I want these. Someone make them for me because I am too lazy.
white girls who want my culture’s bindis and saris and henna
take my skin colour too
and my dark brown lips
take my self-hatred because i don’t fit into the euro-centric ideals of beauty
take the oppression too
take the history of colonization that has devastated my country
and the drones that currently devastate my country
take all the bad stuff too
not just the pretty, shiny, sparky bits
take the ugly, dehumanizing and shitty parts too
Fine, I’ll just stop appreciating or admiring anything of beauty that culture other than my dull, boring, white-bread world creates; and go back to thinking that anything other than the output of my own culture is inferior, offensive, bizarre and disgusting.
way to miss the point.
now i’m just going to read this over and over again and laugh at you.
You know when a parent tells their child that they can’t have ice cream for breakfast and the kid’s like “FINE I GUESS I’LL JUST STARVE” and throws a huge tantrum? This is like that, except serious and legitimately dangerous.
Well, tbh, you don’t need to put in Victorian elements to make it Steampunk- that’s the brilliance of the multicultural steampunk challenge: you think how that particular culture would have evolved with just steam for power and they didn’t necessarily have Victorian influences. They’re their own steampunk.
Yesyesyes, that’s definitely true. Yikes, I hope it doesn’t come across as that. I don’t want to imply that adding traditional elements of Victoriana immediately makes something steampunk, but rather that mixing the fashion styles present in India at the time is what makes it so. I admittedly tend to focus a lot more on punking of fashion, rather than adding overt sci-fi elements; a character choosing to appropriate and integrate motifs from the invading class, on their own terms, rather than the other way around.
So much of sci-fi is about addressing human issues, rather than the actual technology, and Steampunk has a tendency to ignore that entirely if not prompted. Yes, I definitely enjoy playing around with the design aspect of these sorts of pieces, but I’m also extremely keen on the historical and social context that informs it. Not saying I’m on par with Gavin Fernandes or Yinka Shonibare when it comes to fashion design with a message, but I am trying to keep it in mind and encourage the critiques from people who are better informed than I am.
While there is definitely room for the marginalized class to adopt and mimick the dominant class as an act of resistance, very often, this adoption happens as a result of assimilation into the dominant class’ terms. I’d have to ask you why you think the adoption of Victorian elements would make an outfit automatically “steampunk”, even given the elements and the history you’re working with, because as valeriane pointed out, you don’t actually need to turn to Victoriana for that at all. There were MANY other things happening in India at the time, and ardhra has pointed out that a lot of Victorian fashions had already influenced Indian fashion at the time itself (no matter how “traditional” it looked). (See my response to your Ask for more.)
Just trying to keep somewhat apprised of this whole conversation, because it’s pretty awesome.
Has someone already mentioned “Sultana’s Dream” by Rokeya Sakhawat Hussain for possible inspiration (there are over 6000 notes to go through)? Granted, they used solar power and not steam…
(Source: shoomlah.deviantart.com)
From Yo, Is This Racist? “Anonymous asked: It really grates on my ears when I hear black people talking and they don’t conjugate verbs or use pronouns properly.”
The concept of “improper English” makes my blood boil, and not just because it is a type of speech most commonly attributed in the United States to African Americans.*
[Let me make clear before I go on that this is not going to be a discussion of picayune prescriptivist complaints about usage (like, say, less vs. fewer or further vs. farther). The “proper English” I’m referring to here is determined by more conspicuous linguistic discrepancies—for instance the difference between “we are” and “we be” (i.e. “not conjugating verbs”).]
There are those who would would argue that “proper English” is important because its speakers have greater economic opportunities—we interpret “proper English” as “educated English,” the argument goes, so why shouldn’t we promote its use?
I mean, sure—a highly qualified sure. I’m not going to pretend that a speaker of African-American Vernacular English or some Southern (i.e. “poor”) variety of American English won’t be likely to find a more favorable reception on the job market if they adopt a Standard American English accent and stick to textbook morphology. (Which many of these speakers are able to do with ease, by the way.)
But let’s acknowledge how fucked up it is that our society places such importance on what are, ultimately, extremely minor linguistic differences that have absolutely nothing to do with innate intelligence. You do typically see a correlation between declining socioeconomic status and increasingly exclusive use of a non-“standard” vernacular, but the use of those vernaculars is not restricted to the relatively uneducated.
And even if it were: uneducated does not necessarily equal unintelligent.
The way I see it, these language varieties signal first and foremost something about the geographic or cultural or class affiliations of their speakers. As there’s nothing objectively more desirable about the form “proper English” takes from a linguistic perspective**—these varieties are equally expressive and, for the most part, mutually intelligible—I can only conclude that the negative perceptions of these non-“standard” varieties stem from the fact that our society also views certain geographic or cultural or class affiliations in a negative light.
Even more insulting than the denigration of these varieties of English (to my mind, at least) is the insinuation that The Benevolent and Not At All Self-Interested Intervention of Those Who Know Better is required to coax speakers of these varieties around to the One True English. Dude. We all know that “proper English,” discriminatory bullshit though it may be, has its uses. And by “we all” I mean “everyone,” not just “well-off white people.” This is the sort of claptrap English Only supporters say—”if we let immigrants take driver tests in their native languages then they’ll never learn English!”
(Full disclosure: I’m a well-off white person. I’m trying not to speak for anyone’s experience but my own here. It just so happens that my experience involves being pretty pissed off.)
Yes, a knowledge of “proper English” can be beneficial. But it turns out that speakers of other varieties—or other languages—are totally aware of this, not being idiots: if these speakers have access to resources that allow them to acquire “proper English,” they almost definitely will. (There’s a lot of literature to support this, by the way—I’m not just blowing smoke out my ass like I usually do.)
So, in short, if it “grates on [your] ears when [you] hear black people talking and they don’t conjugate verbs or use pronouns properly,” I’m sorry for your ears. Because they’re attached to a fucking asshole.
[If you’re interested in reading more on this particular subject, I’d recommend Word on the Street: Debunking the Myth of “Pure” Standard English by John McWhorter, who knows a whole lot about the closely related study of creole languages (which are perpetually mislabeled as “non-standard” or “uneducated” varieties of their superstrate languages).]
*I don’t have any data at hand to support this claim, but I’m happy to go out on a limb and say it’s true. I suspect that Hispanics/Latinos would be a closer first-runner-up if it were commonly acknowledged that Hispanics/Latinos actually spoke English at all.
**The question of whether our ability to communicate effectively might benefit from the adoption of a more-officially standardized form of English—through, perhaps, the establishment of something like the Académie Française or the Real Academia Española—is a somewhat separate issue. For instance, while some legitimate confusion may result from the increasing overlap between “disinterested” and “uninterested,” I don’t believe there are many English-speakers who would be uncertain about the meaning of “we be.”
ATTENTION, NORTH CAROLINA READERS! (NORTH CAROLINIANS???)
heavyheartedlove submitted: “The Republican party managed to sneak in a real policy-changer for the Primary election (when few registered Democrats will think to vote, since we have our candidate already).
“It will make marriage officially between a man and a woman in our state constitution, making all civil unions and domestic partnerships void, regardless of sexual orientation. It will also make a marriage equality change very difficult.
“VOTE NO, NC.”
NC, you better not pass this shit!
I don’t know if you’re registered yet, Betsy, or if you’re registered as a Democrat, but… this is a thing apparently?
Small blessings, this is a self-published book, so it’s not going to be out there as a real language resource. From the scarily out-there quotes from this lady, I suspect there are deeper problems involved in spending this much time and effort on a language she does not seem to know much about. Why are these ‘spiritual’ people drawn to native culture like this? Creepy.
This might be one of the most baffling things I’ve read in a while; to try to compile a dictionary without speaking the language is just silly but the rationale behind it ‘a spiritual’ connection is a clear example of the way in which indigenous peoples across the globe are perceived by the West.
In short, to the western mind anyway, we’re little more than mythical but ultimately now non-existing cultures to use as inspiration for faux-religious practices, wannabe-linguistics and cultural appropriation fashion and this despite the fact that we actually still exist and thrive as peoples today.
What upsets me is the fact that her book could have been a welcome contribution to the study of a critically endangered language, but instead it does the opposite by making a complete and utter mockery of the struggle to keep the very source of Tlingit culture alive.
People like her are the reason why native learners of endangered languages don’t bother; when our languages are turned into something little more than an exotic ‘authentic’ alternative to Quënya or something equally constructed, there’s just nothing left that could convince people that they should learn the languages of their ancestors.
If she’d done this with South Saami I would have been outraged and having briefly studied Tlingit I cannot imagine what went through her head - we’re talking about a tonal, agglutinative highly complex language that she, in the name of ‘spiritual peace’ is butchering half to death.
Let me just say that the Tlingit scholars I know who have seen this book are far from happy about it.
To say the least.
As a speaker of Gaelic, I can only await her next book on ‘Celtic’ with horror and as a student of Mäori I wonder how completely useless her Mäori dictionary is.Anyway, here are some quotes from her homepage;
For the Hlingit language learner, the book offers a much easier way to learn the grammar. Observe the grammar in the story, see the breakdown of complex word parts made clear and sensible according to a native perspective. I am an outsider, but I have the wisdom to know this. Partly because I’m coming at it from a more ancient viewpoint than anyone else. That’s my mode of operation.
In short, what she’s saying is, because she’s white, she’s naturally more qualified teaching this language than actual native speakers of Tlingit.
Take the Native American people to your heart, and move forward into the new millennium! They are your people. People of differing Native American nations will find it much easier to connect with one another through this knowledge, like a kind of spirit medicine.I am not even going to comment on the fucked-up-ness of this.
You can learn how Hlingit relates to different Native American languages. On a chart of the words for ‘water’ in many different Native American languages (of North, South and Central America), you can see how, although they are different from one another, they all hold some similarity to various Scottish Gàidhlig words for ‘water’. Scottish Gàidhlig must be very ancient, holding the key to linguistics for some language famlies.
What the fuck was this woman smoking while writing this book? For starters, the comment is ridiculous as it has no foundation in real linguistics whatsoever, but do tell how the Scottish Gaelic uisge is any-fucking-where near e.g. the Tlingit héen or the Lakota mní or the Cherokee ᎠᎹor the Cree nîpîy to name but some Native languages from the Americas.
Not to mention that Scottish Gaelic is the descendant of Old Irish and only roughly 1000 years old.
If you’re Hlingit, it’s your language, you can save it by understanding it well. Let it heal your heart. Lighten the heart of some dear elders with the sweet sound of their spoken language.
The nerve of this white fucking woman. This book needs to be destroyed and she needs to take an entire intergalactic football stadium full of seats. We left the Celtic Twilight a century ago, now really.
As a medicine woman, I intuited the spiritual gifts of the different Native American nations. I wanted to bring these together.
I discovered that although I had a special insight into the origin of Native American language, I still had to go through the whole learning process for each language.
I repeat, sit the fuck down, get your New Age ignorance away from real scholars and get a fucking life.
Joy, is this a common thing? Pretend linguists making up entire dictionaries?
(via ayiman)
kingshigwa replied to your post: Why would anyone approve sending a folio to…
of course i do!! i just have to convince jeremiah to leave his job and move home.
Wouldn’t it be worth dealing with a long distance relationship just to work in the cage?!
"consent11. Bring consent out of the bedroom. I think part of the reason we have trouble drawing the line “it’s not okay to force someone into sexual activity” is that in many ways, forcing people to do things is part of our culture in general. Cut that shit out of your life. If someone doesn’t want to go to a party, try a new food, get up and dance, make small talk at the lunchtable—that’s their right. Stop the “aww c’mon” and “just this once” and the games where you playfully force someone to play along. Accept that no means no—all the time."
—
Holly over at The Pervocracy with an excellent 101 post on Consent Culture. Read the whole thing.
(via therotund)
(Source: drst, via monitoredliving)
Things we should internalize about racism:
- We can be “nice,” “smart,” “compassionate,” “caring” and racist at the same time. None of these are mutually exclusive.
- It doesn’t matter if we didn’t mean to be racist. Intentions don’t matter. Actions & consequences do.
- Just because we “don’t hate people of color” doesn’t mean we’re not racist. Racism is subtle, sub-conscious, and ingrained into every fiber of our being.
- Racism is about social domination by whites. Isolated incidents are only relevant if they relate to greater social truths.
- Having friendly/romantic relationships with people of color does not make us exempt from being racist.
- We don’t live in a vacuum. Everything we do relates to society as a whole.
- Prejudice and racism are not the same thing. White people do not and cannot directly experience racism against themselves.
- Just because we’re queer, non-christian, whatever we can still be racist.
- People of color have more experience with racism than us in the West and regions dominated by the West. Always.
And most importantly:
- It’s not about how we feel. It is not about us.
(via juthikaforpresident)
LET’S TUMBLRBOMB THIS
Anti-Equality Advocates Brag About Flipping Polls Against LGBTs
Anti-queer activists in NJ are bragging about their ability to mobilize their base to flip polls that show support for marriage equality.
Show them that we’re just as motivated!
Below quote from an email by the New Jersey Family Policy Council:
The press is still polling! In response to our alerts, you all have helped to turn polls on the subject of same-sex “marriage” from for to against. At the Star-Ledger, marriage supporters flipped an online poll from 52% in favor of same-sex “marriage” to 60% against. At NJ 101.5—which has been hearteningly pro-marriage in its coverage of this legislation—marriage supporters turned the poll from a near tie to stand 71.6% in favor of marriage as one man and one woman. Now the Asbury Park Press is hosting yet another poll, this time giving respondents a chance to pick a reason for their answer. Opponents of marriage currently dominate that poll at 53% compared to our 30%. Vote for marriage now!
Same-sex marriage advocates are not winning yet.
Tumblr, I think you know what to do with this poll.
(via ceasesilence)
