Flowerpetalscout - Sawyers Sanctuary

"the magnus archives sounds cool! what are the content warnings?"

puppy gromit

My University has a requirement that, regardless of your degree, you need to take at least one course that centers on the experiences of a marginalized community or communities. I took a course on the psychological trauma of racism. There was a whole week's worth of lectures and conversations sprinkled throughout the course about how racism affects white people.

My second to last assignment for this course is writing about how we will do something for social change. And part of what we've been discussing all this course is how white people need to specifically think about the privileges and the ways racism also affects you negatively. Understanding that is a good way to start discussions with white people about racism, especially as a white person. Which is what's emphasized throughout the course: starting conversations. Starting discussions, whether in your personal life or your career, are a great way to do something for social change.

This was an introductory course with no prerequisites. There was a specific video we watched of a black man talking about how white people don't understand how this system also harms them as well and his frustration that we don't identify that.

Of course we should just care that people are suffering, and that should be enough, but part of the issue is the way people misidentify their suffering to come from people fighting oppressive systems and not the oppressive systems themselves harming them also.

why the emphasis on men suffering? nobody says that white ppl suffer under white supremacy because they don't, it's there to benefit them and only them, same with the patriarchy and any other oppressive state

People do in fact talk about white people suffering under white supremacy. I have seen many different anti-racist thinkers discuss that exact topic.

There is literally no benefit from insisting that oppressive systems are 100% good and healthy for those who benefit from them. It is good when people go "actually this system sucks and makes mine and everyone else's life worse."

For me this isn't even about empathy or sympathy (though there's value in those as well), it is just straight-up a human rights thing. Once you have decided that there is *any* category of human that can be treated as less-than-human you've said that humanity is conditional, and so are the rights that come with it. You've already lost, you've granted the fascists their point because *you agree with them* that some people don't deserve to be treated like humans.

maxime_lv_photography

you don't "hate kids," you hate being forced into a caretaking role.

you don't "hate kids," you hate censorship passed off as family values.

you don't "hate kids," you hate the constrictiveness of the nuclear family.

you don't "hate kids," you're just not used to occupying fully age diverse spaces so you're not used to the noise or the many different kinds of needs.

you don't "hate kids," most public spaces just aren't built for kids, and so the few kids you see are always uncomfortable and distressed.

you don't "hate kids," you hate the intense social rules assigned to kids and anyone who interacts with kids.

You don't "hate kids," you hate how society reproduces its most restrictive elements and how kids are powerless to resist it.

Ah shit my bowling team has unionized