Complicating Your Dichotomies

what the label “social justice blogger” really means

trubr0wn:

• “it is not normal to be against racism, it is a special interest”
• “you shouldn’t be caring about your own rights”
• “caring about your own rights makes you something other than just who you are (BUT I HAVE THE RIGHT TO SAY ALL THE RACIST SHIT I WANT AND I’LL FITE U FOR IT)”
• “if you were a normal person of color you would be fine with white supremacy”
• “i can’t handle POC pointing out my racism so i am going to pretend they’re crazy extremists”
• “lol we’re better than you, so just give up and stop advocating for yourself”

this says several things about the white people using this phrase:

• they’re scared shitless that a POC is calling them out on their white supremacy, whether or not they’ll consciously admit it to themselves
• they were under the impression that most POC are actually okay with the racist shit they say (newsflash, we’re not. and we never were. and just because we don’t say anything IRL doesn’t mean we’re not side-eyeing the fuck out of you and making a mental note to stay the fuck away from your cracker ass) and that you are just an exception to the rule
• they are extremely unsettled by the attention being called to their own behavior so they attempt to make it about the POC and try to ridicule them or make it sound ridiculous that they actually give a shit about how they’re being treated (aka “you stupid darkie, why don’t you just put up with it and stop complaining?”)

the concept of POC caring about racism (aka THEIR OWN OPPRESSION) equalling some “other” interest is in and of itself some of the most racist fuckery i’ve heard. as if it makes no sense for us to not want to be treated like shit, you fucking wish.

all in all this bullshit is a big white defense mechanism (trademarked BWDM™). a racist-as-fuck defense mechanism that actually achieves diddlyshit besides confirming that person’s racist fuckery.

just sayin.

I’m noticing an ongoing trend of complete lack of support for trans women everywhere…

kiriamaya:

whencylonsdream:

Like, even from people that are fucking awesome about everything else.

It never seems to cross peoples minds to be inclusive towards trans women.

It never seems to cross peoples minds to acknowledge trans women.

It never seems to cross peoples minds that without inclusive and acknowledging statements, trans women need to assume that we aren’t wanted.

We NEED to do this because we are tired as fuck of assuming that we are being included.

We are tired of coming into women’s groups and being victimized and abused.

We are tired of going to rape crisis centers and being turned away because our existence is triggering.

We are tired of wanting a safe space and then being told WE are the rapists, the deceivers, the monsters, and the child molesters.

We are tired of being the punchline and the joke. The fetish object and “best of both worlds” so long as we’re gone by morning.

Never mind the fact that many of us are victims of rape.

That many of us have dealt with child abuse.

That many of us have been physically assaulted.

That all of us live and deal with the constant deceptive nature of cis people.

We NEED to assume we aren’t wanted. Because the whole wide world is telling us we’re trash and we can’t be arsed to assume that you actually meant to include us when you said fucking nothing.

We don’t have the fucking luxury to assume that we are being included.

So yeah…

Make it damn clear that you want us around.

Make it clear that you won’t put up with transmisogyny.

Make it clear that you view us as women. That you view us as fucking people.

I’d like to see some fucking solidarity, but I wonder if this will even be reblogged?

And if it is reblogged I wonder how many people that aren’t trans women will do so?

I’m honestly not betting much, so I guess we’ll see.

I normally don’t like to reblog things that include guilt manipulation, but… I’m feeling this way too much lately. Way too fucking much.

intricate-veins:

Dear fellow white people,

If you are playing ‘devil’s advocate’ for a racist system in a racist country which results in the murders of men and women of color by law enforcement and private citizens alike, I would like you to know that you are not in fact a) an advocate, b) needed in any discussion on this topic ever, or c) challenging any established thought. You are a racist.

This system, these institutions, do not need advocating. If you think they do, in any form, you are the problem and no amount of whining that you’re not really like that will absolve you.

Co-signed, and emphasis mine.

Stephen Colbert Doubles Down on Transphobic Joke

transradical:

If you haven’t been watching The Colbert Report the past few nights, you probably missed Mr. Colbert’s random potshot transgender people. In a segment on controversial meat additive known as pink slime, Colbert remarked on the alternative name for pink slime, LFTB, saying “LFTB, because our beef now has so many hormones in it that it’s a part of the transgender community.” 

Shockingly, some transgender people were offended compared to hormone-laden slime in a story that had absolutely nothing to do with the transgender community. Just like every other mention of trans* people by Colbert, we were only brought in as a punchline.

Now, I certainly didn’t like the joke, but it’s not even close to worst thing Colbert has ever said about trans folk. In January of this year , Colbert invoked the sh-word (rhymes with female, nowhere near as nice) at his Carolina rally to make lame pun on Herman Cain’s first name.

I didn’t expect anything more to come from Colbert’s comment — For some reason he always seems to get a free pass for these kinds of comments. — but the next night, Colbert did issue an apology for the joke.  Unfortunately he decided to issue that appology to “any of [his] transgender bovine viewers that may have been offended.” He goes on to mock the argument against forcing strict gender roles on children, which is not strictly even a transgender issue. 

So Colbert makes the “mistake” (his word) of calling transgender people hormone-filled slime and “apologizes” for it by calling us cattle. We’ll I’m satisfied, aren’t you?

This comment wouldn’t stick out if Colbert did not already have such a strong history of making disparaging comments about transgender people or if even once on his program he ever covered a story relevant to the transgender community. A search for the tag “transgender” on ColbertNation.com yields 3 results: the two videos mentioned above and an interview with George Stephanopoulos where Colbert jokes about Joe Biden getting sexual reassignment surgery so he could become the first female vice president. Classy.

And do I even have to point out that while Colbert has never had an openly transgender guest on his show, Dan Savage has personally been a guest five times!

Handbasket Productions has an incomplete list of the use of transphobic and trans-insensitive jokes on The Colbert Report and its sister-program The Daily Show. The only goes up to 2007, and there have been plenty since, so if you have any jokes from The Colbert Report or The Daily Show against transgender people that particularly hurt or offended you, please share them in the comments below and your reaction to them. I plan on compiling the worst of them into a single video so links to the actual clips would be appreciated.

WHAT.

I just seriously.

Everyone has some hormones in them. Including precious cis people like this asshole. The body needs hormones of various sorts to function.

And of course beef is the one food I’m completely repulsed by, let alone this derived “product”. How’s that making sense to you, Mr Supposedly Funny?

The specifics of this spectacle aside, it’s just disheartening that apparently even all these “highly regarded” comedians/commentary anchors are transphobic fuckwads under the “progressive” facade. That’s the really ridiculous thing about it now. That most cis people are ignorant and make tasteless, groundless remarks is unfortunately nothing new. That these remarks get spouted by popular show hosts like they’re something “edgy” is the real kicker.

I am the absolute worst at Tumblr.

What was this, several months of not posting? Go me. Hi again. Whoops.

Regarding That “Slacktivism” Myth

There are many good arguments for why online activism does count as real activism.

There’s the fact that the whole idea of the internet being just fun and games is busted in the first place; the internet is influenced by real attitudes and shapes those attitudes in turn, and it’s a medium like any other (with the added benefit of comparatively less censorship in countries where censoring the whole thing isn’t customary). There’s the fact that writing remains writing, wherever it happens to be archived. If you harbour the prejudiced notion that nothing of value has ever been posted on the internet, I’ll be happy to prove you wrong with more links than I can count offhand. While we’re at it, what exactly is wrong with - or even particularly new about - using the medium that’s most readily available for writing and sharing your writing?

Then there is the fact that being able to express oneself without much restriction is meaningful in itself, and often precisely what online activists are not getting in their physical surroundings. This may be caused by politics, general (in)accessibility, or just plain lacking an offline forum. There are so many things worth saying including commentary, call-outs and other good points that never make it out in the physical world due to silencing factors or threats of actual violence. On the contrary, if you argue with someone using online comments, at least they can’t interrupt your posting. Even if you don’t convince that particular person, there will be others who see what you’ve written and might judge it from a different position than the confrontational one - this is one of the ways in which online communication can make more of a difference than communication in “meatspace”. The audience tends to be wider and not always bound to one particular place.

Finally, the importance of having a more-or-less-free network where marginalized people can share ideas or keep in contact can’t be stressed enough; I’d like to see something other than the internet fulfil that role so well. The brainstorming factor alone is something that, really, can’t be skipped in any form of activism (how do you demand anything if you haven’t articulated it?). And that’s not even getting into the more social aspects of networking and info-sharing.

I’m sure there’s more in favour of the internet but it doesn’t matter, considering the detractors typically don’t listen to these arguments anyway. So, instead, I’d like to boil it down to the most straightforward, universal point that can be made about the issue:

Writing and distributing said writing is one of the key components of activism.

All this yapping about how distributing it online isn’t “legit enough” is, in principle, anti-activist.

Thank you, and happy 2012.

[TW rape apologism] After Watching Citizens United Film, Perry Shifts To Oppose Abortion Even For Victims Of Rape Or Incest

prolongedeyecontact:

nonplussedbyreligion:

By Scott Keyes on Dec 28, 2011 at 9:30 am

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) declared that he’d experienced a “transformation” following an anti-abortion film and now no longer supports allowing women to get an abortion if they are victims of rape or incest.

Perry joined Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann, and Rick Santorum at the screening of The Gift Of Life, a pro-life film produced by Citizens United, in Iowa last month. Though the 61 year-old Texas Governor had long supported allowing abortions in cases of rape or incest before yesterday, Perry said the movie prompted a change of heart and he now opposed abortions without exceptions for rape or incest.

He told an audience of Iowans at Clark Electric Co-op in Osceola that he was moved by the story of a woman who introduced the film during a screening earlier this month in Des Moines.

“She said, ‘I am the product of rape.’ And she said ‘my life has worth,’” Perry said of his exchange with the woman. “It was a powerful moment.”

The Texas governor made the statement in response to a question from Joshua Verwers, a pastor at Full Faith Christian Center in Chariton, who noted that Perry had recently signed a stringent Personhood USA pledge that urges signatories to oppose abortion “without exception and without compromise.”

Perry’s last-minute shift on abortion comes as he languishes in Iowa polls, where the nation’s first caucuses are held in just six days.

His about-face falls in line with a long series of GOP attacks on a woman’s right to choose this year. As Tanya Somanader notes, “2011 marked a banner year in the Republican war on woman’s health.” From trying to redefine rape to attacking Planned Parenthood to pushing a bill that would let a woman die rather than save her life with a medically-necessary abortion, Republicans like Perry have opened up major new fronts this year in their war on abortion rights.

+++

I don’t want to live in this country anymore. :(

*pregnant people, not just women.

It’s terrifying that all it takes to sway the opinion of a Presidential candidate is a poorly-made piece of shit propaganda film. Do people really not understand the implications of making abortion illegal even in the case of rape? It’s the disturbing idea that rapists have the right to pick who becomes an incubator and no matter what the rape survivor wants or would choose our politicians are on the side of rapists. 

I’ve been sitting on this post trying to come up with appropriate commentary.

Still, all I’ve got is FUCK NO.

All this time I’ve been thinking that at the very least these ridiculous propagandistic movies don’t convince anyone…and then this.

Stereotype Threat

catamite:

Wow that video I just reblogged upset me so fucking much.

I think it’s fucked up that other trans people’s lives and narratives get to me this way. I mean, it’s their lives and their identities. If you wanna call yourself an “FTM” as a noun or talk about your “female upbringing” or claim that testosterone is like fucking heroin to you or something, whatever, it’s your life, I don’t care, I may think you’re a giant bag of douche, and I might think you have internalized cissexism up the wazoo, BUT…. really, does it effect me?

No.

At least, it shouldn’t.

And yet I worry about people thinking that kind of shit has anything to do with me, just because I happen to be trans and happen to have been assigned female at birth.

My narrative is so so completely different. I am not FTM. I was never female. My body was not female. My upbringing was not female. I am not masculine or “transmasculine” or “masculine of center.” I am a male, feminine, androgynous creature. And testosterone is definitely not an addiction for me. In fact I hate injecting and often forget to do it (to the point that I recently started getting periods again, oh my god, fuck my fucking life so much).

So what? I mean, I can have my life and my identity and my narrative and they can have theirs. Right?

Except no. Because of stereotype threat.

That transmasculine, queer-woman-dating, trendy white urban hipster with a ‘female past’ and a ‘connection to women’s spaces’ and a ‘deeper understanding of what women go through’ who ID’s as an FTM and talks about getting a “rush” from injecting “T” etc. etc.? That’s a stereotype. It’s a very familiar stereotype to people in the communities that I hang around, and it’s a stereotype that gets put on me all. The. Fucking. Time.

And it creates EPIC quantities of dysphoria in me. And then I start acting like an asshole and taking a dump on other people’s identities to distance myself from them. And I should stop but I don’t know how because my knee-jerk reaction is just so visceral, so fueled by this sense that nobody will ever see my gender as real and individual and specific and that I will be lumped into the “transmen butches and bois” category for ever even in the minds of some of my closest friends.

It’s something I need to work on. The words “stereotype threat” are a beginning to this work, to remembering that these people’s stories are not about me and that no matter what anybody thinks they will never be about me and that if I just step back from them instead of lashing out I am much more likely to escape the backsplash of the stereotype. 

I think the problem is that the stereotypical narratives are, currently, the only ones being heard by people who aren’t “in the know” (or aren’t bothering to educate themselves on anything related to trans issues besides those readily-available stereotypical accounts). One thing I can’t help is that videos like these always strike me as being made for cis people, to reassure them that we still neatly fit into then arrow concepts of gender they’ve outlined. Even if these vids do accurately reflect the identity of those making them, they always seem to be generalizing their experience as a “universal trans thing”. And so the stereotyping continues, now with the added advantage of looking “trans-approved” enough to be acceptable.

The onus is still on the cis people who assume one trans person’s experience = every trans person’s experience, but telling them that is about as frustrating as debating privilege with 99% of them. (Which I still argue with them, but that’s beside the point.)

dear tumblr sj people: its not “derailing” just bc you don’t wanna hear it or don’t agree with it

youarenotyou:

i’m not gonna sit here silently & wait til i am given permission to speak about my experiences. because that will never happen.

if you are dismissing other people talking about their oppression & calling shit out as derailing & nitpicking just because it’s issues you don’t give a fuck about? you are useless as an activist of any kind. 

& seriously anyone who accuses others of having a victim complex, or self-victimizing, or playing the victim needs to GTFO of social justice 

I’m catching up on Tumblr after several days and suddenly THIS piece of awesome commentary pops up. Yes to infinity.