anthrodynia
n. a state of exhaustion with how shitty people can be to each other, typically causing a countervailing sense of affection for all things that are sincere but not judgmental, are unabashedly joyful, or just are.
GPOY
February 2012
53 posts
To people who think they are "transethnic":
mry:
If you exist outside of the internet, please come take a stroll through my hood and tell people about it. Double dog dare ya.
The latest in Shit You Can Get Away With When All Your Friends Are White.
Transethnic is a term I learned yesterday. I was completely confused and not just a little horrified. Yes take a little a walk through the neighborhood I grew up in. I would show you the house but it has been fire bombed and then razed by the city. STFU.
I had never heard of this until recently either.
And.
Can I just say, to all those “transethnics” out there:
Sign, I just came to look at Tumblr, not to start using it again, but -
Thanks guys, you just completely dismissed a term used by a group of adoptees to express their experiences, one of which include (attempt on) cultural genocide of their cultural background. I’m sure the Sami children, who has grown/is growing up in Fenno-Scandinavian families without any/much contact with their original culture, while said culture gets silently destroyed and has been under attack in several hundreds years (sometimes violently), appreciate it so much.
Brandx has here a point on why this term exist and needs to exist:
“Transethnic,” for those who don’t know, occurs in the context of adoption. For example, a white Jewish child is adopted by non Jews. Or a Saami kid by some other non-indigenous Scandinavians.
These are not transracial adoptions -because if you don’t know that PoC are effectively barred from adopting white children, then STFU already- they are transETHNIC. (Yes, I’m well aware that being Jewish for one does not always entail ethnicity.)
Transethnic can NOT be equated to transracial because of the profound protection that ever holy white privilege affords in the former, but that certainly doesn’t mean it’s a prejudice-free walk in the park. No adoption is outside of fairy tales.
I don’t know if this happens in other parts of the world - though I can imagine it, where on ethnic group dominate another group of the same ‘race’. -, but here in Europe? We have a history of, especially up here North. Adoption, in combination with other tools, of Samis has in Northern Europe an history of being connected to the attempted destruction of the Sami cultures - and it still has a negative influence on if the Sami cultures will survive the next hundred years (I personally doubt any except maybe the Northern Sami culture will survive. The languages are dying out too fast, ‘cause noone learns them). Meanwhile this is happening adopting parents are patting each other on their bags and talking about ‘what good people they are’. It makes my heart break, it really do.
Sad face.
I think this is one of those situations where we need better language. After you pointed this out I realized that there are two ways that people use the word “transethnic”, where one is totally valid and one is pretty much bogus. The one that is totally valid and important is discussed above, and deserves a word to describe it such as “transethnic.”
The fact, then, that there is a need for a word like that for people who are in actual marginalized situations makes me even madder that people use it in a way that is bogus. The bogus way is taking the old “My great-great-great-great grandmother was an Indian princess so I’m completely Indian” or “I was African in a past life” bullshit to a new extreme, where they are trying to say that they are a different race or ethnicity just because they wish they were. There are better things to do with that amount of boredom.
And I’ll be the first to say that white US culture is mad boring. But being bored with it doesn’t make someone black, or whatever race they decide they really should be.
But, thank the Lorde, this doesn’t look like it exists outside of the internet—at least, I can’t imagine it existing for very long. And really, if you wanna tell yourself that you’re black on the inside, I really don’t care; but I really don’t want someone coming at me about how I’m oppressing them by not recognizing that they’re black on the inside—when I’m actually black on the outside with all that that entails.
And that’s the thing: actually being a certain ethnicity means being treated in a certain way, and this can change based on where you are. So if you are white but say you are actually, say, Chinese on the inside, you’re still going to be treated like a white person by society. No one will treat you like you’re Chinese just because you tell them you are, and you won’t have to live with the baggage of being that ethnicity. You still have history in tact, you still have a history that isn’t taboo or vilified, you don’t have the history of migration and colonialism that an actual person of color would have.
There are a few places where I’ve seen this attitude come up without using the word “transethnic”, but the same idea behind it, such as:
- Being in a people of color caucus where a white woman showed up because she was “raised Buddhist and Hindu,” so that made her have a POC life experience
- A local African-American Studies professor who is white using the n-word because he has devoted his life to studying black cultures
- A white person trying to have decision-making power in a POC (by definition) community group because they had done work previously to support the group and therefore were entitled to “be” a person of color
- A white woman I know making jokes that are internal to the black community (“running on CP time,” etc.) because her family is all black
And again, since it’s crucial to remember, in none of those cases do the white people have to carry the baggage of being an actual person of color, neither the day to day baggage nor the historical baggage.
So, if someone wants to tell me that they’re black on the inside, that’s cool because
- We will probably never work on anything together ever, and
- I have a life outside of the internet.
But what does actually matter, and is really damaging, is the attitude behind this, such as in the examples above. Those are all examples of the little bits we have for ourselves—our pieced-together cultures, our jokes, our safe spaces, our language—being intruded on and used against us. We people of color don’t have a whole hell of a lot; we put together what we have, and I would really like to see people respect the bits we do have and leave them be.
Thank you, above poster, for pointing out a situation that does deserve this language, and I’m sorry I didn’t think to specify the bullshit way of using it.
Do these people think there’s some kind of prize, the more marginalised people you appropriate from? Cos they manage to be offensively cissexist and offensively racist with just one word.
What is cultural appropriation « The Long Way Home →
ardhra.wordpress.com
O hai! I finally finished writing this! After starting it more than two years ago {facepalm}. There is more to come that I’ve worked on & researched. Hopefully responses to this won’t be so faily that I’m unmotivated to finish the rest.
Excerpt:
There are a number of issues around cultural appropriation which I see continuously bog down discussion. I think they revolve around some crucial issues undergirding the whole concept of cultural appropriation, so I think we need to “get back to basics” somewhat.
Before I go on, I’d like to acknowledge the work of Andrea Smith, particularly her article ‘Spiritual Appropriation as Sexual Violence’, printed in her book Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide as being very influential to my thinking about these issues.
I disagree with a lot of the common definitions of cultural appropriation around. Cultural appropriation isn’t simply the “taking or borrowing of some aspects of another culture from someone outside that culture”. Cultures throughout time have traded, adapted, and borrowed artefacts, symbols, technologies and narratives from one another. The issue isn’t the aesthetic and material mingling of cultures, hybridity, or that human creativity crosses cultural boundaries. Those are aesthetic and perhaps moral issues, separate from the real political issue of cultural appropriation.
A lot of the time cultural appropriation is also called ‘cultural theft’. But cultures aren’t tangible things that can only be possessed by one person. Culture is made up of shared ideas, skills, traditions, styles, images, that circulate through a particular society. Cultures are heterogeneous — people who are part of the same society can be part of different cultures, which influence each other — and they change over time.
The problem isn’t that cultures intermingle, it’s the terms on which they do so and the part that plays in the power relations between cultures. The problem isn’t “taking” or “borrowing”, the problem is racism, imperialism, white supremacy, and colonialism. The problem is how elements of culture get taken up in disempowering, unequal ways that deny oppressed people autonomy and dignity. Cultural appropriation only occurs in the context of the domination of one society over another, otherwise known as imperialism. Cultural appropriation is an act of domination, which is distinct from ‘borrowing’, syncretism, hybrid cultures, the cultures of assimilated/integrated populations, and the reappropriation of dominant cultures by oppressed peoples.
What’s being appropriated in *cultural appropriation* isn’t the things themselves — the images, stories, artefacts, themes, etc. — it’s the capacity of people of oppressed groups to determine the meaning, scope, usage, and future of those things. Cultural appropriation involves taking over peoples’ control over representations of themselves. Cultural appropriation is an attack on cultural autonomy and self-determination, backed up by historically constructed domination.
Cultural Appropriation: Dreadlocks
“Dreadlocks originated first with Jamaican Rastafarians and then in Indian Sages and Yogis.”
This is why
whitepeople should stop talking. Three seconds on Google, and you’re a fucking expert.EDIT: Okay, I think I previously saw that racismschool is white on their blog, and didn’t see the FAQ where they explain their b/g. So, my apologies. That opening sentence is still wrong, ignorant, and erases a whole lot of people of colour, though.
You saw on my blog that I was white?
Then, you saw in my FAQ that I was b/g…what the hell does “b/g” mean?
Then, you decide that getting information “on Google” makes me think that I am an expert.
Um…a couple of things…You couldn’t even get the correct information on ME on my own damned blog. Also..um…you DO know that “Google” is a search engine and not a website that holds all information. As in, a person can do a search and go to multiple sites and cross reference and such…Finally, how is it “Wrong, ignorant and erases a whole lot of people of colour?”
Go ahead, I’ll wait…
I said I thought I saw previous to seeing the dreadlock post, possibly before you put the FAQ up, not that I actually did. And I apologised for making that assumption.
b/g means background. It’s an abbreviation. We use them occasionally, here on the internet.
If you claim to be “schooling” anyone, then you’re passing yourself off as an expert. You say in the post itself “It took me less than three seconds to find this information on Google” so that’s as much as you said about your research for the post on dreadlocks.
Also, it’s absolutely ridiculous to say “Dreadlocks originated first with Jamaican Rastafarians”. It’s untrue. The term “dreadlocks” came from Jamaican Rastafarians, but the hairstyle itself is much older. Rastafarianism started in the 1930s. The hairstyle, especially as worn by Hindu sadhus worshipping Shiva, who you also mention in the post is hundreds, if not thousands, of years older than that. And it’s not only Rastafarian or Shaivite practices that involve the dreadlocked hairstyle - Egyptian, Maori, Maasai, and Sufi practices over the breadth of human history have involved dreadlocks. So claiming that “dreadlocks originated with Jamaican Rastafarians” isn’t just wrong, it’s erasing all of the other people of colour throughout history whose cultures have involved the hairstyle.
Cultural Appropriation: Dreadlocks
Are Dreadlocks really cultural appropriation?
YES
Here’s why:
Dreadlocks originated first with Jamaican Rastafarians and then in Indian Sages and Yogis. Specifically it was started by holy men. These men renounced all of their worldly belongings (Including combs) and as a result their hair started (and remained) to turn into dreadlocks. In the beginning, it was actually something very beautiful to show that you’d given yourself and all that you possessed to GOD.
Then, it turned into something ugly. When these holy people were seen by others, they were looked down on. Seen as less than because as they gave up all they had, that also meant they gave up their money. They were the poorest of the poor and the dreadlock became a sign of being poor, dirty and less than human.
This was an extremely spiritual symbol. It was not a fad or something people did to show their love of weed.
As time went on, the Indian culture did not see anything terribly interesting about the dreadlocks. However, Jamaicans as well as those in the Caribbean thought otherwise. They believed that the dreadlocks were part of a religious lifestyle and actually considered the hair to be holy and powerful.
Dreadlocks are believed to have made it to the USA during the time of slavery. Both Black slaves as well as Indian slaves were captured and both brought this holy symbol and belief with them.
For the ignorant that want to get dreadlocks because they are Bob Marley fans or because they “Like the Rastafarian lifestyle.” I say, FUCK YOU. Many of you believe that the “Lifestyle” you like so much is about “Relaxing and smoking weed.” Nothing could be further from the truth. As a matter of fact, if Bob Marley was any kind of representation for your wanting the locks in the first place, you know absolutely NOTHING about Bob Marley.
He was a truly spiritual man. His hair, his lyrics and the way he lived his life were representative of this. (Yes, he did some questionable things. That isn’t what this post is about though) For you to take a spiritual symbol and chalk it up to your love of weed, is not only appropriation, it is down right disgusting and cruel. There is this gross misconception that just because religion is a weapon, an afterthought or something to reference during political debate in this country that it is the same in others. IT IS NOT. Your actions are shameful and mean. You are acting disrespectfully and you have chosen to do so with no forethought or concern for who you are hurting.
This “Hair style” that you are choosing to believe is about sticking it to your parents, smoking weed, “loving” Bob Marley (even thought you clearly know nothing about him) or even about “Love and peace” is SO MUCH BIGGER THAN THAT. It is just not bigger than that TO YOU. It isn’t “That big a deal” TO YOU. That is how you know without a shadow of a doubt that you are in fact a bigoted cultural appropriator. You just don’t give a damn. Privilege and entitlement reign supreme.
I have no respect or kindness for those that chose willful ignorance. It took me less than three seconds to find this information on Google. I don’t mean, it took three-ish seconds guys. I mean, I timed myself and found page after page after page of this information. I mean, I timed myself and withing those three seconds, I found more than one page that answered every single question I had. What is your excuse? You are CHOOSING to be a racist, bigoted, cultural appropriating piece of garbage. It is not okay.
reblogging for white cat in a pope hat
“Dreadlocks originated first with Jamaican Rastafarians and then in Indian Sages and Yogis.”
This is why white people should stop talking. Three seconds on Google, and you’re a fucking expert.
EDIT: Okay, I think I previously saw that racismschool is white on their blog, and didn’t see the FAQ where they explain their b/g. So, my apologies. That opening sentence is still wrong, ignorant, and erases a whole lot of people of colour, though.
“
Why is it accepted that some people who eat a ton of food can stay thin, but not accepted that some people who eat a small amount of food can be fat?
Since thin people get diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure, why is becoming thin suggested as a cure?
Why bother using BMI as a substitute for metabolic health measures when we can easily test metabolic health measures?
Doctors treat thin people for joint pain with options other than weight loss, why don’t they give fat people those same treatments?
Why do we believe that doing unhealthy things (liquid diet, smoking, urine injections coupled with starvation, stomach amputation) will lead to a healthy body?
If the diet industry’s product actually “cured fatness”, wouldn’t their profits be going down instead of up as more and more people were permanently thin?
Isn’t it medically unethical to prescribe something without telling your patients that it works less than 5% of the time with a much greater chance at leaving you heavier and less healthy than when you started?
Why do people continue to think that shaming people will lead them to health?
Why do we accept wide variations in things like foot and hand size, nose and lip shape etc. but expect every body to fit into a very narrow proportion of height and weight?
If weight gain isn’t proven to cause diabetes, high blood pressure etc., why would weight loss be recommended as a cure?
Since weight loss ads have to carry a “results not typical” warning, shouldn’t doctors have to give patients a similar warning?
Why do people take the time to come to my blog and make death threats?
Does anyone really succeed at hating themselves healthy? If so is it worth it?
If we’ve been prescribing dieting since the 1800s and still can’t prove that it works, shouldn’t we be trying something else?
How is it possible that suggesting that healthy habits are the best chance for a healthy body is controversial?
” —Some Things I Don’t Understand « Dances With Fat (via jerseyjezebel)
“
TRANSNATIONAL DESI PRIDE
“There is an unexploded land mine heart in us
under every breast chest
waiting for breath
tears a moan
to crack the land open
and let the stories come walking
out of the scar”
-Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha “landmine heart”
For my island Desis, exiled from the ocean for years, chasing foam wings in our dreams and awakening with the memory of feet sinking into sand.
For the Desis who haven’t seen our parents, best friends, brothers, sisters, cousins in too long, counting the days weeks months pennies years
For my Desis who know what missing a country, a land, a soil, a people with every drop of blood in our veins, feels like
For Hindu Desis who must watch the ancient rites of Yoga packaged and sold and gobbled up
For Muslim Desis walking courageously through the warzone where racism and Islamophobia intersect.
For Desis who watched the celebration of Bin Laden’s death and asked ourselves: now will the stamp of criminality be removed from our passports, our skin, our people, already knowing the answer
For Desis who drape our saris and salwars over the secrets of our bodies: the abortions, the secret birth control, the unwanted touching by a respected uncle
For Desis who know, that one phone-call to their parents by a malicious ex-lover could mean the funding pulled, college dreams crushed, but who are brave enough to own the rights of our bodies and make love anyway
For Desis who are afraid to tell of the rape, the abuse, the violence, because the ‘community’ is deemed more important than our bodily integrity
For Desis whose eyelids burn at the racist criticisms of that community, because goddamit it’s our community and WE will be the ones to change it
For Desis who love interracially, wondering why everyone is so bent on binary worlds when we have always lived in multiplicity
For queer Desis, daring to be both, a contradiction to so many oppressive definitions
For the Desis who said fuck it and chose motherhood, brown mamas raising brown babies in a world that despises both
For Desis who must listen to US-ians say ‘oh, international students are all rich’, and picture our parents’ drained life-savings, written away in check after unfaltering check to the colleges where international students are always the scapegoats
For my dark-skinned Desis, marginalized in our own communities
For my light-skinned Desis, ‘admired’ as objects and trophies, silenced as whores and sluts
For every Desi who ever read Shakespeare and wrote poetry, despite a world that tries to tell us we have no place in Literature
For my Desi nerds, proud of our nerdiness, despite the fun-poking from fellow Desis and the racism of fandoms
For my Desis serving sandwiches to their peers, impatient white college students that make faces when we speak our language, and wondering: as you grab your pulled pork sandwich, have you ever thought about food exile, about wanting to taste your mother’s food so much it hurts when you breathe?
For my Desis whipping up chapati and curry in cramped college apartments, sharing the taste of home with others
For all Desis, everywhere, defying boundaries, rewriting histories, re-imagining communities, fighting the good fight and making tortilla-chapati hybrids, loving our zari-thread saris and our bicycles too, rubbing coconut oil in our long hair and piercing our belly buttons: we were always more than what they could imagine, our lives are chimera flowers flourishing wherever planted.
For my Desis everywhere, I love you.
” —Tassja: http://irresistable-revolution.blogspot.com/2011/08/desi-pride.html (via anuraglahiri)
I want to read this loud and clear in front of everyone.
(via mehreenkasana)
I think I’m too bitter to really appreciate this. I don’t get this from Desis anywhere.
Things I Hate, part one of infinity
Non-sex workers talking about sex work.
(The exception being ardhra)
Aw, thanks for the vote of confidence, but I try not to talk about sex work, actually! Unless it’s in a context where I know what I’m saying is well-substantiated.
Trans Sexuality - A Safe Sex Zine →
handbasketproductions.com
Safe sex information is almost universally designed for non-trans (and straight) folks, and then that information is given to us when and where it applies. However, there is a lot of information that is unique to trans people and trans bodies that never gets included. This zine answers the question, what would sex ed look like if it was designed specifically for trans people and their partners?
Trans people experience a wide range of feelings and desires around sex. Each individual person may or may not want to use their genitals for sex, and that may change based on the situation, how safe they feel, the specific sex act, or any number of other factors. This zine contains information for a wide variety of ways anyone might choose to have sex.
(This electronic copy can be freely distributed. You can get a hard copy by visiting my store. Or contact me about bulk orders.)
finally.
RLLY IMPORTANT PLS READ
new blogging goal
never to re-blog/post a picture of a normatively attractive thin white fashionable girl again
(not because I have anything against them but because there are enough people re-circulating those images on the internet already and they don’t need my help)
A couple of months back I said something along the line of ‘I wonder how much better my self esteem would be if I didn’t have to see any pictures of thin white people for one day’ and ever since I was able to articulate that I’ve been more aware of what I find gorgeous and what I’m paying attention to/paying money for in a way I wasn’t before.
So yeah, I think rather than reducing I’d like to commit to doing what the OP is saying. Anyone else?
My own self-esteem and body image issues are dramatically impacted by seeing the glorification of thin white people over and over again…
… at the same time, I do find so many different types of bodies and people beautiful and I like this blog to be for all of them, including the thin white people that capture my imagination, as much as any of the images of people I reblog here capture it…
So I don’t know. Does me reblogging those images impact on you, or any of my other followers? I am genuinely interested to know.
I think your blog would be better without any thin white cis people in it. I think sharing images of thin white cis people in the name of diversity really is just race-, size- and trans-aversive… There are plenty of places people can go to see those images if they want to.
Smash the White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy: Yoga as cultural appropriation →
mytongueisforked.tumblr.com
Can we discuss this?
I’ve been thinking a lot about this. I think it’s fine if people do yoga for their health and teach others for free or for trade. I’m not into white folks who learn yoga from white folks, attempt to market “Eastern spirituality” (however they interpret it), make a ton of money off of it and basically steal and repackage it to appeal to a largely white middle to upper class market. But, yoga is not part of my culture so I’d like to hear what other folks have to say. I think there’s some good articles about yoga and appropriation out there…
Can anyone recommend them?
I wanted to discuss this because I’ve been considering a yoga class to manage my stress and anxiety but I don’t want my white ass going places where it doesn’t belong. Also, there are so many white people with dreads, harem pants, and yoga mats walking around my neighborhood in Montreal. I don’t want to be associated with such folks.
Real Yoga is not done on mats or in classes.
Aside from your discomfort at being associated with a “certain kind of white person,” you’d be benefiting from stealing my culture from me.
Indian High Court Rules That the Decision to Abort a Pregnancy Rests with the Wife, Not the Husband
In a significant decision, the Punjab and Haryana High Court last week ruled that the right to abort a pregnancy in a marriage rests with the wife and not husband.
“A woman is not a machine in which raw material is put and a finished product comes out. She should be mentally prepared to conceive, continue the same and give birth to a child. The unwanted pregnancy would naturally affect the mental health of the pregnant woman…” said the court.
Stressing that marital intimacy between a couple does not automatically translate to the woman’s consent to child bearing, Justice Jitendra Chauhan said, “Mere consent to conjugal rights does not mean consent to give birth to a child for her husband.” Welcoming the judgement, Jagmati Sanwan, All India Democratic Women’s Association national vice-president said, “If the family conditions are unsuitable, no woman would like to give birth to a child because after all, she is the one who takes care of the children for all practical purposes. We see around us that fathers often desert their families after a couple of deliveries. But children become a part and parcel of the mother’s physical and emotional world. She invests much into their well being and she alone suffers. Hence, the rights of whether to give birth or not, should be with her.”
Take note, America.
