outside my house that is both exhausting and exhilarating. I have a few other conditions—anxiety, depression, etc.—that sometimes make leaving the house an act of defiance. That is difficult, but I’m quite proud of that, and proud of the person I’ve become in spite of it. It’s important for the people around me to acknowledge that struggle, even when it looks effortless. I have a lovely family and wonderful friends who ask “Why are you so hard on yourself? You’re beautiful!” That’s important for me to hear, but it’s equally important for them to understand that everyone doesn’t see what they see; and, sometimes, I’ll be sad or frustrated by reactions that aren’t as complimentary, or as kind. If you are raising someone with albinism, give all of their feelings space, even as you remind them that one person’s opinion shouldn’t determine how you feel about yourself.

To young people with albinism, what are you hoping they take away, not only from your story, but their own experiences?

This one may take a bit of time to unravel, but trust me, I’m going somewhere! So, I spent most of the early part of this summer outdoors, which is rare for me: I’m a bookworm and not much of an athlete, and, of course, I burn easily (not to mention the fact that I often forget to wear sunscreen). But this summer, I spent four days at an outdoor music festival, and then travelled with my sister to the Bahamas. All around me were tan, thin, beautiful people, and I felt so self-conscious about my skin. This is unkind, but I literally felt apologetic that people had to look at it and spend time around it. Anyway, a few months later, I developed a skin condition that is temporary, but also incredibly uncomfortable, and it drastically changed the appearance of my skin. Fortunately, it’s finally resolving itself, but in the meantime, I’m realizing that I haven’t been loving my skin the way it deserves to be loved. It doesn’t do what everyone else’s skin does, but it is healthy, for which I am fortunate, and it’s beautiful, period. No caveats. I wish I had understood this earlier. I wish I hadn’t internalized so much of everyone else’s opinions about it. I wish I had known that one person’s recoil doesn’t mean I am unsightly or damaged or worthless. I feel like it’s never too late to change anything and enrich the quality of one’s life, but I wish I hadn’t wasted so much time thinking otherwise.

From their own experiences, I’d say: live your whole life. Albinism is an anomaly that you can’t change, and that may sometimes bring you grief, but don’t try to normalize the rest of your life as consolation for those around you. If you are quirky, if you have interests that differ from people around you, if you think differently from them, hold on to those things. Cherish them. In childhood, they might make you the butt of someone’s joke, or the object of ridicule, but hang on to them. Those opinions change over time, and in adulthood, those traits could make you an artist, a millionaire, an inventor, a world-changer—we won’t know if those parts of you don’t survive. Also, celebrate your albinism. As part of my faith practice, I believe God specifically made me to be myself. He determined my tastes and my cravings, my talents and challenges, my complex desires, and who and what I would come to love. Albinism was part of that plan. It too has its purpose, even though I’m still figuring out what that is. How wonderful it is to think that, years before I would learn to smile or wash my face, God set the bones in it to look like my mother’s and her mother’s, then covered them with a different skin. Then, He set my eye color to match my father’s, though they move differently. I’m no admixture of anything. I am a body curated from my ancestors, but also completely different from them. I can’t say I’m always happy about it, but I can say that, fragile as it often is, my body has survived. So has yours. Every cell in our bodies is narrative and counternarrative, plot and plot twist. We are also vulnerable, but we are also brave enough to be so. That is something worth celebrating.

Photo: Noelle Théard

#LoveThisSkin

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bountyofbeads · 4 years

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Every parent should read this important article regarding how we mistakenly indoctrinate our young men in society.

The Miseducation of the American Boy

Why boys crack up at rape jokes, think having a girlfriend is “gay,” and still can’t cry—and why we need to give them new and better models of masculinity

Story by Peggy Orenstein | Published January/February 2020 Issue | The Atlantic | Posted December 26, 2019 |

Updated at 9:30 p.m. ET on December 20, 2019.

I knew nothing about Cole before meeting him; he was just a name on a list of boys at a private school outside Boston who had volunteered to talk with me (or perhaps had had their arm twisted a bit by a counselor). The afternoon of our first interview, I was running late. As I rushed down a hallway at the school, I noticed a boy sitting outside the library, waiting—it had to be him. He was staring impassively ahead, both feet planted on the floor, hands resting loosely on his thighs.

My first reaction was Oh no.

It was totally unfair, a scarlet letter of personal bias. Cole would later describe himself to me as a “typical tall white athlete” guy, and that is exactly what I saw. At 18, he stood more than 6 feet tall, with broad shoulders and short-clipped hair. His neck was so thick that it seemed to merge into his jawline, and he was planning to enter a military academy for college the following fall. His friends were “the jock group,” he’d tell me. “They’re what you’d expect, I guess. Let’s leave it at that.” If I had closed my eyes and described the boy I imagined would never open up to me, it would have been him.

But Cole surprised me. He pulled up a picture on his phone of his girlfriend, whom he’d been dating for the past 18 months, describing her proudly as “way smarter than I am,” a feminist, and a bedrock of emotional support. He also confided how he’d worried four years earlier, during his first weeks as a freshman on a scholarship at a new school, that he wouldn’t know how to act with other guys, wouldn’t be able to make friends. “I could talk to girls platonically,” he said. “That was easy. But being around guys was different. I needed to be a ‘bro,’ and I didn’t know how to do that.”

Whenever Cole uttered the word bro, he shifted his weight to take up more space, rocking back in his chair, and spoke from low in his throat, like he’d inhaled a lungful of weed. He grinned when I pointed that out. “Yeah,” he said, “that’s part of it: seeming relaxed and never intrusive, yet somehow bringing out that aggression on the sports field. Because a ‘bro’ ”—he rocked back again—“is always, always an athlete.”

The definition of masculinity seems to be contracting. When asked what traits society values most in boys, only 2 percent of male survey respondents said honesty and morality.

Cole eventually found his people on the crew team, but it wasn’t a smooth fit at first. He recalled an incident two years prior when a senior was bragging in the locker room about how he’d convinced one of Cole’s female classmates—a young sophomore, Cole emphasized—that they were an item, then started hooking up with other girls behind her back. And the guy wasn’t shy about sharing the details. Cole and a friend of his, another sophomore, told him to knock it off. “I started to explain why it wasn’t appropriate,” Cole said, “but he just laughed.”

The next day, a second senior started talking about “getting back at” a “bitch” who’d dumped him. Cole’s friend spoke up again, but this time Cole stayed silent. “And as I continued to step back” and the other sophomore “continued to step up, you could tell that the guys on the team stopped liking him as much. They stopped listening to him, too. It’s almost as if he spent all his social currency” trying to get them to stop making sexist jokes. “Meanwhile, I was sitting there”—Cole thumped his chest—“too afraid to spend any of mine, and I just had buckets left.

“I don’t know what to do,” he continued earnestly. “Once I’m in the military, and I’m a part of that culture, I don’t want to have to choose between my own dignity and my relationship with others I’m serving with. But …” He looked me in the eye. “How do I make it so I don’t have to choose?”

I’ve spent two years talking with boys across America—more than 100 of them between the ages of 16 and 21—about masculinity, sex, and love: about the forces, seen and unseen, that shape them as men. Though I spoke with boys of all races and ethnicities, I stuck to those who were in college or college-bound, because like it or not, they’re the ones most likely to set cultural norms. Nearly every guy I interviewed held relatively egalitarian views about girls, at least their role in the public sphere. They considered their female classmates to be smart and competent, entitled to their place on the athletic field and in school leadership, deserving of their admission to college and of professional opportunities. They all had female friends; most had gay male friends as well. That was a huge shift from what you might have seen 50, 40, maybe even 20 years ago. They could also easily reel off the excesses of masculinity. They’d seen the headlines about mass shootings, domestic violence, sexual harassment, campus rape, presidential Twitter tantrums, and Supreme Court confirmation hearings. A Big Ten football player I interviewed bandied about the term toxic masculinity. “Everyone knows what that is,” he said, when I seemed surprised.

Yet when asked to describe the attributes of “the ideal guy,” those same boys appeared to be harking back to 1955. Dominance. Aggression. Rugged good looks (with an emphasis on height). Sexual prowess. Stoicism. Athleticism. Wealth (at least some day). It’s not that all of these qualities, properly channeled, are bad. But while a 2018 national survey of more than 1,000 10-to-19-year-olds commissioned by Plan International USA and conducted by the polling firm PerryUndem found that young women believed there were many ways to be a girl—they could shine in math, sports, music, leadership (the big caveat being that they still felt valued primarily for their appearance)—young men described just one narrow route to successful masculinity.* One-third said they felt compelled to suppress their feelings, to “suck it up” or “be a man” when they were sad or scared, and more than 40 percent said that when they were angry, society expected them to be combative. In another survey, which compared young men from the U.S., the U.K., and Mexico, Americans reported more social pressure to be ever-ready for sex and to get with as many women as possible; they also acknowledged more stigma against homosexuality, and they received more messages that they should control their female partners, as in: Men “deserve to know” the whereabouts of their girlfriends or wives at all times.

Feminism may have provided girls with a powerful alternative to conventional femininity, and a language with which to express the myriad problems-that-have-no-name, but there have been no credible equivalents for boys. Quite the contrary: The definition of masculinity seems to be in some respects contracting. When asked what traits society values most in boys, only 2 percent of male respondents in the PerryUndem survey said honesty and morality, and only 8 percent said leadership skills—traits that are, of course, admirable in anyone but have traditionally been considered masculine. When I asked my subjects, as I always did, what they liked about being a boy, most of them drew a blank. “Huh,” mused Josh, a college sophomore at Washington State. (All the teenagers I spoke with are identified by pseudonyms.) “That’s interesting. I never really thought about that. You hear a lot more about what is wrong with guys.”

While following the conventional script may still bring social and professional rewards to boys and men, research shows that those who rigidly adhere to certain masculine norms are not only more likely to harass and bully others but to themselves be victims of verbal or physical violence. They’re more prone to binge-drinking, risky sexual behavior, and getting in car accidents. They are also less happy than other guys, with higher depression rates and fewer friends in whom they can confide.

It wasn’t always thus. According to Andrew Smiler, a psychologist who has studied the history of Western masculinity, the ideal late-19th-century man was compassionate, a caretaker, but such qualities lost favor as paid labor moved from homes to factories during industrialization. In fact, the Boy Scouts, whose creed urges its members to be loyal, friendly, courteous, and kind, was founded in 1910 in part to counter that dehumanizing trend. Smiler attributes further distortions in masculinity to a century-long backlash against women’s rights. During World War I, women proved that they could keep the economy humming on their own, and soon afterward they secured the vote. Instead of embracing gender equality, he says, the country’s leaders “doubled down” on the inalienable male right to power, emphasizing men’s supposedly more logical and less emotional nature as a prerequisite for leadership.

Then, during the second half of the 20th century, traditional paths to manhood—early marriage, breadwinning—began to close, along with the positive traits associated with them. Today many parents are unsure of how to raise a boy, what sort of masculinity to encourage in their sons. But as I learned from talking with boys themselves, the culture of adolescence, which fuses hyperrationality with domination, sexual conquest, and a glorification of male violence, fills the void.

Read: Today’s masculinity is stifling

For Cole, as for many boys, this stunted masculinity is a yardstick against which all choices, even those seemingly irrelevant to male identity, are measured. When he had a choice, he would team up with girls on school projects, to avoid the possibility of appearing subordinate to another guy. “With a girl, it feels safer to talk and ask questions, to work together or to admit that I did something wrong and want help,” Cole said. During his junior year, he briefly suggested to his crew teammates that they go vegan for a while, just to show that athletes could. “And everybody was like, ‘Cole, that is the dumbest idea ever. We’d be the slowest in any race.’ That’s somewhat true—we do need protein. We do need fats and salts and carbs that we get from meat. But another reason they all thought it was stupid is because being vegans would make us pussies.”

LEARNING TO “MAN UP”

There is no difference between the sexes’ need for connection in infancy, nor between their capacity for empathy—there’s actually some evidence that male infants are more expressive than females. Yet, from the get-go, boys are relegated to an impoverished emotional landscape. In a classic study, adults shown a video of an infant startled by a jack-in-the-box were more likely to presume the baby was “angry” if they were first told the child was male. Mothers of young children have repeatedly been found to talk more to their girls and to employ a broader, richer emotional vocabulary with them; with their sons, again, they tend to linger on anger. As for fathers, they speak with less emotional nuance than mothers regardless of their child’s sex. Despite that, according to Judy Y. Chu, a human-biology lecturer at Stanford who conducted a study of boys from pre-K through first grade, little boys have a keen understanding of emotions and a desire for close relationships. But by age 5 or 6, they’ve learned to knock that stuff off, at least in public: to disconnect from feelings of weakness, reject friendships with girls (or take them underground, outside of school), and become more hierarchical in their behavior.

By adolescence, says the Harvard psychologist William Pollack, boys become “shame-phobic,” convinced that peers will lose respect for them if they discuss their personal problems. My conversations bore this out. Boys routinely confided that they felt denied—by male peers, girlfriends, the media, teachers, coaches, and especially their fathers—the full spectrum of human expression. Cole, for instance, spent most of his childhood with his mother, grandmother, and sister—his parents split up when he was 10 and his dad, who was in the military, was often away. Cole spoke of his mom with unbridled love and respect. His father was another matter. “He’s a nice guy,” Cole said—caring and involved, even after the divorce—“but I can’t be myself around him. I feel like I need to keep everything that’s in here”—Cole tapped his chest again—“behind a wall, where he can’t see it. It’s a taboo—like, not as bad as incest, but …”

Rob, an 18-year-old from New Jersey in his freshman year at a North Carolina college, said his father would tell him to “man up” when he was struggling in school or with baseball. “That’s why I never talk to anybody about my problems.” He’d always think, If you can’t handle this on your own, then you aren’t a man; you aren’t trying hard enough. Other boys also pointed to their fathers as the chief of the gender police, though in a less obvious way. “It’s not like my dad is some alcoholic, emotionally unavailable asshole with a pulse,” said a college sophomore in Southern California. “He’s a normal, loving, charismatic guy who’s not at all intimidating.” But “there’s a block there. There’s a hesitation, even though I don’t like to admit that. A hesitation to talk about … anything, really. We learn to confide in nobody. You sort of train yourself not to feel.”

I met Rob about four months after he’d broken up with his high-school girlfriend. The two had dated for more than three years—“I really did love her,” he said—and although their colleges were far apart, they’d decided to try to stay together. Then, a few weeks into freshman year, Rob heard from a friend that she was cheating on him. “So I cut her off,” he said, snapping his fingers. “I stopped talking to her and forgot about her completely.” Only … not really. Although he didn’t use the word, Rob became depressed. The excitement he’d felt about leaving home, starting college, and rushing a fraternity all drained away, and, as the semester wore on, it didn’t come back.

When I asked whom he talked to during that time, he shrugged. If he had told his friends he was “hung up” on a girl, “they’d be like, ‘Stop being a bitch.’ ” Rob looked glum. The only person with whom he had been able to drop his guard was his girlfriend, but that was no longer an option.

Girlfriends, mothers, and in some cases sisters were the most common confidants of the boys I met. While it’s wonderful to know they have someone to talk to—and I’m sure mothers, in particular, savor the role—teaching boys that women are responsible for emotional labor, for processing men’s emotional lives in ways that would be emasculating for them to do themselves, comes at a price for both sexes. Among other things, that dependence can leave men unable to identify or express their own emotions, and ill-equipped to form caring, lasting adult relationships.

By Thanksgiving break, Rob was so distraught that he had what he called a “mental breakdown” one night while chatting in the kitchen with his mom. “I was so stressed out,” he said. “Classes. The thing with my girlfriend.” He couldn’t describe what that “breakdown” felt like (though he did say it “scared the crap” out of his mom, who immediately demanded, “Tell me everything”). All he could say definitively was that he didn’t cry. “Never,” he insisted. “I don’t cry, ever.”

I paid close attention when boys mentioned crying—doing it, not doing it, wanting to do it, not being able to do it. For most, it was a rare and humiliating event—a dangerous crack in a carefully constructed edifice. A college sophomore in Chicago told me that he hadn’t been able to cry when his parents divorced. “I really wanted to,” he said. “I needed to cry.” His solution: He streamed three movies about the Holocaust over the weekend. That worked.

As someone who, by virtue of my sex, has always had permission to weep, I didn’t initially understand this. Only after multiple interviews did I realize that when boys confided in me about crying—or, even more so, when they teared up right in front of me—they were taking a risk, trusting me with something private and precious: evidence of vulnerability, or a desire for it. Or, as with Rob, an inability to acknowledge any human frailty that was so poignant, it made me want to, well, cry.

BRO CULTURE

While my interview subjects struggled when I asked what they liked about being a boy, the most frequent response was sports. They recalled their early days on the playing field with almost romantic warmth. But I was struck by how many had dropped athletics they’d enjoyed because they couldn’t stand the Lord of the Flies mentality of teammates or coaches. Perhaps the most extreme example was Ethan, a kid from the Bay Area who had been recruited by a small liberal-arts college in New England to play lacrosse. He said he’d expected to encounter the East Coast “ ‘lax bro’ culture,” but he’d underestimated its intensity. “It was all about sex” and bragging about hooking up, and even the coaches endorsed victim-blaming, Ethan told me. “They weren’t like that in class or around other people; it was a super-liberal school. But once you got them in the locker room …” He shook his head. “It was one of the most jarring experiences of my life.”

As a freshman, Ethan didn’t feel he could challenge his older teammates, especially without support from the coaches. So he quit the team; not only that, he transferred. “If I’d stayed, there would’ve been a lot of pressure on me to play, a lot of resentment, and I would’ve run into those guys all the time. This way I didn’t really have to explain anything.” At his new school, Ethan didn’t play lacrosse, or anything else.

What the longtime sportswriter Robert Lipsyte calls “jock culture” (or what the boys I talked with more often referred to as “bro culture”) is the dark underbelly of male-dominated enclaves, whether or not they formally involve athletics: all-boys’ schools, fraternity houses, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, the military. Even as such groups promote bonding, even as they preach honor, pride, and integrity, they tend to condition young men to treat anyone who is not “on the team” as the enemy (the only women who ordinarily make the cut are blood relatives— bros before hos!), justifying any hostility toward them. Loyalty is paramount, and masculinity is habitually established through misogynist language and homophobia.

As a senior in high school, Cole was made captain of the crew team. He relished being part of a unit, a band of brothers. When he raced, he imagined pulling each stroke for the guy in front of him, for the guy behind him—never for himself alone. But not everyone could muster such higher purpose. “Crew demands you push yourself to a threshold of pain and keep yourself there,” Cole said. “And it’s hard to find something to motivate you to do that other than anger and aggression.”

I asked him about how his teammates talked in the locker room. That question always made these young men squirm. They’d rather talk about looking at porn, erectile dysfunction, premature ejaculation—anything else. Cole cut his eyes to the side, shifted in his seat, and sighed deeply. “Okay,” he finally said, “so here’s my best shot: We definitely say fuck a lot; fuckin’ can go anywhere in a sentence. And we call each other pussies, bitches. We never say the N-word, though. That’s going too far.”

“What about fag?” I asked.

“No,” he said, shaking his head firmly.

“So why can’t you say fag or the N-word but you can say pussy and bitch? Aren’t those just as offensive?”

“One of my friends said we probably shouldn’t say those words anymore either, but what would we replace them with? We couldn’t think of anything that bites as much.”

“Bites?”

“Yeah. It’s like … for some reason pussy just works. When someone calls me a pussy—‘Don’t be a pussy! Come on! Fuckin’ go! Pull! Pull! Pull!’—it just flows. If someone said, ‘Come on, Cole, don’t be weak! Be tough! Pull! Pull! Pull!,’ it just wouldn’t get inside my head the same way. I don’t know why that is.” He paused. “Well,” he said, “maybe I do. Maybe I just try not to dig too deeply.”

Although losing ground in more progressive circles, like the one Cole runs in, fag remained pervasive in the language of the boys I interviewed—including those who insisted that they would never use the word in reference to an actual homosexual. Fag has become less a comment on a boy’s sexuality, says the University of Oregon sociology professor C. J. Pascoe, than a referendum on his manhood. It can be used to mock anything, she told me, even something as random as a guy “dropping the meat out of his sandwich.” (Perhaps oddest to me, Pascoe found that one of the more common reasons boys get tagged with fag is for acting romantically with a girl. That’s seen as heterosexual in the “wrong” way, which explains why one high-school junior told me that having a girlfriend was “gay.”) That fluidity, the elusiveness of the word’s definition, only intensifies its power, much like slut for girls.

Recently, Pascoe turned her attention to no homo, a phrase that gained traction in the 1990s. She sifted through more than 1,000 tweets, primarily by young men, that included the phrase. Most were expressing a positive emotion, sometimes as innocuous as “I love chocolate ice cream, #nohomo” or “I loved the movie The Day After Tomorrow, #nohomo.” “A lot of times they were saying things like ‘I miss you’ to a friend or ‘We should hang out soon,’ ” she said. “Just normal expressions of joy or connection.” No homo is a form of inoculation against insults from other guys, Pascoe concluded, a “shield that allows boys to be fully human.”

Just because some young men now draw the line at referring to someone who is openly gay as a fag doesn’t mean, by the way, that gay men (or men with traits that read as gay) are suddenly safe. If anything, the gay guys I met were more conscious of the rules of manhood than their straight peers were. They had to be—and because of that, they were like spies in the house of hypermasculinity.

Mateo, 17, attended the same Boston-area high school as Cole, also on a scholarship, but the two could not have presented more differently. Mateo, whose father is Salvadoran, was slim and tan, with an animated expression and a tendency to wave his arms as he spoke. Where Cole sat straight and still, Mateo crossed his legs at the knee and swung his foot, propping his chin on one hand.

This was Mateo’s second private high school. The oldest of six children, he had been identified as academically gifted and encouraged by an eighth-grade teacher to apply to an all-boys prep school for his freshman year. When he arrived, he discovered that his classmates were nearly all white, athletic, affluent, and, as far as he could tell, straight. Mateo—Latino and gay, the son of a janitor—was none of those things. He felt immediately conscious of how he held himself, of how he sat, and especially of the pitch of his voice. He tried lowering it, but that felt unnatural, so he withdrew from conversation altogether. He changed the way he walked as well, to avoid being targeted as “girly.” “One of my only friends there was gay too,” he said, “and he was a lot more outward about it. He just got destroyed.”

Guys who identify as straight but aren’t athletic, or are involved in the arts, or have a lot of female friends, all risk having their masculinity impugned. What has changed for this generation, though, is that some young men, particularly if they grew up around LGBTQ people, don’t rise to the bait. “I don’t mind when people mistake me for being gay,” said Luke, a high-school senior from New York City. “It’s more of an annoyance than anything, because I want people to believe me when I say I’m straight.” The way he described himself did, indeed, tick every stereotypical box. “I’m a very thin person,” he said. “I like clothing. I care about my appearance in maybe a more delicate way. I’m very in touch with my sensitive side. So when people think I’m gay?” He shrugged. “It can feel like more of a compliment. Like, ‘Oh, you like the way I dress? Thank you! ’ ”

One of Luke’s friends, who was labeled “the faggot frosh” in ninth grade, is not so philosophical. “He treats everything as a test of his masculinity,” Luke told me. “Like, once when I was wearing red pants, I heard him say to other people, ‘He looks like such a faggot.’ I didn’t care, and maybe in that situation no one was really harmed, but when you apply that attitude to whole populations, you end up with Donald Trump as president.”

W’s AND L’s

Sexual conquest—or perhaps more specifically, bragging about your experiences to other boys—is, arguably, the most crucial aspect of toxic masculinity. Nate, who attended a public high school in the Bay Area, knew this well. At a party held near the beginning of his junior year of high school, he sank deep into the couch, trying to look chill. Kids were doing shots and smoking weed. Some were Juuling. Nate didn’t drink much himself and never got high. He wasn’t morally opposed to it; he just didn’t like the feeling of being out of control.

At 16, reputation meant everything to Nate, and certain things could cement your status. “The whole goal of going to a party is to hook up with girls and then tell your guys about it,” he said. And there’s this “race for experience,” because if you get behind, by the time you do hook up with a girl “she’ll have hit it with, like, five guys already. Then she’s going to know how to do things” you don’t—and that’s a problem, if she tells people “you’ve got floppy lips” or “don’t know how to get her bra off.”

A lanky boy with dark, liquid eyes and curly hair that resisted all attempts at taming, Nate put himself in the middle of his school’s social hierarchy: friends with both the “popular” and “lower” kids. Still, he’d hooked up with only three girls since ninth grade—kissing, getting under their shirts—but none had wanted a repeat. That left him worried about his skills. He is afraid of intimacy, he told me sincerely. “It’s a huge self-esteem suck.”

It would probably be more accurate to say that Nate was afraid of having drunken sexual interactions with a girl he did not know or trust. But it was all about credentialing. “Guys need to prove themselves to their guys,” Nate said. To do that, “they’re going to be dominating.” They’re going to “push.” Because the girl is just there “as a means for him to get off and to brag.”

Before the start of this school year, Nate’s “dry spell” had seemed to be ending. He’d been in a relationship with a girl that lasted a full two weeks, until other guys told him she was “slutty”—their word, he hastened to add, not his. Although any hookup is marginally better than none, Nate said, you only truly earn points for getting sexual with the right kind of girl. “If you hook up with a girl below your status, it’s an ‘L,’ ” he explained. “A loss. Like, a bad move.” So he stopped talking to the girl, which was too bad. He’d really liked her.

After a short trip to the kitchen to watch his friend Kyle stand on a table and drunkenly try to pour Sprite from a can into a shot glass, Nate returned to the couch, starting to relax as people swirled around him. Suddenly Nicole, the party’s host and a senior, plopped onto his lap, handing him a shot of vodka. Nate was impressed, if a little confused. Usually, if a girl wanted to hook up with you, there were texts and Snapchats, and if you said yes, it was on; everyone would be anticipating it, and expecting a postmortem.

Nate thought Nicole was “pretty hot”—she had a great body, he said—though he’d never been especially interested in her before this moment. Still, he knew that hooking up with her would be a “W.” A big one. He glanced around the room subtly, wanting to make sure, without appearing to care, that everyone who mattered—everyone “relevant”—saw what was going down. A couple of guys gave him little nods. One winked. Another slapped him on the shoulder. Nate feigned nonchalance. Meanwhile, he told me, “I was just trying not to pop a boner.”

Nicole took Nate’s hand and led him to an empty bedroom. He got through the inevitable, cringey moments when you actually have to talk to your partner, then, finally, they started kissing. In his anxiety, Nate bit Nicole’s lip. Hard. “I was thinking, Oh God! What do I do now?” But he kept going. He took off her top and undid her bra. He took off his own shirt. Then she took off her pants. “And that,” he said, “was the first time I ever saw a vagina. I did not know what to do with it.” He recalled that his friends had said girls go crazy if you stick your fingers up there and make the “come here” motion, so he tried it, but Nicole just lay there. He didn’t ask what might feel better to her, because that would have been admitting ignorance.

After a few more agonizing minutes, Nicole announced that she wanted to see what was going on upstairs, and left, Nate trailing behind. A friend handed him a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. Another high-fived him. A third said, “Dude, you hit that!” Maybe the hookup hadn’t been a disaster after all: He still had bragging rights.

Then he heard a senior, a guy Nate considered kind of a friend, loudly ask Nicole, “Why would you hook up with Nate?”

She giggled. “Oh, I was drunk!” she said. “I was so drunk!”

They were calling him an “L.”

By Monday morning, Nicole had spread the word that Nate was bad at hooking up: that he’d bit her lip, that he didn’t know how to finger a girl. That his nails were ragged. “The stereotype is that guys go into gory detail,” Nate said, but “it’s the other way around.” Guys will brag, but they’re not specific. Girls will go into “what his penis looked like,” every single thing he did.

Nate said he felt “completely emasculated,” so mortified that he told his mom he was sick and stayed home from school the next day. “I was basically crying,” he said. “I was like, Shit! I fucked up.”

No question, gossip about poor “performance” can destroy a guy’s reputation almost as surely as being called a “slut” or a “prude” can destroy a girl’s. As a result, the boys I talked with were concerned with female satisfaction during a hookup; they just didn’t typically define it as the girl having an orgasm. They believed it to be a function of their own endurance and, to a lesser extent, penis size. A college freshman in Los Angeles recalled a high-school classmate who’d had sex with a girl who told everyone he’d ejaculated really quickly: “He got the nickname Second Sam. That basically scared the crap out of all the other guys.” A college senior in Boston recounted how he would glance at the clock when he started penetration. “I’d think, I have to last five minutes, minimum,” he said. “And once I could do that, I’d think, I need to get to double digits. I don’t know if it’s necessarily about your partner’s enjoyment. It’s more about getting beyond the point where you’d be embarrassed, maintaining your pride. It turns sex into a task—one I enjoy to a certain degree, but one where you’re monitoring your performance rather than living in the moment.”

Eventually, Nate decided that he had to take a stand, if only to make returning to school bearable. He texted Nicole and said, “ ‘I’m sorry that you didn’t enjoy it, [but] I would never roast you. Why are you doing this?’ ” She felt “really bad,” he said. “She stopped telling people, but it took me until the next semester to recover.”

HOW MISOGYNY BECOMES “HILARIOUS”

No matter how often I heard it, the brutal language that even a conscientious young man like Nate used to describe sexual contact—you hit that!—always unnerved me. In mixed-sex groups, teenagers may talk about hooking up (already impersonal), but when guys are on their own, they nail, they pound, they bang, they smash, they hammer. They tap that ass, they tear her up. It can be hard to tell whether they have engaged in an intimate act or just returned from a construction site.

It’s not like I imagined boys would gush about making sweet, sweet love to the ladies, but why was their language so weaponized ? The answer, I came to believe, was that locker-room talk isn’t about sex at all, which is why guys were ashamed to discuss it openly with me. The (often clearly exaggerated) stories boys tell are really about power: using aggression toward women to connect and to validate one another as heterosexual, or to claim top spots in the adolescent sexual hierarchy. Dismissing that as “banter” denies the ways that language can desensitize—abrade boys’ ability to see girls as people deserving of respect and dignity in sexual encounters.

For evidence, look no further than the scandals that keep popping up at the country’s top colleges: Harvard, Amherst, Columbia, Yale (the scene of an especially notorious 2010 fraternity chant, “No means yes; yes means anal”). Most recently, in the spring of 2019, at the politically progressive Swarthmore College, in Pennsylvania, two fraternities disbanded after student-run publications released more than 100 pages of “minutes” from house meetings a few years earlier that included, among other things, jokes about a “rape attic” and the acquiring of roofies, “finger blasting” a member’s 10-year-old sister, and vomiting on women during sex.

When called out, boys typically claim that they thought they were just being “funny.” And in a way that makes sense—when left unexamined, such “humor” may seem like an extension of the gross-out comedy of childhood. Little boys are famous for their fart jokes, booger jokes, poop jokes. It’s how they test boundaries, understand the human body, gain a little cred among their peers. But, as can happen with sports, their glee in that can both enable and camouflage sexism. The boy who, at age 10, asks his friends the difference between a dead baby and a bowling ball may or may not find it equally uproarious, at 16, to share what a woman and a bowling ball have in common (you can Google it). He may or may not post ever-escalating “jokes” about women, or African Americans, or homosexuals, or disabled people on a group Snapchat. He may or may not send “funny” texts to friends about “girls who need to be raped,” or think it’s hysterical to surprise a buddy with a meme in which a woman is being gagged by a penis, her mascara mixed with her tears. He may or may not, at 18, scrawl the names of his hookups on a wall in his all-male dorm, as part of a year-long competition to see who can “pull” the most. Perfectly nice, bright, polite boys I interviewed had done one or another of these things.

How does that happen? I talked with a 15-year-old from the East Coast who had been among a group of boys suspended from school for posting more than 100 racist and sexist “jokes” about classmates on a group Finsta (a secondary, or “fake,” Instagram account that is in many cases more genuine than a “Rinsta,” or “real” account).“The Finsta became very competitive,” he said. “You wanted to make your friends laugh, but when you’re not face-to-face,” you can’t tell whether you’ll get a reaction, “so you go one step beyond.” It was “that combination of competitiveness and that … disconnect that triggered it to get worse and worse.”

At the most disturbing end of the continuum, “funny” and “hilarious” become a defense against charges of sexual harassment or assault. To cite just one example, a boy from Steubenville, Ohio, was captured on video joking about the repeated violation of an unconscious girl at a party by a couple of high-school football players. “She is so raped,” he said, laughing. “They raped her quicker than Mike Tyson.” When someone off camera suggested that rape wasn’t funny, he retorted, “It isn’t funny—it’s hilarious!”

“Hilarious” is another way, under the pretext of horseplay or group bonding, that boys learn to disregard others’ feelings as well as their own. “Hilarious” is a haven, offering distance when something is inappropriate, confusing, depressing, unnerving, or horrifying; when something defies boys’ ethics. It allows them to subvert a more compassionate response that could be read as unmasculine—and makes sexism and misogyny feel transgressive rather than supportive of an age-old status quo. Boys may know when something is wrong; they may even know that true manhood—or maybe just common decency—compels them to speak up. Yet, too often, they fear that if they do, they’ll be marginalized or, worse, themselves become the target of derision from other boys. Masculinity, then, becomes not only about what boys do say, but about what they don’t—or won’t, or can’t—say, even when they wish they could. The psychologists Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson, the authors of Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys, have pointed out that silence in the face of cruelty or sexism is how too many boys become men. Charis Denison, a sex educator in the Bay Area, puts it another way: “At one time or another, every young man will get a letter of admission to ‘dick school.’ The question is, will he drop out, graduate, or go for an advanced degree?”

Midway through Cole’s freshman year in military college, I FaceTimed him to see how he’d resolved the conflict between his personal values and those of the culture in which he found himself. As he’d expected, most of his classmates were male, and he said there was a lot of what passed for friendly ribbing: giving one another “love taps” on the back of the head; blocking one another’s paths, then pretending to pick a fight; grabbing one another’s asses; pretending to lean in for a kiss. Giving someone a hard time, Cole said, was always “easy humor,” but it could spiral into something more troubling pretty quickly. When one of his dorm mates joked to another, “I’m going to piss on you in your sleep,” for instance, the other boy shot back, “If you do, I’ll fucking rape you.” For better or worse, Cole said, that sort of comment no longer rattled him.

Although he had been adamantly against the epithet fag when we met, Cole found himself using it, reasoning, as other boys did, that it was “more like ‘You suck’ or ‘You’re lame.’ ” However, at least one of his friends had revealed himself to be legitimately homophobic, declaring that being gay was un-American (“I didn’t know that about him until after we became friends,” Cole insisted). And Cole had not met a single openly LGBTQ student at the school. He certainly wouldn’t want to be out in this environment if he were gay. Nor, he said, would he want to be Asian—the two Asian American boys in his dorm were ostracized and treated like foreigners; both seemed miserable.

“I do feel kind of like a cop-out for letting all the little things slide,” Cole said. “It’s a cop-out to not fight the good fight. But, you know, there was that thing I tried sophomore year … It just didn’t work. I could be a social-justice warrior here, but I don’t think anyone would listen to me. And I’d have no friends.”

The #MeToo movement has created an opportunity, a mandate not only to discuss sexual violence but to engage young men in authentic, long-overdue conversations about gender and intimacy. I don’t want to suggest that this is easy. Back in the early 1990s, when I began writing about how girls’ confidence drops during adolescence, parents would privately tell me that they were afraid to raise outspoken daughters, girls who stood up for themselves and their rights, because they might be excluded by peers and called “bossy” (or worse). Although there is still much work to be done, things are different for young women today. Now it’s time to rethink assumptions about how we raise boys. That will require models of manhood that are neither ashamed nor regressive, and that emphasize emotional flexibility—a hallmark of mental health. Stoicism is valuable sometimes, as is free expression; toughness and tenderness can coexist in one human. In the right context, physical aggression is fun, satisfying, even thrilling. If your response to all of this is Obviously, I’d say: Sure, but it’s a mistake to underestimate the strength and durability of the cultural machinery at work on adolescent boys. Real change will require a sustained, collective effort on the part of fathers, mothers, teachers, coaches. (A study of 2,000 male high-school athletes found significantly reduced rates of dating violence and a greater likelihood of intervening to stop other boys’ abusive conduct among those who participated in weekly coach-led discussions about consent, personal responsibility, and respectful behavior.)

We have to purposefully and repeatedly broaden the masculine repertoire for dealing with disappointment, anger, desire. We have to say not just what we don’t want from boys but what we do want from them. Instructing them to “respect women” and to “not get anyone pregnant” isn’t enough. As one college sophomore told me, “That’s kind of like telling someone who’s learning to drive not to run over any little old ladies and then handing him the car keys. Well, of course you think you’re not going to run over an old lady. But you still don’t know how to drive.” By staying quiet, we leave many boys in a state of confusion—or worse, push them into a defensive crouch, primed to display their manhood in the one way that is definitely on offer: by being a dick.

During our first conversation, Cole had told me that he’d decided to join the military after learning in high-school history class about the My Lai massacre—the infamous 1968 slaughter by U.S. troops of hundreds of unarmed Vietnamese civilians along with the mass rape of girls as young as 10. “I want to be able to be in the same position as someone like that commanding officer and not order people to do something like that,” he’d said. I’d been impressed. Given that noble goal, was a single failure to call out sexism a reason to stop trying? I understood that the personal cost might be greater than the impact. I also understood that, developmentally, adolescents want and need to feel a strong sense of belonging. But if Cole didn’t practice standing up, if he didn’t figure out a way to assert his values and find others who shared them, who was he?

“I knew you were going to ask me something like that,” he said. “I don’t know. In this hyper-masculine culture where you call guys ‘pussies’ and ‘bitches’ and ‘maggots’—”

“Did you say ‘maggots,’ or ‘faggots?’ ” I interrupted.

“Maggots. Like worms. So you’re equating maggots to women and to women’s body parts to convince young men like me that we’re strong. To go up against that, to convince people that we don’t need to put others down to lift ourselves up … I don’t know. I would need to be some sort of superman.” Cole fell silent.

“Maybe the best I can do is to just be a decent guy,” he continued. “The best I can do is lead by example.” He paused again, furrowed his brow, then added, “I really hope that will make a difference.”

_______

Peggy Orenstein is the author of Boys & Sex, Cinderella Ate My Daughter, and Waiting for Daisy: A Tale of Two Continents, Three Religions, Five Infertility Doctors, an Oscar, an Atomic Bomb, a Romantic Night, and One Woman's Quest to Become a Mother. Her website is peggyorenstein.com.

#us politics #parenting #toxic relationship #toxic masculinity #toxic man #toxic marriage #relationship #education #u.s. news #u.s. military #top stories google news #top news #news #social news

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