“People believe that little white kids in the suburbs have the right to live. They have the right to be happy. They have the right to peace. When it comes to black babies in urban neighborhoods, people don’t believe these children deserve to have similar rights. When people say things like ‘I can’t believe this would happen here,’ they are effectively saying that there are some neighborhoods where these tragic outcomes are far more acceptable. I reject this notion entirely, and it is reflective of both white supremacy and classism.”
—The World Cries for Newtown’s Children, but Few of Us Think About Dead Brown Babies, Dr. Boyce Watkins“Terms such as "culturally deprived," "economically disadvantaged" and "underdeveloped" place the responsibility for their own conditions on those being so described. This is known as "blaming the victim." It places responsibility for poverty on the victims of poverty. It removes the blame from those in power who benefit from, and continue to permit, poverty. Still another example involves the use of "non-white," "minority" or "third world." While people of color are a minority in the U.S., they are part of the vast majority of the world's population, in which white people are a distinct minority. Thus, by utilizing the term "minority" to describe people of color in the U.S., we can lose sight of the global majority/minority reality - a fact of some importance in the increasing and interconnected struggles of people of color inside and outside the U.S. To describe people of color as "non-white" is to use whiteness as the standard and norm against which to measure all others.”
—Robert B. Moore, “Racism in the English Language”
Why people of color > “minorities” or “non-white”
don’t make fun of people for their spelling
it’s classist,
it’s ableist,
it’s formalistic,
it strips them of agency (did you know that you can choose to write things in a non-standard way?!?);
it shows that you have absolutely nothing of value to add to the conversation/debate;
it shows that you’re generally just a jerk and it’s a quick way for me to hate you extra-special hard.
I also want to indicate
that its generally upper class women and upper class white women (if you’re speaking in the context of a predominantly white society) who have the means and privilege of performing femininity with the aim of weaponizing it or being feminine at all via action and materialism.
because working class women are often forced into roles that men normally inhabit, and that’s because these women need to clothe and feed themselves and/or their families.
moreover, women of color have always had a complex relationship with femininity because we are desexualized, hypersexualized, compared to men, and most often robbed of any potential femininity we can enjoy or benefit from. we aren’t seen as human, much less women. discussion I see of this on tumblr in lit and fandom? zero.
and ultimately, that’s not surprising, because tumblr focuses primarily on royal and aristocratic (white) women. the entire landscape of graphics, meta, and feministing is thusly homogeneous. and that’s dangerous, because women are diverse, and if you’re ignoring women belonging to marginalized groups, then your feminism has a decidedly racist and classist tone to it that i can’t exactly abide.
“In 2007, women of color held only 7.5% of full time faculty positions and this percentage declined steadily with rising academic rank. Women of color comprised 10.4% of instructors and lecturers; 9.9% of asst. professors; 6.6% of associate professors, and 3.4% of full professors.”
—Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in AcademiaGiving new meaning to ivory tower……
So let's talk reproductive justice.
1.
I want so badly to talk about this picture.
I do.
But when your first thought about it is “support women”, I can’t.
I can feel the words inching away from the raw wounds that even if they scar will always hurt.
Does that seem right to you?
2.
I actively flinch from the word feminist. Because of a long list of reasons.
But the one I really want to talk about right now is the fact that they don’t think about my reproductive justice.
They don’t think about the reproductive justice that means that I and other people who could need birth control who aren’t women deserve to be included.
They don’t think about the reproductive justice that means that they need to support trans people’s rights not to have to be sterilized to get the basic right of being recognized as that person’s true gender/s,
They don’t think about the reproductive justice that means that they need to actively stop sterilization of trans people, of PoC, of disabled people.
They don’t think about the reproductive justice that means the right to accessible, free birth control for everyone.
Their reproductive justice is condoms, abortions, and birth control pills.
Does that seem right to you?
3.
My mother lovingly referred to all of her fetuses as parasites when she was pregnant with each of us. Each of us was unplanned. Each of us was loved.
Why doesn’t anyone ever talk about their mothers being people?
Does that seem right to you?
4.
What the fuck am I supposed to do if I am raped and I get pregnant?
What the fuck am I supposed to do?
This is not a rhetorical question.
What the fuck am I supposed to do?
And I ask because the answer is I don’t know. I was never told.
Does that seem right to you?
5.
Only publishing one narrative of abortion says a lot less about those people’s stories and a lot about the publisher.
The vast majority of abortion narratives are about how abortion is a necessary evil, and very few are about anything else.
Does that seem right to you?
6.
I want to talk about this picture, but for now, let’s talk about the fact that someone took a gender-neutral picture with a powerful message and simplified it down to “support birth control and women’s rights”.
Why does this person not think that we—we people who are still using coat hangers and drinking paint thinner—don’t deserve to say “Never Again”?
Does that seem right to you?
7.
I want to talk about how a very common topic of discussion between disabled people is whether or not our parents would have aborted us if they had had early detection of our disabilities.
I know my mother would not have.
But why the fuck did I have to even ask?
Why the fuck did I even have to wonder?
Does that seem right to you?
8.
If you only ever talk about one form of justice, your justice is unjust.
And yet, that’s just supposed to suffice?
Does that seem right to you?
9.
I want everyone to have reproductive justice.
If you never consider us to be people, then you don’t think about what justice we deserve.
Most people never mention what kind of reproductive justice we deserve.
Does that seem right to you?
10.
I want my uterus out.
I want to not have ovaries.
I genuinely hope that I turn out to have a gene for estrogen-based cancers that runs on both sides of my blood, so I can have an early hysterectomy.
I genuinely hope that I have a higher chance of having my body grow fucking tumors—something that terrifies me on a visceral level because this has happened to both my grandmothers and my mother and I still have screaming, crying nightmares— because it’s probably the quickest way to get relief for the pain of having a cosmically wrong body.
Does that seem right to you?
11.
People call themselves “pro-choice” and then act as if it’s a dichotomous choice.
To abort or not abort, that is the question.
Does that seem right to you?
12.
I have to be afraid of being raped.
I have to be afraid of needing abortion.
But I also have to be afraid of people using that to mean that I know what women go through.
(I don’t. If you want to know what women go through, ask a woman. Ask especially the kind of woman that’s not often considered to be a ‘real’ woman.)
I have to be afraid of never being able to say “I was raped and I needed an abortion too” because then I won’t be a person anymore.
Does that seem right to you?
13.
I can’t stand menstruating. I can’t. It’s one of the few ways that I’m transnormative—a cafab trans person hating menstruation is very transnormative.
It’s worse than just the physical pain, the violent dysphoria, the disorienting sensation that comes from dissociating because I need to be numb sometimes. It’s worse because I remember that no matter what, I need to be afraid.
Does that seem right to you?
14.
One of the very first things someone said when I—self-deluding—told them I was a lesbian was “Oh, but you can use IVF and sperm donors!”
Because having a womb meant, to this person, that I should use it.
(I have fang teeth as well. Does that mean I should have used them to rip open her throat?)
Does that seem right to you?
15.
If you’re a cis woman, I want you to read this, now.
If you’re a cis feminist, I want you to read it twice.
If you’re a cis feminist who thinks they understand how trans people deserve reproductive justice, I want you to read it three times.
I want you to know that this person, one of your own, would rather I drink paint thinner and potentially die than get an abortion.
Does that seem right to you?
16.
“Never Again” is starting to look more and more like “Never Again For Us”.
Does that seem right to you?
17.
One of the reasons that I do not reblog posts on things like suicide and crisis hotlines is because cis people make these lists and cis people reblog them and I cannot trust that you checked this out properly.
I cannot trust that you ensured the safety of me and mine.
I cannot trust you, because too many times has something been advertised as being for me and mine as well and turned out to want us dead.
Does that seem right to you?
18.
When you call pro-fetus attitudes only misogynistic instead of being cruel, ableist, racist, classist, cissexist, violent, entitled, invasive, I wonder if you know what paint thinner tastes like.
When you pretend that pro-fetus people only hate cis white abled rich women, you say that you’re fine with a bloody coathanger and a half-empty bucket of paint thinner so long as it’s not in your sight.
Does that seem right to you?
19.
If I ever need to, I might just go to Planned Parenthood, clutching my mother and sister’s hands, crying.
I’ll cry when they misgender me.
I’ll cry until the dissociation overtakes the dysphoria and all I know is the ceiling.
And you will all call my tears collateral damage.
Does that seem right to you?
20.
The flip side of the feminism that won’t mention me needing justice is the feminism that says that all women need abortions.
The flip side of the feminism that would call my abortion a women’s experience and side with a rapist is the feminism that doesn’t care about trans women being raped—because, supposedly, trans women don’t need any reproductive justice.
Feminism hates women like nothing else, sometimes.
Does that seem right to you?
21.
This response is personal.
The political is personal.
This person and this person want me to drink paint thinner for the crime of not wanting a parasite.
Does that seem right to you?
22.
So, no, I’m not going to talk about that picture.
It might have been powerful until you destroyed it.
Never again?
We might never get to say “never again”.
Does that seem right to you?
“Often, it’s flat out said that poor people need to be policed into eating healthy. And by healthy, you mean whatever the various corporate food lobbies have forced congress to accept as science. This then goes into huge fatphobia issues, the idea that fat will magically go away if people just eat the right things, and that it is somehow morally abhorrent to dare to be fat in public, all of which require their own discussions. But basically, the idea is that rich people have the right to “choose to be fat”, but poor people do not.”
—Ami’s Guide to Food Privilege: How classism, fatphobia, and various other “-isms” control what we eat
Next time someone (white) calls something ghetto, I'm going to ask them, "Do you mean resourceful? Clever? Creative?" Because if you live in the ghetto, those are all things you have to be to overcome your situation. If you don't have money to do things the easy way, you have to think outside of the box.
If you answer, “No, I meant ghetto as in shitty,” then don’t be surprised if a fist comes flying.
on classism and rose hate
why don’t people fucking get it? obviously reading hate on a character is something that’s not worth my time, but even reading some of the defenses- i’ve read things in defense of Rose that say things like ‘yes she may be lower class but she can still do a, b, and c….”
NO. NO BUT. Why isn’t this a bigger thing? One of the reasons I LOVED Rose, one of the reasons she won me over to New Who not even ten minutes into the first episode, was BECAUSE she was working class. Like me. Didn’t go to high school (ok not doing US—>UK terminology here), like me. No ifs, ands, or buts. With Rose, we had a character that was not only working class but comfortable with that part of her identity- not yearning to “better” herself through MONEY or CLASS. Fuck yes. So don’t tell me how you think Rose was annoying because she was working class, and don’t tell me how it’s ok she was working class because sometimes you could forget about it. Because you know what it’s like to be poor? You know what it’s like to have poor parents, poor cousins, poor friends? To know you will always be poor and your children will be poor? No? Then don’t tell me that a working class kid doesn’t deserve to see every star in every galaxy and have the fucking Last Lord of Time fall madly irreversibly impossibly in love with her. Rose Tyler is proud of who she is. SHE CHANGED The Doctor for the BETTER because of who she is.
Rose is my working class hero who got to see the stars, who reminded me that we deserve those stars. Maybe even more than the rich kids, because they were things we could never buy, were never raised to expect, and could only dream of.
Benedict Cumberbatch
(With help from alltheladiesyouhate and rotationalvelocitydensity)
- Compared autistic people to Frankenstein’s Monster while talking about his part as the Creature in a production of Frankenstein: “It’s basically being a man child, it’s being a man infant. And then, psychologically, Danny and Nick Dear, who’s adapted the Mary Shelley novel, into a brilliant 2 ½ hour play version of it, he, they both have autistic sons. So we went to two extraordinary schools and met some high spectrum autistic kids. And it was very, very humbling and amazing and very upsetting, but very, very extraordinary as well, and inspiring. And especially the people looking after them, and these amazing life forces, but just formed with…*sigh* um, socially just things that are outside of everyday. You know, there are certain barriers that aren’t there because of the arrested development that… there was a 17 year old that had the mental age of, I think, an 18 month old. I mean, it was… It’s…it’s…it’s really really extraordinary and very upsetting. And uh, it was important for them to realize that the Creature in their story was not their… the monster of old… the monster of the gothic horror stories. He’s very much an innocent. He’s very much someone who is carried through life, as someone who is so different, not only because of his appearance, but because of these behaviorial tics, which are very autistic, um, both in his understanding of the world, psychologically and emotionally, but also physically as well, how that manifests later in his body. And so that was the major part of the preparation.” (Explanation/ analysis at the link)
- Said he had been “castigated as a moaning, rich, public-school b******, complaining about only getting posh roles”
- About the 2011 London riots: “ ”I’m a Prince of Wales Trust ambassador, so I’m all about giving youth an education, a voice and a chance to not take the wrong road. But those eejits saying they’re doing it for socio-political reasons? Fuck off, no you’re not, you’re on a jolly and you’re getting away with it. It makes me want to belt them, make them lame for a bit so they’re dependent on other people’s mercy… It’s very hard for me to talk about it, because I came from an incredibly privileged bubble so the minute I open my mouth I can sense the comeback of, ‘What the fuck do you know?’ And that’s fair. But my sympathy is with the people who do know what they’re talking about, who have been brought up on estates and live morally decent, contributing lives and who have seen opportunists destroying all their work.”
- About Elementary, the American version of Sherlock “I did say [to Jonny], ‘Well, I’d prefer you didn’t do it but you’ve got a kid to feed, a nice house in LA and a wife to keep in good clothes.’ When you get used to a certain standard of living and they waft a paycheck at you, what are you going to do?”
- “I look in a mirror and I see all the faults I’ve lived with for 35 years and yet people go kind of nuts for certain things about me.”
- “I know I’m no technical expert but I do love trying to sort of dance with the camera. And he knows I’m a tart for it”
- “Those slightly mad eyes which became sadly a lot madder which became part of the tragedy of Jeremy’s life”
- “Martin has much more intuitive brilliance than I have which would make him an asexual sociopath. Not that Martin Freeman is an asexual sociopath but he’s just far quicker at thinking than I am.”
- Said he thought Sherlock’s haircut was “womanly”
- “Being a posh actor in England, you can’t escape class-typing, from whatever side you look at it. I realised quite early on that, although I wasn’t trying to make a career speciality of it, I was playing slightly asexual, sociopathic intellectuals” Wow that must be so hard for you Benny. You should go complain to some POC actors who can’t get work because of the massive racism and whitewashing in the entertainment industry. I’m sure they’ll feel really bad for you.
- About the Victoria Era: “Everyone was held in their place, but what was honourable about it was that there was a duty of care from the top down”. White Man’s Burden, anyone?
- “I want to be able to play trailer-bound fatties in a Judd Apatow comedy”
- “In America I could play everything from trailer-trash to Harvard-educated”
