Lena Dunham
(With help from anerdyfeminist, mexicanprincessbrienne, strange-cares, and alyceislostinwonderland)
- That tiny little thing where her entire damn TV show has no POC in it
- POC cast in Girls play only “the help”, random people:
- Sidné Anderson as “Jamaican Nanny”
- Jermel Howard as “Young Black Guy”
- Moe Hindi as “Roosevelt Hotel Bellhop”
- Jo Yang as “Tibetan Nanny”
- The time she added a black actor (Donald Glover, who is very problematic in his own right and will be getting a post soon) for a couple episodes, during which she accused his character of fetishizing her as a white woman, and declaring that she “doesn’t see race” and “doesn’t see him as black”. Pro tip: erasing people’s identities and experiences is still racist.
- About the lack of POC on Girls: “We really tried to be aware and bring in characters whose job it was to go “Hashtag white people problems, guys.” You know, because it’s the job of POC to go “hashtag white people problems” all the damn time.
- This Islamophobic tweet
- The super Orientalist essay she wrote about a visit to Japan. Choice quotes include:
- “She weighs about seventy-three pounds and has hands like paper cranes”
- “I can’t imagine a passionate affair with a native man”
-
“Yellowish Fever: I know I said I could never imagine a Japanese affair, but I’ve changed my mind. Kazu, the art handler hanging my mom’s show, is gorgeous like the strong, sexy, dreadlocked Mongol in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (causing my sister to email the instruction: “Yeah, girl. crouch that tiger, hide that dragon. P.S. That’s a Chinese movie”)”
- “Japanese people look so young — fourteen year olds in ill-fitting suits. What kind of business could they all be doing? When they cross the street it looks like a music video, or the cover of Abbey Road. They are so orderly and leave a foot of space between themselves and the next office escapee.”
- “The White Man Cometh: Being the only Caucasian in a room, you almost feel invisible because you are so visible. When you’re in Mexico or someplace, at least they want your paper dollars. But here, we are uncouth, smelly, hairy. We have swine-flu. Our currency is inferior and our history is short. Yet the Japanese also love Sid Vicious, cowboys, birthday cakes, bagels.”
- “Her former colleague (a word she pronounces cawl-eee-gew) had an affair with Kazu, art handler crush, and it was a great dishonor, not only for that woman’s husband but for everyone who knew either cheater”
- “Sometimes, when you’ve been in Japan for ten days, you start to get a little funny… You will start bowing to people who hold open a door or sell you a honeydew yogurt or inform you that there are fish flakes on some crackers you’re not sure you want. You will flash a peace sign and assume a pigeon toed stance whenever someone aims a camera at you.”
- “Remember that L’s sound like R’s and vice versa”
- “Tada asks my age. I say “23, last week.” He’s excited. “HOPPY BIRSDAY!””
- “A random guy in a French maid’s apron says, “You so sexy, RENA.””
- “I had this dumb, Western idea. Like, I’m going to go to India and it’s gonna be so transcendent that I’m not gonna be afraid of death anymore, and I’m going to lay down so many of my Western anxieties and embrace a new kind of knowingness and bring it back to the U.S.”
- “We do a really good job in this country of basically sealing off sick people and sealing off toilets and sealing off everything that lets us know we’re animals. And in India not only do they not do that, there’s no interest in doing that.”
- During her trip to India, she said she sympathized more with “the stray dogs she saw than the poverty-stricken people.”
- “I hated India. I know you are not allowed to hate India. But I did. I wasn’t happy. And I felt crazy. I am a hypochondriac. I saw too many puppies that I thought needed me. So many moms and I got in a big fight and I left India. Early.”
- On the cost of her apartment: “It was this cheesy thing where they listed the prices people bought homes for. And its said something like Nicole Richie, 5.3 million dollars, Lena Dunham 430,000 dollars. It was my proudest New York Real Estate moment.” Are we supposed to be impressed that she spent ~only~ half a million dollars?
- How Girls constantly includes scenes of rape or sexual assault, and then depicts them as totally fine and no big deal
- “The world’s getting more and more full. Our generation is not just white girls. It’s guys. Women of color. Gay people.” Well that about sums it up. Those are all the existing types of people. There are NO others. And none of those categories overlap, either.
- The huge amount of nepotism on that show, which makes her assertion that the all-white casting was “a complete accident” seem very unlikely
- “I’m not super thin, but I’m thin, for like, Detroit” which is almost definitely racist, and classist as a bare minimum.
- “The vet was a young, sweet man. Definitely Jewish, which is something I care about only in times of crisis”
- “I want to date a male flight attendant. Everyone I’ve slept with is gay anyway”
- “She was always doing cleanses, yet she still had an inner tube of flesh around her middle—something that I wouldn’t begrudge if her son hadn’t once told me that he thought Nancy and I had ‘the same genre of body’.”
- “Jonah didn’t have a very specific style beyond dressing vaguely like a middle-aged lesbian”
- About a girl she knew and bullied as a child: “Cassie was a very fat girl we knew who we had nicknamed fat Cassie because she also wasn’t that nice.”
- This fuckin tweet
Steven Moffat
With content provided by suivre-le-vent and
- Stereotypes women using sweeping generalizations such as “Women are needy” and believes that “There’s a huge, unfortunate, lack of respect for anything male”
- Thinks asexuality is boring and the Irene Adler in the original story was un-feminist
- “You have to hand it to the Doctor for dumping a slightly needy girlfriend by palming her off on a copy of himself. He tried leaving her in a parallel universe, and that didn’t work.”
- “And I thought, ‘well she’s really good. It’s just a shame she’s so wee and dumpy…When she was about to come through to the auditions I nipped out for a minute and I saw Karen walking on the corridor towards me and I realized she was 5’11, slim and gorgeous and I thought ‘Oh, oh that’ll probably work’.” - Doctor Who Confidential, All About the Girl
- “And there’s a moment with two Amy Ponds in it. If you’re a red-blooded male surely that’s enough! You’ve got Amy Pond flirting with herself.”
- Regarding bisexual representation “We don’t acknowledge you on television cos you’re having FAR TOO MUCH FUN. You probably don’t even watch cos you’re so BUSY!!”
- “Well, the world is vastly counted in favour of men at every level - except if you live in a civilised country and you’re sort of educated and middle-class, because then you’re almost certainly junior in your relationship and in a state of permanent, crippled apology. Your preferences are routinely mocked. There’s a huge, unfortunate lack of respect for anything male.”
- Told a dyslexic follower to run their tweets through spell checker, never apologized
- feministwhoniverse
- stfu-moffat
“Black women face yet other serious forms of gendered racism—the double burden of suffering racial prejudice and stereotyping because they are Black and female. One example is the negative imaging of Black women as “jungle bunnies.” Since at least the seventeenth century, this white (especially white male) stereotype has accented Black women’s allegedly exotic sexuality. Researcher Diane Roberts has shown how white notions of Blackness have frequently been loaded with sexuality. European books, beginning in the 1600s, portrayed Black women and men naked and with exaggerated sexual organs. “The white world drew the Black woman’s body as excessively and flagrantly sexual, quite different from the emerging ideology of purity and modesty which defined the white woman’s body,” Roberts has explained. This view has persisted now over the centuries. Thus, greatly influenced by and perpetuating such racist images, numerous white men during the days of slavery and Jim Crow segregation sought out, molested, and/or raped Black women. Moreover, today, much social science research continues to show that some white men still image and seek out Black women as exotic sex objects. In this manner, gendered racism is regularly inscribed in the bodies of Black women.”
—Joe Feagin“It's arguable that Asiaphilia, ironically, stems from legal attempts to exclude Asian Americans from the United States. The criteria by which many Asian women were permitted to enter the U.S. were not exactly morally sound: prostitutes, picture brides, war brides, mail-order brides. Sexuality was a prerequisite for refuge in the United States.”
—Yellow Fever“Fetishizing someone because of their race is not a compliment. It assumes a monolithic identity and evidences that what is truly desired is not an equal relationship, but a caricature of what is understood to be natural based in race. Each racial group has their own disgusting stereotypes to negotiate by gender: Latino men are said to be full of machismo, Asian men are overtly feminized, and Black men are constantly reduced to large roving penises willing to please. ”
—Womanist MusingsDating outside your race is fine BUT dating someone because they’re a “Spicy Latina”, a “Big, booty, thick, black ho”, a “Submissive Asian” or an “Exotic Indian” is downright disgusting and wrong. It’s racial fetishization, it’s also dehumanizing thus leading to sexual violence. Women of color are more likely to get raped especially Native American women. Women of color, like me, don’t have time for your fucking tears because if you liked someone you’d like them for who they are as a person not solely based on their race or stereotypes attached to their race. In other words, fuck off.
Yellow Fever: They Got it Bad, and That Ain't Good
ocweekly.comBorn and raised in La Habra, Dan* didn’t see manyAsian Americans before college. Now 22, he attributes his Asiaphilia to UC Irvine, where he’s a studio art major and an astounding 58 percent of students claim Asian descent.
But his Asian fetish actually originated in high school, in trig class, where he met a Vietnamese American girl named Ann. Although born in the United States, Ann was raised in Indonesia until about a year before Dan met her. She spoke English well, but not perfectly. They shared the standard high school dating experience: dinner-and-movie dates, study dates, boba dates, kung fu lessons, meditation with the girlfriend’s Buddhist monk uncle. The relationship ended in a pretty standard way, too: Dan suggested sex, Ann resisted, things spiraled. There was an ultimatum and then a breakup, and then—classic—threats of suicide.
Later, Dan sought answers on Ann’s blog, where she labeled him a “standard American boy” and called him out for pressuring her into sex. She ended the entry with a note of disgust: “Get over yourself.”
Perhaps it was the pain of that rejection and the desire to overcome it, but Dan says Ann’s rejection changed him. When he began dating again, he found himself looking for Asian girls. He went through a string of them—one-night stands, flings and friends-with-benefits. He frequented places like Club Bang in Hollywood, which attracts a number of Asian patrons—and Asiaphiles like Dan…
Pinoy Problems #5: When People Fetishize Korean or Japanese Culture to the Point that all other Asian Ethnicities are Not Valid Forms of Being Asian
- White Person at ComiCon: I love your Yoruichi Shihouin costume!
- Filipin@: Thanks!
- White Person: From where in Japan are you from?
- Filipin@: I'm Filipino.
- White Person: (disappointed) Oh...
- or
- White Person: Annyeong!
- Filipin@: Um...Annyeong?
- White Person: OMG! (calls over to Kdrama-watching, white friends) S/he speaks Korean!
- Filipino@: Actually, I don't. I'm Filipin@.
- White Person: (suddenly enraged) Then why are you speaking Korean?! You're Korean!
- Filipin@: I think I'd know if I was.
- White Person: Why would you speak Korean! That's, like, being a poser!
- Filipin@: ...Looked in the mirror lately?
Internalized Racism (Self-Hatred due to Racism) and Why I Don't Date Black People
I wanted to provide a detailed deconstruction of an example of internalized racism, where it comes from, and how it affects me. Internalized racism is when a person of color adopts the discriminatory social schema that our white supremacist society inflicts upon our specific race (social schema as in the thought and behavior stereotypically applied to races, white supremacist society as in a society that caters to white people). I think before I continue, I should write a disclaimer:
Being apart of a racist system does not excuse internalized racism. We are all at a disadvantage in that we are all taught racist beliefs from the time we’re born into this (US American) society. But I am at an advantage in that I have recognized my self-hate as internalized racism, and as long as the racism upholds white supremacy, then I am a culprit of racial oppression. That is, as long as I believe in racist myths, I am failing to resist racism and am fueling the racial oppression of myself and others. I admit that once/since I became aware of my internalized racism, it has been my responsibility to deconstruct it.
With that said, I’ll get started. Here are the racist ideas about myself that I have internalized that contribute to me not dating Black people:
1. Black people are irresponsible/lazy
2. Black people are dangerous
3. Black people are uneducated
4. Black people are unattractive
5. Black people are wanton sex fiends
If you’re reading this and you’re thinking, “But I’ve never thought this about Black people in my life!” You can either 1) quit lying to yourself or 2) leave this post because continuing requires a great deal of self reflection that you’re obviously not ready for yet.
PSA: Do not exotify multi* people
We are not here for you to look at
We do not exist to satisfy your gaze
We are not here for you to fetishize and dehumanize
We are real people who are not around simply for you to objectify and exotify
I’m sure all multi* people have heard the ridiculous and fetishist stereotype that “all multiracial people are hot”
What many people fail to realize is that this stereotype is extremely harmful
Just because it is “positive” (hint: it’s not), does not mean that it is not damaging
It constantly robs multi* people of their humanity, it constantly degrades them into nothing more than walking mannequins, it reduces our entire existence into something for someone else to look at
And it’s even worse for multi* people because exotification of multi* people has a consistent history of othering them
Seriously. By exotifying us, you’re treating us as abnormal objects that do not fit the mainstream. This only further perpetuates these horrendous ideas that multi* people are not any of their composite identities- it’s used as a systematic way to exclude multi* people from claiming their identities. Exotifying us only prevents us from self-identifying as we would like to because now, not only are not any of our identities, we’re also not human.
Furthermore, it just keeps this weird, backwards “All people of [x] race look a certain way” idea that for some reason hasn’t died. As multi* people, we do not owe any explanations as to our physical ambiguity and we do not owe it to you to patronize your discomfort with the way we look. Calling us ‘exotic’ simply makes it clear that you think we can’t possibly be of the identities that make us up because we don’t fit into your narrow-minded idea of how they should look. I’m sure most people aren’t even aware of how many multi* people they run into in a day, simply because we don’t fit the ‘conventional’ look of our identities.
Moreover, not only has it excluded us from our identities, but it has also been used to exclude us from social and political processes. If we’re exotic, we are things, not people- if we are exotic, we are abnormal- if we are exotic, we are separate and do not need to take part in society. This line of thinking has been used to exclude multi* people from being fairly represented in government, education, minority activist groups, etc.
We are not things to look at
We are people
Do not exotify us
Do not fetishize us
Do not dehumanize us
