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hypogryffin · 5 months

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Genuine curiosity as well as making sure I can express myself properly in the future. You mentioned dislike for the term "Abrahamic" when referring to Jewish, Christian, and Muslim faiths as a singular classification. And I totally get that a TON of people saying Abrahamic really just mean Christian.

So, what term would you use if you wanted to refer to the shared origins of these religious groups? Like, what would be the good religious term that is similar to linguistic terms like Germanic or Romantic? Or would you say there really isn't or shouldn't be one term that can refer to all of them?

fyi im a uni dropout in buttfuck nowhere manitoba so my opinion is highly uninformed and furthermore as my credentials are "stranger on the internet who draws good" im crazy underqualified to give you a new term to use.

"abrahamic" is probably the most alright term i know of, since its supposed to be the blanket terms for "[monotheistic] religions that have abraham as a "patriarch" ". this is a fine category of religions that is not exclusive to judaism, christianity, and islam, though those are the 3 most prominent. its distinctive, its not crazy niche or crazy unspecific, and it works. my problem with the term is that people Use It Wrong to the point it kinda ruins my "relationship" (for lack of a better term) with the word. its not that the term belies classification i dislike, its that i hear people Use It Wrong so often that i associate it with people or arguments that i disagree with, think are in bad faith, or are entirely too uninformed on the matter.

if we "needed" a new term, i guess the only things i could "reasonably" suggest would be something to the effect of "monotheistic" (but that widens the category, im just not sure How Much as im, again, not informed on many world religions past my own and the ones i experience) or maybe "western religions" (which is a bit of a disingenuous name for a lot of reasons but first and foremost because all of "the big three" and as far as i can remember at least some of the smaller, less known abrahamic religions were formed in "the middle east").

i cant say there shouldnt be one term to describe the group of religions were talking about or what a better one is, first and foremost because whatever the broad category is called, im literally not using it? i think this post and the one where i first talked abt my dislike of the word are the only times ive used that word outside of middle&high school social studies classes. i think abrahamic is a fine descriptor, because i dont need to describe what its defined as in my day to day life. i just *personally* take issue with the way ive heard people use it.

#not art #asks & requests #if theres any term i actually for real hate its judeochristian. that one is complete and total horseshit.

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joannechocolat · 2 years

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Society of authors members - a word...

Members of the Society of Authors, we have our annual AGM on November 17th.Usually, only a hundred or so members choose to attend the AGM, but this year is going to be different. This year, we face a well-organized attempt by a relatively small group of members to take over the AGM and push through two resolutions.

The meeting is virtual, so you can attend by Zoom. You can also vote on resolutions by proxy as long as you do so before the 15th.

Before we start, this post is mine, and not an official SOA statement. But –

As members of our union, there are a number of important resolutions for you to look at during this year’s AGM, which will help shape the future of the organization. I urge you to look at them all, and especially at resolutions 6 and 7, submitted by a group headed by some prominent gender critical members.

You’ve probably noticed that this year, there has been a great deal of attention given to our little group by a (mostly hostile) media. Much of it centres on me personally, and much of what they say is typically misleading, incomplete or untrue. Most of it has been driven by social media, where for several years I have been the target of abuse and attacks by gender critical people. I believe that the two following resolutions come as a direct result of this.

Resolution 6 is an attempt to get rid of me as Chair because of my “documented behaviour and comments”, which I take to mean my statements on social media in favour of trans rights, as well as my support of the three writers of colour who received racist abuse in the wake of the Kate Clanchy affair last year.

Resolution 7 includes a demand for a commitment to free speech, which, though it may seem reasonable in principle, in this context shows a basic lack of understanding of what the SOA already does for free speech, and implies that there is bias against certain groups within the organization.

First, let’s have a look at this accusation of bias, which runs through the whole proposal. Some of the people behind these two motions have made it clear that they think that my personal opinions, as tweeted on my personal account, somehow make me unable to exercise impartiality in my capacity as SOA chair.

Okay. Let’s look at my personal opinions. I have a lot of them, and I tweet a lot. I’m a Remainer. I’m left-wing. I’m pro-choice. I wear a mask in public places. I support trans rights. I’m afraid of climate change. I hate racism in all its forms. I really like musical theatre, and (full disclosure) once unfollowed someone on Twitter for saying they hated Les Mis. But the thing I keep being accused of bias over is – you guessed it – trans rights.

If you look at the list of people proposing these motions (and if you take a glance at their Twitter profiles), you’ll find some prominent gender critical voices there. I’m not remotely surprised by this. There’s a history and a context to this attack, dating back several years. If you’d like to know more, here it is. And all this has become part of a right-wing culture wars agenda that sees me as part of “a contamination by the woke”, as this blog post (one of many) typifies.The way I see it, this targeting of the SOA is part of a wider attempt to force the organization to abandon its impartiality and to pander to the demands of the right wing, via the gender critical movement – demands that, in this case, amount to removing a democratically elected Chair, and effectively giving preferential treatment to people with gender critical beliefs.

I don’t think that having openly pro-trans beliefs is a reason to stand down as Chair. I don’t think that anyone would insist on this if I held any other belief – if I were Jewish, for instance. But having a trans son, and supporting his rights, is enough in the eyes of these people to justify this unfounded claim – a claim that either by expression my opinions, or by not supporting theirs, I have somehow “allowed” gender critical authors to be cancelled or to lose work, because of their gender critical beliefs.

This is utter nonsense. My Twitter is a personal account, like the rest of my social media. I don’t bring my clashes on Twitter into SOA meetings, or expect the SOA to defend me against criticism or abuse. Nor should anyone else: it’s not within the remit of the SOA to supervise social media, or to comment when authors disagree.What the SOA is very good at is resolving contractual complaints. But anyone needing this kind of help needs to ask the SOA for help, not complain on social media that they weren’t offered any. If my car gets a flat tyre, I don’t complain to the management of my local Toyota garage that they didn’t help me – unless I’ve actually been there first. I wouldn’t expect them to look on social media to find out if I needed repairs. Why? Because what I say on Twitter doesn’t concern my local Toyota garage. For a start, they probably don’t follow me on Twitter. And I wouldn’t expect them to intervene if someone on Twitter complained that I’d left my Toyota blocking their drive, or if someone had left a rude message on the windscreen. Because – guess what? It isn’t their job. They’re a garage, not The Batman.

So, what do I actually do at the SOA? Well, I chair the Management Committee. We deal with finances and strategy, prizes and grants. We help direct policy and, with the help of the SOA staff, determine how best to serve the members. We are not a political party, though we do lobby politicians of all parties on issues that concern our members. We do not debate “what makes a woman” because the SOA has 12,000 members, including trans people and gender critical people, and we want to serve them all. The gender critical lobby has – or so it seems to me – consistently refused to understand this. I have been asked repeatedly to debate with them on Twitter over trans rights. I have been threatened over my refusal to sign a petition that I felt legitimized JK Rowling’s comments on gender. I have received death threats and abuse. I have been told that as Chair of the SOA I must engage with this debate, and then, when I have expressed opinions, have been told by the same people that I shouldn’t have said anything. But here’s the thing. Free speech is for all, even in the case of those with whom you disagree. And a democracy treats people equally, regardless of their status. The gender critical lobby seems also not to understand this. It may have the support of some very powerful and well-connected people, but that doesn’t make their voices any more important than those of our other members. That’s why the SOA remains neutral in disagreements between individuals, whilst still supporting the free speech of everyone concerned. I’m very sure that if my opinion had swung towards the gender-critical side, no-one would be trying to claim that I was biased now. And I think that where there has been prejudice, it has been directed at me, for exercising my right to a belief that a very well-connected group of people in the media feel I simply shouldn’t hold.

Please don’t see this an an invitation to attack these people on social media. Whatever they may have said about me, whatever lies and smears they have used to make their case, I do not condone attacks or abuse in my name. If you feel there is a legitimate complaint to be made about anyone, then please do so via the SOA, according to their Dignity & Respect policy, not on Twitter. Twitter can be ugly, and things can quickly get out of hand there.

When I was elected to the Management Committee, I promised to concentrate on promoting diverse voices and ensuring that the SOA was an inclusive, fair and welcoming environment for every kind of writer. This current attack on our democracy by a vocal group of ideologues not only threatens that promise, but uses up valuable resources of time, expense and energy that would be better spent dealing with the needs of our members.

If you agree, please consider voting against Resolutions 6 and 7, either in person at the AGM, or by proxy.Here’s the link to register: If you agree, please consider voting against Resolutions 6 and 7, either in person at the AGM, or by proxy.

Here's the link to register:

See you at the AGM, where, whatever your views, I look forward to hearing you.

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secular-jew · 2 years

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Posted by Dorit Revitch on July 07, 2022

The “Holy Temple”- in Hebrew, Beit Hamikdash was a large (approximately football-stadium-sized), multi-level, indoor-outdoor structure that was and spiritually still is the nucleus of Judaism. Its most sacred site. It stood atop Jerusalem’s Mount Moriah.

The First Temple called Solomon's Temple was built in 957 BCE and was destroyed by the Babylonians in 587 or 586 BCE.

The second Temple was completed in 515 BCE and was destroyed by the Romans during the Siege of Jerusalem in the year 70 CE.

Many projects to build a Third Temple have not yet come to fruition, but the Temple still features prominently in Orthodox and Conservative Jewish services alike.

Today, to our sorrow, the Temple Mount is the site of the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

But with all that, we the Jewish people are yearning and praying and remembering the Holy Temple or Beit Hamikdash, or Beit-Habchira. Why? Why do we dwell on something that existed over 2000 years ago?

The Holy Temple of Jerusalem or as we will call it here The Holy Temple was, is, and will always be the center of Jewish life all over the world.

But let us first look at some Historical interesting events, no I will not bore you with the whole history I promise.

We all know what the holiday of Hanukkah is, or so we think, we know it as this holiday you get gifts every day for 8 days, and Hanukkah Gelt, and the dreidel.

But what is really the story of Hanukkah? It is the story of the Holy Temple.

According to Jewish sources, another demolition of the Temple (apart from the two mentioned above) was somehow avoided in 332 BCE when the Jews refused to acknowledge the self-deification of Alexander the Great of Macedonia, but Alexander was somehow convinced at the last minute by smart diplomacy and flattery. After the death of Alexander on 323 BCE, and the dismembering of his empire, the Ptolemies came to rule over Judea and the Temple. Under the Ptolemies, the Jews were given many civil liberties and lived content under their rule. However, when the Ptolemaic army was defeated by Antiochus in 200 BCE, this friendly policy changed. Antiochus wanted to convert the Jews to Hellenism and attempted to make the Holy Temple into the Greek Pantheon. Moreover, a rebellion started and was brutally crushed, but no further action by Antiochus was taken, and when Antiochus died in 187 BCE, his son was his successor Sleucus IV Philopator .

However, his policies never took effect in Judea, since he was assassinated the year after his crowning, it was Antiivhus IV Epiphanes that succeeded his older brother to the throne and immediately adopted his father's previous policy of universal Hellenisation. The Jews rebelled again and Antiochus, in a rage, retaliated in force. Considering the previous episodes of discontent, the Jews became even more upset when the religious observances of Shabbath and Circumcision were officially outlawed. When Antiochus erected a statue of Zeus in the Temple and Hellenic priests began sacrificing pigs (the usual sacrifice offered to Greek Gods of the Hellenic religion), the anger of the Jewish people began to spiral. When a Greek official ordered a Jewish priest to perform a Hellenic sacrifice, the priest – Mattathias (Mathityahu in Hebrew) killed him. In 167 BCE, the Jews followed and went behind Mattathias and his five sons to fight, they won their freedom from the Seleucid authority. Mattathias' son Judah the Macabee re-dedicated the temple in 165 BCE and the Jews celebrate this event to this day as the central theme of the non-biblical festival of Hanukkah. The temple was rededicated under Judah Maccabee in 164 BCE.

Around 20 BCE, the building was renovated and expanded by Herod the Great and became known as Herod’s Temple. It was destroyed 90 years later by the Romans in 70 CE.

During the Bar Kokhba Revolt against the Romans in 132–135 CE, Simon Bar- Kokhba and Rabi Akiva wanted to rebuild the Temple, but bar Kokhba's revolt failed, and the Jews were banned from Jerusalem, by the Roman Empire, except on Tisha B’Av. Julian the Emperor allowed the Temple to be rebuilt, but the Earthquake of Galilee in 363 ended all attempts ever since.

After the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem in the 7th century, Umayyad Caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan ordered the construction of an Islamic shrine, the Dome of the Rock, on the Temple Mount. The shrine has stood on the mount since 691 CE; the al-Aqsa Mosque, from roughly the same period, also stands in what used to be the Temple courtyard.

Jordan occupied East Jerusalem and the Temple Mount immediately following Israel's declaration of independence on May 14, 1948. In 1967 during the Six-Day War, Temple Mount, along with the entire Old City of Jerusalem, was captured from Jordan by Israel, allowing Jews once again to visit the holy site.

The iconic image of Israeli soldiers shortly after

the capture of the Wall during the Six-Day War

Today the Jewish Holy Site is the remains of the walls of the Holly temple which is the Wailing Wall / the Western Wall, / Hakotel in Hebrew.

Even though the Muslims claim that the Temple mount was always theirs and they were first, and the stone in the center of the Omar Shrine is where Abraham was going to Sacrifice Izaak, the Jewish people will always claim, as we should, to have the first right on the Moriah Mountain or as we call it now temple mount, there are more than enough archaeological evidence backing up this fact.

The Temple’s centrality to Jewish existence is reflected in the fact that many of the Jewish mitzvot are Temple-related: daily and weekly offerings; holiday pilgrimages and offerings; personal, voluntary, and obligatory offerings; qualifying criteria for the Kohanim and Levites; Temple rituals; and the dos and don’ts for all the above. There are around 180 mitzvot (good deeds) out of a total of 613 related to the Holy Temple.

When the Temple stood, G_D was real to everyone. The Holy Temple was a place of spirituality, a place where you can feel and sense G_D’s presence. A place that when you wanted to be close to G_D you went to Jerusalem to find Him at His Temple. The Temple was a symbol of G_D and all the things that “G_D” means responsibility, morality, ethics, love, compassion, and humility. It was a place where one found spirituality:

You didn’t have to be Jewish to go to the Temple; kings and peasants from every country and culture traveled long distances just to experience it all. The Temple was the single most important structure in society, offering structure to society. Then it was destroyed.

Since the destruction of the Temple, G_D was removed from its geographic location and placed itself within us. Instead of traveling to Jerusalem, G_D wants us to find Him in our inner Jerusalem.

At the times of the Temple, G_D was in principle reaching down to His world, and now in the times of our exile, it is us reaching up, from within that world back to G_D.

When you go and visit the Western Wall for the first time, please put both your hands on its stones and just close your eyes and you feel it, you feel the Holiness of the place, you feel the presence of G_D right there. If you ever doubted G_D’s presence you will know it exists when you are at Temple mount at the Kotel.

This is the place that G_D chose for us to feel its presence, it is the place where we come to celebrate and mourn, we come to request and pray for others and ourselves, just the same as it was over 2000 years ago.

The Holy Temple with its very Symbolic history is the History of the Jewish people. It’s our core existence our past and our future, our roots are there and our strength as a nation comes from there. Our unity comes from Traditions and Mitzvot that exist for thousands and hundreds of years.

And that is where we are all connected, any Jew worldwide knows that the Holy Temple was and will be rebuilt in Jerusalem.

That’s why we mourn the fall of the holy temple on Tisha B’Av, which is the culmination of the Three Weeks, a period during which we mourn and mark the destruction of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem.

These days usually fall on the months of July and August.

So as you can see The Holy Temple has a big influence on Jewish lives, and the connection of the Jewish people to the Holy Temple is our Spiritual connection to our G_D All-Mighty.

Next Year in Jerusalem!

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psychotrenny · 7 months

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Hi! May I share your thread on TikTok? The one on how Israel isn't egalitarian in its "safe haven" for Jewish folk. It was so well written and informed. I wanted to make a similar video about how it indirectly Stokes antisemitism, but it'd would be better to highlight Jewish voices as I'm a black muslim

Feel free to if you want but to be absolutely clear that I myself am not Jewish. I just made that post to share some oft he things I've learned in response recent tide of zionist propaganda that's been all over the western media.

If your interested in a Jewish perspective then many Jewish tumblr users have made a lot of very good posts and additions that covers a lot of similar matters. Just of the top of my head there's lesbianchemicalplant (with posts like this, this and this ) and determinate-negation (i.e. this one and this one ) There's many others of course but between tumblr's awful search function and my own inconsistent tagging habits its hard to keep track of what I've read and no doubt there's many that I just haven't seen

Several of the articles I linked are also written by Jewish people or centered on a Jewish Perspective. This theme is likely most prominent in this article, which is focuses on an interview with the scholar Benjamin Balthaser about Jewish Leftist anti-Zionism in the 20s and 30s

Also looking back on that thread and its responses I've realised a number of errors, or at least points where I employed poorly chosen language. I've conflated the Shepardic and Ashkenazis Old Yishuv in ways that I don't think are helpful; as the term is one coined by Zionist settlers to describe the various Jewish people already present in Palestine at the start of the settlement process and thus includes a number of different groups with differing histories and relationships to the land. I also used the term "indigenous" to describe them. This was in an attempt to outline how Jewish presence in Palestine isn't synonymous with Zionism (i.e. the creation of an ethno-state supposedly for all Jewish peoples everywhere) but it also had the effect of implying that they are exempt from participation n the Zionist colonial project which thy are very much not. My point was that there have been Jewish people in Palestine far before the era of Zionist colonialism but in the political sense referring to them as "indigenous", especially in implied reference to the contemporary political situation, was a poor use of the word . Additionally, while my readings on the early development of modern vernacular Hebrew reminded me very much of self-indigenization in terms of how it often evoked an ancestral connection to the ancient Kingdom of Israel (thinking of quotes from Eleizer Ben-Yehuda like "The Hebrew language can live only if we revive the nation and return it to the fatherland" ) it has been pointed out that this was very likely not the primary intention considering that Zionism originated at the very height of European settler-colonialism when such downplaying rhetoric wasn't really necessary. The (frequently forced) use of Hebrew as the spoken language likely had had far more to do with creating a new common culture and stripping Jewish migrants of their own so they could be more easily integrated into the state. While it seems to me that appeals to an ancestral land connection still featured far more in even early Zionism that in any other strain of European Settler-Colonialism (which indeed often made the "newness" of the conquered land a rhetorical point of pride, disregarding indigenous claims to the land without insisting that the settlers had any more rights than was granted with their force and diligence), I suppose that the term "self-indigenisation" may not be the most appropriate in this context and would be best restricted to the more modern faux-progressive forms of Zionist apologia. I'm sure there are many other mistakes I've made in that post or things I've overlooked, but these currently appear to me to be the most important once. Overall I'm honoured that you'd consider my writing worthy of such attention but would urge caution and insist that you seek out other sources in addition to it. Thank you for your time and good luck with the video

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weirdmageddon · 2 years

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There’s something I’ve been struggling with for a while and I was hoping to get some insight from someone in a similar situation: I’ve been feeling kind of insecure about being Jewish lately because I feel like so much of the religion/culture is tied to Israel which is, as is pretty well known at this point, a military state with a stranglehold on its original Palestinian natives. How much of Judaism is intertwined with Zionism? Is it okay to identify with a culture that’s associated with a state that’s so cruel to a culture they think don’t belong there? Please don’t take this as some sort of interrogation or attack, it’s just been nagging at me for a while now.

dont worry i feel the exact same way. i think the bottom line about it is having a sense of fairness, justice, and peace as an individual. an ethnostate violates each one of those. it’s not that i don’t support a safe place for jews i just don’t support ethnostates, regardless of who it’s for, even if i would benefit. i would not feel comfortable moving to israel knowing the policies they have in place for the people living there.

palestinians created this website and they address this. anti-zionism is NOT antisemitism!

The recent rise to prominence of a distorted and shallow understanding of identity politics has been a boon to this kind of conflation. Suddenly we see Zionism being detached from its material history and presented as an integral part of Jewish identity. This is especially popular in the West, where young Zionists who are raised on propaganda and myths of this “amazing” Zionist project come to treat it as inseparable from themselves. Here, we see the cynical twisting of social justice language to declare that only Zionists may define what Zionism is — as if it was a subjective phenomenon, with no material reality, founders, history, effects or victims — and that it was an attack on the Jewish people to oppose it or describe it as colonial.

Criticism of Israel and its founding ideology cannot be conflated with the hatred of the Jewish people. When Palestinians resist Israeli colonialism, it is not due to the religion or ethnicity of Israelis. Resistance to foreign domination has been a staple of oppressed and colonized people all across the globe. From the very beginning, the Zionist movement had the goal of establishing an exclusivist ethnic state at the expense of the natives already living there, Palestinians objecting to and resisting this endeavor cannot be compared to the odious, murderous antisemitism that plagued Europe throughout history. This is not even to mention that most Zionists today aren’t even Jewish, and many anti-Zionists are.

as a jewish person myself, zionism very much is colonial. the words zionists use to talk about it is colonialist language, including the terra nullius argument. religious text is never a good excuse to nullify the reality that is right in front of you, which in this case is living breathing people occupying that space in the present just living their lives.

in an ideal world, territorial bastards wouldn’t desire to play king of the hill on small piece of land in the middle east because an ancient text took place there. “back then” is completely irrelevant. what matters is now. things have changed. other people occupy that territory now. it’s like…girl move on. earth has been following this pattern forever: populations changing and migrating over time. religion doesn’t make anyone’s case special. settler colonialism is settler colonialism regardless of the “justification”.

this is more of a personal opinion and is only tangentially related but i’m honestly not a fan of religion in general since it creates an arbitrary distance and “us-vs-them” mentality where there otherwise wouldn’t be any. it creates a barrier to cooperation and harmony because one group has to assert their belief system over the other group as “right” when we can never really know the truth so who gives a shit. we need to look at what actually matters immediately which is resources (food, shelter, supplies) and how we can cooperate to survive. the stories of religion and whose religion is right has no bearing on that and is basically setting us up for unnecessary self-destruction instead of grounded concerns. i understand the important role religion can play for the individual but in all honesty it becomes a problem on a larger scale when people form in-group out-group based on theistic beliefs that can’t be proven or disproven. i don’t like to talk about religion much because it does not hold importance to me and having genuine discussions like this are like stepping on eggshells around many people

anyway lets get you some latkes and maybe youll feel better

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90363462 · 2 years

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Ye's Donda Academy shutting down for school year, per principal

The Donda Academy is shutting down for the school year after the recent antisemitic statements made by the academy's founder, the artist formerly known as Kanye West.

According to an email from academy principal Jason Angell, a copy of which was obtained by ESPN, the decision to close was made by the Grammy Award-winning artist, who has legally changed his name to Ye.

"Our leadership team will be working diligently to assist all families during this transition, ensuring that every scholar has what they need to succeed in their next community in a prompt and gracious manner," Angell wrote. "We intend to begin afresh in September of 2023."

However, another email obtained by TMZ and signed "Parents of Donda" called for students to return to the academy Thursday, leaving the status of the school in some doubt.

Amid the closing announcement, the Donda Academy's boys' basketball program, which has three top-50 recruits in the Class of 2023, has seen invitations to three prominent high school basketball showcases rescinded.

The Hoophall Classic and Kentucky Play-By-Play Classic both confirmed in statements that Donda Academy would no longer participate in their events, with Scholastic Play By Play Classics founder Jeremy Treatman expressing remorse for the effect on the academy's players.

"Kanye's words and actions violate our values as a company and a country, and what we seek to ensure at all of our events -- a spirit of diversity, sportsmanship, inclusion, equity and mutual respect," Treatman said in a statement. "While we are firm in our reasoning for this decision, it does not diminish our heartache and regret for Donda's hardworking student-athletes who will lose out the most as a result of Kanye's actions."

A third event in which Donda Academy was scheduled to play, the City of Palms Classic, replaced the academy with The Patrick School (New Jersey) on Thursday morning.

Donda's boys' basketball team features Kentucky commit Robert Dillingham, who is ranked No. 8 in the ESPN 100, and fellow top-50 seniors A.J. Johnson and Javonte Taylor.

For weeks, Ye has made antisemitic comments in interviews and social media, including a Twitter post earlier this month that he would soon go "death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE," an apparent reference to the U.S. defense readiness condition scale known as DEFCON. His posts led to his suspension from both Twitter and Instagram, although new posts have been made on Instagram this week since the suspension.

Donda Academy's shutdown is the latest fallout from Ye's controversial remarks. Adidas said Tuesday that it was ending its partnership with Ye, while Los Angeles Rams star Aaron Donaldand Boston Celtics star Jaylen Brown both announced this week that they were leaving the Donda Sports agency.

Donald addressed his decision to cut ties with Donda Sports on Thursday, saying he came to that decision after discussing Ye's comments with his wife, who also helps with the defensive tackle's marketing.

"It's just a situation where a lot of things was going on that I felt that wasn't in the best interest of my family or what we got going on and what we believe in," Donald said. "So I think it was best for us to go our separate ways."

ESPN's Sarah Barshop and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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iplacedajar · 1 year

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2022

I’m daunted by the prospect of reflecting on this year. 2021 was a year spent waiting for things to go back to normal and 2022 was a year spent realizing that things will not be going back to normal, not for my high-risk partner and me, and that’s sobering. I think there’s a big change coming in 2023, but I’m not sure what shape it will take yet, and that daunts me, too.

There were bright spots, and I’ll try to focus on those. E and I spent a magical week in Italy for his best friend’s wedding. D visited me and we had the best chill week eating bagels and watching New Girl. I made some little TikToks, an unexpected creative outlet. My job, which had been in a state of flux and then stagnation for many months, solidified and I enjoy it again. My perfect cat continues to be a source of joy.

And, of course, I read some very good books.

Books

It was a low-volume, high-quality year for reading. I love living within walking distance of my local library. Here are my favorites, selected with difficulty:

THE DISPOSSESSED by Ursula K. LeGuin - I read this at the beginning of the year, on the couch with Hermione on quiet January evenings, and it's marvelous. Absolutely a crime that we read ANTHEM (with which it shares surface-level similarities in the premise of a collectivist society, but interrogates the ensuing themes so much more effectively and is also actually a good book) in high school and not this. (Fuck ANTHEM.)

“You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.”

THE INVISIBLE LIFE OF ADDIE LARUE by V. E. Schwab - Possibly the book most recommended to me ever—at least four people who knew I liked books about time suggested this to me. Completely gorgeous.

“Do you know how to live three hundred years?” she says. And when he asks how, she smiles. “The same way you live one. A second at a time.”

SEA OF TRANQUILITY by Emily St. John Mandel - fuck yeah time travel pandemic novel I adore you.

“Pandemics don’t approach like wars, with the distant thud of artillery growing louder every day and flashes of bombs on the horizon. They arrive in retrospect, essentially. It’s disorienting. The pandemic is far away and then it’s all around you with seemingly no intermediate step.”

“Do you ever catch yourself thinking about the simulation hypothesis?”

UPROOTED by Naomi Novik - Obsessed with this book, I wish it was twice as long. Instead I just keep coming back to it. It inverts classic fairytale tropes about princes and towers, and injects dark and thrilling new life into others (prominently, Don’t Go to the Woods).

“No one has gone into the Wood as deep as you and come out whole: not since—” He halted, and I somehow knew without his saying her name that it was Jaga: that Jaga had walked in the Wood, and come out again. He saw my realization, and glared at me. “And at the time,” he said, icily, “she was a hundred years old, and so steeped in magic that black toadstools would spring up where she walked.”

SPINNING SILVER by Naomi Novik - Still obsessed. Same author, another standalone fantasy novel. The previous drew inspiration from Polish folklore, and this one draws inspiration from Jewish folklore. The multiple narrators—a moneylender, a farmer’s daughter, and a tsarina with a trace of magic, all determined young women making hard choices—all won my heart and admiration.

“There are men who are wolves inside, and want to eat up other people to fill their bellies. That is what was in your house with you, all your life. But here you are with your brothers, and you are not eaten up, and there is not a wolf inside you. You have fed each other, and you kept the wolf away. That is all we can do for each other in the world, to keep the wolf away. And if there has been food in my house for you, then I am glad, glad with all my heart. I hope there will always be.”

GOODBYE, AGAIN by Jonny Sun - I felt so much recognition reading these essays full of small wisdoms. It almost felt like I’d written it, if that’s not too arrogant to say. Or maybe just someone knows me very well. Here is someone else who delights in liminal spaces, who struggles going home, who spends a lot of time in their own head. Reading this made me feel less alone.

“I think a lot of pressure gets put on making things “for something” or “for some reason” and the pressure of “but why?” and “but who’s this for?” and “is it good enough?” and “it’s a waste of time and energy!” and “why don’t you do something productive instead?” and I think that all of this removes the importance and value of making things for the ones who are making it, because maybe the ones who are making the thing are the ones who might need it the most.”

TOMORROW AND TOMORROW AND TOMORROW by Gabrielle Zevin - It strikes me that this is the only fiction book that’s non-genre to make the list this year. This book is a masterpiece, but it was an unusual reading experience for me because I felt so close to the subject matter. It’s a sprawling epic about life and love, how relationships change, storytelling and the creative process in general and video games in particular.

“What's everyone talking about?”

“The end of The Iliad.”

“That's the best part,” Marx said.

“Why is it the best part?” Sadie asked.

“Because it's perfect,” Marx said. “‘Tamer of horses’ is an honest profession. The lines mean that one doesn't have to be a god or a king for your life to have meaning.”

THE WIZARD OF EARTHSEA by Ursula K. LeGuin - I thought I’d finished reading for the year, but then Eddy and I spent four days in a car driving to Houston in December and listened to this audiobook. Ursula wrote that, in 1967, wizards were all wise old men with long beards. But Merlin and Gandalf must have been young and foolish once, right? This book is the result.

“You thought, as a boy, that a mage is one who can do anything. So I thought, once. So did we all. And the truth is that as a man's real power grows and his knowledge widens, ever the way he can follow grows narrower: until at last he chooses nothing, but does only and wholly what he must do.”

Other Media

Lol. Derry Girls, Killing Eve, and Arcane were my favorite shows. We watched basically no movies. Ooblets (the full release) and The Stillness of the Wind were my favorite new-to-me games, but honorable mentions to Breath of the Wild and Stardew Valley for their depth and replayability.

In Conclusion

Happy New Year. Keep going.

#2022 #shut up olivia

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elmer-kasprzak · 2 years

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in honor of my post abt not every newsie being a wasp becoming my most popular post, here’s some fun hcs about the newsies nationalities and a sprinkle of religion (not much)

david jacobs - we’ll start with the most popular i suppose. he’s ethnically and religiously jewish, and i’m thinking his family is from a german-speaking country. austria is probably likely (there were a lot of jewish people in austria in the late 1800s), but germany is also a likely option. his parents probably emigrated to america before he can remember, and at the very least les was born in new york. all three siblings can speak german fluently, though they don’t have much of an accent. they were raised in new york.

elmer kasprzak - not to be biased or anything, but i’ve done quite a few thinks about elmer and his family history. he’s from poland, and moved to new york with his mom and dad sometime after his 5th birthday. because he grew up with english as a second language, he most likely had to attempt to learn a “proper” new york accent. he was born in a village close to the german-polish boarder, and so he probably also could speak some german. he could understand more than he could speak.

racetrack higgins - okay this is specifically talking about livesies racetrack (because 92sies racer is so very italian /pos). points. that man is irish, through and through. i want to say first or second generation american, but the idea that he has an irish accent is fucking hilarious so maybe he was born in ireland. either way, he’s catholic. a HUGE majority of irish people who moved to america were catholic, so it would make sense that he was, too.

york - okay, okay. i know he’s not technically a livesies or 92sies newsie, but i think he deserves to be talked about more. originally, this hc was a joke, but then i thought about it and suddenly i decided it was no longer a joke. york is from york. old york. britain. he’s a british little fuck and he has the accent and it’s so good. granted, because he moved to new york when he was 10, it’s a bit faded, but it’s DEFINITELY still noticeable. he’s proud of it, so good for him. actually, he’s probably the most wasp you can get.

graves - okay so this is something i’ve affectionately dubbed the anthony zas effect. basically, any newsie he plays is polish. graves is second generation american, although he doesn’t have much connection to his polish heritage. it’s most prominent in his surname (i hc it to be dudek, but that’s just me), but only spot really knows that. he’s also not one specific denomination of christian, and so he avoids any shit based off of that. he kinda flies under the radar.

buttons - okay i lied about york. this is the most wasp-like newsie. his last name is davenport. do i need to say more? he doesn’t really know much about his heritage. his family has been in america since before the civil war, and so it doesn’t really matter to him where he’s from. (hint: he’s british. that man is just english and it’s really funny).

okay… i’m so very exhausted so this list is short but if you have anyone else you want me to yell about when it comes to nationality hcs, lmk because i absolutely will. i’m vaguely thinking about more poc newsies, but i need to do more research on immigration policies before i do anything for them. until then, enjoy, gay people.

#just oli talkin'#newsies #livesies #elmer kasprzak #davey jacobs #david jacobs #buttons newsies #buttons davenport #york newsies #graves newsies #racetrack newsies #racetrack higgins #race newsies

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brucewayneargento-moved · 2 years

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[TW: Disscusions of racism, racist imagery]

I didn't know I was biracial until I was sixteen.

I knew my parents were of different races but I didn’t know there was a name for what I was. I knew the word mestizo and the caste system from the colonial era but I didn’t know those strange, ancient terms could apply to me. Back when I watched Jessie on the Disney Channel I pictured Luke’s biological mom as a black woman despite now knowing that he was half black in real life, I just thought that parents had to be different shades in order to have a baby.

My dad, a white man, always raised me with the idea that I was a Italian because his grandparents immigrated from there and my mom, being the quiet and shut in woman that she is (no offense mami I love you) would never talk about her side of the family and that only become more prominent when my maternal grandfather (an indigenous man from Paraguay) died and she broke off contact with her brothers. It wasn’t until I directly confronted her about it that she opened up, and I was able to place more pieces of the puzzle that I was, ethnicity wise.

To be clear, I’m white passing and disconnected from my indigenous side and people who look at me on the street don’t treat me differently because of my physical characteristics. Yet I’ve felt very clearly the effects of racism on my life: I’ve had brown friends who have been racially profiled and suffered race-based bullying in school. And whenever I was a witness of those things I couldn’t help but think of my mother. Because the things they were antagonized for, were characteristics that my mom and my grandfather had. So I grew up with the notion that sharing physical characteristics with them was a bad thing.

And I would have killed to see someone in my shoes growing up. Someone who not only looks like me but that I have the same experience as me, someone who enjoys both sides of their family, someone with diverse looking siblings whose other people doubt that they are actually siblings.

And I eventually got it: Elena Alvarez from ODAAT and Pepa Madrigal from Encanto come to mind, people from diverse families who happen to look white, that was all I ever wanted. But for every well written multiracial character there’s a bunch of characters who just don’t land.

My first introduction to Damian Wayne Al Ghul was the Bad Blood movie, and I didn’t had any initial thoughts about him besides “Cool, Robin has a sword” and I don’t remember when I found out he was multiracial but I do remember how seen I felt when I saw Talia drawn as a brown woman for the first time. Even though my mom is brown Latina and Talia is Chinese Arab and those aren’t interchangeable, it did feel good to see my mom’s skin colour in a character who, in her inception, was meant to be the most beautiful woman in the world.

And I’ve projected my insecurities of growing up with my indigenous heritage being denied into Damian using his, Arab, Chinese and Jewish heritage (those last two both usually ignored by Canon and Fanon) as a vector to talk about my own experiences while also listening to experiences of other biracial POC who aren’t white passing. I do this because I’m of the opinion that Damian shouldn’t have that many eurocentric features, (beside his iconic green eyes), because while I‘m personally starved for white passing characters of multiracial families in media, I also recognize that I’m not the first in line in the good representation repartition.

I’m an advocate for Damian having all aspects of his heritage recognized, because I know what it’s like to feel like a piece of your identity is missing and I also know what it's like to never see yourself in the stories you love.

There’s so many beautiful complex mixed race characters in the DC canon: Cassandra Cain, Connor Hawke, Wallace West II, Emiko Queen, etc. And if DC really wanted to, it could craft such great and diverse stories for them. But it doesn’t seem to want to do that. I’m not saying that what we've been getting in the last few years is bad, look at the recently released “DC Festival of Heroes: The Asian Superhero Celebration” for honestly endearing stories that includes some of the characters I’ve mentioned previously. But that book was the exception to the norm and… what is the norm exactly?

Let’s stay focused on Damian, he’s usually portrayed as light-skinned and shares plenty of characteristics with Bruce, this is used to really drive the point home that he's the “blood son”. But what’s weird about that it’s that the narrative usually dresses him down for thinking he’s special just because he and Bruce are actually related. So why reinforce the idea that he’s actually the Son of Batman while simultaneously shaming him for it?

And let’s keep going. Because this isn’t only a contrivance of the story, it also actively makes it less interesting. Wouldn’t it be more engaging if he physically shared more characteristics with Talia and that’s his obsession with being the biological son of Batman not only came from insecurity for being raised in a death cult but also because he felt he doesn’t actually look like him?

And it is also strange to me that the narrative constantly acknowledges that Damian and Bruce are very similar but also ignores the implications of that fact, because that opens a new can of worms: Is Damian canonically white passing? If so, shouldn’t we acknowledge that? Because it’s not enough to say “Oh yeah this character it’s just white passing” you have to show how that affects them: Do they feel the need to “prove” they're a POC? How are his relationships with other non white passing characters of colour? These are things a good writer would consider when writing this kind of character.

But no one wants to think about that stuff, because it involves…thinking and here’s a little dirty secret that all writers have: we’re lazy as shit. We don’t want to think about the implications of what we write, we just do what we think would be cool and rarely give it a second thought.

Now that we’ve established one of the symptoms of DC’s treatment of one of it’s more popular multiracial characters it’s attributed to laziness, let’s get on to the more uncomfortable subject matter: Direct harm created by the narratives that the comics represent.

We should talk about how Damian gets constantly put into situations where he has to "pick a side" regarding his parents and how when he shows to be connected to the culture of his parent of colour it's usually to convey to the audience that he's becoming evil. (See also: The beginning of his Teen Titans arc that it starts with him remembering his mother's Ox soup and it concludes with him completely falling off the wagon and violating criminals’ civil liberties)

Is the fact that one of DC’s most prominent multiracial character gets the same arc of “choosing a side” over and over again just a coincidence? Or there's something more insidious we’re not catching? I'll admit I don’t have a clear answer for that, so this particular subject I’ll let you decide for yourself.

However, if someone reads all of Damian’s appearance and concludes that DC has a racism problem, that’s the fault of DC. People can do bad fatih reading of their work? Sure, but unless DC can fully explain what they meant with their choices, the conclusions we draw from their work are their responsibility.

There is one last thing I want to bring up before the conclusion, and that is the active racism at play in the DC writing department. You see, until now I’ve just attributed the problems of DC’s ignorance on the racial part as accidental mishaps, something they can apologize for and try to correct in the future but the truth is that there’s no correcting this:

(source: Teen Titans (2018) Annual #1)

There’s no correcting the retcon of Talia killing rapists into being a rapist herself, there’s no correcting the fetizhization of Dick’s Romani heritage, there’s no fixing the “tiger mom” stereotype of Shado, Cheshire and Lady Shiva.

Because the problem goes beyond the writers and the artists, the problem is DC. They are the disease, all the things I’ve mentioned above are just symptoms.

And there is no easy cure for this. The editorial is rotten from the inside out but the fans are also to blame, we see Tom Taylor write a shallow depiction of bisexuality and we go hog wild with it while ignoring how he inserted his own zionist views into one of the most popular comics of the decade.

So how do we start fixing this? We've talked about how lazy some people are, and unfortunately that means that we have to do the hard thing and not be lazy ourselves. We need to start calling out the creators and the high executives. We need to make it a problem worth dealing with. In the same way that people managed to get Connor Hawke un-whitewashed thanks to fans backlash, we can make DC acknowledge it’s diverse fanbase and to make their wrongs, right.

Thank you for reading

#damian wayne al ghul #damian wayne #damian wayne meta #dc comics #batman #batman & robin #batman and robin #robin #teen titans #essay #my post

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mcustorm · 3 years

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In Defense of a Black Cyclops

In case my username didn’t make it clear, the single most anticipated visual project for me is the MCU’s interpretation of the X-Men, which hasn’t even been announced yet [officially]. And ladies and gents, I have found your Cyclops:

Good ol’ Alfred Enoch, who we all know from Harry Potter and How to Get Away With Murder. If you’re not familiar with HTGAWM, know that his character goes from the de facto leader of the ragtag (murderers) and most cherished protege of Viola Davis’ Professor X to taking more of a grimdark turn after his girlfriend’s death. Sound at least somewhat familiar?

Enoch also embodies the physicality of the character well, seeing as to how he’s “slim”, 6′4(!!), black, and notoriously lanky. Wait, one of these isn’t like the others.

In general I hate fancasting. Everyone generally picks from the same pool of about 30 actors (Peeps, neither Taron nor Daniel is a good Wolverine choice. Argue with your mother!), and most all of it is based on physicality, except when it absolutely should be (like say, choosing a ~5′10 dark-skinned black woman for Storm).

And I think there’s some malarkey afoot. I think there needs to be some serious consideration on part of fancasters and actual casting agents alike to rethink race when it comes to the [white] X-Men, especially since they’re the X-Men of all teams. So I’ll make the case for a black Cyclops:

1. There is no quota on Black X-Men: There’s a bug in your ear that’s been whispering lies to you for years, it says something to the effect of “We need a black person on the team for diversity. How bout Storm?” And you’ve gotten complacent. Storm does not have to be the only black person on your X-Men roster.

2. The X-Men represent diversity: Iceman is gay, Cyclops and Prof. X are disabled (sorta), there are plenty of women, oh and everybody except Storm is white. Of the A-List X-Men, there is only *one* POC character. I’d argue that an MCU X-Men needs to champion diversity like never before.

3. The X-Men represent minority struggle while being mostly white: There’s a cognitive dissonance in the metaphor that has always been there, and for the most part, nobody cares. To appeal to the white readers of the 60′s, the X-Men were all initially white. That way, the message of the mutants could be related to the audience with a familiar face. We don’t need to approach the problem that way in 202?

4. Just because that’s the way it’s always been, doesn’t mean that’s the way it should be: The first line of defense. Sorry, that will never be a good justification for literally any idea. It’s time for some more critical thinking.

5. We don’t all want to be Bishop: So say you’re white and you have a kid who for his birthday having a costume party. You’ve bought some X-Men costumes and you want each kid to pick one. 9 white kids and one black kid show up to your house. As the kids deliberate who gets what costume, be it Cyke or Wolvie or whatever, you yell at everybody to “STOP!”, point to the one black kid and tell him “You’re gonna be Bishop. That’s it, end of story!”

We don’t all want to be Bishop. The black child could have the best Cyclops interpretation within him, but you’ll never know if you don’t let him try. And that’s no different from the Black actors of Hollywood. There’s no reason why all of the black talent should *have* to compete for the role of Bishop or Storm, which I’ve discussed, while Joe Schmo can walk up and audition for literally anybody he wants.

Jharrel Jerome is 23 and has an Emmy to his name. He needs to be in the MCU in some capacity, period. Stephan James is another. How bout Damson Idris. Ashton Sanders. But no, no, let’s fancast Dacre Montgomery or Ansel or Joe Keery again as [Human Torch, Wolverine, Iceman, Angel, I’ve literally seen it all.]

6. Nobody wants to see the B-team if it comes down to it. The next line of defense from your racebending naysayers after “That’s the way it’s always been!” is “Well, what about Psylocke, Bishop, Forge and Jubilee?” who are otherwise known as B-tier X-Men. The problem is, we’ve got limited time and limited spots.

So since the X-Men is all about wonky metaphors that make half sense, let me give you another: Let’s say somebody approaches you and says “Hey buddy, I got two free concert tickets for ya! You can either see Michael Jackson Sings the Blues, or you can go see Justin Timberlake. Free of charge!”

Now, are you used to MJ singing the blues? No! Do you have a problem with going to see Justin Timberlake? No, he’s fine on a Wednesday! He had that one little diddy we liked that one time. We’d love to see him eventually! But are you gonna say, “fuck that, I’m going to see MJ Sings the Blues” regardless? Hell yes, because that’s still Michael Jackson. He’s gonna give the same amazing performance he always does, it’s just gonna be the blues. And speaking of blues...

7. Black is not Blue, Brown is not Blue: Raise your hand if you’ve ever heard this one: “I don’t care if you’re black, white, purple, or green, I’m going to treat you all the same!” I will not say all have this intention, but some fancasters have noticed that the racial diversity is kinda low within the A-List X-Men, so they oh-so-generously give the following roles to a black or brown person: Iceman, Nightcrawler, Beast.

Notice the pattern? It’s a microaggression, and it’s bullshit. What these fancasters are implicitly telling you is that, yes the actors will be black or brown, but when the action starts we can ignore that. They’ll be blue by then. In other words, you in fact do care if they’re purple or green. Nobody will cry foul if Dev Patel gets to play Nightcrawler (because that’s a common one I see), but should Anna Diop be Starfire or Michael B. Jordan be Human Torch, I bet there’d be backlash. Oh wait. If that’s you, please stop acting like you actually value diversity. You don’t want to see black or brown skin, period. Unless of course, it’s Storm (refer to point #1).

But wait, there’s more! When brown characters get whitewashed in these movies, it’s crickets! So eventually it’s revealed implicitly that proclaimers of point #4 only care about it one way.

8. Professor X should not be black if you’re not willing to change anyone else: The next line of defense is that some people say the professor should be black, if anybody HAS to be racebent. Something something MLK Jr., Civil Rights or some shit. Number one, I’m not reducing Professor X to being a magical negro for 9 white people (and Storm!) who for all intents and purposes get to have all the action. Number 2, the Professor X/MLK/Magneto/Malcolm X comparison is an oversimplifying disservice to ALL FOUR of those people. I hate that line whenever I see it, please watch a documentary my friends.

9. The Candidates for Racebending: For me, the A-List X-Men are Cyclops, Jean Grey, Iceman, Angel, Beast, Wolverine, Storm, Gambit, Rogue, Colossus, Nightcrawler, and Kitty Pryde. Now, who should be exempt from the racebending? Storm, she’s our designated minority. Gambit, he’s Cajun and they’re white (generally speaking, that’s a fun bit of research). Wolverine, Colossus, and Nightcrawler, because their nationality/ethnicity was the whole point of the Giant-Size premise in the first place. Angel, because his character embodies a privileged white male. Beast and Iceman, I don’t care one way or another (Point #7).

That leaves Cyclops, Rogue, Jean Grey, and Kitty Pryde. Now Jean Grey is a redhead, and we all know that every time a redhead is racebent people sharpen their pitchforks (Mary Jane, Wally West, Iris West), so I will cede the ground on Jean if only so that my ginger friends can get their rep. Kitty Pryde is Jewish, but Jews of color exist. Rogue is from the South. And Cyclops is, well, just Cyclops. That makes those three characters good options for more diversity. But allow me to make the case for Cyclops, specifically.

10. It’s not just diversity for diversity’s sake: If you had to pick who the main character of the X-Men is supposed to be, most would say Cyclops. And so in a series that highlights racial discrimination in society, it makes sense that our main character be black. While changing Cyclops’ skin color should not change who he is as a character, it *should* recontextualize it. Now, as an eventual increasingly radical leader of the X-Men, Cyclops would evoke real life figures such as Colin Kaepernick or, shall I say, Martin Luther King, Jr.

Not that most X-Men fans and writers truly think about what it means to be black anyways. Storm’s minority status is almost always put through the lens of her being a mutant and not her being a black woman. In other words, you can’t argue that making a character black will fundamentally change his or her character when you haven’t even analyzed the racial context of the black character(s) you already have. Another concept that the MCU X-Men should tackle: intersectionality.

11. Representation matters: I have to say it: Chadwick Boseman’s Black Panther hit different. And now he is tragically gone. At the end of the day, the MCU moving forward is down its most prominent black male superhero. Which has implications beyond just the movies themselves.

The women are in good hands. Shuri, Okoye, and Nakia are badasses in Wakanda, Valkyrie is ruling Asgard, Storm is almost assuredly on the way, RiRi Williams has already been cast, and Monica Rambeau is here and she’s not even at her most glorious yet. That doesn’t even include variable Δ, or the number of characters who can and will be racebent. And I’ll note again that to me, Gamora doesn’t count, because she’s green (#7 really pisses me off because it’s so blatant. I hate it). Of course from a behind the camera perspective we love black women getting work.

The men are a completely different story. Imma just go out and say it, I can’t stand Falcon and War Machine [in the MCU] because they’re not characters, they’re just two of a slew of MCU minority sidekicks who have essentially been at the beck and call of Captain America and Iron Man, respectively. You cannot tell Falcon’s story without mentioning Cap. The reverse is not true. There’s a whole essay that could be and have been written on “Minorities in the MCU, pre-Black Panther”. Remember, there’s a reason BP made so much noise in the first place.

So excluding those two we have, let’s see, M’Baku, Blade, and Fury who aren’t exactly the most superheroic superheroes, Eli Bradley is proooobably coming, I doubt Miles Morales is coming (because he’s just Peter Parker in the MCU), Luke Cage(?) Bishop(??), Sunspot(???), Blue Marvel(????). Not only are they not A-List, I would not put money on any of them being in the MCU any time soon.

Cyclops is thee Captain America of the X-Men. He’s the frontman. He’s the poster boy. He’s the “boy scout”, which in other words means he’s the hero, if there has to be one. It would mean a lot right now, and specifically *right now*, if he were to be black. The MCU needs it. It NEEDS it.

12. The X-Men is the Summers Story: I’ll even make the case that if just one character needs to racebent, then it should be Cyclops, because that of course implies that other related characters need to be black because half of the X-Men universe is in fact a part of the Summers family.

So now Cable is black. Corsair is black. Havok is black. And one of the most central stories in the X-Men mythos, the Summers family drama, is now a black family drama set in space or the future or where the fuck ever. The concept is boundary pushing. When white families have drama in the media, it gets to be Game of Thrones or Star Wars, while when black families have drama in the media, it has to be black people arguing in a kitchen or living room about their various earthly traumas (I’m @’ing you, Mr. Perry). I mean, that’s all fine and good often times, but I want my black family drama in space, dammit.

And again, this is the X-Men, the series that’s all about *minorities* and their struggle, so again, why not?

Oh, and I’ll even throw out a Havok fancast for you: How bout Jharrel Jerome?

#cyclops #scott summers #the mutants #monica rambeau #X-men #xmen #marvel #MCU #fancast #jharrel would actually be a better sunspot #but you get the point #my man would have OPTIONS

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dwellordream · 3 years

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“…There is a real belief on behalf of a not insignificant subset of society that the medieval Church was a shadowy organisation dedicated solely to suppressing knowledge and scientific advancement. This is not true.

The Church was in all actuality the medieval period’s largest benefactor of scholars of all stripes. Initially, in the early medieval period much learning was focused in monastaries in particular. Because monks took a vow to eschew idleness, they were always looking for new ways to work for the greater glory of God, or whatever. Sometimes this took the form of doing manual labour to feed themselves, but as monasteries such as Cluny rose to prominence they did more and more work in libraries as well.

Monks copied and embellished manuscripts and kept impressive libraries. Sometimes this work took place inside what we call “scriptoria” where more than one scribe is working at a time. They saw themselves as charged with transmitting knowledge. A lot of that knowledge was, of course, pagan, because they were extremely into classical thinkers. They were also reading this work of course, and writing their own commentaries on it. Many of them took the medical texts and used them to set up hospitals within their monasteries, as we have talked about before.

Lest you think this is all one big sausage fest, women were also very much about that book life within nunneries. They also had their own scriptoria and were busy scribbling away, reading, writing, and thinking. If you wanted a life where you strove for new scholarly heights, odds were that in the early medieval period you did that inside a monastery on nunnery.

As the medieval period moved on, scholarship eventually moved out of the cloister and into cities when the medieval university was established. The first degree awarding institution to call itself a university was the University of Bologna established around 1088, though teaching had been going on there previously and students had been going to Bologna from at least the late tenth century. Second was the University of Paris, which was established in 1150. Again teaching had been happening there from much earlier, and at least 1045.

Medieval universities weren’t like universities now, in that they didn’t have established campuses or anything like that. They were, more or less, a loose affiliation of scholars who would provide lessons to interested students. The University of Paris, for example, described itself as “a guild of teachers and scholars” (universitas magistrorum et scholarium).

In Paris there were four faculties: Arts, Medicine, Law, and Theology. Everyone had to attend the Arts school first where they would be asked to learn the trivium, which was comprised of rhetoric, logic, and grammar. Basically that meant all undergrads spent their time learning to argue, which is how the whole Abelard thing comes about. Then if they wanted more they could go do medicine, law, or theology. Theology was considered the really crazy good stuff, as medieval theologians were sorta held up in the way we worship astrophysicists like Neil de Grasse Tyson (ugh) or Stephen Hawking now. But if you wanna be a dick and super modern about it and think that nothing is more important than science, you will note that medicine is there and actively pursued.

So what, what does all of this have to do with the Church not being suppressive? Well literally everyone, both scholars and students in a medieval university was a member of the clergy. That’s right. Are you a Christian and you wanna learn about medicine? Well you need to take holy orders first. So every single scientific advancement that came out of a medieval university (and there were plenty) was made by a man of the cloth.

The quick among you might have spotted that the thing about unis is that they were just for dudes though, and that is lamentably true. Women weren’t able to take the same orders as men, which means they were excluded from university training. Plenty of them got tutored if they were rich. (See poor Heloise who just had Abelard, like, do himself at her.) Otherwise there was plenty of sweet stuff going on in nunneries still and always, as the visionary natural biologist Hildegard of Bingen can attest. Monasteries were also still producing good stuff as Thomas Aquinas would be happy to let you know from the comfort of his Dominican order.

Given that all of this is the case, it’s hard to square that circle of “the Church is intentionally suppressing knowledge!” with the fact that everyone actively working on acquiring and furthering knowledge was a member of it and all. The Church was a welcoming home to scholars because it was a place where you got the time needed to contemplate subjects for a long time. If you have your corporeal needs taken care of, then you can go on to think about stuff. The Church offered that.

Having said all of this, there were, of course, plenty of Jewish and Muslim scholars at work in medieval Europe as well. The thriving Jewish communities of the medieval period had their own complex theological discussions about the Talmud, and produced their own truly delightful sexual and scientific theory that I will never tire of reading.

I’ve also talked at length about how Islamic medical advances were very much taken on board by medieval Christians in Europe. The fact that the Christians in holy orders beavering away at the medical faculties of universities across Europe were very much looking to a Muslim guy called Ibn Sinna for medical knowledge makes it hard to see the Church as an oppressive hater of all things non-Catholic. I’m just saying.

What else is at play here? Meh, society writ large. A lot of us in the English as a first language speaking world, and in northern Europe more generally have been raised in a Protestant context even if we ourselves are not Protestant. The thing about that is Protestants, famously, is that they are not huge fans of the Church. Big news, I know. In the Early Modern period this could get kinda wild, with things like the Great Fire of London being blamed on a nefarious “Papish plot”, for example, becoming a nice early example of a conspiracy theory. (That conspiracy theory was still written in Latin at the based of The Monument built to commemorate the fire until 1830 when the Catholics were officially emancipated in Britain. LOL.)

When the whole Enlightenment thing went down, generalised distrust of Catholics was then later compounded by the fact that “serious” thinkers aka Voltaire’s ridiculously basic self began to categorise the accumulation of knowledge specifically in opposition to religious thought. This is the old “Age of Reason” which we currently allegedly reside in, versus the “Age of Faith” idea. The Church as an overarching institution from the age of faith was therefore thought of as necessarily regressive, and it became assumed that it has always been actively attempting to thwart advantage for vaguely sinister reasons that are never fully articulated.

…Now, plenty of people were killed for witchcraft because they were doing medicine. The witch trials were a very real thing, and you know when and where they happened? In the modern period, and usually with a greater regularity in Protestant places. Witchcraft trials peak in general from about 1560-1630 which is the modern period. The most famous trials with the biggest kill count took place in Trier, Fulda, Basque, Wurtzburg, Bamberg, North Berwick, Torsåker and Salem. You know what was going on in most of the places? The Reformation. Witch trials sort of reflected various confessions of Christianity’s ability to effectively protect their flocks from evil. Did Catholics kill “witches” oh you bet your sweet ass they did. So did Protestants, and it was all fucking ugly.

What is important to note is that in countries where Catholicism was static witch trials were largely unheard of. Ireland, the Iberian Peninsula, and Italy, for example, just didn’t go in for them even though they were theoretically in the clutches of a nefarious Church bent on destroying all medical knowledge or something.

Now, none of this is to excuse the multifarious sins of the institutional Church over the years. In many ways my entire career as a medieval historian is a product of the fact that I was frustrated with the Church after 16 years of Catholic school. If you had to go to a High School named after the prosecutor in the Galileo trial, you might also end up devoting yourself to picking intricate theological fights with the Church, OK? (Yes, this is my origin story.)

And that brings us to the crux of the matter: if you make up a bunch of stuff that the Church did not do it makes it harder to critique them of the manifold things they actually did do and are doing right fucking now. We need to be critiquing the Magdalene Laundries; the international cover up of pedophile priests; signing an actual concordant with Nazi Germany; the regressive attitudes towards abortion and contraception that happen still, now, and endanger the lives of countless women. All of this is real, and calls for the strongest possible condemnation.”

- Eleanor Janega, “JFC, calm down about the medieval Church.”

#medieval #religion #education

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dancedance-resolution · 3 years

Text

Why Batwoman 2x01 was so good:

1. The writers managed to strike a great balance between paying respect to Kate Kane and introducing Ryan. Kate Kane as a character is, of course, significant to DC. She’s an important source of representation as a Jewish lesbian, and she has a large legacy/mythos within the larger DC Comics history. Batwoman first showed respect to Kate as a character by wisely chosing to not kill her off. Next, there’s one scene where Ryan is reading up on Kate, developing new understanding and respect in the process, and every few seconds the camera cuts over to where Mary and Luke are reading up on Ryan, similarly gaining understanding and respect for Ryan. I think this scene effectively facilitate the batsuit’s—as a mantle, as a symbol, and as a mythos—being passed on to Ryan. It paid a large amount of respect to Kate as a character, pointing out some of the most significant aspects of her character, and sort of drew Ryan into Kate’s mythos as Batwoman in a way that helps facilitate her becoming Batwoman - she comes to learn and respect the history and the gravity of Batwoman as a person, as an entity, as a figure of justice, and as an icon; and as a result, she can now carry on that legacy and expand it, using it to bring even more good to the world.

But even before she learned about Kate, Ryan respected her. When Ryan first met Mary and Luke, she offers genuine condolences for their loss. She doesn’t disrespect them or make light of their grief. Even though these two people are strangers,

In the process of paying due respect to Kate, however, Batwoman did not minimize Ryan or treat her as “second” to Kate. Ryan got a significant amount of screentime and focus—as she should—and her time on screen was all truly meaningful. We’ve begun to see her backstory, see who she is as a person, and see what that will mean for her as Batwoman.

2. Ryan is a lovable character, and Javicia did an excellent job portraying her. I love Ryan a lot, guys. She’s passionate, earnest, and driven. She’s down-to-earth and has a strong sense of justice that leads her through life. And at the same time, she’s a charming dork - the type of charming dork who yells “I’m bulletproof, bitches!” after dangling helplessly from the sky by a grappling hook. I, obviously, fucking love her for it.

I also think that the writers did a great job of keeping the vibe of season 1 to a good extent. The way Ryan was introduced felt like a proper introduction considering what we know about this show’s Gotham and considering how things were done in season 1. It worked well. Additionally, it is not lost on me how meaningful it is that from Ryan’s very first scene, we see that her instinct is to selflessly help victims to the best of her ability, and it is because she went out to help them that she stumbled upon the Batsuit. Furthermore, in that scene where she does discover the suit, the flashbacks establish that this moment in meaningful beyond just this one moment of time - it has connection to Ryan’s history and motivations for becoming Batwoman. During the DC Fandome this past summer, Caroline Dries said this season would deal with destiny. I think that that first scene was a great way to introduce it as a concept without taking away any of the sense that Ryan truly deserves this mantle as well. (One last side note - the use of music and sound effects in that first scene was excellent.)

While the writers certainly deserve a good bit of credit for creating this amazing character from scratch, I think Javicia also deserves a lot of credit here - she did an absolutely stunning job as Ryan. The charm I saw in Ryan was very similar to the goofy charm she brought to Ali in God Friended Me (which I loved, by the way), and those lighter scenes were played with the same adeptness as the dark, intense, and gutwrenchingly emotional scenes.

3. Batwoman acknowledged Alice’s grief and trauma in a way that also gave viewers some closure regarding season 1 matters. I think that Alice’s grief process was written pretty well considering her already existing trauma. And that succinct summary of Alice’s plan to get her dad to kill Kate was pretty clever on the writer’s part, as it gave us some closure regarding season 1’s goings on that were interrupted by COVID (and that were unable to be seen to completion since Kate Kane is no longer Batwoman).

4. The episode had many powerful moments. Some quotes that really struck me:

“You make it sound like these are all my choices...You wanna know why I haven’t paid my fines? Because I can’t find a job. Because I don’t have a home. Because no land lord wants to rent to an ex-con on post-release. You see how this works? No one cares that the dope wasn’t mine or that the Crows were dirty. Or that I’m actually a decent human. I am a file in your cabinet. That is not having power. That is thr very definition of powerless.” This line is made all the more powerful by the fact that Ryan’s first words upon donning the Batsuit are “Time to be powerful.”

“Trust me, I know I’m not a symbol, or a name, or a legacy...I am a number. I am the 327th baby of a Black woman who died of childbirth that year. I am a twenty-dollar-a-day check to a group home. I’m Inmate 4075 serving eighteen months for a crime I didn’t commit. But I can live with all those numbers because the mama who adopted me? I was her number one. But it turns out she’s just one of a quarter million murders in this country who have not seen justice. And that is a number I can’t live with.”

“I’m bulletproof, bitches!”

5. Batwoman has a truly excellent supporting cast. I know that a significant portion of the Batwoman fandom has been in love with Mary, Luke, and Alice since day one. One common fear within the fandom was that season 2 would feel like a completely different show, but at least in this episode, that wasn’t the case. The supporting characters were all prominently featured and given a good amount of emotional depth to cover - and seeing their journey helped the show feel familiar and helped carry us viewers over into this new era of Batwoman. And because the transition from Kate to Ryan was so well done, as I discussed in point 1, I didn’t feel like there was any absence or lacking in the show.

6. They did a great job carrying over that Kryptonite storyline from last season. In fact, it makes a lot more sense to me now. I was admittedly a bit confused by the whole Kryptonite storyline last season (it felt a bit like a mere device to facilitate Kate’s relationship with Kara - which, hey, I’m not complaining; I loved that friendship and think they should have hooked up once). Perhaps it was confusing since COVID cut it short. But whatever the reason, I’m glad that I now understand the deeper purpose behind this Kryptonite storyline. And, wow, this has the potential to be super cool and interesting!

7. They called out the Crows in a meaningful way. I think I’m not the only person who is a bit uncomfortable with the Crows in both concept and practice (yes, I do understand that they’re based on the comics, though). So I really appreciated—and found it super powerful—that it was Ryan who delivered the line “The Crows were dirty.” Sometimes I get confused as to whether Batwoman is portraying the Crows as good or bad, so lines like that give me comfort in knowing that the show at the very least acknowledges the problematic nature of an overmilitarized private police force that has been contracted out to have dominion over a city whose population includes a significant amount of low income people.

8. Bonus: They did good by the shippers. Batmoore shippers got some closure by observing Sophie’s grief process and hearing the letter Kate left her. Pennymoore shippers are certainly getting emotional and significant content for their ship. And for clowns like me, the show introduced a great new ship, Mary/Ryan, that I adore even though I know it won’t be canoning, lol.

#batwoman #batwoman spoilers

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apenitentialprayer · 3 years

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I somehow ended up on a wikipedia on Christian influences on Islam, and read that the Muslim practice of praying 5 times a day, prostrating a certain way, and facing east might have been influenced by the prayer practices of early Christians, especially Middle Eastern Christians. Is this true, and are there other examples of potential Christian influences on Islam? You know, aside from New Testament material being referenced in the Quran?

Yeah, I can think of a few things. First and foremost is the Isra’iliyyat literature, a series of stories about the prophets of Israel coming from Jewish and Christian sources. In the early centuries of Islam, these accounts were very popular because they helped fill out a lot of the more cryptic references found in the Qur’an. It is through these oral traditions that a lot of Jewish and Christian exegesis entered into Islamic tradition, usually under the position that it could be believed or disbelieved, so long as it doesn’t contradict Qur’anic or hadith sources. Starting in the 14th century, though, fear of corrupting authentic Muslim traditions caused scholars like Ibn Kathir to start rejecting them. The asceticism found in the early Islamic period was almost definitely a result of Christian influence; in the Umayyad and early ‘Abbasid periods, Christian holy men were beloved figures among the Muslim populace, and there seems to have been a significant overlap between Muslim and Christian ascetics, with the former often borrowing from the latter. Mainstream Islam has always had a bit of an ambivalent relationship with asceticism, but figures like Rabi’a al-Basri, Moinuddin Chisti, and the like would fit pretty easily into Christian tradition. Relic and saint veneration is a major biggie, too. Islamic fundamentalists like the Salafis would like to pretend these are pagan accretions, but most of Islamic history is filled with pious Muslims who believed that baraka (blessing) could be given to them by the physical remains and possessions of prominent Muslim saints (called ‘awiliya, or “friends of God”). In certain parts of the Indian subcontinent and in Iran, you can visit the graves of important Muslim saints. Moinuddin Chisti’s grave is the to-go spot for women hoping to become pregnant, for example, while water that has been used to soak hairs or toenail clippings of the Prophet Muhammad are believed to have miraculous curing effects. Among Shi’a Muslims specifically, the concept of redemptive suffering is a major part of devotional religiosity, with veneration of the passion of Husayn ibn ‘Ali playing an important role in Shi’a spirituality. These involves both commemoration of his death in the forms of ascetic practices, but also emulation of his life (a kind of Imitatio Husayni, if you will); in essence, much as how the Christian becomes part of the family of God by becoming a member of the Body of Christ, the Shi’a becomes a part of the family of God by becoming a member of the ‘Ahl al-Bayt (the People of the House, or Muhammad’s family) by mourning the death of his grandson. We’re getting into more particular examples now, but the ‘Alawis of Syria (who may or may not be Muslim, depending on who you ask) worship Jesus as a manifestation of God, but not the primary manifestation; in that cycle of manifestation, it is Peter who was the primary God-figure, who is hidden by Christ, just as how the spiritual power of ‘Ali was hidden by Muhammad in the next cycle. ‘Alawi ritual and belief is largely secret, but it does involve a Eucharist-like meal centered on wine. I could probably think of more, and how Islam affected Christianity as well, but I think the point is getting across; there is significant cross-fertilization between the three major Abrahamic faiths in the course of their respective histories.

#asks #Islam #Christianity #Husayn #Alawites #relic #asceticism

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screechingpulsar · 3 years

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Why I Value Tagging Over Censorship

(TW for descriptions of antisemitism, nazism, cocsa (child-on-child sexual assault), necrophilia, and torture-porn. I will mark in bold the sections where this is discussed in more detail.)

@olderthannetfic you asked to be tagged in this post, so here you go! It’s uhhh... Not a fun story! But I thought it was important to share since people tend to claim that those on the more “freedom of expression” side of things have no experience with running into explicit/problematic work as a minor, or have been groomed into believing that it’s okay to do this and that’s... not accurate.

TLDR: When an archive’s policy is that problematic or triggering content must be tagged rather than deleted, it is actually much easier to root out bigoted garbage and/or otherwise objectionable content than on a site where such content is not allowed, but also not warned for. As an example, as a child I was exposed to a truly terrible piece of work deliberately made to trigger and hurt others. Had that work been forced to use proper tags, I would have never seen it, or seen the tags and known to stay away.

The anti/pro-ship debate is exhausting to watch, tbh. I hold opinions on the issue that I’m sure people from both sides would take issue with. But one thing that I’ve seen crop up lately that rubs me the wrong way is the debate over AO3.

The argument I’ve seen from antis boils down to: AO3 hosts problematic content-- namely underage explicit fics, rape/noncon fics, incest and rpf, and has it enshrined in its policy that it’s pretty much impossible to get something deleted off the site for being morally repugnant or gross-- therefore it should not exist or instead moderate its content to remove these things. Doing this would make it safer for minors to use the site.

Funny story. As a kid, about 12 years old, maybe a bit younger, I went on a fanfic website that had a policy against hateful or offensive works, and it’s there that I was exposed to the nastiest piece of work I’ve ever seen in my life (and I’ve read HP Lovecraft /half joking).

This site was not AO3. It was FFN (fanfiction.net for those unaware). The fandom was Phineas and Ferb, a widely beloved kid’s cartoon.

I avoided AO3 because even as a 12 year old I recognized that site had Adult Content(tm) on it, and if I didn’t want to see that I shouldn’t go on there. So I didn’t.

FFN didn’t allow NC17/E-rated stuff on its site, and because of the relatively stricter moderation policy, people tended to skew their ratings up to avoid being reported. This meant my creepypasta loving ass often looked through T and M stories to find that good good horror content. Also, FFN didn’t have a smut filter of any kind, the best I could do was remove any works tagged “romance”. Which I did, because again, horror-loving child.

(TW comes into effect most prominently here)

The fic was called, “The Final Solution for Isabella”. Should I have known better from the title alone? As a Jewish descendant of a Holocaust survivor, yeah probably. Except I didn’t, because I was twelve and naive, and didn’t think that someone would be fucking sick enough to write what they did.

(I thought the title was a reference to the dynamic between Isabella and Phineas where she constantly flirts with him and he ignores her advances/is unaware of them. And that this fic would be her trying some wacky scheme to finally get him to notice. I was, of course, very wrong.)

Short version of the fic: Phineas tortures and rapes Isabella for being Jewish, then is graphically described to set her on fire and then have sex with her charred corpse.

The fic’s taken down now (I checked about 5 years ago, I don’t know how long it was up after or before I saw it), don’t go looking for it. Not that I imagine you’d want to.

It wasn’t the only or first story I’d seen that covered topics like WW2 and the Holocaust either. Again, creepypasta kid, I saw tons of nazi-experiment ghost stories. On the creepypasta wiki. Where I expected them. Where it was often made abundantly clear in advance what kind of horror I’d be dealing with.

(a rare advantage to formulaic, bad writing)

It was the first (and only) fic that genuinely traumatized me though.

I want to be clear here: this wasn’t merely dark fiction, or someone’s weird snuff. This was malicious, created to deliberately upset as many people as possible, especially Jewish fans of PnF. This was beyond even the grooming material antis talk about. There aren’t enough insults in the world to describe what this was.

(Graphic description is over.)

FFN’s moderation policy didn’t catch the most blatantly terrible and hateful thing I’ve ever seen in my life. How many other kids saw that fic, I wonder? How many little Jewish kids were exposed to that kind of vitriol while just trying to have some fun with a show they liked?

Trust me. You want people to have a place where they can put their fucked up fics and have them be well-tagged. I can go on AO3 and filter out adult content of any flavour with a couple clicks. I could have even gone on it without the age filters and just filtered out smut, but still gotten the gratuitous violence my tiny edgelord soul craved!

(Sidebar: there was another fic on FFN in the PnF fandom that my child self absolutely loved: it was about a haunted house where most of the cast ended up dying brutally and graphically. It was messed up, kinda trashy and gorey for gore’s sake, but that’s what I was looking for, and that’s what I found.

(I’m not sure if that one’s better or worse than the circus AU one I saw where Phineas literally ate people’s souls... I liked that one because it’s how I learned about Creature Feature. Probably should have just picked up Cirque du Freak, eh?)

No matter how morally reprehensible I find some of the content on AO3 to be, I will never fault them for having the tagging system they do. I would much rather see a sign that says, “WARNING: Horrible, awful, no good, very bad stuff ahead” and go somewhere else than see a sign that says, “We don’t allow the horrible, awful, no good etc. content here!” only to be smacked in the face by something I’d rather have not seen.

(Disclaimer: I’m aware that someone could just as easily not tag their shit on AO3 and have the same effect, but fun thing about AO3′s policy: if you don’t put any ratings/warnings on your work, they will automatically put the tags “Not Rated” and/or “Creator chose not to use archive warnings”. So even then, the work could be avoided if a user is, in AO3′s terms, “risk-averse”.)

#fandom discourse #shipping discourse #ao3 #archive of our own #in which i out myself as a huge edgelord for internet discourse #fun fact about my lovecraft jab: i found out what he named his cat through the necronomicon i got for my birthday at 14 #and surprise surprise! reading lovecraft didn't make me think racism and xenophobia was okay!#in fact: it's a big part in how I started noticing problematic themes in horror! and then in other genres too!#anyway that's not quite relevant to the main point of this post #which boils down to: if people wanted to expose kids to abuse/incest/underage fics against their will #thoroughly tagging them so content filters can pick up on them on a website known for its robust tagging system #is a pretty bad way to accomplish this #in other words: i have moral issues with some shit people write #but i have ethical issues with trying to censor things instead of just labelling them as what they are and moving on

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