whitelivesdontmatter:

nigga is the only racially targeted slur i can think of that’s been turned into colloquialism for people of all races to use in their everyday conversations…and yall dont think that a nonblack person who says it is antiblack & racist. lol ok.
the simple fact that everyone’s so comfortable saying nigga and not some other slur goes to show that black pain, blackness in general, is open for consumption by all races

queenrinacat:

smarmyanarchist:

respectability politics is how we get people saying the entire BLM movement is a hate movement because some of the protests became riots or because some of the protesters chanted “fuck the police”, but when it comes to Neo-Nazis, they’re happy to engage them in “polite debate” because they appear “dapper” and calm/reasonable. it’s how people genuinely believe that “antifa are as bad as fascists” because we use violence against them.

it all comes back down to this bizarre preoccupation with how nice and polite someone seems, rather than the content of their ideas and their overall goals.

Additionally, how “nice and polite someone seems” is subjective, and strongly biased by societal stereotypes and bigotry. Black people will always been seen as inherently more “aggressive” than white people thanks to stereotypes born out of (deliberately maintained) institutional racism. 

perfumed-sea:

White people are chronically devoid of empathy, not because they are incapable of it, but because the crux of whiteness as an identity and process is the dehumanization of the Other – this permeates every aspect of the white psyche, especially when it comes to interactions of any kind with racialized people, and this goes double for white “progressives” who tend to do absolutely anything but empathize,
anything to avoid doing the real work of critical introspection and
extending empathy as an action grounded in knowledge as opposed to a hollow,
self-serving and convenient sentiment

They’ll self-flagellate, beg for absolution, claim solidarity, collect racialized people and our ideas as proof, chide us for not giving them enough credit for having tried, rigorously monitor us for “mistakes” that justify our dehumanization, shoehorn themselves into our bodies, our pain –
without at any point realizing that what makes it possible to do any of
the aforementioned is that historical, material, psychical relation between whiteness and the Other, that perpetual process of dehumanizing us in order to humanize themselves and justify violence, i.e., the antithesis of empathy

maxanorsgf:

honestly you guys need to stop misapplying intersectional theory. since you base your ideas on identity politics you seem to think that each “identity” holds the same weight, but in reality our lives are determined by race, class, and gender (and also ability and nationality). but these things don’t have equal predictive effects on people’s lives. you guys seem to think that if a working-class person of color is also “neurotypical” and able-bodied and cishet that the count of “privileges” to “disprivileges” makes them “less oppressed” than a white person who is not-cis, not-straight, and not-neurotypical at the same time, but that’s absolutely not how oppression works. trying to quantify oppression “levels” means you’ve already lost. even then, we have to understand this through historical transformations and labor relations under capitalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy. 

wrt to the working-class cishet poc, their cishet status doesn’t really grant them grand material benefits at the end of the day. they’re still oppressed by the state and denied access to material goods. like, cathy cohen talked about this in her pivotal essay in which she criticized queer theory for this exact dichotomy (queer vs cishet) in her essay “punks, bulldaggers, and welfare queens”. 

whereas even if a white person is a woman and also lgbt, their race is a huge shield against certain forms of material violence that cishet men of color face despite being cishet or male. 

oppression is continuous and sustained and it’s determined by labor relations/class relations. if there is no class or race in your analysis then it is faulty. 

we have to analyze these things through a materialist lens. so for example, a white lgbt woman may be oppressed because she is denied access to material goods either because she’s a woman (so being denied employment bc she doesn’t wear makeup, for instance) or because she’s lgbt (so being denied housing, for instance). but is she susceptible to sustained poverty, or environmental/biological racism, or urban racism, or biometric surveillance, or state violence? probably not. class has to factor into this. 

a working class cishet poc who may appear neurotypical and able-bodied (i say appear bc it’s necessary to chart the physical and mental effects of poverty onto a person and that doesn’t become immediately apparent) is not less oppressed or more privileged because they have “three” or “four” privileges (cis, het, able-bodied, neurotypical). let’s say they live in flint, michigan. they are targeted by an onslaught of environmental racism that has trickled down into the very cells of their body. so in addition to living in abject poverty, which the state ignores and even exacerbates, the environmental racism that characterized the flint water crisis affects them physically and psychologically on a daily basis. this prevents them from working, from providing for their children, from saving and investing. they have low assets and disposable income. their income probably decreases because of outrageous healthcare costs and their difficulty working due to health problems. 

their supposed “neurotypical” status or their cishet status neither shield them from this violence nor gain them any benefits. on the contrary, a white lgbt woman living in a middle-class town may have “fewer” privileged identities (if you’re using the identity politics privilege chart) but her life isn’t impacted by environmental racism or police brutality or class violence, and so she can navigate her material reality with far greater ease. of course she can still be exposed to the violence of misogyny and homophobia, but that violence is quite unlikely to come from that working-class cishet poc in flint, michigan. 

we can an apply a similar analysis to the dakota access pipeline and how that is an example of the settler colonial state oppressing indigenous people. it doesn’t matter if the indigenous person in question is straight or not – their people are universally targeted by environmental racism and state violence. 

so when like you guys call cishet poc “heteronormative” or cishet moc “patriarchal” it makes no sense bc they aren’t oppressing you and if they are enacting homophobic or patriarchal violence it’s probably and primarily against women or LGBT people in THEIR community, not against white women or white LGBT people. 

sure they can be homophobic or misogynistic. but if we’re going to analyze something such as “straight” privilege or “male” privilege in their context, we’d have to compare it against lgbt poc and women of color, not against the lgbt community or women at large. and that’s when you see like cishet moc being privileged against lgbt woc. 

oppression is not a simplistic algebra equation. it’s not like “okay, i have three privileges, and you have four, so your privileges cancel out your oppression”. it’s a complicated, interconnected matrix, primarily determined by race and class (and gender).  

entitledrichpeople:

Capitalism produces scarcity artificially where there is none.

There are enough houses.

There is enough food (in fact there’s currently massive amounts of “overproduced” grain being left to rot)

There is enough water.

Even without changing the horribly designed production systems, there is no real shortage.  People don’t starve, have no fresh water, have no houses to live in, etc. because there are not enough of these things.  People don’t have access because capitalism denies them it.

There’s enough to share for everyone.  It’s not a zero sum game for poor and oppressed peoples. 

thecuckoohaslanded:

This is gonna start off sounding weird but stay with me for a second:

We really need to move on from the current performative culture of “no terfs allowed” and “reblog to make a terf angry”

Because that’s not a valuable solution to the underlying problem.

You know what would really bother trans exclusionary/exterminatory radical ‘feminists’?  IRRELEVANCE.  They’re just like the Alt-Right; their worst enemy is an audience that isn’t receptive to their message of hate and won’t give them a voice to keep spreading it.  Instead of giving them a free pass to go back to their echo chambers and prey on young wlw that they can indoctrinate and radicalize into their transphobic cult, make it so that their voices don’t actually reach anyone in the first place.  Deny them stable footing to build a platform on.

You know how you do that?

Build an alternative culture of radical acceptance and validation for trans women in women’s spaces and especially wlw safe spaces.

Don’t just toss out a “fuck terfs” every once in a while and think your job is done.  If you actually want to be an ally to trans women, BE AN ALLY TO TRANS WOMEN.  Make your spaces a safer place for us, and be VOCAL about it.  Be consistent, persistent, and insistent on defining us authentically as women and make it obvious that we’re accepted and welcomed as such.  And make sure you are boosting the voices of trans women in queer and women’s spaces if there’s any doubt that you don’t have the best information to hand out on trans issues, because misinformation about us is the best weapon terfs have.  START DENYING THEM THAT WEAPON BY ACTIVELY PRESENTING A TRUTHFUL NARRATIVE ABOUT TRANS PEOPLE INSTEAD.

This exposes new generations to the reality of trans women’s lives and identities instead of letting terfs pick off and cultivate the vulnerable ones who don’t know any better and using the dismissive nature of performative allyship to convince these young wlw that there’s some gender conspiracy that’s letting men invade women’s spaces.  

(Which is obviously insane just on face value.  Can you honestly even imagine a cis man having to face the reality of womanhood for an extended period of time?  It’d be a trainwreck.  The whole basis of their philosophy falls apart in SECONDS when you just represent the lived experiences of trans women in an honest way.  No cis man could live a day in a trans woman’s shoes.)

If you don’t have the energy to deal with these people personally, by all means care for yourself by keeping them at a distance.  But NEVER believe that slapping a “twerfs can choke” in your bio is by itself enough to deal with the source of the problem, which is terfs preying on vulnerable young wlw by feeding them misinformation about trans women.

If you really want to be an ally to trans women you HAVE to present an alternate narrative of truthful information so these younger generations won’t be swayed by the false narratives that terfs are currently selling them.

Deny them their recruiting grounds by ACCEPTING AND VALIDATING AND WELCOMING TRANS WOMEN IN WOMEN’S AND WLW SAFE SPACES, STAND UP FOR US WHEN YOU CAN, AND NEVER LET TERFS CONTROL THE NARRATIVE ABOUT US.  Make their voices irrelevant by exposing them for what they are: predatory radicals that use the same isolation and misinformation tactics as the Far Right to cultivate new generations of twisted, vile rhetoric and a philosophy of violence and hatred.

Don’t just “reblog to make a terf angry”.  They take out that anger on US while you remain safe in the ‘terf-free zone’ you want your blogs to be.  

Instead build an authentic culture of love and support for trans women and spread visibility for the truth of our womanhood so terfs can’t keep selling their snake oil to new generations of vulnerable young wlw who end up making comics about literally boiling us alive.

Reblog to start building that culture of trans positivity and make the world a safer place for us to live.  

Reblog to validate a trans woman.

thecuckoohaslanded:

This is gonna start off sounding weird but stay with me for a second:

We really need to move on from the current performative culture of “no terfs allowed” and “reblog to make a terf angry”

Because that’s not a valuable solution to the underlying problem.

You know what would really bother trans exclusionary/exterminatory radical ‘feminists’?  IRRELEVANCE.  They’re just like the Alt-Right; their worst enemy is an audience that isn’t receptive to their message of hate and won’t give them a voice to keep spreading it.  Instead of giving them a free pass to go back to their echo chambers and prey on young wlw that they can indoctrinate and radicalize into their transphobic cult, make it so that their voices don’t actually reach anyone in the first place.  Deny them stable footing to build a platform on.

You know how you do that?

Build an alternative culture of radical acceptance and validation for trans women in women’s spaces and especially wlw safe spaces.

Don’t just toss out a “fuck terfs” every once in a while and think your job is done.  If you actually want to be an ally to trans women, BE AN ALLY TO TRANS WOMEN.  Make your spaces a safer place for us, and be VOCAL about it.  Be consistent, persistent, and insistent on defining us authentically as women and make it obvious that we’re accepted and welcomed as such.  And make sure you are boosting the voices of trans women in queer and women’s spaces if there’s any doubt that you don’t have the best information to hand out on trans issues, because misinformation about us is the best weapon terfs have.  START DENYING THEM THAT WEAPON BY ACTIVELY PRESENTING A TRUTHFUL NARRATIVE ABOUT TRANS PEOPLE INSTEAD.

This exposes new generations to the reality of trans women’s lives and identities instead of letting terfs pick off and cultivate the vulnerable ones who don’t know any better and using the dismissive nature of performative allyship to convince these young wlw that there’s some gender conspiracy that’s letting men invade women’s spaces.  

(Which is obviously insane just on face value.  Can you honestly even imagine a cis man having to face the reality of womanhood for an extended period of time?  It’d be a trainwreck.  The whole basis of their philosophy falls apart in SECONDS when you just represent the lived experiences of trans women in an honest way.  No cis man could live a day in a trans woman’s shoes.)

If you don’t have the energy to deal with these people personally, by all means care for yourself by keeping them at a distance.  But NEVER believe that slapping a “twerfs can choke” in your bio is by itself enough to deal with the source of the problem, which is terfs preying on vulnerable young wlw by feeding them misinformation about trans women.

If you really want to be an ally to trans women you HAVE to present an alternate narrative of truthful information so these younger generations won’t be swayed by the false narratives that terfs are currently selling them.

Deny them their recruiting grounds by ACCEPTING AND VALIDATING AND WELCOMING TRANS WOMEN IN WOMEN’S AND WLW SAFE SPACES, STAND UP FOR US WHEN YOU CAN, AND NEVER LET TERFS CONTROL THE NARRATIVE ABOUT US.  Make their voices irrelevant by exposing them for what they are: predatory radicals that use the same isolation and misinformation tactics as the Far Right to cultivate new generations of twisted, vile rhetoric and a philosophy of violence and hatred.

Don’t just “reblog to make a terf angry”.  They take out that anger on US while you remain safe in the ‘terf-free zone’ you want your blogs to be.  

Instead build an authentic culture of love and support for trans women and spread visibility for the truth of our womanhood so terfs can’t keep selling their snake oil to new generations of vulnerable young wlw who end up making comics about literally boiling us alive.

Reblog to start building that culture of trans positivity and make the world a safer place for us to live.  

Reblog to validate a trans woman.