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People who defend whitewashing have hundreds of tired excuses for why roles should be white, but never Asian-American. These excuses always boil down to a white supremacist ideology that believes “American” is synonymous with “white,” and Asian-Americans have no place in this country.

So it’s no surprise that Hollywood always tells Asians that the best we can get is crumbs—even when we’re the ones who made the cake. But rather than agree that there’s a problem, defenders of whitewashing will instead try to redirect our attention to something like L’s supposed “blackwashing”—which doesn’t exist, and is instead a concept designed to put a wedge between two communities of color who are both constantly told to be happy with their crumbs.

From my own personal experiences with Hollywood, Asian-Americans don’t get anywhere by asking nicely like a model minority. Instead of staying silent or being misdirected, we need to be loud. Luckily, we don’t need a magical notebook to do so in this instance—we can boycott Death Note to make it flop, and remind Hollywood that if we don’t get any cake, they don’t either.

A lot of people think representation in media/Hollywood is a trivial matter and not one of the “real issues.” But when Asian-Americans are dehumanized by their portrayals (or lack thereof), the impact can go far beyond mere social perception, resulting in hate crimes and institutional harm like discriminatory legislation. For Asian-Americans to be treated as people, we must be depicted as people. Representation matters.

Dr Joshi was the first Indian woman to earn an MD; her Wikipedia page has the broad details of her life story. She argued that she should go to medical school due to “a growing need for Hindu lady doctors in India”, and was apparently the only student with the stomach to last through a demonstration autopsy of an infant. She died of tuberculosis in 1887, aged just 21 years old, but was such a remarkable figure that her first biography was published in 1888; since then there have been multiple biographies, a novel, a play, and a Hindi serial about her life. Drexel University has quite a few more documents about her in their archives.

Dr Okami was the first Japanese woman to earn a degree in Western medicine from a Western university; she also has a Wikipedia page which gives an overview of her life. Among other things she was appointed to head the gynaecology unit at Jikei Hospital in Tokyo, but resigned after Emperor Meiji visited the hospital and refused to receive her because she was a woman.

Dr Islambooly is the least well-known; her life was mostly undocumented after she returned home to Syria as the country’s first female physician. She was apparently a Kurdish Jewish woman who later moved to Cairo, where she died in 1941.

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A comedic series set in Kingston, Jamaica that follows the various adult-ing misadventures of its beleaguered protagonist, Renee Patience.

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Even in terms of just cis women, not all cis women have functioning ovaries, not all cis women have their periods, not all cis women can have children, or breastfeed, or have functioning breasts.

And cis women who fall outside the idea of what it means to be a woman feel broken and “not fully female” because of these pressures, because people keep equating being a woman with parts of them that don’t function the way they are suppose too, with parts of them that make feel like are outside womanhood because people are defining womanhood by parts.

And of course all of this also relates to trans women.

Because if you think president trump wouldn’t try and “pussy grab” a trans woman that looks his type, and then murder her because she’s trans, you’re a fool. I get the whole “This pussy grabs back” but don’t think for a second that trans women don’t belong in that space, they face even more hatred and violence for being trans, especially trans women of color, especially black trans women.

Women are women regardless of parts.