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garden-of-succulents · 7 years

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I've taken some time to think over and process recent criticisms that people have made of me. Thank you to everyone for being patient while I took this time to reflect--I think that a brief review of my behaviour in the past has shown that I often respond poorly and clumsily in the heat of the moment, and these conversations benefit when I give them the thought and effort they deserve.

I am responding to people whose direct responses to me, or public commentary, seemed to indicate they wanted some sort of response from me. I hope I've addressed everyone; please let me know if I've missed anyone. I have also, as was requested, cleared out my OMGCP-related blocklist.

Briefly, about that: I have, in the past, blocked people for two main reasons. The first is that they're producing fannish content (fic, art, or meta) that triggers my anxiety, which my body reacts very poorly to; the other is that I have disagreed with them about something, but know that they are significantly younger/less privileged than I am, and blocking is one of the tools I use to make sure I don't impulsively strike up an unfair argument about something unimportant.

I would like to apologize for the distress and insult my blocking users caused them; it was not intended. I have been investigating ways to curate my online experience to what I can manage with mental health that varies from day to day, with less of a negative effect on other people and maintains their ability to draw my attention to important conversations.

Although I believe listening to criticism is important, especially on topics where I am privileged or ignorant, this is something I have to balance with my mental and physical health; I have to carefully budget time and energy to engage with it when I am capable of thinking clearly and deeply. Sometimes I'm able to seek out and read criticism, but sometimes I'm not. I miss conversations or misunderstand peoples' points. I know this is frustrating to people who do not have the luxury of ignoring or escaping these issues in their daily lives, and I'm sorry.

On a practical note, I am taking pains to make sure that people can contact me through my des-zimbits account, but I should make clear that unfortunately, I cannot accept anon messages and I am very unpredictable about seeing things written on blogs I do not follow; my friends are not in the habit of telling me about criticism made by third parties. There have been times that I only found out long after the fact that someone has put enormous amounts of time and energy into critiquing my behaviour on their blog, and become upset that I have not responded or changed. In those circumstances, I never saw the original posts in the first place. I don't have a complete solution for this, but I encourage people to tag me or message me a post they think I should see; if you don't want to deal with me thereafter, just say, "Don't reply."

I am making this apology not in hope that anyone will change their opinion of me or forgive me. I know that people of colour in this fandom are frustrated by white fans' inability to listen and respond in a way that makes things better, and I know that my own behaviour has contributed to that. My sincere desire here is to make it plain that I am willing to listen and try, and perhaps even make other fans feel that they can directly approach me with their frustrations and concerns.

I am beyond grateful to the fans of colour who have expended energy and time educating me, criticizing me, talking to me, and helping me. Your willingness to be open about your feelings and experiences, and to speak truth to power, have been unspeakably helpful in helping me see my blind spots, and understand the effect my behaviour has on other people. I know that it takes a lot of energy and courage it takes to speak about such a painful and infuriating subject. I want to thank the people who, despite my resistance at times, continue to engage me in these issues. Your feedback is valuable and appreciated.

@dexydex and @georgiapeche, re: this post

You’re right, I haven’t been responding correctly to your criticism. I’ve taken it too personally instead of taking a step back to consider your perspectives in a more nuanced and empathetic way. Thank you for all of the emotional labor you’ve expended up until this point trying to get through to me. I’m sorry that I’ve made it your responsibility to teach me what I’m doing wrong rather than go out and learn for myself. I’ve been complacent in the ways I’ve interacted with my own privilege. I’m sorry that my apologies have fallen flat time and time again. I’m sorry I haven’t done enough yet to unlearn my implicit racism. This is something I will increase my efforts to address and correct in the future. It is not your job to forgive me. It is not your job to absolve me of any ill will.

phillipsheabutter, re: this post

You're right; Kent's behaviour in canon is cruel and abusive, which Nursey's isn't. My response to them is very backwards the usual responses. I am especially sorry that my answer about him didn't address the word "hate", so I flatly said that I "hated" him, which is a strong and unwarranted negative assessment to make of his behaviour. This was especially wrong of me because the behaviour I was criticizing is a response many Black readers identify with, to the experience of having their emotional responses intensely policed and invalidated. It is a testament of my ignorance and prejudice that I felt this perspective was something I could choose to discard when thinking about him.

As to how I struggle to have empathy for one behaviour but not the other, I can't offer any excuse for my racism, but I can briefly explain: I’ve tried to articulate in the past that Kent’s narrative strongly evokes people and relationships that have been incredibly formative for me, and that I have dedicated years of personal searching and academic study to understanding Kent's kind of extreme behaviour and maintaining relationships with people who display it. My relationship to invalidating behaviour is still too raw and painful to talk about in detail, but in short, it was something I had powerfully negative experiences with when I was young, and as an adult I have found it deeply distressing when it was directed at me; I have embraced a career based around validating emotions. I hadn't yet truly realized the extent to which it is used as a coping mechanism by African Americans--the majority of Black people I have known have been first- or second-generation Canadians hailing from Africa or the Carribean, who have had expressed different cultural and racial experiences to me, and I haven't consumed enough American media to truly understand where Nursey is coming from. I struggle to relate to him as much as I do to characters like Ransom whose cultural experiences and coping mechanisms are more familiar to me.

In equating Nursey to generic white hipsters I encountered this behaviour from, I was erasing his Blackness in favor of pointing to an implied socioeconomic privilege that in no way makes up for or safeguards him from the experiences of being a Black man living in the United States. That wasn’t just wrong of me, it was careless and racist.

There’s a lot to his character that I’ve yet to explore and it was wrong of me to say I hate him when I haven’t done enough work to understand who he is or where he comes from. I'm going to work more to expand my knowledge and find deeper empathy for him.

@oluranurse, re: this post

You’re right, I keep making the same mistakes over again. I can understand how frustrating it feels when a larger blog says repeatedly that they will be different, and better, but the results are disappointing at best. I can only hope that by taking the time to listen, really listen, to your feedback, that someday I won’t have to apologize for my mistakes (because they will few and far apart).

I realize that as someone who doesn't have Borderline Personality Disorder, it is potentially problematic that I am so invested in its fictional depiction, especially given the extreme stigma against the disorder by members of my own profession. As I've explained before, however, it's a condition I've had significant personal experience with, and writing about mental health issues helps me build the skills that may let me someday write coherently about my own C-PTSD. What's more, I am not pulling these conditions out of nowhere or treating them lightly; I'm a licensed mental health professional, and I take a great deal of care to root my mental health headcanons in close analysis of the source material. The diagnoses I suggest for characters are by no means the ultimate truth about them and alternate perceptions of them are wholly plausible

I would like to talk more about your classification of BPD as "a mental illness that fandom likes to give to characters that have 'bad attitudes'," but on a separate occasion where that discussion doesn’t detract from the real conversation we’re having here.

In reference to the disagreement I had with brenbits, I still believe that the way they engaged me could have been more direct, and less heated, from the start. But I respect that other users confront issues they find problematic differently.

In reference to my post about dealing with criticism, I understand that the tone implied something much different than what I intended. I was attempting to be a resource for content creators who feel discouraged by discourse and offer show them how to respond to said criticism in a thoughtful and nuanced way. I realize how ironic that may sound considering some of my past responses. I know that in that post it sounds like I will apologize and defend every microaggression and racist comment that comes my way. That was never the case, but I’m sorry I did such a poor job of articulating that. Times that I have provided this service include helping writers find essays written by members of minorities about common difficulties or pitfalls in depictions of their experiences, or in helping them personally connect with someone who has the cultural competency to assess a situation, and is willing to expend the emotional labour of providing an author with a critique.

With regard to the time that I answered the question, "Are genderbends transphobic?" I shouldn't have answered, given that I am cis. I will make an effort in the future not to summarize trans peoples' opinions, and step back to amplify the voices of trans people who have already made their thoughts accessible.

I feel that the fandom should do more to support content creators and to talk through (especially with younger creators) what they could be doing better in terms of representation. I do understand, however, that doesn’t mean members of the fandom should have to stand for racist and stereotypical content and/or be grateful that it even exists.

You’re right, I’ve been complacent and racist in how I treat POC characters. I need to take a step back, consume more media and academic material related to the experiences of these characters. I need to immerse myself in the positive representations and transformative works this fandom already has for these characters. I need to make these already available transformative works more visible by interacting with them on my blog in ways that are supportive and enriching. I need do more to change my racist thoughts and tendencies because this is a comic made by a WOC that seeks to better minority representation and inclusion in the sports world. I need to be more present in how my behavior affects the experiences of others in this fandom.

I also concede that I do not understand the inherent danger that POC and trans people endure daily. I cannot take your concerns for granted just because I don’t understand them at first. It’s my personal responsibility to seek out information and understanding. I’m also sorry that I have focused more on my personal reaction to criticism rather than on the concerns raised about my behavior. I have many privileges in this fandom, I need to do a better job of utilizing them properly.

@eriquebittle, re: this post

You’re right, my apology focused too much on my feelings and not how my actions have hurt others. I was attempting to start a conversation I wasn’t ready to engage in properly. My apology was lackluster and nothing new at best. As I’m addressing in other posts, I am working on active change. From now on, I'll give the performative white guilt a rest and focus on listening and changing my behaviour.

@senor-lapin, re: this post

I meant what I said about doing my best. However, my apology was neither warranted in the way I handled it nor effective at articulating how I’m taking steps to fix my racist thoughts and actions. As I’ve addressed previously, I have removed the blocks I placed on other members of OMGCP fandom and will work in the future not to exclude them from the discussion. I will listen, research, and reflect for as long as I need to in order to understand my critics. That is the least I owe them.

@duanlarissa, re: this post

I was ineffective in trying to articulate or consider an intersectionality between neurodivergence and racial identity. The way I addressed Nursey and Dex’s relationship was very simplistic and downright racist. There’s a lot of nuance to their relationship that I haven’t begun to explore and shouldn’t have commented on. Nursey has every right to negotiate Dex’s behavior in a way that keeps him both mentally and physically safe.

@onethousandroaches, re: this post

It isn’t worse. You’re right.

In trying to dissect different aspects of his personality, I was not only minimizing his experiences and struggles, but othering and essentializing him. It was racist. I was racist. I need to consider and accept every part of his identity. I need to take a hard look at what I haven’t liked about him in the past, accept that I’ve been narrow minded and prejudiced, and unlearn those tendencies. I need to set a better example of how white fans should support characters of colour (especially Black characters in a fandom created by a Black woman). I need to use the privilege I have (as a white person, as a popular blog) to support this character and the people who enjoy him. All of him.

#race in fandom discourse #stuff i wrote

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componentplanet · 4 years

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Report: China Sells Minorities Into ‘Forced Labor’ to Benefit Apple, Foxconn, Others

Ongoing human rights violations in China were a significant topic of discussion at the end of 2019. The country has sought to block criticism of its policies towards Tibet, the still-ongoing Hong Kong protests, and its imprisonment of a million or more Uighurs and other ethnic minority groups in forced re-education camps. A new bombshell report from Australia indicates that the Uighurs and other minorities aren’t just being subjected to forced re-education — they’re being used as slave labor after completing their terms of “study.”

The paper, by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, doesn’t use the term “slavery,” preferring to rely instead on the euphemism of “forced labor.” Here’s how the situation is described (Uighur and Uyghur are two different ways of spelling the same word):

It is extremely difficult for Uyghurs to refuse or escape these work assignments, which are enmeshed with the apparatus of detention and political indoctrination both inside and outside of Xinjiang. In addition to constant surveillance, the threat of arbitrary detention hangs over minority citizens who refuse their government-sponsored work assignments. Most strikingly, local governments and private brokers are paid a price per head by the Xinjiang provincial government to organise the labour assignments…

The Uyghur workers, unlike their Han counterparts, are reportedly unable to go home for holidays… Uyghur workers are often transported across China in special segregated trains… Multiple sources suggest that in factories across China, many Uyghur workers lead a harsh, segregated life under so-called ‘military-style management’. Outside work hours, they attend factory-organised Mandarin language classes, participate in ‘patriotic education’, and are prevented from practising their religion. Every 50 Uyghur workers are assigned one government minder and are monitored by dedicated security personnel. They have little freedom of movement and live in carefully guarded dormitories, isolated from their families and children back in Xinjiang. There is also evidence that, at least in some factories, they are paid less than their Han counterparts.

There’s a common perception that the difference between slaves and free individuals is that the latter is paid for their work, but the truth is more complex. This article from the Organization of American Historians is a deep dive into the history of slaves earning wages in the South. In some cases, slaveowners found it advantageous to allow slaves to earn a certain amount of money and to spend it on improving their own lives or the lives of their families. The same is undoubtedly true in China today.

If you can’t refuse a work assignment, can’t go home to see your family, can’t practice your religion, are forced to live by a schedule in which virtually every minute of your life is regimented for you, are kept under constant or near-constant surveillance and subject to the whims of headhunters who earn a bounty for delivering you to a job, and didn’t get any choice in the matter, I’d argue you’re effectively a slave. In some cases, workers’ families are also under simultaneous surveillance back at home, which provides an extra incentive for the slaves “prisoners with jobs” to behave themselves.

Image by Disney, from Thor: Ragnarok. This is one of those “I needed a bit of a joke, because the next few images are really nauseating” moments.

The ASPI estimates that up to 80,000 Uighurs have been forced into labor camps this way, some of them directly after finishing their indoctrination at Chinese re-education centers. The report includes three case studies focused on factories producing goods for Nike, Adidas/Fila, and Apple. A total of 83 companies have been identified as benefiting from these practices:

Abercrombie & Fitch, Acer, Adidas, Alstom, Amazon, Apple, ASUS, BAIC Motor, BMW, Bombardier, Bosch, BYD, Calvin Klein, Candy, Carter’s, Cerruti 1881, Changan Automobile, Cisco, CRRC, Dell, Electrolux, Fila, Founder Group, GAC Group (automobiles), Gap, Geely Auto, General Electric, General Motors, Google, H&M, Haier, Hart Schaffner Marx, Hisense, Hitachi, HP, HTC, Huawei, iFlyTek, Jack & Jones, Jaguar, Japan Display Inc., L.L.Bean, Lacoste, Land Rover, Lenovo, LG, Li-Ning, Mayor, Meizu, Mercedes-Benz, MG, Microsoft, Mitsubishi, Mitsumi, Nike, Nintendo, Nokia, The North Face, Oculus, Oppo, Panasonic, Polo Ralph Lauren, Puma, Roewe, SAIC Motor, Samsung, SGMW, Sharp, Siemens, Skechers, Sony, TDK, Tommy Hilfiger, Toshiba, Tsinghua Tongfang, Uniqlo, Victoria’s Secret, Vivo, Volkswagen, Xiaomi, Zara, Zegna, and ZTE.

How many vocational schools do you know of that don’t have completely fenced-off areas and a dozen or more security checkpoints?

The report details how this massive system of relocation and forced labor has been built up under the guise of an aid program known as “Xinjiang Aid.” What appears superficially as a targeted aid program for the poor and undereducated people in the province is a relocation and reeducation program meant to destroy their culture and religious practices. Companies all over China have been encouraged to provide “industrial Xianjing aid” by building factories in the province to absorb what China terms “surplus labor capacity” or to hire Uighurs for other tasks in factories across the rest of China.

Factories are well-compensated for taking these workers and advertisements for their services have reportedly begun popping up in Chinese publications, as shown above and below:

Compare that with some vintage advertisements for American pre-owned human property.

The report details how, days before Tim Cook visited an O-Film Technology factory in 2017, the company transferred 700 Uighurs to a separate factory. In a now-deleted press release, Cook praised the company for its “humane approach towards employees.” The company reportedly continued to hire more Uighur prisoners throughout the year.

The ASPI doesn’t make any damning accusations that any specific Western company knew that its products were being built by slave labor. There are multiple diagrams attached to each case report that make it clear how intricate some of these supply chains are. When you look at the supply chains for companies like O-Film, you immediately see just how many major firms could be buying products tainted by the use of slave labor:

The ASPI does not argue that Apple or any other company has been aware of what has been going on within their supply chains. But the web of connections between these firms implies many companies have benefited from this practice and need to take immediate action to address it. Past that immediate problem, this is another area where we as a society have to choose whether we want to stay quite so cozy with a nation with an increasingly awful human rights record.

If you’ve paid attention to the clashes over issues like freedom of speech between the United States and China over the past six months, it’s become very clear that China isn’t just attempting to control what is said within its borders. In multiple instances, the Chinese have targeted low-level employees or minor embarrassments with hostility beyond all proportion to the alleged offense. This overreaction is not an accident. It’s part and parcel of how the nation is demonstrating its willingness to enforce its own cultural and social norms on others.

While it is absolutely possible for nations to have positive effects on each other, it is past time to let go of the fiction that engaging with China in economic terms will intrinsically lead the company to democratize its policies or protect the rights of its citizenry. Under the leadership of Xi Jinping, China has moved to curtail freedom of the press and freedom of speech. It has imprisoned 1-2 million citizens in political re-education camps and is forcing some of those citizens into what is effectively slavery to manufacture cheap goods for Western markets.

I’m Not Just a Consumer

Businesses make a lot of assumptions about what their customers will or won’t want. One of the most offensive, I’d argue, is the idea that customers are sensitive to nothing but price. Suggest that we might benefit from moving production to a country where minority workers and their families aren’t literally enslaved to provide cheap labor, and someone will instantly bring up the fact that prices would go up if anything changed. In some cases, that’s probably true. A more meaningful question that few people seem to have the guts to ask these days is, “So what?”

Over the past few years, we’ve watched smartphone manufacturers like Apple and Samsung jack up the price of smartphones to the point that $1,000 isn’t even guaranteed to buy you a top-end product any longer. The iPhone XR starts at $600 while the iPhone 11 Pro Max starts at $1,100, but everybody knows that it doesn’t cost Apple an extra $500 to build an iPhone 11 Pro Max. For the past few years, both Samsung and Apple have increased prices simply because they could increase prices.

Somehow, however, the same MBAs who confidently predict to the Tim Cooks of the world that the market will cheerfully absorb a price increase engineered for the sole purpose of installing more gold-plated bathtubs in the C-suites would quail at the idea of refusing to do business with a reprehensible dictatorship that inflicts catastrophic human rights abuses on its own citizenry. The idea that I might be willing to pay more for an iPhone because Apple wants to spend more money propping up its own stock is treated as a given. The idea that I might be willing to pay more for an iPhone because I don’t believe the Chinese government should be rewarded for literally enslaving people? Well, that’s letting morality get in the way of business.

And yet, the fact remains: I would vastly rather pay an extra $50-$100 to know my phone wasn’t made with slave labor than I would to pay an extra $50-$100 so that some rich schmuck on Wall Street can make an extra million bucks in bonuses this quarter. I know I am not the only person who feels that way.

The clash of values between China and the United States isn’t going to go away. Writing in 1945, philosopher Karl Popper described what is now known as the paradox of tolerance, stating: “Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.”

I am aware of all of the reasons — literally billions of reasons — why United States’ companies seek access to Chinese markets. I am aware of the hyper-optimized supply chains and the decades of investment US companies have made in them. Any effort to shift even a small amount of manufacturing out of China would be difficult and time-consuming, and in many cases, alternatives would have to be developed from scratch. Furthermore, because the Earth’s resources are unevenly distributed, some nations have a much larger supply of valuable resources than others. The United States has most of the world’s helium. China has a huge percentage of rare earths. Bolivia has a huge chunk of the world’s lithium reserves. Even in the best of cases, we live in a global, interconnected economy. There is no way to simply wave a wand and roll the clock back to the early 20th century.

There is, however, still time for Americans to push back on the idea that access to Chinese markets is the highest value to which we, as a people, can aspire to. And since every conversation starts with someone choosing to start it, I’ll go first. I am not willing to pay higher drug prices so that the pharmaceutical industry can continue ripping off Americans with exorbitant drug prices. I am not willing to pay higher prices for goods and services so that “disruptive” companies can pocket their employees’ tips. I am not willing, generally speaking, to watch my own costs rise so that people who already make more money in a day than I’ll make in a year can get just a little richer.

But I would be willing to pay more for my electronics and devices if it meant knowing that the countries and companies where these devices were manufactured weren’t enslaving their employees, driving them to suicide, exposing them to poisonous toxins, or otherwise destroying their lives, particularly when one of the benefits of doing so is knowing that my fellow citizens will not be subject to being fired for the crime of accidentally liking the wrong tweet.

If Tim Cook wanted to demonstrate the courage Phil Schiller claims Apple possesses, he could declare that Apple would take a leadership position in certifying that the workers employed at every company in every part of its supply chain were ethically treated and that none of the profit from its raw material purchases would be used to finance wars or conflict around the world. It would be an enormous challenge — one befitting a trillion-dollar company with enough yearly revenue to qualify as the 42nd-largest economy in the world. If the other companies named in this report joined him, they would collectively represent enough purchasing power to force even China to the bargaining table, if backed up by the US government.

The very concept of the “marketplace of ideas” is that people are allowed to bring their thoughts and ideas to the metaphorical table for everyone to peruse them. The connection between China deploying slave labor in factories and, say, the protests in Hong Kong, is that China doesn’t want anybody talking about any of this, and it’s already proven its own willingness to use extraordinary measures to clamp down on dissent, even when that dissent comes from other countries. We ignore these trends at our own peril.

Now Read:

Report: China’s New Comac C919 Jetliner Is Built With Stolen Technology

Leaked: How Chinese Use AI, Apps for Mass Incarceration, Internment

Blizzard Lowers Penalty on Hong Kong Streamer, Says China Uninvolved in Censorship

from ExtremeTechExtremeTech https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/306909-report-china-sells-minorities-into-forced-labor-to-benefit-apple-foxconn-others from Blogger http://componentplanet.blogspot.com/2020/03/report-china-sells-minorities-into.html

#Report: China Sells Minorities Into ‘Forced Labor’ to Benefit Apple #Foxconn #Others

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