Latest Posts by auranxia - Page 5
Remember when Ursula K. Le Guin called JK Rowling a nasty basic bitch back in like, 2004? We should have listened
it still disgusts me in a way i can’t completely express the way everyone just glossed over the violent misogynoir in shapiro’s WAP criticism like this is why “feminism” is annoying because most people were focused on the :O anti-women!!! messages but not specifically the anti-BLACK WOMAN messages, especially in the immediate jump to “you probably have a medical disorder” like just between my own experiences in gynecology and knowing how white ppl have literally dissected BW to make our sexual characteristics both spectacles and sites of violence it’s just so!!! evil and if i ever had the chance i’d murder him myself.
📁Elsa (the runner, Michiru's "Friend". This is random I know, but nobody talks about her)
That she’s half-black, half-Japanese. More specifically that her mother is an African-American who came to Japan to do translation work and her father is Japanese.
emma leger
shane dawson still got fans despite being a racist predator…………..that 6ix9ne freak a whole predator nd he still got fans…………………doja cat exposed as rubbing elbows w white supremacists nd she still got fans……………………jeffree star exposed as racist w bad business practices nd he still got fans………………………bts do sumn antiblack once a yr nd they not only have fans but have ppl brainwashing others into thinking that they are the ONLY kpop group that cares…………pray tell where is this cancel culture bitch everybody keep talking abt?
I love that man
A story that may have relevance for others, or then again, maybe not:
When I was in college, about ten or so years ago, I was a history major. I wanted to learn to dance, so I joined a swing dance club on campus. To my surprise, this club had about twice as many men as women (in high school, the last time I’d tried dancing, the ratio had gone the other way–lots of girls, and boys only that you could drag by their ears).
But apparently, there had been some kind of word spread specifically to the STEM guys that dance was a way that they could meet girls.
So anyway. I joined the swing dance club, and met a few guys. And at one point, when socializing with the guys outside of dance class, one of them asked me what my research was on. (I had already established that I was an honors history student doing a thesis, just as he had established that he was an honors… I’m not sure if he was CS or Math, but it was one of those.)
So I gave him the thumbnail sketch of my research. Now, to be clear, an honors senior thesis, while nothing like what a graduate student would do, was still fairly in-depth. I had to translate primary sources from the original late-Classical Latin. (My professor said, basically, that while there were plenty of translations of my source material, that I’d only be able to comfortably trust them if I had at least made a stab at a translation of my own. And he was right.) And there was so much secondary material, often contradictory, that I had been carefully sorting through.
But I was able to sift it into a three-sentence summary of my senior thesis work, you know, as one does.
So I gave him that summary, and then asked–since he was also an undergraduate senior doing an honors thesis–what his research was on.
“Oh,” he said, “you wouldn’t understand it.”
Reader, I went home in a frothing rage. Because I had thought we were playing one game–a game of ‘let’s talk about what we’re passionate about!’– and he had been playing another game, which was, one-upsmanship. I had done my best to give a basically understandable brief of my research–and he had used that against me. As if my research, my painstaking translation, my digging through archives and ILLs of esoteric works, my reading of ten thousand articles in Speculum (yes, the pre-eminent medievalist journal in North America is called Speculum, I’m sorry, it’s hilarious/sad but also true), and then my effort to sum it up for him, was nothing. Because his research into some kind of algorithm or other was just too complex for my tiny brain to conceive of. Because I just couldn’t possibly understand his work.
Now, the important note here is that the person I went home to was my senior year roommate. She was a graduate student–normally undergrads and graduate students couldn’t be roommates, but we’d been friends for years, and the tenured faculty-in-residence used his powers for good and permitted us to be roommates that year. Anyway. My senior year roommate was basically… in retrospect I think possibly an avatar of Athena. She was six feet tall, blonde, attractive in a muscular athletic way, a rock climber and racquetball player, sweet but sharp, extremely socially awkward, exceptionally kind even when it cost her to be kind, and an incredibly brilliant computer science major who spent most of her time working on extremely complicated mathematical algorithms. (Yes, I was a little in love with her, why do you ask? But she was as straight as a length of rope, and is now happily married, and so am I, so it worked out.)
(Still, yes, she is my mental image of Athena, to this day.)
Anyway, I came home in a frothing rage to my roommate, the Athena avatar. And I said, “He made me feel like such an idiot, that I could sum up my research to him but his research was just too smart for stupid little me.”
And she shut her book, and smiled at me, with her dark eyes and her high cheekbones and her bright hair, and said, “If he can’t explain his research to you, then he’s not nearly as smart as he thinks he is.”
Now I hesitated, because I’d be in college long enough to have sort of bought into the ridiculous idea that if you couldn’t dazzle them with your brilliance, you should baffle them with your bullshit. But she said, “Look, I’ve been doing work on computer science algorithms that have significantly complicated mathematical underpinnings. What do I do?”
And I said, “Genetic algorithms–that is, self-optimizing algorithms–for prioritization, specifically for scheduling.”
“Right,” she said. “You couldn’t code them because you’re not a computer scientist or a mathematician. But you can understand what I do. If someone can’t explain it like that, it isn’t a problem with you as a person. It’s a problem with them. They either don’t understand it as well as they think they do–or they want to make you feel inferior. And neither is a positive thing.”
So. There.
If you are looking into something and have a question, and someone treats you like an idiot for not understanding right away… here is what I have to say: maybe it isn’t you who is the idiot.
in sixth grade you were either a cucumber melon bitch or a warm vanilla sugar bitch
how to be less racist
im exhausted from blocking u and sending ur dumbass posts to my friends to talk shit so here’s a tutorial on how not to be a demon. ur welcome white devil
broke: speaking for us
woke: boosting our voices
broke: #im white tag
woke: putting that you’re white in your about page where we can always see it instead of tagging the bi monthly post you rb about racism with this
broke: uwu please let me know if i do something racist
woke: taking responsibility for yourself, monitoring your own actions, being receptive of criticism even if it’s not delivered to you in a nice way
broke: distancing yourself from your whiteness by making white people jokes and talking mad shit abt other white people
woke: understanding that you are not somehow less white than other white people bc you aren’t a cishet able bodied nt man
broke: getting mad when we make jokes abt hating white people
woke: understanding that you don’t get to monitor how we express our anger abt the trauma we’ve experienced at white people’s hands
broke: arguing with us about what is or isn’t racism
woke: understanding that you have never actually experienced racism, staying in your lane, actually listening to us
broke: making racism abt you and your feelings
woke: understanding your experiences with and perspective on racism are dumb and don’t matter, focusing on people of color instead
broke: constantly asking your friends of color to roast people for you
woke: not dragging us into all your messes, handling your own beef, understanding we’re probably tired of ur shit, learning to roast people yourself
broke: reblogging posts abt racism with #let me know if this is ok to rb
woke: not rbing posts if you think rbing it would be overstepping boundaries, contacting op to ask if you can rb their post, developing critical thinking skills
broke: “yeah i dont do this” or “omg i didnt realize that was Bad and i was actively hurting people by doing it” on posts abt racism
woke: reading and comprehending them, reblogging them silently and without commentary, not trying to get brownie points at all times
broke: answering asks from other white demons consoling you after you get called out for racism
woke: blocking those racist bitches, not feeding into the idea that any poc who calls you out is a monster, acknowledging that you fucked up, apologizing, not doing whatever you did again
broke: thanking me for teaching you how to treat poc like people
woke: realizing you should be embarrassed i had to tell you this shit
just a reminder:
a black girl character growing her hair out long breaks more stereotypes than a black girl character having short hair
a black girl character getting to be soft and fragile breaks more stereotypes than a black girl character being strong all the time
a black girl character being protected and comforted by others breaks more stereotypes than a black girl character having no one to look out for her but herself
a black girl character being considered pretty or cute by other characters breaks more stereotypes than a black girl character being considered unattractive
not everything that is empowering for white girls is empowering for black girls
the sexism we face overlaps, but it is not the same
Found this on FB and thought I'd share. This is some food for thought for those of you who that have uttered any of these phrases.
Reblog if you're black tumblr.
You don’t have to be black, it just means you support us, you stand by us and you’re for us.
And not a damn lie was told.
THIS RIGHT HERE
black is always elegant — moodboard
Black Women in Leisure
$ouranxia
Black people reblog with your cash app!
$AthenaTheBAMF
Here’s the thing about the air nomads.
I introduced a friend to ATLA a few nights ago, and they had only known two things about the entire show: the cabbage meme, and that Aang apparently wants to ride every large and dangerous animal he can possibly find. We got through the first five or so episodes, and my friend noted that Aang is exactly what a 12-year-old would be like if given godlike powers, and that this is literally just what he could do with airbending. He can’t even wield any of the other elements, and he’s one of the most powerful people on the planet, because he’s an airbender.
And that got me thinking.
This snippet from Bitter Work is one of the few pieces of concrete information we get about the airbenders, at least in ATLA. Iroh is explaining to Zuko how all four of the elements connect to the world and to each other.
Fire is the element of power, of desire and will, of ambition and the ability to see it through. Power is crucial to the world; without it, there’s no drive, no momentum, no push. But fire can easily grow out of control and become dangerous; it can become unpredictable, unless it is nurtured and watched and structured.
Earth is the element of substance, persistence, and enduring. Earth is strong, consistent, and blunt. It can construct things with a sense of permanence; a house, a town, a walled city. But earth is also stubborn; it’s liable to get stuck, dig in, and stay put even when it’s best to move on.
Water is the element of change, of adaptation, of movement. Water is incredibly powerful both as a liquid and a solid; it will flow and redirect. But it also will change, even when you don’t want it to; ice will melt, liquid will evaporate. A life dedicated to change necessarily involves constant movement, never putting down roots, never letting yourself become too comfortable.
We see only a few flashbacks to Aang’s life in the temples, and we get a sense of who he was and what kind of upbringing he had.
This is a preteen with the power to fucking fly. He’s got no fear of falling, and a much reduced fear of death. There’s a reason why the sages avoid telling the new avatar their status until they turn sixteen; could you imagine a firebender, at twelve years old, learning that they were going to be the most powerful person in the whole world? Depending on that child, that could go so badly.
But the thing about Aang, and the thing about the Air Nomads, is that they were part of the world too. They contributed to the balance, and then they were all but wiped out by Sozin. What was lost, there? Was it freedom? Yes, but I think there’s something else too, and it’s just yet another piece of the utter brilliance of the worldbuilding of ATLA.
To recap: we have power to push us forward; we have stability to keep us strong; we have change to keep us moving.
And then we have this guy.
The air nomads brought fun to the world. They brought a very literal sense of lightheartedness.
Sozin saw this as a weakness. I think a lot of the world did, in ATLA. Why do the Air Nomads bother, right? They’re just up there in their temples, playing games, baking pies in order to throw them as a gag. As Iroh said above, they had pretty great senses of humour, and they didn’t take themselves too seriously.
But that’s a huge part of having a world of balance and peace.
It’s not just about power, or might, or the ability to adapt. You can have all of those, but you also need fun. You need the ability to be vulnerable, to have no ambitions beyond just having a good day. You need to be able to embrace silliness, to nurture play, to have that space where a very specific kind of emotional growth can occur. Fun makes a hard life a little easier. Fun makes your own mortality a little less frightening to grasp. Fun is the spaces in between, that can’t be measured by money or military might. Fun is what nurtures imagination, allows you to see a situation in a whole new light, to find new solutions to problems previously considered impossible.
Fun is what makes a stranger into a friend, rather than an enemy.
Fun helps you see past your differences.
Fun is what fuels curiosity and openmindedness.
Fun is the first thing to die in a war.
YEMEN. South Yemen. Island of Socotra. Young girls in Hadiboh. 1995.
Protesting works: don’t let it die
Reminder to not give up, you are bringing about change.
List of positives to come out of the recent protests as of June 4:
- George Floyd’s murderer charged with murder and manslaughter, then had charges increased, then the officers that watched it happen were charged with aiding and abetting
- Louisville police (Breonna Taylor’s murderers) department will now be under review from an outside agency, which will include review on training, bias-free policing and accountability. (Unfortunately her killers have still not faced charges yet as far as I could find.)
- Charges are to be dropped for Kenneth Walker
- Atlanta has announced plans to create a task force + public database to track police brutality in metro Atlanta area
- Minneapolis city council members are considering disbanding police force in favor of a “community-oriented, nonviolent public safety and outreach capacity”
- Colorado lawmakers have introduced an incredible police reform bill that includes body cam laws, repealing the “fleeing felon” statute, banning chokeholds, and more
Feel free to add more if you know of more!
We’re spreading these photos of John Boyega, and good we should. But in the midst of all that don’t ignore the haunted pain in his eyes. Or the tears running down his cheeks. There’s a brokenness there that’s been felt for generations. One sharp like shattered glass. It’s an aching that’s fueled outcry for years, we can’t ignore that
“Why do you hate white people?”
“Black people can be racist too!”
“Dr Martin Luther King Jr. said…”
“Why isn’t there a white history month?!”
“Why can you say the n-word and we can’t?”
Feel free to add your own