#Also our system is not white- we are asian. I'm saying this so that you know our perspective!! Not bc our words shld be 'better' than anyon | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

antiendovents · 29 days

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actually, since i already commented on your post about tulpas and how they pissed me off; im gonna do it again. in detail.

note: i am a former buddhist, i live in a buddhist country. (95% of thais are buddhists) and pretty much been surrounded by it. im asian. saying it before people jump at me because im terrified as shit

as i mentioned, tulpas are stolen and bastardized completely from a tribe of tibetan buddhists, and the practice itself isn't even a system thing. while thai buddhism and tibetan buddhism are different in their own way, i am very fucking pissed off that they just saw the concept of a thoughtform spirit that helps you meditate, overcome your fear and guide you to nirvana (because that's the main purpose of buddhism) and turn them into "oh! we make alters because we can due to our meditation and we're spiritual so that totally excuses using a generally closed practice! we're not harming anyone!" total bullshit.

i don't want (and sorry if i'm a bit mean) those bigoted fucks stealing basically my culture since im attached to buddhism in general, i grew up with it. and "tulpa systems" slapping it on themselves for the sake of being "unique". i have seen countless comments and posts about how its always the white/non asian people that say "no its not a closed practice, its not cultural appropriation :) actually you should be glad we're appreciating your culture in the first place" fuck off! appreciating culture is fine, but you bastardize it so much and dumb it down to just "making alters/imaginary friends" are you just hearing yourself? are you stupid? are you braindead? god, im getting so angry again.

i have also seen "tulpamancers" insulting actual asians like me who speak against tulpas, saying that we're just "asian token of a character" or that we're "closed minded" and should accept these assholes who dont know what theyre doing into my culture and blatantly disrespecting it, spitting on it and just taking one practice that fits their narrative. wow, talk about being appreciative while half of your community does shit like this to actual buddhists, huh? real nice of you. way to go, you cultural appropriating fucks. /vneg

i cannot count how many times asian culture is so whitewashed on the internet, people that just take our tradition and do whatever the hell they want with it, including making a system out of thoughtforms, which is not possible whatsoever. and for what? FOR WHAT? for your own sick entertainment and enjoyment of having a imaginary friend in your head? try dissociating so hard you cry yourself to sleep you absolute pillock. this is a very angry submission, but it just frustrates me so much. all of the insulting "yous" are directed towards "tulpamancers" that they proudly call themselves. by the way. sorry if it sounded like it was directed at you, im just so angry at the moment.

one last thing. Stop. Using. The Term. Tulpa. For your system. Please!!!!. tulpa systems are not a thing and will never be. End of story. Nothing will change that. Endos fuck off. im sick of your shit. thanks for reading my angry rant.

-azriel for the majority of this, rox/virus proofreading some of the parts, thanks for letting us vent ^^

i dont have much to add, please read this ^^

#important psa about tuplas #no you can't be a tupla system #fuck off #endos dni #tupla systems dni #anti endo #did #did system #plural #actually did #alters #system #endos fuck off #did osdd

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kimyoonmiauthor · 6 months

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Worldbuilding: !@#$ the terfs, be more creative with gender and bio sex than a binary system.

9.5 times out of ten the majority of gender systems I read in US books are really, really uncreative, and I do mean that because manga, has more creative gender systems than a lot of US books. I love you Melanie Rawn, but still, the inversion as good as it was in the uncompleted Ruins of Ambrai, still was largely a European system because it was largely a commentary on the European system. (Yes, I did understand that.)

And the US tends to, very much accuse other countries of having uncreative gender systems that are absolutely rigid, say the US to Japan. (Though the usually [white] understanding of Japanese gender is usually abysmal... but that's a whole paper and a half there.)

When building a gender system, be more creative! You have this other fake culture. You can do whatever the heck you feel like. Say, the Barbie Movie, which hilariously the alt-right USian detested, though it still was a commentary on mostly US gender norms.

Can't we loosen this up a little? You have literal aliens and you can't imagine a more creative sex and gender system than the binary? Oh really? Humans aren't even binary on either. I'm going to give cultural examples.

Introduction

Bugis have 5 genders.

BTW, someone got so mad when I pointed out the page they cited said that Bugis recognized 5 genders, they went on a youtube rant about it. lol Deal. BTW, people put a lot of emphasis on Bissu like how people hyperfocus on trans women in the US because masculinity is that fragile. Albanian is complicated.

Some countries/ethnicities have 3.

India has a 3 gender system in Northern India. Women, men, Hijra

I mean this list:

Some countries don’t even define the two gender system the same way (Europeans are sooo uptight. Loosen up.)

For example, a Korean man wearing pink--no problem. No one flips the hell out when a man in Korea wears a hanbok with a chima and a jeogori. They are like cool. He can do as he likes. Even baksu wear chima in religious ceremonies. They believe it gives them extra powers.

The whole pants. are. for. men. and. women. only. wear. skirts.

Oh c'mon...

Pants were invented for horseback riding--like the heel.

So let's get this mind-numbingly straight (pun somewhat intended here) Men, are men because of horses. (haha, yes, Barbie reference), thus have to wear pants. But are absolutely effing forbidden from wearing heels, which are also associated with what? Horseback riding. Hmmm...

And men still wear dresses and skirts, but they call it by other names.

Judicial robes for sale, and look, a man is wearing them.

But--But that's soo different from a dress...

https://www.net-a-porter.com/en-jp/shop/product/la-doublej/clothing/maxi-dresses/muumuu-printed-silk-twill-maxi-dress/38063312420399795

This is a dress because as Webster's Dictionary says:

: an outer garment (as for a woman or girl) usually consisting of a one-piece bodice and skirt

Yes, it's worn by a woman. I couldn't find another definition.

But men also wear sarongs. And bath towels, and kilts all of which look suspiciously like skirts. And togas. Which shows how fragile the definition is that you need to narrow the definition that much.

And freaking for those religious, God on the Sistine Chapel, by suspected maybe gay Michelangelo, has a vaccuum sealed butt on the Sistine chapel wearing a pink dress.

C'mon, we can be more creative than this, surely. I mean, if you look at this super rigid gender system, does it make any sense at all? OK, I'm NB and all, but seriously, I look at it and go, WTF happened to you?

You get so uptight about men wearing lace, stocking, high heels, dresses, pink but forget so quickly that less than 200 years ago, no one gave a damn, and if a man didn't wear those things, he couldn't make it in high society.

I mean...

Lafayette, wearing pink, heels, stockings, lace (his collar), and a wig. Give me a break here.

And gender definitions change over time...

Just about 100 years back, in order to be out and gay, it was thought your entire gender was different. There was nothing like a butch gay man. You were considered part female, in fact. And no one in the 19th century would have taken exception to that. It didn't change until much later in Europe.

But also Europe imperialized the world with gender expectations, leading to a rise of violence against third gender communities.

What was one of the first three rules of culture I posted? Culture changes. Koreans like to say, even in ten years the Mountains and rivers change. So gender can and will also change in definitions becoming more rigid, more fluid, recategorized, etc over time.

So given all of these things... let's rethink gender.

Gender doesn't have to be Defined by Sex Assigned at Birth

A lot of Human cultures assign gender this way. Born one way, raise them that way, hope it works out.

But you have a whole FANTASY WORLD and you can see, humans don't make a lot of logical sense when it comes to gender. I mean heels are for women, and men should never wear them, except when they are attached to boots, but the boots better not be too high , or you're *gasp* gay is the European "logic" system. And only what? 50 or so years ago, women were finally allowed to wear pants.

So you don't have to do it by genitals. You could do it by hair color. Gender affirming care would be changing your hair color, or horns, or whatever tickles your fancy. You could, say have a cephlapod species with smaller males that can present female part of the time, and based on their texture of their skin, that's their gender.

You could do it by color--the species has actually blue, dark blue, green, yellow, etc skin colors and they can change them at any moment and the one they tend towards, well, that's their gender.

You could also make it so you automatically need a polycule for the species to work out and reproduce. And thus there might be, say a 6 gender system. 2 possible genders for the three adults there.

C'mon. Nature is creative and sometimes has an all female species. Look at Mourning geckos. There are so few males, and they are sometimes called a lesbian species of gecko.

Even then, you have intersex, and not all intersex people are infertile.

Terfs only think it's wrong to "go against nature" when it has to do with gender presentation. Nothing else. But they have no, no problem with assigning a sex to an intersex child without their consent. That's culture taking over for nature. And how that is shaped, or not shaped, absolutely belongs in world building.

If your men aren't horseback riding, and your women aren't either, then dresses for all are fine. Deal with it.

I think it would be entertaining to see an alien species determine the gender of the child by holding up paint swatches to the child's say eyes and then saying, "Yep, a girl."

Or even well, the birther stayed in # temp rooms, for # amount of days, Oh, this is the expected sex of the child. But the gender, well, we will determine that by these [arbitrary] factors.

But seriously, you can define gender and sex however, you want. Is medical/magic intervention necessary or not? Who gets to determine it?

Next step is to find the rules for how gender is expressed in an idealized world.

Do you constantly call all of your girls and tell them they can grow up to be a princess? But tell all your boys they are going to grow up to be doctors and lawyers?

This is what Social Scientists would call socialization.

For this, I would suggest you make a spreadsheet and then put down arbitrary lists of things the "ideal" gender would wear. So for the US, Pink is for girls. Blue is for boys. How they should act. And finally, how they are taught.

It's so ubiquitous that even feminists often trip up and see a baby in a pink dress with lace and automatically pick up a doll. (I'm just saying, maybe think that one over a bit.)

Make a list for each column. And then for the individual characters figure out how they DON'T fit those norms and then terrorize them with it...

What do you threaten the privileged group with if they come out of line?

For men in the US, for example, you go with homophobia. "That's gay."

Because the threat of being gay is sooo outlandish. *eyeroll* It's an threat to everything masculine.

I'll go over this in more detail later in the series, but you need things to discipline the privileged group and the disadvantage group(s). What's the threat if you become this other group? Death? Social ridicule? Financial loss? Being outcast?

Or, do you get rewarded and become a shaman, a healer, or a celebrated hero for being able to not fit in? (This also is possible).

Cultural justifications

Cultural justifications for this are different from the actual historical reasons or the facts.

The historical reason that pink and blue switched was because dyes became more readily available for both and they felt like it.

Blue used to be more rare, and thus considered "virginal" because blue is rare in nature, but under industrialization as people became more and more disconnected from nature, and blue dyes became available, the idea of this became more diluted, and the switch was from blue to pink.

That's not what the cultural justifications were for this thought originally. The thought was that blue was a more "delicate" color, clearly more suited to women.

Because, if you have forgotten (yes a joke coming), humans constantly get amnesia on where things come from. Constantly. We've lost information in your own lifetime. You were born 2 seconds ago? Well, I hate to tell you, we've lost information in that 2 seconds.

So, when they can't remember the reason, Humans make up a reason to go with it, that's often frivolous and silly. Something that feels, what? Natural to them. Though remember the rule, Nature gives no fucks. So find and make up a logical reason for the cultural item and then find a stupid reason that people are willing to double down on it and there you go, that's culture. So say your species of aliens, the ones that are temperature linked to sex, link Iunno, gender to horn size. Bigger horns mean a certain class of gender. The original reason might be that bigger horned females are better at digging nests back when they were a pastoral society, thus better able to have larger clutches of children. But they've now reached the stars, so they completely forgot why and now just say that bigger horns are simply sexier because reasons. Or it could have flipped that smaller horns are in more demand, because big horns get in the way of industrial tasks, but no one says that. And now the bigger horned females, are considered a lower gender than the smaller horned females, who then raise all of the eggs.

See, the justification doesn't even have to follow any sort of logic. It's what they tell everyone to make them feel better.

And truthfully, a lot of culture is built this way. The reason you tell everyone isn't really the actual truth. I mean I did a whole series on Story Structure, and the justifications versus the reasons why it was made that way don't even close to match. People blindly parrot what other people tell them if it will help them succeed. (BTW, not saying I'm not guilty of this, I absolutely am.)

So I think this gives you a good basis to free yourself up for a larger system and be more creative with your gender definitions. Because absolutely both gender and sex are defined by culture, but in different ways.

You have effing demons, and you can come up with a more creative gender categories? You have unicorns and you don't have more creative gender categories. And you have kracken climbing buildings, but you can't imagine a third sex category for them when it absolutely exists in nature. C'mon. Hit me with your most creative and free yourself of your own culture's definitions of gender.

What if you nuked the entire Male/female/NB system. What would that look like? How would you justify it on two fronts? Blow that system out of the water and rework it. What would the Sexual orientation work like with a 3 sexes, 2 gender for each each system?

What stupid prohibitions would you put in for such a system?

#writing advice #worldbuilding #gender #be more creative with gender please

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intersectionalpraxis · 4 months

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And one more thing since I saw your post about how the boycott on Starbucks is working. They're trying to clean up their image

twitter.com/broseph_stalin/status/1737776697485746471?t=YruuqHFqiKmOq4wr923e1Q&s=19

As if a commercial is going to make anyone forget they serve blood coffee.

I'm honestly not surprised. This is a sign of desperation and it's absolutely appalling. Although this varies contextually, we see this in retail companies across the industries with their 'promised efforts' to 'hire more diversely' without tackling their prejudiced store management and staff and having genuine conversations/actual workshops to address the importance of inclusivity/to unlearn their bigotry and confirmation biases because many Black, Brown, Indigenous, and many more folks have been historically and currently are marginalized and disadvantaged by governments and structures when it comes to work opportunities and career advancements in multiple fields because of racist and xenophobic systems (and the many interconnections of their lived experiences as well).

These companies just want to 'appear' better without making real systemic changes -and it's beyond disturbing.

I worked at a previous company for 3 years, and I didn't sign any NDA's, so sometimes I feel like being more public about what I and many people personally went through -but a majority of their store managers were white women (mostly under 35) and I kid you not -blond as well (there were like 3 women in total from East Asian, and Southeast Asian decents of the 100 or so they had). When later management came at the CEO level (before I left), they had workshops for 'hiring' and a majority of the store managers in my district at the time openly admitted to not calling back names they could 'not pronounce' (among many other aspects). I have a handful of stories that still disgust me to this day, but it happens everywhere and it's disgusting.

So yes, Starbucks is no different (and many thanks for sending this to me, so that other folks can see how nefarious and shameless they continue to be). I always say the companies that appear to be the most friendly/lovely/and family-like are usually the most toxic and riddled with micro-management and prejudices. Yes, there are exceptions, but I have heard so many people (Baristas, specifically -not those in upper management because they have good benefits and hours -will leave because it's too much for them, or they have been through incidents of harassment or bullying and are not supported). Needless to say, never forget how rotten Starbucks is, and be wary of companies you buy from regardless. I think this is an important reminder that there is NO ethical consumption under capitalism, but we can do our best to support businesses that are not part of this huge network that aligns with genocidal and oppressive regimes.

FU Starbucks -and keep boycotting ya'll. I also wanted to show this article I saw the other day -this further reinforces how desperate they are trying to make it seem like they're 'actually a good business.' with 'good intentions,' and it's just absolutely horrifying how people and companies will say they condemn terrorism, while supporting the IOF, who is responsible for mass genociding and killing 20,000+ Palestinian people...

#feminist #feminism #social justice #free palestine #freepalastine🇵🇸#palestine #free gaza #gaza #boycotting #boycott israel #boycott starbucks #settler violence #colonial violence #retail #confirmation bias #fuck capitalism #abolish capitalism #us imperialism #western imperialism

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a-faggot-with-opinions · 9 months

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very frustrated with the way people see "transandrophobia" and say "lol just that word tells me these people don't understand intersectional feminism" when all the language we have surrounding oppression only sounds "right" because it's been around for a while and been normalized. Idk if this example will land because it's not a good direct comparison, but when I was a kid (and like, now, tbh) people would say "feminism" and everyone would yell "oh so you only care about WOMEN? FEMALES? what about now X and Y affect men, huh?? You want female supremacy, etc" when feminists were absolutely already discussing how patriarchy affects men and (the ones I was around) were very clear that their goal was equality between "the sexes" (my experience, the feminists I was around). There was the whole "I'm not a feminist bc i don't believe in female supremacy, I'm an egalitarian" thing.

I think that "transmisogyny" is like... a lucky word in that it's pretty catchy and the words it's built out of are currently widely used (even if maybe people define them a little differently in different circles). At least in my language context, it just makes sense (it's intuitive that it's describing the intersection of misogyny and transphobia). Any attempt to make up a single word that describes that intersection in the context of transitioning toward masculinity will run into the issue that there's not a word for when men experience oppression in a specific way due to their gender, because white men don't experience oppression due to their gender.

Honestly, I do feel like it would be useful to have words or at least common phrases to describe how men are marginalized by systems of oppression. People try to draw comparisons between language around racism and language around transphobia by saying things like "Black women experience misogynoir but Black men just experience 'regular' anti-Black racism," and while I think the direct comparison between transphobia and racism isn't very useful, I think distinguishing the experience of racism depending on what gender you're being assigned in the moment is useful, actually. Because non-white men experience racism, and the intersection between racism and one's perceived gender is inextricable.

So much of racism is about stripping away the culture (and therefore any cultural experience of gender) of a racialized group and then applying White gender expectations. Of course, non-White people can never live up to those expectations because our physical, racial features aren't the norm. This is inherent to racially othering people, and while there's plenty features of racism that don't appear to be gendered... it really is heavily tied up in it. There's no "pure," "base" racism that doesn't rely at least in part on the idea that the racialized group is failing White gender, or is more likely to and therefore must work harder (assimilation), because you can't pick racism apart into several neat boxes that aren't deeply interconnected.

I am not Black so I won't try talking more on Black people's experiences, but I really do think. I'm Chinese, and I think it can be really hard to talk about anti-Asian racism because people assume it's the same for asian men and women, when actually the gendered distinction is really important and I don't think (as someone who's lived as both and is to this day perceived as both depending on context, despite the fact that I have transitioned) that Asian women experience the intersection of anti-asian racism + misogyny but Asian men experience "just anti-Asian racism". We (Asian men) experience it in a way that's very tied up in that we are Asian MEN. It's a big part, historically, of USAmerican anti-Chinese sentiment, the stripping away of Asian masculinity, the feminization of Asian men and our inherently undesirability since it's impossible for us to truly be masculine. These stereotypes are shifting and obviously more complex than just that, fetishization is also a big part of modern anti-Asian racism (especially online from what I've seen). Notably, many Asian men are clearly not feminine, at which point we can still fail at manhood by being labelled hypermasculine (aggressive, unintelligent, incapable of reason and culture, only useful for potential as manual laborers). Racism working as intended so we can always be told we're failing gender.

Disclaimer that I specifically didn't talk about Asian assimilation in USAmerica or our "model minority" status here and all of that affects the framework I laid out above. I am also not trying to compare how different groups are affected by racism, I just didn't think it's my place to make this example all about anti-Blackness since it's really not my place.

I guess my point is that saying intersectional language is only valid when you're using to say one is oppressed by all applicable systems of oppression makes it harder to discuss intersections of privilege and oppression without it seeming like you're attempting to dominate the entire conversation. Tying it back: if trans men & transmascs were to only use "transphobia" to describe our experiences while trans women & transfems use "transmisogyny," we would surely seem to dominate the conversation about transphobia in general and give the implication that transitioning towards masculinity is the default, usual way to be trans.

sorry for the length and I don't think I was as clear as I hoped, I can't make it any briefer without like, an editor. I'm really only talking about my frustration with the dismissal of "transandrophobia" due to it's etymology and diving into my issue with the common arguments I've seen made against it on an etymological basis, not trying to make an argument about whether trans men experience misogyny and transphobia bc we, as a group, obviously do. Regardless of if some of us usually don't.

^^^

#asks #transandrophobia #long post #racism

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eeveecraft · 9 months

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Hihi! I saw this post in the syscourse tag and was wondering if u had seen it?

https://www.tumblr.com/kipandkandicore/723924087333879808/alright-so-we-feel-like-we-need-to-respond-to

The post says u blocked that user. I wanted to make sure u knew about this in case you didnt since its about your essay and all

Well, you can probably understand why I have them blocked. I was initially planning to reply to it, but I decided against it because I really don't want to give it attention.

Like, oh my god, that post is atrocious. Nearly every goddamn sentence they typed (out of 2.6k WORDS) is twisted or just false. All it did was really highlight how horribly ignorant this system is of not only our community (seriously, they say they've been in the Tulpamancy community for a year and has a spouse who has a tulpa, but then clearly state misinformation like "Tulpamancy" or "Tulpamancer" being used with the paranormal definition of "tulpa" when both of those terms were made in the community and are exclusively used by the community), but also just Buddhism in general.

For context: that system is white and clearly suffers from white savior complex, it isn't even funny. They go on tirades about uplifting POC, but then are the ones to make Google Docs, make these harmful posts, and legitimately harm people with them (some of which definitely include POC). They tried to group all Asians into one homogeneous group that can dictate each other's culture (which is so goddamn racist, what the hell) and when they were called out on it, they backpedaled and then swapped to lumping all Asian *Buddhists* into one group that can have say over all of Buddhism. They have this habit of stripping the nuance from things like religion and race, and in my opinion, that is far more harmful than us using "tulpa."

And like every single system who tries to say us using "tulpa" has caused harm, they provide zero actual examples of "tulpa" specifically causing harm to Tibetan Buddhists. Yeah, they linked articles to other aspects of Tibetan Buddhism being appropriated and how those specific instances are harmful, but I'm gonna say this for the umpteenth time: tulpa was DERIVED from Tibetan language, not directly ripped. Tulpa as a word literally does not exist in Tibetan and if you tried saying it to a Tibetan person, they're going to look at you funny.

Every single time any of us has asked for any specific instance of "tulpa" being used by the Tulpamancy community causing harm to actual Tibetan Buddhists, these people can't provide any because there is no harm. They just can't admit it.

And again, though they can't cite any harm besides the word annoying them, we can cite multiple instances of harm being done to the community and others because of posts made by this system, Amanitasys, and more.

Such as: The harassment we faced before. Sophie being told to end it because she uses tulpa (and literally is one).

The post you linked labeling us as racist, @cambriancrew as ableist, and @sophieinwonderland as a "proud racist."

Posts like these flooding the #tulpa tag.

And more! We have literally been told in Discord servers that people want to drop tulpa, not because they agree that it's appropriative and/or racist, but because they're tired of arguing/getting harassed.

That sounds like a harassment campaign, NOT a good-faith discussion on a term that DOES have a murky history of both good and bad.

Oh, can't forget how they called me racist because I supposedly "promot[e] incredibly racist ideas," and they provide ZERO evidence for this besides me saying tulpa isn't an inherently racist word. While also simultaneously going (paraphrasing), "Well, we don't condone harassment, buuuut we can see why because Eeveecraft is racist." Please tell me I'm not the only one who realizes what's being implied there.

Overall, that post is, quite frankly awful in every sense of the word and it really highlights why "tulpa = appropriation" is very often not made in good faith. I don't even encourage replying to it and slam-dunking it into the ground like it deserves because all that does is give it more attention and visibility. Though obviously, I can't stop people from doing so, even if I don't condone it. EDIT: I also want to add that this system says that the majority of systems who say "tulpa = appropriation" are pro-endogenic, but then posts like this exist that just blatantly disprove that.

And in that same post, you can see what many users on r/Buddhism think about Tulpamancy and most of them are either neutral/fine with it. Who woulda thunk it?

7-27-2023

#tulpamancy #plurality #actuallyplural #endogenic #tulpa #cultural appropriation #anon ask #ask #anonymous #anonymous ask

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captainsvscaptains · 5 months

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If you're new here, it might be the first time you hear me talk about anti-propaganda. Others... well, I can be quite stubborn. Some might considering my investment in this fight ridiculous. Well, it's your right, block the "not polls" tag if you must, but I think this particular piece everyone should read

You can not always tell, because bias may have made you assume a brown character is merely tanned, or there wasn't official art, but some (I know the proportion is low but people can only submit characters that exist, and popular media's providers still find ways to make their casts whiter than snow / are not willing to promote products with BIPOC main protag(s), which mostly leave us all with indie creators to rely on) characters in the polls are Black or Brown.

Reading "Kill him with violence" about a brown guy, be it a fictional person from an imaginary world, feels very, very wrong, especially when they're against a white character. Possibly the person saying that didn't realize how it'd sound to strangers / didn't notice the character wasn't white (the alternative is quite concerning).

This is also why I've been insisting about not using propaganda. You wouldn't believe how many times someone knows nothing about a media they criticize.

Many times, you don't know the history and ethnicity of a character, or even what kind of media they're from, when you vote against them. Or their gender, for instance. So many people called Jihye a guy when two seconds in the comments' section would have helped you determine her gender (when they just didn't go straight for racism and decided that she must be an anime character. I've seen people literally call her a generic anime boy). Just use "they/them" when you're not certain of a character's pronoun.

Racism isn't always the big, obvious thing often portrayed in media. Yes some people will use the n word and make fake, hurtful and offending comparisons. But racism is much more insidious than that most of the times and here this is what it is about : microaggressions

As a white person -which is also my case- , you will certainly commit some, even if you'll do your best to fix it when you've given it some thought. Apology when you have to and learn to do better. Racism is not always intentional, and you should be aware of that. Just thinking "I'm not racist" doesn't make you not racist. That'd be wishful thinking. European and US cultures are full of racist things most white people wouldn't be naturally aware of since we don't suffer from it. Racism appears in our structural systems and we have to address that.

Anyway, I'm running out of time but take a moment to think about why someone (possibly but not necessarily a teen) would feel the need to threatens a non white character of violent death (even if we can agree characters don't get hurt and hopefully that person would never have acted this way irl), as if death wasn't enough

Don't threaten characters. Or people. It's really not necessary and could easily be interpreted as systemic racism in some cases.

Also remember than China and Japan are not the sole Asian countries and that many art forms exist in such a vast and populated continent

#not polls #about antipropaganda

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apocalypticavolition · 6 months

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Let's (re)Read The Great Hunt! Chapter 13: From Stone to Stone

Yeah it's been awhile but I guess I should get back into the groove. As usual there's going to be nothing but spoilers until the end of the whole series, so people who are just starting reading the books because of the show probably should skip this.

And about the rim, the trees stood blackened and twisted as if a firestorm had roared through them. Everything seemed paler than it should be, just like the sun, more subdued, as if seen through mist. Only there was no mist. Just the three of them and the horses appeared truly solid.

And so we take our first step into a larger multiworld. Jordan's mirror worlds aren't quite the usual take on many worlds theory, and so right away we're confronted with the fact that everything in this "what if" is a lot less real than stuff from the prime reality. Though things get complicated when we add T'A'R to the mix, but thankfully I don't have to worry about that this book so let's not!

Something about the steps caught his eye, the different colors, seven rising from blue to red. “One for each Ajah,” he said.

This is by far the weirdest, most incongruous detail about the portal stones. They predate the modern Ajah system by a great deal, and yet "one for each Ajah"... I've seen two reasonable explanations for it:

In the early Third Age, the Tower channelers came and marked as many Portal Stones as they could with the Ajah colors as a way of saying, "This belongs to the Tower", since unlike the usual objects of Power the Stones can't be moved.

The seven colors don't actually match Ajah colors and are just a generic rainbow which Rand mistakenly conflates with Ajah colors because blue, green, yellow and red are present (and possibly orange seeming to be brown).

A third I'm realizing just now relates to color terms and languages. Basic color terms show up in human languages in a set order: every language distinguishes between white and black (well, warm-bright and cold-dark but still), then red is added, then green or yellow but definitely both if there's five basic terms, then blue (east Asian languages are well-known examples of those that stopped before blue).

After that you usually get brown added, and then other terms like gray. While you can easily end up with languages that have basic terms for purple and orange but not gray, it may well be that both portal stones and Ajahs were decorated for the seven non-Shadow color terms used in the Old Tongue and thus converged naturally.

“Yet even if Aes Sedai can use them, or could, we had no Aes Sedai with us to channel the Power, so I don’t see how it can be.”

Loial is very book smart but he's not exactly a detective, is he?

‘If a woman go left, or right, does Time’s flow divide? Does the Wheel then weave two Patterns? A thousand, for each of her turnings? As many as the stars? Is one real, the others merely shadows and reflections?’

He's also not very good at non-lecture material, since he's pretty baffled by this. I like to think that there were once very plain textbooks but that the only one that survived was "The Tao of World-Hopping" just to make sure that every Third Ager was as confused as possible.

“My Lord Rand, you’ll get us back, won’t you? Back where we belong? I’ve a wife, my Lord, and children. Melia’d take it bad enough, me dying, but if she doesn’t even have my body to give to the mother’s embrace, she’ll grieve to the end of her days. You understand, my Lord. I can’t leave her not knowing. You’ll get us back. And if I die, if you can’t take her my body, you’ll let her know, so she has that, at least.” He was no longer questioning at the end. A note of confidence had crept into his voice.

Poor Hurin. He really doesn't deserve to be tossed into Rand's drama. And he's very brainwashed by feudalism.

Suddenly he knew he could not tell the man again that he was not a lord. All that was holding the sniffer together was his belief in a lord, and he could not take that away, not now. Not here. “No bowing,” he finished awkwardly.“ As you say, Lord Rand.” Hurin’s grin was almost as wide as when Rand first met him.

Seriously, Hurin seems specifically designed by the Wheel to punish Rand and Perrin for their reluctance as much as possible. He should have stuck around Perrin to keep that boy on track.

He reached for it—he was not sure how he reached, but it was something, a movement, a stretching toward the light, toward saidin—and caught nothing, as if running his hands through water. It felt like a slimy pond, scum floating atop clean water below, but he could not scoop up any of the water. Time and again it trickled through his fingers, not even droplets of the water remaining, only the slick scum, making his skin crawl.

So Rand is having some typical Wilder difficulties with channeling and they expose exactly how dangerous the taint on saidin really is. Once the trained male Aes Sedai blew up, the Wilders had no resources to learn to channel effectively so many probably had a lot of experiences like Rand where they reached out and got a double dipping of taint with no actual Source to at least make up for it. There is no safe way for men to channel in this Age.

Loial had a different look, a slightly puzzled frown, but his eyes were on Rand, too. Rand wondered what he was thinking.

Loial is probably trying to come up with a theory that doesn't involve Rand being a channeler because that's just awkward for him.

If Fain and the Darkfriends were here—wherever here was—they might know how to get back. They had to, if they had reached here in the first place. And they had the Horn, and the dagger. Mat had to have that dagger. For that if for nothing else, he had to find them. What finally decided him, he was ashamed to realize, was that he was afraid to try again. Afraid to try channeling the Power. He was less afraid of confronting Darkfriends and Trollocs with only Hurin and Loial than he was of that.

This paragraph is absolutely devastating for Cauthor fans. But seriously, Fain and the dagger versus more Taint sucking is an absolutely horrible choice. Neither option is all that good.

“Rand, that fragment said the Stones came from an older Age than the Age of Legends, and even the Aes Sedai then did not understand them, though they used them, some of the truly powerful did. They used them with the One Power, Rand. How did you think to use this Stone to take us back? Or any other Stone we find?” For a moment Rand could only stare at the Ogier, thinking faster than he ever had in his life. “If they are older than the Age of Legends, maybe the people who built them didn’t use the Power...”

Honestly this detail about Portal Stones is even worse. We certainly aren't about to build Portal Stones in real life and yet we are apparently due to do so in the next couple years before we nuke each other into magic mutations. We can barely manage quantum computers and frankly even if we did they wouldn't last for the requisite thousands of years. Frankly as far as I'm concerned, the book Loial read is wrong and what with stuff like war and famine getting forgotten, people forgot that the Portal Stones were the result of early AoL projects with the power.

Worst of all, though, the land seemed to twist the eye. What was close at hand looked all right, and what was seen straight ahead in the distance. But whenever Rand turned his head, things that appeared distant when seen from the corner of his eye seemed to rush toward him, to be nearer when he stared straight at them. It made for dizziness; even the horses whickered nervously and rolled their eyes. He tried moving his head slowly; the apparent movement of things that should have been fixed was still there, but it seemed to help a little.

This Mirror World seems to be particularly hyperbolic in its geometry, which is confusing to think about (how do you even map the sphere that is the Earth to a hyperbolic geometry and why do I suspect that the best answer means "the north and/or south poles do not actually exist here"). We'll get more into why it's weird further on though, in a chapter or two. For now just hold onto the image of a hyperbolic infinity being overlaid on the closed geometries of T'A'R and the prime timeline and make sure you're picturing it in four dimensions so you have room for the Ways, Ogier-home, and Sindhol, all of which intersect the prime reality in tangential ways.

You can picture four dimensional non-Euclidean geometries, can't you?

#let's read #wheel of time #wot #robert jordan #wheel of time spoilers #wot spoilers #rand al'thor #loial #hurin

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mixedkid-matchup · 1 year

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you do not have to answer this!! I'm using you to confess my dubious feelings for the Percy Jackson series bc you also expressed like some weird feelings about it, and I kind of thought the series was untouchable bc of how much everyone I see fawns over it, and I have GOT to get this off my chest to someone who might get what I'm saying. But I have major issues with the writing/premise/series bc it's just feels so deeply colonized and it's bothered me since it FIRST came out and everyone in middle school and high school was reading it and teachers were assigning it. Like the whole premise for the Greek gods being in the US is that they follow Western "progress" and it completely disregards all the amazing things Indigenous did and our way of life, and also removes the importance of place-based culture for both Greek stories and Native peoples (like okay all the Greek stuff moved to the U.S. but wth happened to all our spiritual figures?? The story completelya cts like Native people weren't here and didn't have complex beliefs and ways of life connected to the land, and the gods were just free to take over here with no issues). As a mixed Indigenous kid it just rubs me wrong in all the worst ways and the academic systems love affair with Greek and Roman stuff and Rick Riordan's sheer popularity has been forcing this stuff in my face foreveeeerrrr 😭😭 I was surprised to see your tags about the fandom being weird before too tho since I don't interact with it, so I hope you don't mind this ask and just know I kinda feel the same way!! Ok thanks bye sorry for the rant.

BRO I HAVE HAD THIS RANT ON HAND FOR A LONG TIME ITS OKAY!!!!!!!!!

I THINK IF HEARD ABOUT THIS ACTUALLY. but you explained it way better. like when i first read percy jackson ok fine i was 11, i obviously caught onto the ableism and such but i did not catch onto this until i thought about it when i got older. you're super right. the whole thing about ww2 being caused by demigods was the weirdest shit ever i literally did not remember reading it until i read lightning thief again last year. why did hitler need to be child of hades. THAT IS QUITE LITERALLY HOW PERCY DESCRIBES HADES WHEN HE SEES HIM. LOOKING LIKE HITLER. then what you're saying how they move with the places that are the most progressive and basically take over..... like it's just ..... incredibly misplaced and insensitive.

but about the fandom being weird (its literally encouraged by riordan's book tbh), in heroes of olympus, hazel is a black girl from lousiana in the 1930s?? or 40s idk anyways i think she dies and then nico brings her back. whatever, everyone draws her lightskin and with orange hair, and super skinny, (which she's from louisana. shes darkskin and does not have "caramel" hair i hate white men sometimes.) and shes like 13 btw and in a relationship with frank whos like 16. weird as hell and everyone thinks theyre so sweet. and also rick cannot write meaningful young women. and especially not girls of color. like its WEIRD how piper is portrayed as some pick me girl she constantly feels the need to express shes not like the Aphrodite girls. and rick had to make it weird with aphrodite anyway by making them a whole stereotype of snobby boys and girls who love putting on makeup. they had drew, an asian girl & counselor of aphrodite, straight up mean to piper bc she likes jason. like for no other reason. drew only wants to participate and go on the quest because of jason. and other stereotypes like making leo, latine, be super flirty.

and lets really talk about how annoying annabeth was about the blondes are dumb stereotype because, girl we can talk about misogyny and people not letting you do things because of it, but lets also talk about how you are TWELVE, and the blonde stereotype is tired. i never liked annabeth, she was really tone deaf as someone whos half black. OH AND FRANK. they had this weird ass arc where they implied he was fat because of lack of confidence? like when he got confident he, lost weight... because of a blessing of mars? i dont even know.

like as i get older its more and more annoying to see it. i literally rolled my eyes when i saw rick talking about colorblind casting when people got mad about annabeth. he could of said anything else. how this could reconceptualize annabeth's arc around misogyny and now racism. and purposely alter her character to fit this new black annabeth. but no. people treat colorblind casting as a pinnacle of progressiveness.

#theres probably other stuff i didnt hit like the way the girls are literally fighting over jason for no reason #anyway in carter and sadie's situation its more of. like. no research.#like sure genetics are crazy but like. sadie is not gonna have straight blonde hair #shes not gonna have blue eyes 9/10 #and people are WEIRD ABOUT IT #draw her with brown eyes and tan skin and curls before i lose my mind #also again. shes like 13 and in a relationship with a 16 yr old #its so weird how they make the black girls in weird age difference relationships #also. how carter is drawn with black features and brown skin and curly hair but they dont extend that to his sister.#its weird. why do black girls have to be lightskin.#mixed matchup tag

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magnetothemagnificent · 1 year

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What are your thoughts on white Jews who refuse to identify themselves as white? Obviously Nazis will never treat us like white people as we aren't the same race in their eyes. But I've seen a lot of white Jews in other contexts, begging and pleading people to not call them white, not say they have white privilege etc. because they're ethnically Jewish and therefore don't identify as white.

If you ask me I think this is a bullshit way for white Jews to try and avoid taking responsibility for their white privilege. Being Jewish does not erase my whiteness just as being Jewish does not erase a black Jew's blackness, or an Asian Jew's Asianness, and it doesn't override any other Jew of colour's ethnicity. For me to say I'm not white because I'm ethnically Jewish feels like a racist sham. White people can be Jewish. Jewish people can be white. Whiteness or lack thereof isn't something you get to choose for yourself.

Being Jewish gives me a dual ethnicity. I am Jewish and white. To say I'm not white seems unfair to Jews of color who don't get the opportunity to shrug off racism in the same way some white Jews try to shrug off their whiteness. To me it just screams that the person doesn't want to admit they're white because they don't want to acknowledge that they're more shielded from racism and racialized antisemitism than many others. Or maybe they think being white makes them less Jewish. Thoughts?

You've seen many Jews chime in, including myself, and say that even though they pass as white *sometimes*, they're victims of racialized antisemitism too. Race and ethnicity isn't so simple, and what's considered white is also different from country to country. It's not so simple. If you want to identify as white, that's your prerogative. But for many Jews, they are deeply uncomfortable with identifying as such because they know it's conditional and they know it's weaponized. Also it's interesting that you mention Asian Jews because what do you mean by Asian? On a genetic level, most Jews are West Asian, we are from the Levant. Or do you mean Indian Jews? Or perhaps Kaifeng Jews? Afghani Jews? Russian Jews? None of these groups of Jews "look" alike. What do you mean by "Asian"? Do you mean in the way race science claims there's only four "colors", and everyone else is a racial mutt? (Which by the way, is how Jews have historically been classified- racial mutts of "Oriental", "African", and "White"). Is that the system you want to abide by?

And if you claim that Jews not identifying as white is "shrugging off claims of racism", are you saying that only white people are racist? Really? Are you saying East Asian people can't be antiblack and colourist? Are you saying Black people can't be sinophobic? Are you serious?? Is that what you're implying??

Racism isn't a binary of "only white people are racist" and "all PoC are incapable of being racist towards other racial groups or ever towards themselves". Jews can be non-white and still take accountability for intracommunity racism, just like other racial groups can still take accountability for their own racism. It's not "shrugging off claims of racism", it's refusing to abide by a racist system of classification.

Ever since "race" became a topic of discussion, Jews haven't been considered white. Jews and Roma were murdered during the Holocaust because they weren't white. If it was about religion, then Jews who had converted to Christianity would have been spared. But they weren't. It's only recently that some Jews have been able to access some white privilege, but even then, it's entirely conditional on them behaving. And in Leftist circles, our conditional whiteness is used as an excuse for them to ignore the racialized antisemitism we face. Because yeah, they still have the same narrow ideas about race as Hitler did, just with a fresh coat of paint.

So go ahead, be the "good Jew" all you want to be, anon, try to police the language your Jewish brethren use (because for some reason the way other people identify bothers you). But I warn you....your good graces are conditional, and when the people you try to please turn on you, the Jewish community, even the ones you think are identifying themselves wrong, are the only ones left who will defend you.

#sighhh #intracommunity issues #goyim don't touch #racism #antisemitism #jewish identity #racialized antisemitism

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system-of-a-feather · 10 months

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as a fellow asian system i hope having to deal with racists doesn’t take too much of a toll on you !!

It's just a Saturday honestly.

As bad as Sophie and crew are, they're honestly not that special in terms of just being white. You can't really let their idiocy get to you otherwise you'll just sit there and be chronically angry which - while XIV 1.0 can enjoy it - it's not really my cup of tea. There's a time for being upset about things and its important to air that out, but at this point I've decided I'm kind of just over it.

I'm honestly just playing Inscryption, doing art fight, and going to my basically-mother-in-laws birthday celebration today - probably the gym and playing the guitar. While it is active on the blog right now, I just add my two cents here and there when it comes up cause the topic does actually matter to me as both an Asian and a Buddhist and I'd love to open the door to those trying to genuinely understand it more to discuss how some of these things work, cause again, it's my life and it does mean a lot to me and I like to share it, but it's kinda hard when everyone is (reasonably and validly) upset and focused on two chickens with their heads cut off running in circles making a mess of the place.

So honestly, while it was more "taxing" (<- wouldn't really say that beyond the moment whenever it got me irked) before, at this point I just sigh and go back to my things after adding my two cents.

Cause I would like to see some nice discussion on tulpa stuff and buddhism and white / western appropriation, commercialization, and sensationalism of eastern cultures and the history between the "cultural exchange" claimed - and I'd honestly like to hear other opinions and people with different knowledge than I do comment on it - but that sort of conversation is limited when we don't ignore the two that go "UM ACTUALLY EXCUSE ME WHITE PEOPLE ARE ENTIRELY INNOCENT AND YOU ARE RACIST FOR IMPLYING THAT IT MIGHT NOT BE 100% INNOCENT" and refuse to accept the basic premise that maybe - perhaps - there are a few things off about it.

But again, I digress. I have other things to sit on my mind about it today and its not really something I'm gonna let fester in here beyond when it comes up on my dash directly. I got better things to do than to put time being upset and angry at people who really don't care if I'm upset and angry.

That plus I am also just a bit tired of the sheer negative and angry intent being brought into conversations on this blog, so I am kind of debating what I intend to allow to be on this platform moving forward. I'm not sure where the line between uplifting conversation on AAPI issues begins and when it turns to the sort of syscourse/syscourse-esque things I don't really want to put on people's dash.

Regardless, thats for me to judge as I see it.

Thanks for the ask and concern though. We're doing good and long post short, we look like we are fixated on this topic more than we are cause the internet is only a fraction of our life honestly.

#alter: riku #ask #asks #tulpa tw #discourse tw #syscourse tw

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destinyc1020 · 1 year

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i'm from nz and the general attitude towards racism here (mainly towards the indigenous people) tends to be very similar to british attitudes in that SOME people are okay with admitting there might be a problem, but the get out of jail free card is always 'oh but the us is worse', or 'australia is worse', which detracts from the very real issues going on in our own country.

people who are very confident in saying 'my [insert country here] isn't racist' are always wrong! i also believe no one has anything to gain by saying that they aren't as bad as somewhere else; how does that help people facing racism? saying 'yeah you get followed around a store because of your skin colour, people mock your accent/speech patterns, you can't get a job if you follow certain cultural customs, but AT LEAST IT'S NOT AS BAD AS THE US!' doesn't help anyone!

I agree Anon....

I don't think that kind of mindset helps anyone anywhere! 😕

Plus, we have to keep in mind that the news only shares the WORST of the WORST. So yes, while America does have an issue with racism in our country, it's not like you can barely exist here or that you're getting called racist names everyday or smthg like that. No. Most ppl live quiet peaceful lives here in the US as well, but systemic racism does still exist!

In addition, I have great friends of various races and backgrounds here (Black, White, Asian, Latina, Indian, African, etc.) so it's not like we're all fighting each other all the time. We're just aware that certain things exist in this country.

One thing that I'm proud of the fact though is that my ancestors fought for equal rights in this country. Idk where we would be had it not been for that. 😔

One thing that I do appreciate in the US is the fact that I see so many people that look like me represented onscreen, on TV, in films, in politics, in education, in the medical field, in entertainment, in sports, etc. 😊👍🏾 I think sometimes we take that for granted.

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missmonkeymode · 11 months

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So on Disco Elysium.

I think I see some of your points, like a lot of people really connected to the specific game play and narrative combo. I guess that's probably where it's just like, full divergence from the people getting angry at the tweet for me. Like I just... I don't know. I played through a bit of it, and I just really didn't connect to the character of Harry or even really Kim at all. I guess knowing it's intentionally a deconstruction is neat.

I liked the level up system (a lot), the chance and dialogue differences based on your perks felt like someone took FO1/2/NV speech/skill dialogue options and made that into an entire game based on like, every pop culture cop archetype and I'm here for it. I'll admit that is in part connected to the character of Harry the cop and his position in the world, but as a slate for other archetypal characters (like a witch) it really wouldn't be that hard to, at least, on the surface, I feel, make apply the mechanics in other interesting ways in other games with different narratives. (Also Twin Peaks quirks transfer over to a witch game).

The world (the bits I explored, I didn't get very far-- it was just ultimately kind of dull, for me) did feel lived in, and I liked the quirky characters you could meet. My thing is, I didn't really care about the story or the characters-- so for me, a system of game mechanics like this actually makes a lot of sense to use on different types of games, because I found that mechanical system to be cool and a really interesting way to resolve conflict and create game play tension and all that fun stuff.

Harry was alright, I guess. Not really, to me, but people like him so I try not to be too mean. I just don't really like cops at all. I don't need to play through a however many hour game to know that they're incompetent pigs-- I can just go outside. Or even online and type "cop shot black child" and see what new result comes up this week. My mom can't close her fist because a pig shattered her hand during a "non-violent drug offense" arrest. Does Harry ever actually do any police brutality? I never got that far-- is it like...? A different ending type thing? Where use of certain tactics over others produces different results for the case? That's neat if my random guess is anywhere near right-- as it was it just felt like a cop simulator but quirky. Like they get nothing done like regular cops but this time he's likably incompetent.

I also thought Kim was poorly done, honestly. I mean-- not really my place to say, but it feels like the only Asian representation is either tropey Indian or pale East Asian (and sometimes those roles aren't tropey)-- and Kim is very tropey. Like he's the classic stoic sidekick who's more competent than the lead. I know he's got a lot of depth, but... I don't know. It didn't leave a great taste in my mouth. Ultimately he's a non-white sidekick to do all the work the boisterous white lead can't and won't in silence. Also, as far as I got there were no other POC in the game. Maybe there are some tokens... but honestly, it makes sense-- DE takes place in like, a fictional Slav country, right? Not a lot of brown people. I still feel like it would have been more of a deconstruction of the genre if Harry was a Black high femme lesbian who is only a cop because she wants to kill with impunity.

Sidebar-- the OP of the twwet mentioned Harry was an old white guy. It feels weird everyone's calling her hypocritical when she did suggest someone young and very much not a guy. It doesn't feel hypocritical to me to leave her race as white since, like fictional slavland being mostly white, so are the Alps to my knowledge. I mean I'd like her more if she was Latina too, but I also would just connect more to a cute little baby witch than a drunk cop.

Anyhoo like... I don't know. Like our world is a literal dystopia where we spend so much time reliant on technology made with stolen resources and stolen labor, that we ourselves buy wit our own stolen labor, and he cops exist to protect the treasure hoards of the thieves.. That isn't to say we can't have dystopic fiction or games-- that's one of my favorite genres-- but I just wasn't able to connect to DE on any levels where I found the lead characters, many aspects of the world, or the story, engaging, interesting, or important. I liked the mechanics and the dialogue. I think if we had this kind of focus on a game about a little witch girl and her cat that'd be really cute and relaxing.

I am a witch though, so I'm biased.

Also, I didn't find your response rude or anything. I'm just happy to talk about things.

I mean this in a way that does not mean to offend you in any way, but I just think the game isn't really for you. If you don't really like the main character and don't really jive with the gameplay, it's fine to simply go "yeah I don't like this"! I don't want to insinuate that you're dumb or lesser or whatever for not liking the game, but sometimes you just don't like something yknow?

On the surface, I do agree that you can take the concept of "24 characters are constantly feeding you information a la ttrpg rolls and checks" and apply them to a different game, but I feel as though the gameplay and the story are too married to each other where it can't really shine without the other. As for Harry and police brutality, he can and cant if that makes sense? You are given the chance to shoot cunoesse (although its a immediate game over if you do) and generally just be shitty and abuse his position as a cop, but you're also given the chance to not to that, so uhhh it depends on how you play the game. Player decision and such. On your poc point, I can see where you get the perception of him being "stoic and competent" especially since (from the sound of it) you stopped playing early on, but as you play the game you discover that Harry is a highly competent cop (despite like being a mess of a person). I don't want to speak too much about the poc in the game, mostly bc I'm white passing and I'd feel like I'd be speaking over your points about the limited amount of poc in the game and how they're handled so uh yeah. I do disagree with the idea that Harry being a femme black lesbian would work towards the deconstruction though, but that's mostly because the way that I see it Harry gets away with a lot of shit (like routinely showing up to work drunk and high, losing his gun and id simultaneously, letting a corspe just kinda chill outside as he goes on a 3 day bender) because of his position as a white man in a hypermasculine field, and changing him from a white man to a black woman would weaken the critiques that its making. And the game does comment about those who join the police force to live out their fantasy of holding a lot of power (but the characters profession isnt really cop, just cop adjacent, but I feel like that's worth mentioning at least). For me at least, I see op going "i don't want to play as a white man, but a white woman" is hypocritical because in her talking point against the game, she used "white" as a negative to harry, but in the same breath turned around and suggested a white woman instead. Does that make sense? It's like someone going "I don't like this shirt because it's a red shirt and I don't like the color red, I'd much rather wear a red dress", the clothes are still red, the only thing that changed is the article of clothing.

I don't want you to come away from this post and feel as though I'm trying to bash on games like "a witch trying to find a lost cat". That's a wonderful game concept, that is not what most people are upset about (as far as I can tell). People are upset because the tweeter is taking a complex, gritty game that talks heavily about politics and is trying to remove the complexity from it and flatten it out into a wholesome game (whether knowingly or unknowingly). You can't really have a game like disco elysium and take out the parts that make disco elysium disco elysium, and that's generally what people are talking about. Also I'm you didn't find my response rude, I like chatting about things and explaining things.

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dhaaruni · 1 year

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Have you read Lockhart's Lament? It's a pretty thorough skewering of how we teach and conceive of math in our society that I thought was pretty interesting, and I was curious what you, as someone who enjoys math, would feel about it.

I will warn you that gets a little dismissive of people that find success in math in our current system, but I don't think you're quite what's being described there, and that's not the reason I'm asking you - just wanted to give you a heads up so you didn't feel attacked out of the blue.

No I haven't read it, and I won't do it because I think it'll just make me angry lol.

I've always been really annoyed by the western disdain for mathematics, and I'm renewedly angry about it due to the extreme and quite frankly racist backlash to Rishi Sunak's proposal to make mathematics mandatory through secondary school, and not just because I personally happen to be extremely good with numbers.

Not everybody is good at math and not everybody has to be, but the contemporary cultural zeitgeist is dominated by people who not only can't take an integral but have decided that their personal failure of not being able to take an integral means that anybody who can is automatically some pathetically boring automaton. I'm not very good at physics, but that doesn't mean that everybody who can correctly apply the right-hand rule is inferior to me, you know?

Another underdiscussed point to anti-math propaganda is also that people who are good at math often end up with more lucrative jobs than those who aren't good at math, and there's a lot of tension there. Plus, a lot of white liberals are REALLY mad that immigrants and the children of immigrants, namely Asian ones, are able to build successful lives for themselves and their families through working hard and well, being good at math, so that's why they're so hell bent on like, making it difficult to take calculus in public schools and abolishing standardized test requirements for college.

All I'm saying is that there's a reason that since 2016, Asian-Americans have shifted right (although most still vote Democrat) and this is exactly why.

#mathematics #anonymous #answered

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symptoms-syndrome · 2 years

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I am a white passing (mostly I think?) System , only an 8th Japanese n 4th Mexican, n have started to notice over time I have alters who are completely white.. I get people who if I say I'm white, scoff and disagree; especially white friends, but including my other filipino and Asian friends in the past. but there are also people who would agree that I am just white.

Only as I'm older, and have spent more time with the Japanese part of my family, I realize that I feel very bad when I engage openly with parts of my heritage that are on the Japanese or Mexican side because I was raised by a very white (and racist) step-parent, I feel like it is me appropriating it. People have made racially insensitive comments to me about my art saying it makes sense that we can draw what we draw because of being part Japanese, and also about my appearance and food habits.

Overall, I don't know how to integrate these experiences, as I realize parts of us often feel as if we are 100% white and I'm too priveliged to complain about it, but I also am painfully aware that we are not even perceived this way by many people outside of us. Some alters have used Japanese and Spanish names when we were younger/still have those names, some even given to us by family, which often make me feel very embarrassed to talk about publicly.

How can you best tell if something you are doing is true to yourself, or if it is harming other people? Your post about race within systems made me think about it more, and I don't often talk about it with anyone because it makes me feel bad about myself. So it is interesting to see the discussion around it. Thank you for reading.

Sry I'm not at the top of my game today (I've been moving shit around + doing a lot of heavy labor for like three days aaa) but I wanted to answer this before I like. Forget.

I think there's a misconception that having privilege and being disprivileged are mutually exclusive categories. As in, people think you're either "privileged" or "oppressed." This isn't really true! That's part of what intersectionality is all about. You can hold the privilege of being white passing/light skinned/etc while also facing oppression based on your race/ethnicity/culture. Kind of like how someone can be oppressed for being disabled while also holding privilege for being white.

For example, I am someone who is visibly Asian but grew up primarily in white culture. I face racism most often on the basis of my visible race, as in the physical features I have; like my monolid eyes and tan skin. One of my friends is half Black, and was raised very much in Black culture by their dad, but is much lighter skinned than me. She may not face racism based on the way she looks as often, but she still faces racism on the basis of her cultural background, like the food she eats or the way she speaks.

To try and say one of us is more or less oppressed than the other is kinda silly. It's apples to oranges. Both of us face oppression based in racism, and that's what we should both be focusing on! She can complain about her oppression and I can complain about mine and neither diminishes the other. We can hold that our experiences are different while acknowledging they have the same cause (a deviation from whiteness.)

Think of oppression less like a linear spectrum and more like boxes we all have to carry. Some people may have lots of little things in their box, some people may have one or two big things, but ultimately what's in the box doesn't matter, the box is heavy regardless of what exactly is inside it. And saying my box is heavier than someone else's doesn't make theirs any lighter.

As for what makes something "true to yourself," that's hard to say from an outside perspective. It sounds to me from your ask like you have some strong cultural connections in your family, and I encourage you to embrace them! There's nothing wrong with learning about cultures regardless of how much you personally connect with them. I am not often perceived as German, but I have very strong cultural connections to German culture. Obvi that's a little different, but my point is the same: don't worry about what other people will think. Your relationship to your own identity is yours to decide. As long as you're not holding your cultural connections over anyone's head, they're your business! And it seems like your intentions are good, which I know isn't always the end-all be-all but that means it's fine to make mistakes. As long as you are honest and upfront, I believe you'll be fine!

I also want to mention that the idea of "white passing," much like many other types of passing, isn't really a black and white situation either! I thought I was remarkably white passing a lot of my life as well, but now I know I'm definitely not. My friend I mentioned before has often passed for white, but a lot of her Black peers say that they can definitely tell she's half Black. There are also, for a large variety of reasons, people who's cultural background and identity don't match up with their ethnicity, and that's fine too.

I guess the TLDR here is that I would try and avoid thinking of exploring your own identity as something you can "mess up." Identity is really complex and something many people of color wrestle with our whole lives. You're not wrong for finding it hard to grapple with. Just remember that sometimes things that seem mutually exclusive actually aren't, and it's possible to hold many seemingly contradictory parts (no pun intended) at the same time.

Wishing you love on your personal journey 💕

#race and DID #asks #also re:parts feeling white. i have a post somewhere abt that. its rly hard!!! its rly complex!!!

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desi-lgbt-fest · 2 years

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I want the notion of man= misogyny and toxic masculinity to fucking die. This narrative has always been weaponised against trans men and it hurts when even queer women do this. Cis queer women will say the most vile transphobic shit but we must keep our mouths shut because we are MEN so calling them out is misogynistic and a sign of toxic masculinity right? We have femininity forced upon us all our lives but we're not allowed to reject it because that's somehow misogynistic. I fucking hate these transphobic "feminists" who think that just because they're women they're allowed to say anything about trans men and it's not "real" transphobia because they've faced misogyny from cis men

okay so we received this quite a while ago and i think, since it's been sitting here for a good while, it either needs to be addressed or tossed out. i guess i'll try to do the former?

i think there is something to learn from this, so here goes.

all of the experiences you have highlighted are valid and, of course, absolutely atrocious and yes should be called out when seen. i think that when we are put into situations where we don't know what a certain statement or conversation is leading and how much we should agree or disagree. someone weaponizing your identity to fit some personal claim is not something to be tolerated at all. call them out, cut them off, whatever you feel like needs to be done, do it. if you are lucky, and they are receptive, they might change their mind. if you are not, then don't bother continuing and move on. I'm sure you have better things to do than to waste precious time on people who don't want to, at the very least, entertain another alternative.

however, if you don't mind, i would like to expand on your own take to hopefully provide a different understanding.

there is a nuance that you are missing, at least in the first line. man = misogyny and toxic masculinity will continue to thrive so long as we are bound by the standards of the patriarchy and white supremacy. which we are, by the way. very, very tightly. even more so if you are south asian, which i am assuming you are because of the contextual space we are occupying. furthermore, i believe there is a certain misplaced expectation that we are bringing to the table here. women (cis, trans, queer) have always been bound by forced double standards for centuries. it won't disappear right away.

now, i'm not sure what experience you've had that has led to this, but whatever it was it must have been very traumatizing and extreme, not to mention by people who we consider to be part of the same community. so yes when this happens, we have the absolute right to call out shit behavior and reject their opinions.

but, in the larger scale of things, men have been the perpetrators of the same systems they are now victims of. and these harmful systems bleed into queer spaces. to see it as one big congealed mass of a problem that can immediately be rejected and then fixed also, in turn, is illogical because it doesn't take into consideration the interdisciplinary nature of the consequences of the patriarchy.

we cannot simply kill the tree by snipping off branches, and it is far too late to nip something as grand as this in the bud. but that doesn't mean we can't try to find the root and work up from there.

#once again feel free to add on #disagree or agree whatever you want to do #but please be respectful #this is a bit heavy so sorry about that #i do not tolerate anyone being unkind just to prove a point #thank youu #mod navi

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