“The World Is Full Of Beauty”

Video Transcription from user @/lelegenevieve on TikTok: “If you’ve been supporting the Black Lives Matter movement or are looking for ways to support, please stop scrolling and signal boost this video. I’ve been coding—pretty tirelessly—everyday for my website pb-resources.com. It’s an education tool and resource I’ve been using to compile information to fight police brutality and white supremacy. There are calls to action, educational tools, and different places to donate. Today I added this section that allows you to input your information and send automated emails; and everything is filled out for you. It was also really important that for me to adds way to support the Black trans community. And in a few days, the website will be generating ad revenue and 100% of the proceeds will be donated; so all you have to do is visit the site to support BLM. Lastly, I’ve been asking you guys to follow me on Instagram (@/alexisdenisew) so I can hit 10k and get the swipe up update and I’m almost there. So if you haven’t already, go follow.”

If anyone with experience with audio transcription formatting would like to repost this with a better transcript, please do, my experience is limited.

Brutality while cutting Lawn

https://www.youcaring.com/marlingipson-886711

This is some bullshit, leave black ppl alone!!! Shit fucked up! 

Racist white people HATE to see black people being innocent. This man out here cuttin grass to make money & YALL STILL GOT A FUCKIN PROBLEM

JARED CAMPBELL BADGE 8740 OFFICE OF ACCOUNTABILITY (206)684-8797

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/15/outrage-video-police-mace-child-seattle-protest

okay, but you’re not going to like the answer.

here’s the truth: you can’t separate the art from the artist. not entirely. HP Lovecraft was an incredibly talented, but much more incredibly racist man. It would nice to say you don’t agree with his views but you can enjoy his works without that leaking in but…. well, I’m afraid that would be misunderstanding his books entirely.

Consider, for a second, that Lovecraft’s works were horror stories about extradimensional alien monsters having mutant children with humans, they were about invasions from distant monsters, they were about the purity of quaint European towns being tainted. Consider how this may have all been inflicted by the fact that he just simply despised anybody who wasn’t white. Consider how is opinions on “mixing the races” might fight into this; consider why being unable to maintain the “purity” of white Europe was the scariest thing of all to him.

This extends to Rowling too.

I would love to say we can just acknowledge that she is an awful, racist, antisemitic, transphobic person and then say “but at least her books are good,” because, well, they are, aren’t they? I would say so, for sure. But to suggest that one can separate her from them is…. ridiculous.

Consider why an antisemitic woman wrote about a species of goblins who live among us, but who for the most part keep to themselvesand are maybe a little bit oppressed by the institution, but also hold all the cards, all the money, run the banks.

Consider why a racist woman would write about a species of slaves who loved being enslaved, who enjoyed working for no pay, and cleaning up after humans, with the only small caveat of that they didn’t want to be beaten. Imagine that only the most radical of their species wanted to be free, and he still spent the rest of his life working for no pay and helping out a little white boy and his friends wherever he could. Consider why the only person in the story who thought they should be free, that they should have rights, was treated as an overzealous joke, who was acting against the wishes of those slaves who really LOVE being enslaved. Consider that Rowling went on to say that she kind of considers that girl to be black, now.

Consider why JK Rowling, an open and proud transphobe, wrote Rita Skeeter as having a large square jaw, thick “manly” hands, and dressing incredibly gaudily with the most obvious fake nails and fake teeth and fake hair and fake everything. Consider why a woman who tweets about how trans women are “foxes pretending to be hens to get in the hen house” might write this Rita Skeeter to then illegally transform her body in order to spy on children.

Harry Potter is full of Rowling’s bigotry, start to finish. Not even tangentially, like, “oh the goblins are bad, Rita Skeeter is bad, the house elves are bad, but most of it’s good!” because the deeper you dig and the longer you think the more you realise the entire story is based on her prejudices.

Harry Potter pretends to be an aracial story about found family, but if that were true, why are Harry’s distant ancestors important to who he is today even in the seventh book? Why does Harry have to live with his cousin and aunt and uncle? Because magic inherently prefers blood ties. Whilst Rowling was writing a story that seemed to say, “your heritage is not that important and doesn’t make you better than others” she was still writing a story about a boy who got all of his money through his bloodline, who was protected by living with his bloodline, no matter how evil, who was uniquely able to stop Voldemort because his bloodline passed down the invisibility cloak for generations and generations. Any step Harry takes he is compared to his perfect parents who were exactly like him — he looks just like his father, but he has his mother’s eyes, you know! — consider WHY a woman who is racist might’ve written a story like this. A story that on its surface, condemns a blood caste, but still in every step it takes, validates the idea that blood is thicker than water, and your geneological origin is what makes you special.

You can enjoy Harry Pottwr, of course you can. There are fantastic parts. I love a small group of teenagers deciding to become anarchies rebels and train to fight against fascism in secret. I love the murder mystery plots, I love how the series tells kids that it’s a good thing to be brave, and a good thing to fight injustice, and a good thing to challenge the government. But I cannot separate it from its author because it is such a product of its author. All of the structures of the world, the way things work in the universe, and drenched in Rowling’s beliefs, her bigotries. Of course they are: she made them.

Again. This doesn’t mean you cannot enjoy it. But I think we are past the day where we can pretend that disavowing a bigoted author is enough, and that that somehow separates the text from its bigotry. I think we are past the day where we can pretend that Harry Potter isn’t a deeply, inherently bigoted piece of media. Even the bits we love. I think we are beyond the day where we can truthfully pretend to separate it from her, because she is present through all of it. We MUST recognise its flaws. We MUST admit that she is in every part of it.

EDIT (much later):

People who Looooove tr*mp will go fill this out in droves, and people who would like to see him lit on fire by his combover won’t, thereby skewing the results.

GO FILL IT OUT.

DON’T USE YOUR ACTUAL NAME OR EMAIL ADDRESS.

If you’re not from the US, just use any 5-digit number for the zip code (even including beginning with 0)

what in the fuck is this 

The first chapter of my short story webcomic, The Touch of Sunlight, is now up to read on webtoons :D