I'm a fucking Black Barbie💅🏿

unfortunately, because she is also a ~100yr old green sea turtle, i legally cannot touch her. she’s a protected species, and a fairly prominent individual at that, and im not one of the aquarists who dives into that tank NOR am i a vet, so i’m not among the handful of people who are ALLOWED to give her scratchies. she knows all of the divers personally, and knows that i am not one of them. she doesn’t care. she wants attention and because she’s the specialest princess in the entire universe she will do anything in her power to get it.

she also throws a big ol tantrum when i end up not petting her. she’ll stick up her head to snort water at me, slap at the platform and ladder with her fins, and then swim under the dive platform and bump her shell against the bottom — she’s a 500lb turtle, which is a lot of weight for her to be throwing around. i usually have to move pretty quick to get off the platform and onto solid ground cuz there have been times where i’ve genuinely felt like i was about to lose my balance and REALLY didn’t want to end up falling into the tank.

Saw this post floating around, don’t wanna target anyone or argue with Zionists, but it is my duty (especially as an actually indigenous Jew) to educate well-meaning gentiles who might see this and think they have no right to speak on the matter. I’ll go point by point.

1) “Is it so terrible for a Jew to be a Zionist?”

If we were living in any other era, where the genocidal crimes of Israel were not as widely known (though they were very well documented), you could perhaps ask this question in sincerity. Many Jews (such as myself) grow up in religious educational settings which either fail to mention the human rights violations of the state or claim they’re justified because “they want to kill us!” Past a certain point, though, one can’t continue to claim ignorance of what Zionism actually does. Short answer: yes, it is terrible for anyone to claim to be a Zionist, but this will be more evident as I continue to analyze these arguments.

2) “Zionism is the belief in the inherent right of the Jewish people to return to their homeland”

First of all, Palestine is not the “homeland” of the Jewish people any more than Siberia is the homeland of indigenous american tribes. Is there a historical connection? Yes, but though assimilation and migration Jews have found homes across the world. For me, my homeland is Mexico, because my family has lived there for generations, partly through migration but mostly through having cultivated the land for millennia. Even biblically speaking, Palestine does not “belong” to the Jewish people, it belongs to G-d. Furthermore, there is no shortage of Jewish scholarship and activism that asserts that wherever we live, that is our homeland. Frankly, I’m more interested in fighting to stay where I am than fighting to force people out of their homes to accommodate me.

3) “Zionism is the belief in the Jewish right not to be murdered”

By murdering others instead? Once again, there is no shortage of Jewish scholarship and activism in favor of Jewish self defense where we live. Jewish resistance fighters lived and died fighting the nazis in Europe under the third reich. If Zionism was actually interested in preventing Jewish death, it would fight antisemitism where it is. “Preventing murder” is not an excuse to commit genocide.

4) “there are so many definitions of Zionism”

Sorry but I just think of this tweet from @jewdas on Twitter when I read this: “There’s a actual existing Zionism which practices apartheid and denial of human rights. But there’s another Zionism inside my head which is all rainbows and kosher marshmallows, so who can say which is the real Zionism?” In other words, the actual, material consequences of Zionist beliefs are more important than what any individual thinks their Zionism is. Once again, we live in the Information Age, where anyone can easily learn about the damage that Zionism has done in Palestine and abroad. There is no excuse to continue using the label that doesn’t presuppose complete ignorance of Israeli violence.

5) “zionists just want to be safe from antisemitism in the diaspora”

See points 3 & 4.

6) “and this is different from evangelical zionists”

Materially speaking, not really. Once again, see point 4. Until you pull all US/european colonial support for Israel, this claim falls flat.

7) “zionists just want to live peacefully with other indigenous people in the area”

That’s not what indigeneity is, it doesn’t mean “from there,” it’s a specific relationship to the land and to its cultivation. (On a side note, even biblically and historically speaking, Jews are not “from” Palestine.) See point 2. Zionism has proven it is not a peaceful ideology. See point 4.

8) “people refuse to see the difference in types of Zionism because they hate the Jews”

No, it’s because there are no material differences. See point 4. Evangelical Zionism and Jewish Zionism actually share quite a bit in common. The “Jewish state” would not exist without evangelical Zionists. See point 6. And the original Jewish Zionist thinkers had a vested interest in tying the two together.

https://annas-archive.org

https://sci-hub.se

https://z-lib.is

https://libgen.is

https://libgen.rs

https://www.pdfdrive.com

https://library.memoryoftheworld.org

https://monoskop.org/Monoskop

https://libcom.org

https://libretexts.org

http://classics.mit.edu

https://librivox.org

https://standardebooks.org

https://www.gutenberg.org

Imagine being a black, gay drag queen in the 1800s after being born into enslavement AND having the style and cachè to throw soirées that the girls had to come to! That’s why I don’t want to hear this “we’re not our ancestors stuff.” You’re right!

From The Very Black Project Page- William Dorsey Swann was a gay liberation activist. Born into slavery in 1858, he was the first person in the United States to lead a queer resistance group and the first known person to self-identify as a “queen of drag”. Imagine the queenery of this icon.

He was a slave in Hancock, Maryland and was freed by Union soldiers after the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect. During the 1880s and 1890s, he organized a series of balls in Washington, D.C. He called himself the “queen of drag”. Most of the attendees his gatherings were men who were former slaves, and were gathering to dance in their satin and silk dresses. William was arrested in police raids numerous times,including in the first documented case of arrests for female impersonation in the United States, on April 12, 1888. In 1896, he was falsely convicted and sentenced to 10 months in jail for “keeping a disorderly house” (running a brothel). After his sentencing, he requested a pardon from President Grover Cleveland. This request was denied, but but he was the first American on record who pursued legal and political action to defend the LGBTQ community’s right to gather.

He was known to have been close with Pierce Lafayette and Felix Hall, two men who had also both been slaves and who formed the first known male same-sex relationship between enslaved Americans.

When William stopped organizing and participating in drag events, his brother continued to make costumes for the drag community. Two of his brothers had also been active participants in his drag balls.

Imagine how intelligent and ambitious this man had to be to come up with drag balls in the 1800s! Imagine how many terrible concepts he had to unlearn by himself to be a confident gay black man who does drag in the 1800s! Imagine how courageous he had to be to fight for lgbt people as a former slave in America in the 1800s!