Bake That, Linguist!

Other shitty things Reagan did:

1) He almost tripled the National Debt. And you need to see the difference with zeroes:

When Reagan took office in 1980: $909,100,000  owed.(909.1 billion)

When Reagan left office in 1988:  $2,601,300,000,000 owed. (2.6 trillion)

2) He raised taxes on the middle class and the poor ELEVEN TIMES while in office. 

3) Unemployment soared after Reagan passed his tax cuts for the rich, and it took decades to get back down again.

4) He turned the U.S. into an illegal weapons dealer.

5) He funded terrorists, helping create the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. From NewsOne:

After Ronald Reagan was elected in 1981, U.S. funding of the mujahideen increased significantly and CIA Paramilitary Officers played a big role in training, arming and sometimes even leading mujahideen forces.

The CIA trained the mujahideen in many of the tactics Al Qaeda is known for today, such as car bombs, assassinations and other acts that would be considered terrorism today.

6) When his economic policies began wreaking havoc on the government, Reagan stole from Social Security–to the tune of 2.5 TRILLION–treating it for eight years as the private slush fund of himself and his rich friends. 

7) [T]he Reagan administration demonized opponents of apartheid, most notably the African National Congress, as dangerous and pro-communist. Reagan even vetoed a bill to impose sanctions on South Africa, only to be overruled by Congress.

interview with Lyra Monteiro, A Hamilton Skeptic on Why the Show Isn’t As Revolutionary As It Seems (Slate)

this interview brings up a number of historical & artistic points that are very good to bear in mind when receiving the show & looking at the show in cultural context…

but at the same time, much of it (the bootstrap narrative is the part that I agree with) seems to miss the point. it’s so focused on the past that it fails to account for the present & is largely critiquing the show for not being a completely different show from what it is. Hamilton is not a show that aims to say “we were also there then,” but rather one that says “we are here now.” (look around, look around.) it tells the story about how all the hip-hop outsiders can grab their power & build a nation. 

one’s fave will always be problematic & that’s a good thing to remember. & certainly the mainstream media likes to simplify things terribly & puff itself up with how the slightest bit of diversity is absolutely revolutionary. but critiques in this vein tend to presume a lot of ignorance on the part of the artists (who certainly have not forgotten about the issue of slavery, nor ever claimed heroism on that account) & to carry a weird vibe of “[this particular piece of media itself] doesn’t actually mean anything” that is incredibly dismissive toward the people to whom it is, in fact, something very meaningful.

(via thefederalistfreestyle)

You’re never going to understand why this hurts Black people, if you use the ones involved with Hamilton as a buffer to righteous anger about the humanization of brutality and slave owners. Like…whether it means something to you or them really isn’t important in the larger picture, is it? This is a narrative that compounds on anti Black historical perspectives and cites them for it. Annette Gordon-Reed hit the nail on the head.

It’s complicated. One could argue that audiences should be allowed to suspend disbelief and let, say, Daveed Diggs (Thomas Jefferson and Lafayette) do what all actors do: step out of their actual identities and pretend to be other people. The difficulty is that this suspension cannot be total. We must notice that the actors are black, or the play’s central conceit does not work. We are asked to be open to their blackness so that the play’s touted message—that the founding era also “belongs” to black people—gets through. At the same time, we are presumably not to be so open to the actors’ blackness that we feel discomfited seeing them dancing around during the sublime “The Schuyler Sisters” proclaiming how “lucky” they were “to be alive” during a time of African chattel slavery.

There is no question that having a black cast insulates the play from criticisms that might otherwise appear. The genius of black music and black performance styles is used to sell a picture of the founding era that has been largely rejected in history books. Viewers (both white and black) can celebrate without discomfort because black people are playing the men who have been, of late, subjected to much criticism. Imagine Hamilton with white actors—there are white rappers, and not all of the songs are rap. Would the rosy view of the founding era grate? Would we notice the failure to portray any black characters, save for a brief reference to Sally Hemings?

This last point takes us to Monteiro’s critique of the casting, which is more detailed and far stronger than Reed’s. I don’t read her as saying that having a black cast is presumptively wrong. The problem is that the use of black actors excuses the failure to portray black historical figures. Viewers don’t notice that there are no “black” characters because the stage is full of black people. She is also right in saying that selling the cast as depicting “Obama’s America” or “America now” does, unwittingly I think, suggest that the revolutionary period was “white.”

Monteiro’s view that the play does not, as some have said, employ color-blind casting is fascinating. Race is not just about skin color. As she correctly observes, the actors sing in particular “racialized musical forms,” with some who “read as white” singing the “‘white’ music of traditional Broadway” and others, who “read” black, singing black musical forms.

Conforming to American gender and racial rules, the “black” Angelica Schuyler is dynamic, aggressive—“fierce” as the young people used to say–while her “white” sister Elizabeth is demure, ladylike, and, evidently, marriage material. Despite being in love with Angelica, Hamilton marries Elizabeth. Now, Miranda had to change some details to get us to the excellent tune “Satisfied.” The real Angelica Schuyler was married by the time Eliza married Alexander. And despite the play’s breaking of casting barriers, the Hamilton family—including wife and son—read as “white,” in the midst of other “black” characters.

Finally, even if there is only one black character in Hamilton, slavery and race do appear, but primarily to establish Hamilton’s “goodness” for modern audiences. He is depicted as an ardent abolitionist, which he was not. The Manumission Society, of which he was a president, was extremely moderate and not at all an abolitionist outfit. Hamilton is said to have owned two enslaved people and bought and sold them for others. He was much better than other founders on the question, but almost certainly did not believe that the colonists would “never be free” until people in bondage had the same rights as everyone. The John Laurens character sings those words, but the Hamilton character verbally agrees to them. The audience is able to feel better about the era because there was some antislavery sentiment, and they can supposedly draw a direct line from that to where we are now.

This is a narrative that points to Black actors (limited still in theatre) and says ‘We can make them villains too! Let’s make Aaron Burr Black so they feel included’. No one said they FORGOT. We’re just wondering how it’s any better just because of that. We’re wondering why it was made to start with. Why keep a lie going?

Annette Gordon-Reed, Hamilton: The Musical: Blacks and the founding fathers (NPCH)

@fandomshateblackpeople these fans, I swear.

A comic about Seagulls. If you feel like this comic doesn’t accurately represent you, and that you personally don’t act like this, good. That means this comic isn’t about you.

HYPER-SEXUALIZATION, SEXUAL STEREOTYPES, DE-SEXUALIZATION, AND EXOTIFICATION OF WOMEN OF COLOR

Hyper-sexualization of Black Women

I’m Not Your Spicy Latina

Female Sexuality As a Site For Colonial Rulers To Assert Their Moral Superiority

Colonizing Land Usually Also Meant Colonizing the Women Inhabiting In That Land

Poetic Justice: Drake and East African Girls

Understanding the Asian Fetish Through The Colonial Logic of Pornography (NSFW)

“Sexy Indian”: Poorly Represented Images of Native American Women, and Objectification Native women

White Sexual Imperialism 

Sex Among Allies 

Expanding Upon The Exotic Fallacy-Mixed Race Subjects VS. Mixed Race Objects

Growing Up Brown: Desexualized and Hyper-sexualized

Desexualization of Women of Size Especially Women of Color 

To JK Rowling From Cho Chang: Turning Asian Women Into a Tragic Fetish

What’s Wrong With Generalizing More Sex = Liberation: Straight, Middle-Class White Women Have Been Stereotyped as Pure, Asexual Virgins, While Women of Color Have Been Hyper-sexualized as Exotic, Erotic Beings

Asian American Women Stereotypes

“Mistresses” Looks to Be Retread of Tired Asian American Stereotypes

Oversexed and Underrated: The Hyper-sexualization of Latinas in Television and Film

Framing Latinas: Hispanic Women Through the Lenses of Spanish-Language and English-Language News Media

Not Your Erotic, Not Your Exotic

Breaking Down the Sexualization of Asian Women Stereotypes

The Hyper-sexualization of African American Women in Film

Selling Sexy: Mainstream Hip Hop Cultures Commodification of Black Female Sexuality 

Sarah Baartman Was Not a Video Vixen

SlutWalks v. Ho Strolls

The Black Hyper-sexualization Was Used to Justify the Rape of Black Women

Desi women: Hyper-sexualized or Completely De-sexualized

Ending White Supremacy’s Hyper-sexualization of Asian Women Does Not Begin With Controlling Asian Women’s Decisions

Victoria Secret and the Hyper-sexualization of Native Women

On Being Called ‘Exotic’ [Hint: It’s not a compliment]

Asian Women, American GIs, and Modern Rape Culture

Custer’s Revenge: Perpetuating Sexual Stereotypes of Native Women Leads to Sexual Violence

Native Women Hunting Season

The Sexualization of Native American Women

Killing the Indian Maiden: Images of Native American Women in Film

Jezebel Stereotype

Callaloo Parade and the Sexualization of Native American Women 

Portraying Pocahontas: or the Not-So-Modern Origins of the “Sexy Indian Princess” 

Jasmine and Me: The Orientalist Gaze in Sephora’s ‘Disney Collection’

White Sexual Imperialism: A Theory on Asian Feminist Jurisprudence

Native Women Sexualized Since The Beginning

Portrayal of Native Americans in Media: Looking Hot

The Jasmine Diaries Part II: ‘Exotic’ is not a Compliment

The Jasmine Diaries Part I: Colonial Legacies and Modern Dilemmas

Asian-American Women Pay Price For Lurid Rumors About Actress Zhang Ziyi

The Hypersexuality of Race: Performing Asian/American Women on Screen and Scene

Exotification – I’m Not Your Pretty Little Lotus Flower

5 Spicy Latina Stereotypes & Why They Need to Stop 

“Batty” Politic: Toward an Aesthetic of the Black Female Body

End Colonial Mentality: I’m Not Some Exotic Safari

Yellow Fever: Asiaphilia

Women of Color Seen As Always Sexually Available

Women of Color & Sexuality Stereotypes Manifesto

Gail Dines, Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality

Race play and Racist Pornography

Hyper-sexualization and De-sexualization: South Asian Women in relation to East Asian Women

Desexualization of South Asian Women Perpetuated by White Men

Sexualized-Desexualization of South Asian Women

White Women Sexuality vs. Non-White Women Sexuality

-G 

They assume that we just want to “complain” and “be offended at everything” and they want to hand-wave away any concerns we have, regardless of their validity.

Then they assume we don’t have the skills to make our own games because they don’t think we love games as much as they supposedly do, nor do they think we haven’t been doing that since forever, and now it’s just so much easier for anyone to do.

So, they tell us to “make our own games” if we don’t like theirs, and then we do, and they pitch a fit that people are even paying attention to them or saying they’re actually good. We research, we make our own games, we do everything they tell us to do, and we still aren’t valid to them.

And we never fucking will be, because it’s never been about any of their pitiful excuses. It’s always been about shutting us out by any means necessary.

When someone’s not a content creator, but a critic, researcher or even just a fan casually sharing their opinion, the Status Quo Warriors would shut them down for “doing nothing” or “just whining” or “not appreciating” the media as they already are.

If someone is a content creator, the Status Quo Warriors would accuse their work of all the above “political agendas” (not realizing every creative work is political by nature) and blow every minute problem the work might have out of proportion.

And then they have the audacity to say that it’s the critics who are never satisfied.

“Go make your own thing” is really yet another variation of making up arbitrary conditions to prevent status quo-upholding media from being critiqued.

I mean, his doctrine of radical individualism is a sham that ultimately reduces his followers to faceless conformity. This isn’t deep metatextual wankery - it’s the literal text of the film.

In the book Nurture Shock, which is a child psychology book that identifies common parenting mistakes, the author spends a chapter on children’s television. The author specifically talks about how media designed to teach morals often backfires – children who watch morality lessons express *more* behavior problems and become *more* cruel.

Now the author says it’s because of how these programs are structured. First they depict bad behavior, and then they explain why the behavior is bad, showing consequences, and tying up the program with a moral.

Small children aren’t smart enough to understand the moral. Small children learn by emulating behavior they see. They see a bad behavior and they learn the bad behavior. Just exposing children to bad behavior is enough to make them internalize that the behavior is something lots of people do, and therefore something acceptable for people to do to do.

If you try to explain to them after the fact that the behavior is harmful and to be avoided, that message is too complicated and goes right over their heads. You can’t tell little kids “do as I say, not as I do.”

Now the author of this book says “small children aren’t old enough to understand the moral.”

But honestly? Adults have the exact same problem.

Tyler Durden loses in the end. That’s the moral of the movie. Unfortunately that moral is too complicated for the vast majority of the audience. The typical adult audience member does not think critically enough about film media to process this moral.

A critical viewer thinks – the point is that Tyler is wrong! The point is that Tyler is doomed by his own hubris! HOW CAN AUDIENCES HAVE MISSED THE ENTIRE POINT IF THE MOVIE?!?!?

Easily, considering the movie only really devotes 5% of its screen time to explicitly denouncing Tyler’s behavior, and that explicit denouncement only arrives at the very end of the film.

The other 95% of the screen time is spent watching Tyler Durden jerk off.

Look – you can’t film two hours of bareback sex followed by a five minute tutorial on how to correctly use a condom and a 30 second montage of miserable teen parents changing diapers, then call your film a safe sex PSA.

You did not make a safe sex PSA.

You made a porno.

You can try to argue that the bareback sex is an ironic subversive metaphor, and that the “real point” of your film is proper condom usage and an anti-teen pregnancy message, but the fact is, the majority of your audience is going to change the channel the moment the cumshot finishes.

This is why I loved Fury Road so much, and also what I felt was so profoundly revolutionary about the movie. Fury Road is a movie about women escaping violent misogynists. Yet editor Margaret Sixel had the SHEER BRILLIANCE and AUDACITY to cut all the footage of misogynist violence out of the movie. 

Mad Max: Fury Road proved that it is possible to denounce misogynist violence without depicting it.

Mad Max: Fury Road showed that refusal to depict misogynist violence is in and of itself a denouncement of misogynist violence.

We don’t need to show what victims went through to make victims sympathetic. In fact, voyeuristically depicting acts of cruelty only further objectifies victims. George Miller and Margaret Sixel understand this.

Similarly, George Miller made a point of using telling his videographers to use camera angels that focused on the action of the scene, instead of voyeristically zooming in the female castmember’s breasts/asses/legs  – because he understood that when the camera ogles the female characters in an objectifying manner, the audience, who views the movie through the camera’s lens, is forced to ogle and objectify. George understood that sexist camera work creates a sexist perspective, and a sexist perspective tells a sexist narrative.

The thing is that the narrator is always sympathetic. Intimacy and familiarity breed sympathy. The audience is primed  to feel sympathy for the narrator simply because they are speaking more than any other individual character.

No matter how unreliable, or morally dubious you make the narrator, they are still the hero or the story. Every villain is the hero of their own story. And when the villain is the narrator, the audience is hearing the version of the story in which the villain is the hero, and the audience is moved by that perspective.

We can give Fight Club the benefit of the doubt and look at Fight Club as an intellectual experiment to see whether or not it’s possible to tell a story from the villain’s perspective and still denounce the villain’s actions.

But the fact is, the experiment didn’t work. It was a statistical failure. The vast majority of the audience did not recognize the film as a criticism of toxic masculinity, but rather, a romanticization of it.

Rather than spelling out an ‘unfashionably’ direct critique, or moral lessons, to their male audience, the cool moral detachment of films like Fight Club requires a critical, thinking, supposedly sophisticated, viewer – the viewer who knows ‘The point is that Tyler is wrong!’ – while playing a double game. The cool mode enables bro cinema to have its cake and eat it, commercially speaking: it can simultaneously profit from (A) the ‘majority of the [male] audience’ who don’t want to have their misogyny challenged and even celebrate misogyny, while gaining acclaim for (B) its subtle, yet meant-to-be-understood-as-critical, depictions of toxic masculinity…

Also, to the comment about 95% celebration vs. 5% “morals”, it’s really about what you show in terms of character reaction and consequences immediately that tells the audience whether this is good, or bad.   

When a character does something and other characters are repulsed and react immediately (or the same character realizes they’ve messed up and you can see them regret it right away), no one sees this as something to enjoy or celebrate.  When it goes without comment or is treated as good, you can’t later get to the moral and say “Actually it’s wrong” and expect it to sink in.  

This is even true of villains - they may see nothing wrong with what they’re doing, but the characters whose emotions you center and frame are the ones that paint events as right or wrong.

Tying these two points together - if you never center or frame the feelings of certain groups of people (marginalized people), then the harm exists as an idea but not as a narrative reality.  It’s not “don’t do x because it hurts y people” it’s “Don’t do x because this other white guy said so”… which fundamentally teaches “do what the white guy says” not “respect people’s boundaries”

We as cis wlw also need to hold the members of our communities who attack trans women like @homojabi for speaking out about how the idolisation of Gillian Anderson hurt her accountable and make it clear that giving trans women any shit about their reactions to transmisogyny, esp transmisogyny in wlw spaces, will not be tolerated.

And we need to stop with this apologetic “it was years ago and she’s never said anything like this since then” and “please don’t make us feel bad for loving her she’s really important to us” bullshit and we need to communicate to other women loving women that this kind of apologism is shit and needs to stop. We need to stop valuing our own comfort and our idols over trans women’s safety from transmisogyny in wlw spaces.

We need to do better.

but Also the President of the South, Jefferson Davis felt the same way. 

Sex and Slavery: An Incomplete Reading List

Today, let’s talk about LA FARFA MAGAZINE.

“We don’t promote losing weight or gaining weight, because there are women that look gorgeous regardless of what they weigh,” Kon, editor in chief of La Farfa magazine, tells The Japan Times. “Our view is that people should not be defined by the size of the clothes they wear.”

La Farfa magazine, believed to be the first one in Japan aimed at generously proportioned women, features models that weigh between 60 and 120 kg. A distinctive feature of the fashion magazine is that it provides the weight, the height and the body measurements of each model on the page since, according to Kon, “it is more convenient for the readers.”

The creation of the magazine stems from Kon’s own experience. She says regular fashion magazines featuring slim models were of no practical use to her, but she enjoyed checking the latest trends anyway.

Then came the recent expansion of overseas retail clothing companies in Japan — including H&M and Forever 21 — that allowed women to enjoy stylish clothing for a reasonable price, and in bigger sizes.

The media has also started to embrace plump female celebrities in the past few years, with comedians such as Naomi Watanabe and Kanako Yanagihara being popular. Terms such as puniko and pochako, which can be roughly translated to “squishy girl” and “pudgy girl,” have gained ground this year, with some mainstream fashion magazines such as CanCam publishing stories on the movement.

“There was demand for our kind of fashion magazine,” Kon says, as she gives her take on the trend. “Personally, I feel that men are looking at women differently than before.” She adds that while dating a slender woman was considered the ideal not too long ago, men now appear to be seeking partners who can provide iyashi (healing).

“There have also been changes in how women see men as well,” she continues, pointing out that the height, income and academic background of men may not be the prized qualities they were a decade ago.

Initially unable to find any agency with plump models, Kon says her team recruited candidates straight from the streets. Many of the fashion brands were also reluctant to provide sample clothing for La Farfa “since they couldn’t tell what our publication was going to look like at first.”

But that changed quickly after their inaugural issue in March sold out its 80,000 copies. La Farfa was first intended as a bi-annual publication, but the publishers quickly agreed to make it a bi-monthly instead.

La Farfa says it does not use digital methods to make its models look slimmer, but will take advantage of their body features to display the models’ “glamorous” side. Make-up pages are filled with advice for round-faced women, instead of teaching readers how to use cosmetics to look thinner.

“Initially, there was feedback from readers saying our models weren’t pretty, and that dressing them up doesn’t change the fact they are overweight,” Kon says. But she adds that responses from the readers have become more positive recently.

Kon is aware that losing weight remains a vexing issue for many people today. She is not critical of those trying to shed some pounds, but she has her own take on it.

“Whether you want to lose weight or not,” she says, “you must begin with accepting and being happy with who you are now.” She adds that trying to lose weight because you aren’t content with who you are “won’t change the situation.”

True to the spirit of La Farfa, Yaseru Festa isn’t out to pressure people into being thin, just to be happy and healthy, Kuraishi says.

“We just want people to find the best service or product that is suited to them.”

Source Japan times

Louisiana State Penitentiary, otherwise known as ‘Angola Prison’, to this day compels prisoners to plant and pick cotton by hand, for as little as 4 cents an hour. Eighty percent of its prisoners are African-American.

Long rows of men, mostly African-American, till the fields under the hot Louisiana sun while armed guards, mostly white, ride up and down the rows on horseback, keeping watch.

It is the largest maximum security prison in America, bigger than Manhattan, sprawling over 18,000 acres of farmland dotted with barbed-wire enclosures, gun towers and concrete dormitories.

A History of Slavery

The land on which the prison sits is a composite of several slave plantations -it is called Angola, after the homeland of the slaves who first worked its soil - bought up in the decades following the Civil War. From when it was converted from plantations, prisoners have worked the land in much the same way as slaves did, under conditions so brutal, prisoners resorting to cutting their own Achilles’s tendons in protest in the 50′s.

After the plantation was converted to a prison, former plantation overseers and their descendants kept their general roles, becoming prison officials and guards. This white overseer community, is located on the farm’s grounds, both close to the prisoners and completely separate from them. In addition to their prison labour, Angola’s inmates do free work for these residents, from cutting their grass to trimming their hair to cleaning up Prison View Golf Course, the only course in the country where players can watch prisoners labouring as they golf.

Harsh Conditions

Angola prisoners technically work eight-hour days. However, since extra work can be mandated as a punishment for “bad behaviour", it’s common for Angola prisoners to work 65 hours a week after disciplinary reports have been filed, with guards often writing out reports well in advance, fabricating incident citations, then filling in prisoners’ names, sometimes at random.

“Guards talked to prisoners like slaves,” says former prisoner Robert King who spent 29 years at Angola, until he was released in 2001 after proving his innocence. “Prisoners worked out in the field, sometimes 17 hours straight, rain or shine.”

4 Cents per Hour for Backbreaking Work

Wages for agricultural and industrial prison labour are still almost non-existent compared with the federal minimum wage. Angola prisoners are paid anywhere from four to twenty cents per hour, with agricultural labourers falling on the lowest end of the pay scale.

On top of that, prisoner’s keep only half the money they make. The other half is placed in an account for prisoners to use to “set themselves up” after they’re released. However, due to some of the harshest sentencing practices in the country, 97% of Angola prisoners will never be released and so most will never get the other half.

A Common Occurrence

Angola is not alone. Sixteen percent of Louisiana prisoners are compelled to perform farm labour. Because of harsh mandatory minimum sentences, in Louisiana, writing bad checks can earn you up to 10 years in jail, a two-time car burglar can get 24 years without parole, a trio of drug convictions will get someone a life sentence, all of which time prisoners can be forced to work in conditions that mirror those supposedly outlawed 150 years ago.

Despite this system of modern slavery, Angola’s labour system does not break the law. In fact, it is explicitly authorized by the Constitution. The 13th Amendment, which prohibits forced labour, contains a caveat. It reads, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime where of the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States.”

Prisoners can be forced to work for the government against their will, and this is true in every state

$898.56