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We are constantly redefining our own perspectives, and therefore tend to write a lot about our personal experiences. Many followers and contributors are living with anorexia, bulimia, body dysmorphic disorder, depression, and a variety of other body image disorders or mental illnesses, so please be respectful and remember that health applies differently to everyone. Any and all potentially triggering content will be prefaced with a trigger warning.
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npr:
Dudes in capes, dudes in cars, dudes in space. In many parts of the country right now, if you want to go to see a movie in the theater and see a current movie about a woman — any story about any woman that isn’t a documentary or a cartoon — you can’t. Where did all the women go? At The Movies, The Women Are Gone : Monkey See
Photo: iStockphoto.com
This article illustrates just how big of a problem we have with the lack of representation, not just of women but of POC, queer and trans* people, fat people, people with disabilities, etc. The vast majority of media is centered on and catering to thin, able-bodied cishet white men. This article is about gender representation in movies, but the industry is even WORSE when it comes to race. In most places in the country right now you couldn’t even find a female centered movie to go see if you wanted to, let alone one featuring men and women of color. It is so frustrating and marginalizing to almost EVERYONE. And yes, part of it is that it is summer, the time of the testosterone-fulled, hyper-masculine action/super hero blockbuster. But let’s not pretend it changes much at any time of year.
We need to see ourselves represented in the culture, in all our different manifestations, in order to understand ourselves and each other as fully human. It may seem like a small thing but it is SO IMPORTANT. Blogs like this one can only do so much to fill in the gaps of our cultural imagination. Is it any wonder that our culture lacks empathy for people of color, women, queer people, trans* people, people with disabilities, fat people, when the only characters we routinely asked to imagine and identify with are white men?
Self reblogging to add a thing I found:
http://overland.org.au/previous-issues/issue-208/feature-malcolm-harris/
The account @Anti_Racism_Dog didn’t last long. Twitter suspended it quickly, a fate reserved only for the most aggressive, abusive and hateful users. What could a dog – an anti-racist one, at that – do to deserve it? @Anti_Racism_Dog had one real function: to bark at racist speech on Twitter. The account responded to tweets it deemed racist with the simple response ‘bark bark bark!’ Sometimes it would send wags to supporters but that was pretty much it.
For the short time it lasted, it was amazing to watch how people reacted to @Anti_Racism_Dog. The account would respond mostly to what the sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva would call ‘colour-blind racism’, that is, racisms that are generally right-libertarian in orientation and justified through appeals to supposedly objective discourses like science and statistics. It’s a notoriously insidious white-supremacist ideology, a virulent strain evolved specifically to resist anti-racist language. Colour-blind racism defends itself by appeals to neutrality and meritocracy, accusing its adversaries of being ‘the real racists’. Although its moves are predictable, they’re hard to combat rhetorically since they’re able to ingest the conventional opposition scripts. Colour-blind racists feed on good-faith debate, and engaging with them, especially online, is almost always futile. But when they’re barked at by a dog, one whose only quality is anti-racism, they flip the fuck out. They demand to be engaged in debate (‘Tell me how what I said was racist!’) or appeal to objective definitions (‘The dictionary says racist means X, therefore nothing I said was racist’), but @Anti_Racism_Dog just barks.
@Anti_Racism_Dog inverted the usual balance of energy in online dialogs about race. Precisely because the dominant global discourse is white-supremacist, it is rhetorically easier to make a racist argument than an anti-racist one. Look at almost any comment thread or discussion board about race and you can see anti-racists working laboriously to be convincing and to play on their opponents’ ‘logical’ turf, and racists repeating the same simple lines they were taught (‘I didn’t own slaves’, ‘I’m just stating the facts’, ‘The Irish were persecuted too’, etc.) ‘Trolling’ as a certain kind of internet harassment is tied to time: the successful troll expends much less time and energy on the interaction than their targets do. It’s the most micro of micro-politics, an interpersonal tug of war for the only thing that matters. But have you ever played tug of war with a dog?
A true troll doesn’t have a position to protect because to establish one would leave it vulnerable to attack, and playing defence takes time. @Anti_Racism_Dog, by fully assuming the persona of an animal, was invulnerable to counter-attack. You can’t explain yourself to a dog and you look like an idiot trying. The only way to win is not to play but this is the colour-blind racist’s Achilles Heel: they’re compelled to defend themselves against accusations of racism. It’s the anti-racist argument that gives them content; theirs is an ideology that’s in large part a list of counter-arguments. After all, white-supremacists are already winning – their task now is to keep the same racist structures in place while making plausibly colour-blind arguments against dismantling them. @Anti_Racism_Dog was empty of anything other than accusation and so left its targets sputtering.
The account served a second purpose: as a sort of anti-racist hunting dog. @Anti_Racism_Dog quickly attracted a lot of like-minded followers who understood the dynamics at play. Whenever it would start barking at another user, this was a cue to the dog’s followers to troll the offender as well. There’s only so much one dog can do alone. Colour-blind racism is particularly dangerous because it isn’t immediately visible as such. It provokes good-faith discussion from liberals about what counts as racism, muddying the water. But @Anti_Racism_Dog’s strategy draws new lines about what constitutes acceptable discourse on race, placing colour-blind racists on the other side by speaking to them like an animal. What would be taken as totally insane in flesh space can be infuriatingly clever online.THIS ARTICLE HAS TEETH
I WANT ANTI RACISM DOG BACK
fuck twitter Im going to go delete mine
useless piece of shit it is
Marilyn Wann discovered this ad in her hometown and shared it on her Facebook page after posting a letter next to it, complete with an open list for signatures, that states:
“This ad promotes negative stereotypes and prejudice about weight, race [and] class. Children deserve respect [and] joy. That’s what we think.”
(The physical list has since been taken down/removed by an unknown source.)
Some of her followers (notably Lynn Novak) also discovered that the ad included a heavily photoshopped photo that included darkening the little girl’s skin and fattening her appearance, replacing the milk in her hand with a packet of juice.
You can also see the original image on their homepage:
http://www.ccfc.ca.gov/parents/
Now, I work in the advertising world. I sit in a gaggle of creative people who are directed to do things like this by clients, or who may genuinely feel there is nothing wrong with the harmful perpetuation of stereotypes this sort of work represents.
But I know better.
Labeling foods as “healthy” and “unhealthy” is inaccurate, especially when these messages of ill-health are being directly correlated with images of fat bodies, feeding into the kind of hysteria and fear of obesity that breeds hate and body shaming.
The bottom line is that different foods, drinks, and sugars effect different bodies in different ways.
If corporations and government organizations want to have a discussion about health and sugary drinks, that’s one thing - but there is no doubt that these messages can be expressed without pulling fat bodies into the equation, or feeding into harmful stereotypes about fatness and health.
There is so much more to be said about this ad regarding implications about diabetes, class, and race - But I will save that for those who may be better equipped to add to the conversation.
- Haley
It is no coincidence that government agencies (and diet companies) are now targeting communities of color with “obesity prevention” campaigns. The photo/ad above is only one example, but what you see are agencies going into these communities and instead of trying to solve systemic racism or poverty, which has a far larger impact on health than body size, they are only pushing to eradicate fat people.
This is aside from the photoshopping of the original image to create a child that not only looks older, darker and cartoonish is incredibly dehumanizing, fat phobic, and racist.
-Amanda-
Asked space-race-mental-case
I’m wary to speak for anyone else, that’s just my way, but I’m here here to rise above and help others rise above the traditional media and ideals that have pressured us to hate and undermine ourselves. I’m not here to celebrate or coddle a straight white heterosexual male, who, like many others like him, has climbed to fame on the back of POC actors who are never given an opportunity. Do I slight him for his looks? No. But considering there are entire blogs dedicated to demeaning the looks of POC, I can’t say I care if a post we reblog has an “unflattering” picture of a white actor that gets plenty of praise to make up for it. And you’re right, that is the casting director and producer’s decisions ultimately, but that doesn’t mean he has to benefit with his mouth shut especially when he’s well known for complaining for being type casted as posch. I’m sure all those POC actors that never get parts other than common thug #3 would LOVE to take it off his hands.
1) You trash on black women far outside of “general black people humor.”
2) You talk about how black women have “tons of kids” and “no jobs” but don’t examine why that is (and how for many people that is false)
3) Your pick-up line when you hit on a black woman is “Soooo baby, do you have kids?” (Yes. I’ve had this happen to me. More than once. No joke.)
4) You hate black women who date out of their race, while complaining about black women who date shitty people within their race.
5) You hate black women for not dating you…and also hate black women when they’re trying to date you while you’re trying (and failing) to get with non-black women.
6) You don’t date black women because of reasons.
7) Any of those reasons involves “needing to feel like a man”.
8) You think you aren’t capable of anti-black misogyny because you’re black.
9) You hate seeing independence in black women. This may manifest as having a black woman dare to do things without a black man at her side. (Not any man. Just a black one.)
10) You forget your mamas, sisters, and aunties are black women when you’re talking about them.
11) You think being light-skinned means black women owe you something.
12) You think black women owe you something, regardless of how fucked up you are because hey, they’re black and desperate anyway.
13) You think any of these don’t apply to you while simultaneously acting as if they do.
Feel free to add more, ladies.14) You complain about black women pursuing advanced degrees & you complain about black women without degrees who hold lower paying jobs.
15) You insist that black women should cook, clean, & cater to you, but you feel no need to reciprocate.
16) You insist that any woman you date should have a low number of former partners while bragging about your years of being a dog.
17) You call any black woman with standards for potential mates too picky, a gold digger, etc while riffing on how you need a woman with X, Y, & Z to even consider commitment.
New York Millionaire On Trial For Keeping A Slave In Her Mansion
Millionaire socialite Annie George, 40, went on trial Tuesday for allegedly keeping an undocumented immigrant as a “slave” in her upstate New York mansion.
According to CBS 6 in Albany, Valsamma Mathai, 49, testified Tuesday that she was held in the 30,000 square foot, 26-bedroom Llenroc Mansion in Rexford, New York for six and a half years as she worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week, and slept in a walk-in closet.
Mathai, an undocumented immigrant from India, said she was picked up at a New York bus station by George’s late husband Mathai Kolath George, who spoke her native tongue and offered a job that would pay $1,000 per month — a significant raise over the $100 per month she was making.
When she arrived, however, Mathai claims she did not have her passport or visa, and soon discovered she wasn’t allowed to leave.
It wasn’t until the National Human Trafficking Resource Center received a tip from the woman’s son, who prosecutors said recorded a conversation with George, that agents came to her rescue. A criminal complaint was filed last March.
George is facing a charge of harboring an undocumented immigrant, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.
That the worst thing they could charge this woman with is ‘harboring an undocumented immigrant,’ & that that’s a crime that carries a potential sentence of 10 years in prison is baffling. This woman should face criminal prosecution, but not for giving shelter to another human being.
How ‘bout false imprisonment or kidnapping or torture or extortion? What does it say about our criminal justice system that HARBORING AN UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANT is worse and/or more prosecutable than all those other things?
Still pissed
Bragh!
THIS THIS THIS is why it is SO frustrating when people refer to other other non-citizens as “illegals.”
THEY ARE NOT CRIMINALS. MORE OFTEN THAN NOT - THEY ARE VICTIMS OF CRIMES LIKE THIS.
THIS IS NOT AN ISOLATED INCIDENT. I REPEAT
THIS IS NOT AN ISOLATED INCIDENT.
HUMAN TRAFFICKING IS VERY REAL.
SO WHEN YOU TALK ABOUT ‘ILLEGALS’ (the fact that this is a term used for a person disgusts me ) REALIZE THAT YOU MORE OFTEN THAN NOT ARE TALKING ABOUT PEOPLE WHO WERE BROUGHT HERE AGAINST THEIR WILL.
AND DO NOT EVEN GET ME STARTED ON SEX TRAFFICKING IN THE UNITED STATES BECAUSE I JUST CANNOT.
THE WOMAN WHO HELD THIS WOMAN CAPTIVE DESERVES A SENTENCE WORSE THAN DEATH. SHE STOLE THIS WOMANS LIFE.
OH AND SHE ALSO OWES HER BACK PAY.
BET YOU THE GOVERNMENT WON’T GIVE IT TO HER - YOU KNOW WHY - “BECAUSE SHE’S AN ILLEGAL, SHE DOESN’T HAVE A RIGHT TO WORK HERE.”
YOUR RACISM IS SHOWING, JUDICIAL SYSTEM.
The first thing you really need to understand is that the definition of racism that you probably have (which is the colloquial definition: “racism is prejudice against someone based on their skin color or ethnicity”) is NOT the definition that’s commonly used in anti-racist circles.
The definition used in anti-racist circles is the accepted sociological definition (which is commonly used in academic research, and has been used for more than a decade now): “racism is prejudice plus power”. What this means, in easy language:
A. Anyone can hold “racial prejudice” — that is, they can carry positive or negative stereotypes of others based on racial characteristics. For example, a white person thinking all Asians are smart, or all black people are criminals; or a Chinese person thinking Japanese people are untrustworthy; or what-have-you. ANYONE, of any race, can have racial prejudices.
B. People of any race can commit acts of violence, mistreatment, ostracizing, etc., based on their racial prejudices. A black kid can beat up a white kid because he doesn’t like white kids. An Indian person can refuse to associate with Asians. Whatever, you get the idea.
C. However, to be racist (rather than simply prejudiced) requires havinginstitutional power. In North America, white people have the institutional power. In large part we head the corporations; we make up the largest proportion of lawmakers and judges; we have the money; we make the decisions. In short, we control the systems that matter. “White” is presented as normal, the default. Because we have institutional power, when we think differently about people based on their race or act on our racial prejudices, we are being racist. Only white people can be racist, because only white people have institutional power.D. People of color can be prejudiced, but they cannot be racist, because they don’t have the institutional power. (However, some people refer to intra-PoC prejudice as “lateral racism”. You may also hear the term “colorism”, which refers to lighter-skinned PoC being prejudiced toward darker-skinned PoC.) However, that situation can be different in other countries; for example, a Japanese person in Japan can be racist against others, because the Japanese have the institutional power there. But in North America, Japanese peoplecan’t be racist because they don’t hold the institutional power.
E. If you’re in an area of your city/state/province that is predominantly populated by PoC and, as a white person, you get harassed because of your skin color, it’s still not racism, even though you’re in a PoC-dominated area. The fact is, even though they’re the majority population in that area, they still lack the institutional power. They don’t have their own special PoC-dominated police force for that area. They don’t have their own special PoC-dominated courts in that area. The state/province and national media are still not dominated by PoC. Even though they have a large population in that particular area, they still lack the institutional power overall.
F. So that’s the definition of racism that you’re likely to encounter. If you start talking about “reverse racism” you’re going to either get insulted or laughed at, because it isn’t possible under that definition; PoC don’t have the power in North America, so by definition, they can’t be racist. Crying “reverse racism!” is like waving a Clueless White Person Badge around.
bell hooks, Eating the Other
This is why it makes me mad when people say they’re into someone who is “ethnic”, it just means they’re into the idea of someone’s race, wanting a part of it, and to acquire that or I guess “taste” that culture they try and sleep with someone who is labeled “ethnic”. Often people who are considered “ethnic” are either hyper-sexualized and are seen as “dominant” and aggressive almost animalistic while others are seen as submissive “slaves” for the “masters” to control and dominate and use. There is no in between or normalcy when it comes to People of Color, the “ethnic” group of people, which is a group label usually made up by white people but it’s not limited to just them.
(via loohn)
With respect to Bell Hooks, I think the underlying phenomena she describes is a human truth. Though the assignment of traits to various races may differ.
Still very astute nonetheless.
(via bumsquash)
“Fashion Week’s Models Are Getting Whiter”
That was the headline the other day at Jezebel, which came up with the above graph after some exhaustive research.
What’s up with New York Fashion Week?
In reporting on the issue myself, I realized that this isn’t just about a bunch of women on runways. It’s about the very perception of wealth. In short, the faces that we see in ads for luxury products — makeup, handbags, sunglasses — are almost invariably white. Black and Hispanic ladies: good luck.
Ashley Mears, a sociologist and former model who’s studied the issue, says high fashion is looking for girls who project youth, unattainability and a sort of sexual purity. Over the centuries, those qualities have come to be reinforced with whiteness in the West.
“Throughout colonial history, non-white women have often been marked as sexually deviant, hypersexual, sexually available,” said Mears. “Not just women, but also men.”
For black models, that means being repeatedly told they should get nose jobs, or that their rear ends are too big.
To be fair, some industry insiders take this seriously. But others, not so much. One designer who’s show I attended at Fashion Week was Nicole Miller. About a quarter of her models were non-white, and she had this to say.
“I had 5 diversified girls, plus a redhead,” said Miller. “Which is the most diversity. Because the lowest percentage of the population is redheads. So you have to include them in the diversified group.”
There you have it: redheads as women of color.
i’m laughing to keep from banging my head on the table
redheads as women of color…..
wow really?
LOL omg.
Redheads are their own race, now. OMG AHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA
- White people: I'm tired of hearing about race on tumblr
- PoC: I'm tired of experiencing racism in real life
- fat shame is not the last acceptable prejudice, seriously. Look around you. Get it together.
- if you blog diligently about thin privilege but are unable to check your own privileges? GTFO. Stop looking up at the privilege you lack and start looking at the ones you’ve got.
- yes fat phobia sucks but if you shout to the rafters about being fat bashed but then say nothing about racism, misogyny, transphobia, homophobia, ableism, ageism or any of the other bad isms? You’re doing it wrong.
- if your message is “fat is beautiful” but the subtext of every post you make is that fat is only beautiful when white, youthful, “beautiful”, able-bodied, hetero, cis-, economically advantaged, and always falling in a lockstep line with the slavish & brutal corporate fashion industries? umm you’re not helping, bro.
- let being fat inform the way normativity works in our world, how those of us with fat bodies fall outside the “norm” which is a system of classification set up to place on a pedestal the white, the young, the wealthy, hetero & cis people of this earth, and yes, thinness is part of that but only a slender fragment of the larger picture. Let your experiences being fat bashed inform the way you process race, class, gender, sexual orientation, class status, age, “ability”. Don’t just rally to be treated the same as other thin, young, white, pretty people.
thank you and much fatty loveness.
The above is very important. Read it, then read it again.
And WIN on the gif.
-ArteToLife
Fat people clearly should acknowledge all the intersectionality of privlege, but the way this is written, it sounds a like weight priviledg takes a back seat to the other ones mentioned. That is called oppression olympics and most people make a policy of not doing that. Fat people no more need to constantly be dealing with race in their activism than race activist should be dealing with sexuality. Yes, recognizing that no privileged and no oppression stand alone is important, but choosing one cause and making that your focus is also okay.
This last here? That’s privilege talking.
It’s bullshit. The OP takes thin privilege as a given, and does not, anywhere, engage in oppression olympics. What it DOES do is call on white, straight, cis, TAB, and/or male fatties to acknowledge their privilege in other areas because it’s the right thing to do. Because if you call other people on their privilege over you, but don’t acknowledge or talk about the privilege you have over others, you are a fucking hypocrite.
This is an absolutely classic privilege-person whine. I’m a white feminist, and I see other white feminists pull the same kind of bullshit when WOC try to talk about racism in feminist spaces.
White fat people ignore and talk over fat POC in fat spaces all the fucking time. And you’re doing it now.
If you cannot grasp intersectionality and different axes of privilege, or if you can’t stand to acknowledge ways in which other people are oppressed, then you need to go adjust your thinking and educate yourself. And in the mean time, get the fuck off my side.
To paraphrase Flavia Dzodan, my activist will be intersectional, or it will be bullshit. And when your activism is bullshit, I will fucking call you on it.
On of the places where fat acceptance is FAILING is in building an intersectional foundation. There’s nothing in the original post that plays Oppression Olympics, nothing that questions or hierarchizes the existence of fat hate. What there IS, and what we as fat people should in fact be conscious of as we work in an activist way, is the acknowledgment that we exist within a system that is built on oppression — and if we fail to let that inform our fat acceptance, then fat acceptance fails to be anything other than a movement for white pretty (mostly middle class and able-bodied) people who just happen to be a little bit fatter than the “norm.”
When we talk about making fat acceptance inclusive, this is the meat of it — we build a movement that actively welcomes EVERYONE by explicitly addressing the issues of intersectionality and using that as our framework.
The OP said, “Let your experiences being fat bashed inform the way you process race, class, gender, sexual orientation, class status, age, “ability”.” I would add to that — let all of those things inform the way you think about and talk about fat bashing. Because your experience is not universal and all of those things impact body politics on a fundamental level.
There is not, to my mind, any such thing as “choosing one cause” — we all have finite energy and we might put the bulk of our efforts under one heading but no cause is functioning in a vacuum and the movement we build as fat people should not simply replicate the current oppressive social paradigm in the way it deals with other oppressions. If you cannot even begin to make an effort to see how other oppressions are related, then you are not paying enough attention to the other people involved in your “chosen” cause.
Bolded emphasis mine. This thread addresses the some of what I was writing about a few days ago, around relative size privilege and the difference between body positivity and fat acceptance. It is impossible to make an effective, honest, and truly inclusive social justice movement without constantly acknowledging the intersectionality of oppression. Though, as Marianne said here, and I sad yesterday morning, it is totally OK (and in fact perhaps more practical) to focus your limited energy to one or a few areas of identity politics, but if you don’t remain vigilant and open about your own privileges and fail to acknowledge how the oppression you are fighting against intersects with others, your politics will fail. 
I think this is the most concise summary of privilege I’ve seen yet
Thanks to an anonymous tip (I’m not trying to sound cool, this was a legit anonymous ask sent in) we’ve decided to talk about these screen shots of Tyler Oakley on LiveJournal, back in 2011, declaring that American Apparel selling a “Conical Asian Hat” is in fact NOT racist. In his words, “calling it racist is racist within itself.”
We live in a society where POC are constantly mocked. We live in a society where stereotypes about POC are perpetuated on the regular. And even those more “noble” stereotypes or “cool” aspects of our culture become a commodity to be fetishized by white bodies. (See: commodity fetishism and Tyler Oakley’s Appropriation of Black Women’s Speech).
Simply, white America is the great cultural appropriator. White Americans take without asking or even giving credit. White America sterilizes and gentrifies other folks’ culture in an effort to seem cool, hip, and, above all things, cultured.
This incident with Oakley is a great example of how white individuals try to justify their actions when they are called out for agreeing with or perpetuating certain aspects of cultural appropriation. Oakley’s lack of understanding of his position of power in this conversation is laughable. Here a white man is essentially telling Asian folks that taking aspects of their culture for American consumption isn’t racist. No, no, it’s capitalism and the American way. Not only that, he’s also telling people that they only see the hats as bad because they believe there’s something wrong with being Asian.
Dude is so far out of his depth here, and it never even occurs to him, because the idea that there’s a conversation on oppression where he’s not the most knowledgeable one in the room just doesn’t make sense to him.
Sorry for all the Tyler Oakley posts, but if he just wouldn’t do so much problematic stuff, we wouldn’t have so much to write about.
