Dear white people Why do you want so very badly to be a victim? Is it just that the very idea of somebody, somewhere getting something that you imagine you're not getting makes you crazy?
Today, an attorney takes to the pages of a national publication to declare loudly and for all to hear that she is dumb, easily persuadable, and lacking in any genuine moral foundation whatsoever.
I haven’t quite thought this out enough to have my thoughts totally clear, but I usually clarify my thoughts by writing them down, so I’m gonna try it anyway. For context I am writing as an ethnically Jewish white person.
I have seen some Discourse where person A says something like “We can’t dehumanize the people we’re fighting,” and then Person B goes “Yeah, this was why we shouldn’t have punched that Nazi!” and then Person C goes “Uh, we have to punch Nazis,” and then Person D says “Nazis aren’t people!” and then the whole Discourse Cycle starts up again.
The problem, I think, is that we are taking “don’t dehumanize” as code for “be nice to?” And that’s not what it is. “Don’t dehumanize” means understanding there is not a profound difference between yourself and a person who believes something repugnant. Otherwise, it becomes too tempting to think that a repugnant belief is some kind of monstrous mental defect that we get to just magically Not Have, because we – after all – are people, and Nazis are Not People.
If we believe that we are immune to repugnant beliefs, we become incredibly vulnerable to them. Sorry if I’m being redundant here, but I really want to spell this out: If we think that Nazis aren’t people, we open a door that is going to kill our ability to be useful, effective, intersectional activists. We will absolutely become complacent. Beliefs will creep up slowly in our brains, because that’s what brains do, they gather information and make just whatever crap soup out of it, and we – if we sense the development of these ideas at all – will go “Well, this must NOT be a repugnant belief, because only Not-People have repugnant beliefs, and I am a Person!”
And again, that’s not synonymous with saying that “If you want to punch Nazis in the face YOU’RE JUST AS BAD AS THEM!!!!” That’s crazy and garbage. It’s also not synonymous with “We have to tolerate Nazi beliefs!” I am trying to make a pretty straightforward statement that Nazis are people. They are people, and we have to look that fact dead on, and then we have to punch those people in the face, hard and often.
Nazis ARE people and tbh that’s part of why they’re so terrifying to me.
If you believe Nazis aren’t people, then you will refuse to believe that anyone who is (to you) self-evidently a person could really be a Nazi. It should go without saying that this is counterproductive.
Also: if you insist that Nazis aren’t people so that you can justify treating them in a fashion that you believe one must never ever treat people, thaaaat’s kind of morally bankrupt. Not because the way you want to justify treating Nazis is necessarily a wrong way to treat Nazis, but because what you need to do is rigorously reexamine that never ever.
I’ve been seeing discussions on my dash about the use of the words “pussy” and even the color of the pink hats used in the women’s march, and I’d like to submit a couple of ideas to you for consideration.
Let me preface by saying: I am not in favor of signage/words that prioritize one set of sexual organs over another because that gets into weird places of associating genitalia with gender, etc.
However, signs that say things like “Pussy Grabs Back” - please consider that this is in context and direct opposition to a man who bragged about assaulting women with vaginas by saying “I grab ‘em by the pussy.” This is reflecting his language back in the form of protest, and in this case, I think is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
Also please consider that vaginas are very, very often targets and sites of violence, even when they belong to men. Vaginas are so derided, as a concept and as a body part, that most of the anti-trans-woman rhetoric I’ve heard from cis men in my life has centered around the fact that they would rather die before they’d give up their penis for a vagina. (Nevermind their complete lack of comprehension about the actual experience of being trans and how body parts do or don’t contribute to that.) I’m saying that this is their actual viewpoint: vaginas are terrible and anyone who would want to have one is weak and less-than. So signs that laud, praise, and glorify vaginas are still an act of rebellion. (Of course I am also saying please do not make the mistake of vagina=woman. Having a vagina is a completely separate issue from your actual gender.) But in this context, pro-vagina is still an act of rebellion against a patriarchy that views them as dirty and worthy of scorn and violence.
Also, as far as pink hats go: I would like you to consider that, completely separate from the reference to “pink bits” – even taking into account cat ears and the name “pussy hat” – pink is considered a feminine color and as such is subject to the same derision that a patriarchy places on women.
idk if you’ve ever been to the American South, especially, but say you’re standing outside a Target or a Wal-Mart in Virginia or the Carolinas or Georgia or Alabama. Say it’s pouring rain. Say it’s hailing. And there’s a dude standing a couple of feet away from you without an umbrella, squinting under the brim of his sportsball team cap. Say you have an extra umbrella and you are a generous person and you go to offer it to this man. But say the umbrella is pink.
Let me tell you a thing: There is a roughly 80% chance that the man is going to look at the pink umbrella, snort, take a step sideways away from you, and say, “Not that thing.” He won’t touch it. He probably won’t even be polite about refusing it. In his mind, you’ve just offended him by offering him something that is pink – the color of femininity. You’ve just implied that he’s not masculine. You’ve just implied that he’s weak, or “gay”, or whatever.
I’m not exaggerating. I have lived in the American South all my life. I’ve seen men stand in hailstorms rather than touch something pink. I’ve seen men go naked rather than wear something pink. I’ve heard them complain about having to TOUCH something pink.
So yeah, there’s a context to the color beyond just “pink parts.” The context is that anything the patriarchy PERCEIVES as feminine – whether it actually is or not – is a fair target for violence in their minds. And that is worth protesting.
But even with this context in mind, I want to put out there one more thought: Protect trans women. Protect intersex women. Protect women of color. Protect disabled women. And if any of these people feel uncomfortable or excluded because of the way that these items are often associated with cis white women, respect that, and don’t force them to interface with it.
No, not all women have a vagina and no, not all people with vaginas are women. A vagina doesn’t make you a woman, but this is still a women’s issue, just like parenting, the economy, violence against transwomen, and immigration are women’s issues. Women are reduced down to their vaginas, whether or not men have access to them, whether or not a woman has a vagina, what it looks like, what it smells like, how aesthetically pleasing it is to someone else, how many people have touched it, how you’re allowed to medicate it, how you’re allowed to procreate with it, how much they can charge you to access it.
For anyone who has a vagina, this is a push to reclaim power over it.
And it’s just one of a great many issues that women collectively face together.
Saw this in the notes on this post and wanted to give it some visibility, not least of which because it sources some of the bullshit ways vaginas, specifically, are targeted by this cishet white patriarchy trying to crush us all and one of the things internalized misogyny does is ignore or excuse any time the patriarchy does this.
(I also want to point out that WOC and indigenous women are statistically at higher risk for having their bodily autonomy attacked than white women, and we’re at a higher risk than is acceptable to begin with. idk I just wanted to acknowledge that.)
Good to see he managed to get in his hourly mention of Japanese internment camps.
After he voted to support the party that put him in there
I love that he supports the party that quite literally passed an executive order to put him and his family in an internment camp, take his property and deny him his rights because they wanted to.
Not evil republicans, a Democrat.
George is like that annoying vegan.
“IS THERE A DOCTOR ABOARD?!?!?!”
“I was in an internment camp”
“and I’m a vegan”
Do you know how long our families stayed silent on this issue and died without ever talking about the internment camps (or passing on their culture, language, or cultural objects to their descendants)? They, the Issei and a few Nisei, stayed silent for decades so ashamed and hurt because of what happened to us.
@shadows-ember Most Japanese Americans with history in the internment camps (whether they were interned and/or their parents, siblings, grandparents, great grandparents, or great great grandparents were interned) support the Democrat party and I believe this shows how much the Democrat party stance has changed over the years and if you study politics, you (will) know that the parties switch their stances every so often.. the only thing that may possibly stay the same is how involved government should be with the lives of citizens.
I have met someone who fought for the 442nd and he vehemently hates Trump and what the Republican party currently stands for and asks us why and how such a man got elected and he shared with us, Japanese and Japanese-Americans, what it was like during his time period and how we shouldn’t repeat history and what he fought for. Of course, there are Japanese Americans who also believe in the Republican party because of FDR and Ronald Reagan and/or other personal reasons.
We have every right to speak about our experiences and the experiences of our families. We stayed silent for too long and now that history is inevitably repeating aspects of itself again, we will not stay silent so another group of people experience what we/our families experienced. We are the Nisei, Sansei, Yonsei, and Gosei who will speak when we can about what we experienced.
I don’t always like what comes out of Mr. Takei’s mouth but when it comes to Japanese Internment, I’m glad he’s speaking up and talking about it and reminding everyone…
This winter, Glenn Beck took a wee, tentative sip of sanity, and found it surprisingly refreshing. He gave an interview to the New Yorker talking about how bad he felt for “freaking out about Barack Obama.” He told the Atlantic he regretted his role in the rise of Trumpism: “I’ll not only take my share of blame, I’ll…
A comic about looking after yourself, your loved ones and your mental health during the tough times ahead. I started this last November, when people were hurting so hard it was difficult to function - I’m sorry it took me so long to finish it.
It's... bad that I find it a relief that Trump is deliberately screwing up relations with the IC, right? Like, really, really, incomprehensibly bad that THAT'S my silver lining, right?
Donald Trump’s bizarre appearance at the CIA on Saturday drew rave reviews … from Trump himself, who tweeted that he received “long standing ovations,” and his chief of staff Reince Priebus, who called it a “love fest.” Other reviewers weren’t so kind, starting with former CIA Director John Brennan, who called it a “despicable display of self-aggrandizement in front of C.I.A.’s Memorial Wall of Agency heroes” and said Trump “should be ashamed of himself.” According to Priebus, Brennan is just “bitter” because Trump is replacing him. Fine, then! Let’s set Brennan aside and check out what some other current and former intelligence officials have to say.
“What self-centered, irrational decision process got him to this travesty?” [30-year CIA veteran John] MacGaffin told me. “Most importantly, how will that process serve us when the issues he must address are dangerous and incredibly complex? This is scary stuff!”
Hmmm. That doesn’t sound good. But maybe people currently working in intelligence felt differently? Not so much.
U.S. intelligence officials tell CBS News Mr. Trump’s visit to CIA headquarters was “uncomfortable,” and that he “made relations with the intelligence community worse.”
And really, you don’t have to be an uncritical fan of the CIA to realize that its people might be sharp enough to be suspicious when Trump went from comparing the leak of an intelligence dossier on him to Nazi Germany to showing up at the CIA and claiming that “we’re on the same wavelength” and “you’re going to get so much backing. Maybe you’re going to say, Please don’t give us so much backing. Mr. President, please, we don’t need that much backing.” (How creepy is it that Trump can’t talk about offering support without making it sound like a threat?)
