#DearNonNatives happened yesterday. Signal boost this and support! This hashtag needs more traction.
important
We don’t believe that everything can be self-taught. Sometimes you can’t just Google something. Sometimes you’d rather get an education from somebody you trust, and not the first Tumblr that pops up. A single mother who works two jobs to support her family and never went to college doesn’t necessarily have the time to teach herself queer theory before jumping into a community like ours. Teenagers in small towns without any queer resources and no access to feminist literature come here knowing literally nothing, and that’s actually totally okay. We have readers who are the only queer person of color in their town, the only trans woman in their town, the only gay in the village, who desperately need a safe space to be themselves. We have readers who aren’t fluent in academia and we also have a lot of readers who aren’t fluent in English, either. We have readers who have the resources but still mess up sometimes and that is also okay.
We’re here to say that we will absolutely forgive those of us who are still learning — about the world and also themselves, their place in it. We believe that sometimes it is up to us, and to you, to assume good faith when it makes sense, and to educate people when we can. We want to intentionally leave room for the grey areas that don’t have obvious rights and wrongs, because that’s where growth happens. When we respectfully engage in conversations and we take on the role of being someone else’s sounding board and help them hash out their understanding of various topics and experiences, we necessarily affect change.
‘11 Things To Never Ask A Transgender Person’ Released By BBC Free Speech
Talking about transgender issues and experiences can be tricky, unless you have the right language to talk about them.
“Things Not to Say to a Trans Person” brings together a slew of people from the United Kingdom across the gender identity spectrum to discuss frequent – and often inappropriate – questions they often get as trans individuals.
So let me get this straight, in Monopoly if you give one player more money to start out it’s “unfair” but if you do it in real life it’s “capitalism”?
You know what, I’m going to tell you guys a story.
In my Sociology class a few semesters ago, our prof had us break off into groups and, much to our naive joy, began distributing Monopoly boards! We had no idea what was going on but yay! Games! Of course, once our group, and a number of others, got the board we began to work at setting up and distributing the money…
until suddenly our prof told us to put the money down and pick up the dice.
“Roll the dice and sort yourselves from highest to lowest,” our teacher commanded. "Now, the highest number is the upper class. The next one is upper middle class. The next two or three are middle class. The last person is in poverty.“
Well, as the person who rolled a two this was startling and not wholly welcome news.
From that point the game changed entirely. We had to hand out the money so that the “upper class” had this fucking mountain, and then less for upper middle, even less for middle, and I didn’t get any triple digit bills. We would all collect different amounts from passing go as well.
The biggest change though? Going to jail. Upper class didn’t. Period. Upper middle class could go but they only had to stay for one turn or they could immediately pay their way out. Middle class had some pretty easy guidelines for when they could pay to get out. As lower class, it was really easy for me to wind up in jail and REALLY hard to get out. But since I was working with so little money when everyone else had so much I was in jail all the time because there was no “game over”. If I couldn’t pay I had to go to jail for a certain period of time. I had to take out loans with interest I could never pay back just to get out only to wind up back in it again, rolling dice turn after turn hoping to be able to get out.
It was simultaneously the most enlightening and most awful game I had ever played. I was bored and frustrated and a little terrified about it all. And it wasn’t only me. I would never win, I sort of accepted this, but it was amazing how the middle classes reacted as well. They were stressed. Because they were always that close to either being able to one-up the upper class or from crashing into poverty with me. They had to fight constantly just to stay in the middle.
(I should also mention that the upper class player in one group felt so bad for the lower income players that they ended up overhauling their entire game and creating a “socialist” society instead. I’m not sure how our teacher felt about that one.)
Worth stressing this is entirely in the spirit of the original designer’s aims for Monopoly.
Monopoly’s original form of The Landlord Game which was explicitly designed to teach people about the unfairness of rent systems. To quote from the wikipedia entry, just as it’s the easiest source to hand…
Magie designed the game to be a “practical demonstration of the present system of land grabbing with all its usual outcomes and consequences”.[2] She based the game on the economic principles of Georgism, a system proposed byHenry George, with the object of demonstrating how rents enrich property owners and impoverish tenants. She knew that some people could find it hard to understand why this happened and what might be done about it, and she thought that if Georgist ideas were put into the concrete form of a game, they might be easier to demonstrate.When the usual suspects start making “don’t bring politics into games” noises, I roll my eyes pretty hard. They have no idea of the history of the form.
i do feel like there should be more openness for like. some political leniency
as in, it’s okay that a lot of us have differing viewpoints!! obv i’m not talkin “homophobia is ok” being a valid viewpoint but like. idk my political stance on certain subjects and the nuances thereof fluctuate almost CONSTANTLY. i cant expect everyone, even just all my friends to be 100% on the same page as me
it’s good to talk about these things and see if one viewpoint is more morally right than the other, of course; we should always strive for improvement. but acting as if every unrefined political standpoint is the same as being a Huge Bigot isn’t the way to encourage that open discussion and improvement
Today I learned that my cousin was targeted by the police, but they failed.
So he was dropping his girlfriend off at her house and he was taking my grandfather’s NEW truck.
The police pulled him over and he put his hands on the steering wheel, like you’re supposed to do, and he waited on the police officer to approach him.
The police officer informed him that he pulled him over because there was something wrong with the tailpipe of the truck (keep in mind, brand new truck) & that he needed his license and registration, so my cousin gave it to him.
As the police officer went back to his car, my cousin called my grandpa and told him that something was wrong with his tailpipe on his BRAND NEW TRUCK.
My grandpa, thinking something was not right, asked where my cousin was and went to arrive where he was being pulled over at.
Back to my cousin, waiting on the police officer, 3 more cop cars pulled up and one had a K-9 dog with him. My cousin, confused, asked what was going on. The police told him nothing, not to worry about it. He kept talking to my cousin to distract him, but my cousin saw in the rear view mirror that the police officer with the K-9 dog had something in his hand.
The police officer with the k-9 dog called the other police over and told him, “the dog smells weed.” My cousin does not smoke, and my grandfather doesn’t carry weed.
When the police asked my cousin if he had any drugs on him, my grandpa pulled up in his car. At the very moment, the police with the K-9 dog got back in his car, & sped off. The first police officer told my grandpa, “we’re done here.” & left in his car with the other cops following him.
Guys.
The police officer was going to try and plant weed in my grandpa’s truck.
He was going to say that it was my cousins.
My cousin could have been the next hashtag on our social media networks.
REBLOG THIS BECAUSE I WANT EVERYONE TO SEE THIS SHIT. SOME POLICEMAN ARENT SHIT AND DO NOT DESERVE THEIR BADGE. THEY DELIBERATELY TARGETED MY 18 YEAR OLD COUSIN AND WAS GOING TO SET HIM UP. THIS IS BULLSHIT.
“I am insulted that this anime did/didn’t do a thing with race! POC deserve respect! I want them to change it to be more like I want!”
The Japanese have a completely different racial and social history, so it may be that they are making it based on their own experiences. Are you basing this idea on Western ideas of race and racial relations? Wouldn’t making the Japanese make media that reflects a Western idea of race be cultural imperialism? Here’s a good way of knowing if you are informed of Japanese racial politics:
Are you aware that Okinawa was not originally a part of Japan, was conquered, and is often referred to as the Ryukyu Islands? That it has it’s own ethnic minority with its own rapidly-dying language, and Okinawa also has by far the largest concentration of detested American army bases? Here is a photo from the 19th century of a Ryukyu Island native, taken by a Japanese man to sell “ethnic photos” back on the mainland.
Did you know that the “Japanese” we know of are not technically native to the island at all, but arrived sometime in prehistory to displace the original inhabitants? This would be the Ainu, and genetic studies have shown they’re actually more closely related to Caucasians. They now mostly live in Hokkaido, most of their land having been taken and many been killed due to historic wars and slavery.
Did you know that countless ethnic Koreans and Chinese have lived in Japan since the colonial period, often because of having their land ownership and livelihoods forcibly taken and moved to Japan? That they were forced to not speak their native language and had to go by Japanese names? That even though many of them have lived there for generations, they could not obtain citizenship until 1980 without getting a Japanese name? That there were hate crimes committed against Korean schoolgirls as early as the late 1990’s?
And the ultimate taboo, did you know that Japan had its own class of “untouchables” like India? These are known as Burakumin, or at least that’s the nicest word for them. They were often relegated to “unclean” professions like tanning and butchery, and in premodern Japan someone could literally cut down a Burakumin in the street in broad daylight and receive no reprisal. While they are legally no different from anyone anymore, socially is a different story. If you have Burakumin ancestry, chances are, you live in certain districts–because no one else will rent or sell a house to you. Employers use your address to openly discriminate against you. If you marry, your family may hire someone to trace your family history to make sure you have no Burakumin ancestors. To many, it’s taboo to even discuss them. Below is Jiichiro Matsumoto, a burakumin and considered to be the father of burakumin liberation.
There’s more, of course, but you get the idea. Most people outside of Japan are simply considered gaijin–whether you’re a black gaijin or a white gaijin. You’re a foreigner. Sure, due to imperialism, a Japanese is going to think of a white English-speaker first and there are some differences within the category, but know that this is the category the rest of the world has been placed in. We’re a goofy novelty sure, but there are random gaijin of all colors being the “talento” of Japanese television. Outside of the extreme Japanese right, we’re not very controversial.
As you can see, the Japanese are racial-ideology-wise far from perfect. But for someone to come in with no knowledge of this long and complicated history and insist that having more Hispanic/Black/POC(a meaningless term in a country full of POC) characters in anime, it’s saying that American racial ideas and politics are more important. Sure, I love when anime has diversity of any kind. But if you think an anime with a “POC” is more progressive and ignore something like Samurai Champloo–which has both a Ryukyu island native main character and several episodes devoted to the Ainu–then I’m sorry, but you’re being culturally ignorant and contributing to cultural imperialism. That yet again, the gaijin should be the star. And the West has a very, very long history of imposing its own sense of morality on everyone else. I can find way more foreigners of any color portrayed in anime than any Ainu, let me tell ya. I have no right to tell a foreign industry to stop making media that reflects them and their racial identity and instead make stuff that looks like an American sitcom.
This doesn’t mean let Japan off the hook. But that means that if you want to have your own opinion, if you want to be taken seriously, and if you want to promote social justice without doing the exact same white man’s burden act we’ve always done, then you have a responsibility to educate yourself.
Mara Wilson’s Important Message For Teens Living With Mental Illness
Looking back on her experience with, Mara Wilson wishes someone had told her that being depressed and having anxiety was OK. Since no one did that for her growing up, she’s taking the opportunity to tell young people now. The former child actress and current writer teamed up with, a nonprofit organization devoted to helping teens with mental illness.