- Don’t characterize a Black character as sassy or thuggish, especially when the character in question is can be described in literally ten thousand other ways..
- Don’t describe Black characters as chocolate, coffee, or any sort of food item.
- Don’t highlight the race of Black characters (ie, “the dark man” or “the brown woman”) if you don’t highlight the race of white characters.
- Think very carefully about that antebellum slavery or Jim Crow AU fic as a backdrop for your romance.
- If you’re not fluent with AAVE, don’t use it to try to look cool or edgy. You look corny as hell.
- Don’t use Black characters as a prop for the non-Black characters you’re actually interested in.
- Keep “unpopular opinions” about racism, Black Lives Matter, and other issues pertinent to Black folks out the mouths of Black characters. We know what the fuck you’re doing with that and need to stop.
- Don’t assume a Black character likes or hates a certain food, music, or piece of pop culture.
- You can make a Black character’s race pertinent without doing it like this.
- Be extremely careful about insinuating that one or more of a Black character’s physical features are dirty, unclean, or ugly.
Feel free to add more.
Adding more…
- Be wary of making Black characters seem animalistic, uncivilized, or subhuman in comparison to white characters. Watch out for: comparing us to monkeys, gorillas, chimpanzees, apes, and other animals.
- Words like Negroid, colored/colured, Negro, and the n-word do not belong in the mouths of contemporary characters you want to portray as sympathetic.
- Not all Black people are African American.
- Africa is not a country but the second-largest continent on earth with some 54 different countries with thousands of ethnic groups and 1,500 to 3,000 languages and dialects.
- Resist the urge to make a Black character seem uneducated and ignorant compared to white characters.
- Capitalizing Black shows that you recognize that the word unifying people of African descent, particularly the diaspora, should be described using a proper noun.
- Please, say “Black people,” not “blacks.”
- Give Black characters the same psychological and moral complexity as white men are given by default.
- Make sure that you don’t write a Black character as happily subservient to a white character.
- Understand and show that you understand that Black characters don’t exist to be the caretakers of white characters.
And more…
- Do your own homework instead of expecting, asking, or demanding Black fans to do it.
- Before approaching that Black person you admire so much for being so articulate about race issues (this is sarcasm) to beta read your work: 1) make sure it’s something they’ve expressed interest in doing, and 2) you offer something in return for their time and expertise.
- Be prepared for fans to have issues with what you came up with and open to suggestions.
- Having only one Black character in a story that takes place in a huge city, country, or galaxy looks weird. Really, really weird. Scary weird.
- Don’t use a Black character’s death to motivate a white character.
- Portray Black characters with complex and multifaceted identities. We are more than just Black. We are also women, LGBT, Jewish, disabled, neurodivergent, immigrants, etc.
- There is a huge chasm between hypersexual and desexualized.
- Remember: what’s progressive for a white character is not necessarily progressive for a Black one.
I kind of wish disney’s ~weird period~ had lasted longer. Like all of a sudden we were getting these films like lilo & stitch and Atlantis and the emperor’s new groove and treasure planet and they were so fun and DIFFERENT. Just thinking about what the pitches for those movies had to have been like is so surreal?? A little blue criminal alien crash lands on a Hawaiian island and gets adopted by two sisters dealing with social services that teach him about the value of family. An Inca emperor gets turned into a llama and john goodman helps him get back to his palace and one of the bad guys talks to squirrels. Treasure island but in SPACE. Like, on the surface, the premise for these films seem so random but they all TOTALLY WORKED IN REALLY GREAT WAYS??? idk I just really miss that early 2000s spark of offbeat creativity in Disney’s timeline.
& treasure planet was surreal in that its main relationship was between a teenager whose dad abandoned him and a pirate outlaw who acted as a father figure to him??? romance is great and all but it’s really nice that most of lilo and stitch’s, emporer’s new groove’s, and treasure planet’s stories all revolved around platonic relationships and they just were so pure and refreshing???
Bernice King, the daughter of Dr. Martin Luther King and Coretta King, posted this on her Facebook page.
Reblog this to save several million lives.
I upset myself because I didn’t realize that Dr King was so recent that his daughter is still alive, and using facebook.
He’s not a Fucking Dread Wizardlord, for Gods’ Sake.
Call him Donald; that honestly pisses him off more than anything else. The idea that ANYONE would take such liberty with him, that ANYONE would identify him as who he IS rather than as his Brand, infuriates the man endlessly, as Clinton showed repeatedly on national television. Avoiding his name gives him more importance and power over us than he deserves.
Note to Millennials from GenX:
So you know those news stories about how Millennials don’t buy enough breakfast cereal or paperback books or homes or whatever the hell that Boomers are complaining that “kids these days” don’t spend money on? And y’all are like “LOL, no cash my pal”?
I think there’s something more insidious going on. You see, they thought they had you. Forget the Saturday morning cartoons of my childhood, they had Disney Channel and Nickelodeon feeding you ads all day long. Your generation got advertising in your schools. Your parents took you to prosperity doctrine spewing MegaChurches (it’s Mega so it’s gotta impress the kids, right?).
They thought you were going to be their generation of super-consumers.
You are generations distant from the great depression, and the 1979 energy crisis. Boomers want to pretend that the 2008 housing bubble wouldn’t affect the little kids. And plus, we had grown past the era of Yankee thrift and hippie DIY frugality. Right? And there was no mopey Kurt Cobain glamorizing thrift-store flannel shirts. You guys were going to out-consume the Boomer generation. They were sure of it.
Those think pieces? They’re Boomer disappointment that you have found value in something other than your place as a mindless consumer.
And yeah, I’m not going to pretend that y’all have more cash than you do. It was fucking idiotic to think they were going to raise a consumer generation without having to pay them the money they would need to buy even life’s necessities. And I could write a book about how my generation was complicit in destroying the old values around work and loyalty that left your generation screwed. Really, I’m genuinely sorry for the mistakes we made.
But you guys have given a big middle finger to the generation who thought that they could manipulate you from birth into manipulable-money-spending-machines. And I’m way fucking proud of you for that.
So I generally think generation-hate is ALSO a tool, but… I do think there is something to this.
there’s a lot of evidence that the iliad and the odyssey were actually composed by a variety of poets through an oral tradition rather than just by one poet, so what if the homeric texts are actually just a very long game of D&D
homer, the dm: okay achilles, agamemnon has just taken away your war prize, what do you want to do
achilles’ player: i roll to have a diplomatic conversation with agamemnon
achilles’ player: *rolls a 1*
homer: you throw the staff of speaking at agamemnon’s face and storm off to sulk with your boyfriendHomer, the DM: Your beautiful Patroclus is dead. What do you do?
Achilles’ player: I fight everyone.
Homer, the DM: You can’t fight everyone. How would you even–
Achilles’ player: *rolls a 20* I fight everyone.
Homer, the DM: *sighs* Fine. You cut a path through the Trojan army, enemy dead strewn in your wake.
Achilles’ player: How many?
Homer, the DM: …lots. Enough to clog the friggin’ river with bodies.
Achilles’ player: I fight the river.
Homer, the DM: You. can. not. fight. the. river.
Achilles’ player: *reaches for dice*Homer, the DM: Okay guys, so the war’s over, you had a bunch of losses but you won in the end. Time to go home, let’s roll to see who gets there firs—
Odysseus’s player: I got a critical failure.
Homer: The cyclops asks you who you are. What do you do?
Odysseus’s player: I say, “Who me? I’m nobody.”
Homer: Roll for deception.
Odysseus’s player: I got a natural 20.
Homer: The cyclops now completely believes that your name is Nobody. He shouts for help from the other cyclops but they ignore him because he’s telling them that “Nobody hurt him.”
Odysseus’s
player: FUCK yes
in response to the crisis going on in chechnya right now, i wanted to underline how important it is to understand the complexity of russian homophobia, which has proven to be distinct from many western strains of homophobia due to historical circumstances. historically, same-sex attraction has been seen as non-russian due to its connection to bourgeois decadence of the west (which opposed proletarian values), as well as long-term invisibility of the LGBT+ community under stalin and its sudden reemergence in the 90s (when the soviet union collapsed) which shapes much of contemporary homophobia. there are also other factors, such as promotion of hypermasculinity within the soviet union after WWII and the generally sexphobic culture prevalent under the regime. while biological arguments (”it’s unnatural”) and religion have also played a role in modern russian homophobia, it is the association of LGBT+ existence with the west that has causes the most retaliation against LGBT+ activism. (we can see this most evidently with sochi olympics and now with the chechnya crisis; external activist efforts are rejected because ‘the west is trying to meddle with russian politics/values’ and internal efforts are rejected because ‘they’re brainwashed by the west’)
since i just finished my massive research paper on russian lgbt+ history, here are a few sources that i would highly recommend for learning more about how russia came to be so homophobic:
DAN HEALEY (aka the champion of russian LGBT+ history):
- Book: Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia: The Regulation of Sexual and Gender Dissent – excellent and meticulously detailed overview of the complexities of russian LGBT+ lives at the beginning of the 20th century; discusses both progressiveness of lenin’s regime and the violent repression and erasure of LGBT+ identity under stalin, as well as so much more
- Journal: HOMOSEXUAL EXISTENCE AND EXISTING SOCIALISM: New Light on the Repression of Male Homosexuality in Stalin’s Russia; a more brief overview than the book; may be more easily accessible. strongly recommend if you’re interested in history and want a starting point for learning about early soviet politics and how they affected LGBT+ lives
BRIAN BAER:
- Book: Other Russias: Homosexuality and the Crisis of Post-Soviet Identity; excellent examination in the role that invisibility of the LGBT+ community (due to stalin’s repression and sudden reappearance in the 80s and 90s after gorbachev’s reforms) has played in making russians believe that same-sex attraction is a product of western infiltration into russian society. offers excellent criticisms of discourse surrounding russian LGBT+ issues by western scholars.
DAVID TULLER:
- Book: Cracks in the Iron Closet: Travels in Gay and Lesbian Russia; offers a more accessible insight into russian LGBT+ society through recounting the author’s travels. over all a good book, but is not as far reaching or deeply analytical as some of the other sources. there’s a preview on google books, so you can easily skim through it.
MULTIPLE AUTHORS:
- Book: Out of the Blue: Russia’s Hidden Gay Literature; An Anthology (ed. Kevin Moss); a wonderful read revealing numerous hidden gay/LGBT+ figures throughout russian literary scene. you’ll be surprised to find how many of the famous russian authors and poets were not straight.
- Book: Gender in Russian History and Culture (ed. Edmondson); features a chapter by my man Healey discussing lesbianism and the medical/endocrinological discoveries of the 1910s-1920s that shaped russian discourse on homosexuality later on, as well as many interesting discussions about womanhood in russian and early soviet society.
if you went to discuss anything with me or have any questions about russian LGBT+ history, homophobia, or things about my personal experience as a same-gender attracted russian & ukrainian woman, my inbox/IM is available (just keep in mind that this is a highly sensitive subject for me and there may be some things i’m not comfortable disclosing)
Yes, i have a question. Why is the west always to blame for everything in the eyes of non-western countries? And why is homosexuality associated with the west in non-western countries?
Ok I cannot speak for yelyzaveta’s situation but since you are talking about non-western countries in general:
1. It’s not true everyone in non-western countries blames the west for everything. There is plenty of acknowledgement that the problems we face are complex and that inasmuch as we were affected by Western imperialism, we too had agency and it is not as simple.
2. HOWEVER, that rhetoric has at times been weaponised by certain politicians who wish to appeal to the notion that being LGBT+ is inherently foreign and alien, against our ‘traditional culture’ and therefore justifiably rejected. This is what I have encountered as an East & SEAsian. This is of course not true; same gender relationships are well-documented in Chinese history even as far back as the Han dynasty, for example. But it is a cheap and easy rhetoric to use in countries that either had a) a prior experience of Western imperialism/colonialism b) are in some ways seeing themselves opposed to some concept of ‘the West.’ The reason for this opposition differs depending on the country of course, but some sense of opposing Western-ness in general can feed this mentality. Unfortunately, as I’ve seen in my own family, a number of people fall for it.
3. One common reason they see it as emanating from ‘Western’ culture because for example, if I compare UK and Malaysia, the UK is a lot more progressive on LGBT+ rights today. These things are associated with Western-ness. The fact that many major human rights organisations that criticise these abuses are headquartered in Western countries feeds their claim that it is ‘cultural imperialism’ (as a side note, this is why it is extremely important to give visibility and awareness to the many non-western human rights and LGBT+ activists from those very countries). This, I must emphasise, is not only erasure of history but exceedingly ironic, and not only because LGBT+ people have existed in our societies throughout history. Because the UK in the past used to treat same gender attraction as either criminal or a mental illness. It has changed today because of the efforts of activists. But many of our countries that used to be part of the British Empire actually still have the homophobic colonial-era laws enacted by colonial governments in the books. Like section 377. Our societies were not necessarily utopian or totally accepting of LGBT+ people before that, but those British colonial laws are in fact used to oppress people today and did play a role in institutionalising homophobia as it exists in the present day. But that colonial origin is often conveniently forgotten by people who claim LGBT+ rights are ‘western’, and instead we get a reductive idea that LGBT+ rights is a ‘Western’ idea because of the modern situation.
I will underscore that the exact nuances of this narrative that ‘LGBT+ rights = foreign Western idea that should be rejected’ also takes on different nuances and contours, depending on the society in question.
holy fucking shit
rnph:
tumblr is pretty cool because no matter what you choose to blog about (whether it be jokes, a fandom, fashion, or something else) someone out there will always explicitly hate you for it with mad intensity
I wish I could just start appointments by asking “So, do you prefer mildly condescending platitudes, or medications with a bunch of side effects?”, and then people could just tell me, and I wouldn’t have to guess, and they couldn’t get angry if I gave them the one they wanted.
And if they said “Neither!”, I would answer “Oh, so you must want placebo. I know a really great acupuncturist, let me give you her number.”
I’d also include “or (1) actual examination of what you’re doing that makes your life better and what you’re doing that makes your life worse, and how you can do more of the former and less of the latter, and (2) examination of what important life skills you lack, and exploration of ways for you to develop them and/or work around their absence,” with selection of that one to be followed by “okay, let me refer you to a therapist, that’s not really something I can provide in 20 minutes once a month.”
My impression is that the chance of this reducing to “mildly condescending platitudes” varies with the patient’s intelligence and social class, from “wait,you’re saying I should get a good night’s sleep? I never thought of that before!” among confused schizophrenics, to “of course I’ve used black-market d-cycloserine to potentiate the effects of cognitive-behavioral self-help workbooks, what kind of moron do you think I am, you’re wasting my fucking time” among people I talk to on Tumblr.
When I tried the “Wow, you mean diet and exercise help lose weight? Goodness me, in all the years I’ve been fat, I never heard of that, much less tried it!” retort to the “mildly condescending platitudes”, it didn’t end well.
So you’ll have to take the platitudes plus the side-effects if you want any treatment at all. Be nice to get the “talk to me like a human being and even an averagely intelligent one at that” option but doesn’t happen often (did happen with one doctor which is a refreshing change but not too frequent, alas!)
Be even nicer if the “I can’t take that medication you want to prescribe me and are pushing me to take, because it will react badly with a medication I’m currently taking, and no I didn’t just read that off the Internet, the last time I got prescribed that I turned blue in the face and had to be rushed to the ER” option was on offer, but we can’t expect miracles, now can we?
Though re: social class and judgements of status and intelligence, I don’t know if this is more pronounced over here, but because I’m (a) fat (b) naturally talk widda native aksent like, bye, I do tend to get the “plainly thick as two short planks, do the condescending talking down bit and the ignoring what they’re saying bit” unless I use my “the nuns at school taught us elocution lessons” voice and then I get the “hey, evidence of a brain here, talk to them like a real person!” reaction. But it needs to be finely judged, if you show too much intelligence that triggers the “who do they think they are, I’m the doctor here” reaction which also goes badly.
Which is kind of a shame, given that I have the same level of comprehension and intellect in both instances, and only my vocabulary and diction has changed.
I think the problem is that there are lots of genuinely…let’s politely call them “confused” people who don’t realize even very obvious things, and if you don’t know your patients well enough to predict who they are you might as well just give the “eat well, exercise, and get a good night’s sleep” spiel to everybody. But it sure does sound condescending if you’re not the right target.
(and this gets harder when we go into subtler things like “have you tried sleeping in a cool room with good white noise” or “have you tried melatonin” etc)
Again, I wish I could just ask “Are you aware of basic things that it would be very surprising if you weren’t?” but everyone would define this differently and it would be useless.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest the wild’n’crazy notion that if a fat person is going to a doctor semi-regularly (e.g. this is not their first appointment ever with a medical professional), they kinda sorta maybe have heard the “do you realise you are fat?” part before, even if they are as dumb as a rock.
I realise that there’s not really a tactful way of going about it, but suggesting (rather than assuming they have no idea that “eating more = putting on weight”) that if they’d care to discuss their problems with weight loss you might have some suggestions that would be helpful could work out better.
And there are physical conditions which do make weight gain easier and weight loss harder; again, I know that the idea that fat people like to blame their “glands” and it’s only an excuse has some basis in reality, but for instance – when I found out very late in life that I had PCOS and that this contributes to weight gain, I was about fit to kick in a window. Nobody had ever explored this with me before, nobody believed me when I was saying ‘no, honest, I really am trying to diet and exercise and the weight is not coming off’ and all the years since puberty when the weight started to pile on and I was feeling guilty (because “blaming your glands is only an excuse, the reason you’re fat is because plainly you’re eating too much of the wrong food”) and miserable and fighting with my mother over my weight and going on crash diets that didn’t work as soon as I went off “you eat one bowl of soup a day”so the weight all came back and hating myself for being fat and ugly and stupid and all the other things society tells you that being fat means about your character and intelligence – well.
Yes, eating too much of the wrong food is to blame there, but there was a real, physical, not in my control cause there as well, and had I known, that would have made a difference.
tl;dr – yeah, sometimes us fatties are stupid and ignorant and it is eating too much and not exercising enough. But sometimes there are other real medical problems there too.
On the one hand, I totally sympathize with what you’re saying and I understand it must be really annoying.
On the other hand, this has actually been discussed and studied, and current very-carefully-considered recommendations are to say the thing. See eg The Impact Of Physician Discussion Of Weight Loss In US Adults, GPs Should Not Worry About Offending Obese Patients Study Finds, et cetera.
As always, none of these studies is unimpeachably super-impressive, but considering the low risk I think it’s fair to do this even on weak evidence.
I am not convinced the risk is low. I’ve seen someone specifically instructed by a doctor to immediately discontinue physical therapy and exercise because it was resulting in muscle mass gain which was increasing BMI. I’ve also seen someone need a year of asking doctors about unambiguous medication-side-effect weight gain before a doctor actually condescended to even read the side-effect list for the medication and admit that this could be related.
In short, the risk is not “the risk of offending the patient”. The risk is doctors persistently completely disregard any and all information about a patient that fails to conform to the “fatty is lazy and stupid” narrative.
That risk is what people are concerned with. We are not talking about merely-annoying. We are talking about refusal to provide basic medical care at all to fat patients. We are talking about actively life-threatening advice given to patients.
In short, I think the study results are sort of irrelevant to what people are talking about here. They’re covering “is it possible that you’re fat because you eat too much”. Other people are talking about spending months to years going through tests and results and everything with a doctor looking at weight, saying “well, weight is still high, therefore everything you’ve said about exercise and diet is lies”.
… And that is something that I have seen so consistently, from so many overweight people, that I am starting to strongly suspect that refusal to provide basic medical care to fat people may be a statistically significant contributor to the computed “risks”. Like, I do not actually know a fat person who has not been outright refused medical care for something not-weight-related based on “but you’re fat”.
After a particularly exhausting (read annoying) conversation with an old friend, I can’t help but have a few reflections on the idea of laziness as it has been used to describe poor people. Besides the fact that the way it has been crafted and wielded is historically ableist and racist, when it does comes up the rationale of its proponents never holds water anyway.
Defined on its own terms it falls flat on its face.
“Laziness: unwilling to work or use energy.”
Which requires less work and energy: Able-bodied people of some financial means writing a check for charity, or the most vulnerable people in society building alternative systems of support and mutual aid with/for each other with virtually no safety net?
Which requires less work and energy: Accepting the spoonfed, carefully curated narrative of mainstream media with little to no resistance, or opting to dig deeper than soundbites and holding the complexity of how oppression impacts groups and individuals?
Which requires less work and energy: Resigning oneself to the idea that swaths of people choose not to work and prefer a meager food stipend, or breaking down the myths about poverty and poor people created by a system which benefits from exploitation?
Which requires less work and energy: Writing people off because they aren’t as “successful” as you are, or contextualizing individuals’ life stories, their challenges, caring about them, and mobilizing resources to help them reach their fullest potential?
Which requires less work and energy: Following the pre-scripted path of every temporarily embarrassed millionaire (get rich or die trying), or forgoing fortune, risking financial and emotional instability, risking health and life for the possibility of an equitable world?
Seems like a no brainer to me. Fuck anybody who says poor people are lazy and aren’t out here trying. If you’re so insulated that you can’t see people struggling to escape poverty, you’re the problem. Get off your ass and help or do the rest of us a favor and shut the fuck up.
No one notices that Dex and Nursey are together for two months. They’re surprisingly subtle about it, maintaining their decorum on the ice, saving their kisses for when they’re alone. They fight as much as they did before, because some things never change, but they resolve every issue with soft apologies and warm bodies in the dark of their rooms. It’s tentative but intense, and they’re both a little too afraid of the depth of their feelings to announce it to everyone – that would mean putting a name on it, on what they feel for each other, and they’re not there yet.
So they don’t say anything, and everyone’s too sure of their hatred for each other to see the change in their relationship. Two months since the first heated kiss in Dex’s room and the SMH are none the wiser. It’s almost too easy, Dex giving a practiced scowl whenever Chowder tries to get him to socialize with Nursey, Nursey shrugging nonchalantly whenever Ransom and Holster point out the pros of being friends and D-men. Even Bitty and Lardo miss the subtle cues they give: a glance here, a brush of a hand there, Nursey eyeing the delightful red of Dex’s blush whenever his shirt rides up to show a slither of toned, dark skin. They get a little reckless, stealing kisses in the Haus just outside the kitchen doorway as Bitty putters about inside, exploring each other’s bodies in the stands at Faber. They begin to talk about them a little more, growing more and more confident each day in themselves and their relationship to the point that Dex thinks they might soon be brave enough to define it.
And then they play Michigan, and everything goes to shit.
It’s a rough game, rougher than any of them have played in a long time, and they’re not prepared. Bitty gets checked in the first period and it’s dirty. He’s lucky it’s not worse, but he has to sit out for the rest of the game and they’re furious. The SMH are now on edge, every one of them out for blood, but even when Tango checks the guy who’d got Bitty hard, Michigan don’t let up. The atmosphere in the stands has gone from enthusiastic to tense, angry ripples running through the crowd, and it doesn’t help the team keep a level head. At the end of the second period Bitty calls them over and gives them a fond but firm talking to – he’s not a damsel they need to defend; they can’t stoop to Michigan’s level; they need to play their best and play for themselves, not to prove something to their opponents. Rans and Holtz give him surprisingly gentle hugs, tease him about being a shoo-in for Captain next year (everyone else agrees) and give their own brief rallying call.
When they go back out on the ice they’re braced to win with pride, or at least go down with dignity. Dex makes sure to skate a little too close to Nursey as they take their positions, a brief brush of arms as reassurance that they’re there, it’s okay, it’s fine. Something warm settles in Nursey’s chest, and he’s ready. The final period starts, and they’re off. The SMH play valiantly and cleanly, resistant and stoic in the face of Michigan’s questionable tactics, and it does them good. It looks like they’re going to win as they enter the final five minutes, and Dex can’t resist flashing a grin at Nursey as he hits the puck up to Tango. Nursey means to return it, meets Dex’s gaze – and catches the moment that a Michigan player crashes into Dex.
The check is violent to the extreme and completely illegal. Everyone’s yelling around them, the crowd in uproar, the paramedics making their way out onto the ice, the team screaming at Michigan. Nursey just freezes where he stands, stares at Dex’s unmoving form, watches as the paramedics search for a pulse. The relief is palpable when they find it, but Dex is still unconscious, and is that blood? Red is seeping onto the ice, staining the delicate strands of Dex’s ginger hair a vicious red. There’s a brief moment when Nursey remembers the night before, lying in Dex’s bed, running his hands through that beautiful hair, and then-
and then red is all he can see.
just moving along like everyone else 