Elderly Worm

They were a continuation of the Egyptian tradition of funerary masks but rather than sculpting them and making them of precious metals, they began painting these lifelike portraits.

It’s hotly debated whether this is an example of Greco-Roman realist style imposed on their subjects, or a home grown Egyptian development of their own ancient tradition. Those who say it’s more Egyptian than Roman point out that there’s no surviving paintings in the rest of the Roman Empire that were this realistic. Those who say it’s more Roman than Egyptian point out the arid climate left these portraits intact, and beleive the others in the rest of the empire were lost.

Personally I think you can call them Egyptian because these people, whether of Roman or ancient Egyptian descent, are still the ancestors of the modern Egyptians today.

Hey, Jumblr! Seeing anything familiar in this piece? (Bolding by me)

So that "no other minority" thing? Not true. Unfortunately, it shows that the problem is bigger and more widespread than is often assumed.

I have spent much of my adult life arguing with the Democratic Party.

I have questioned candidates. I have questioned policies. I have questioned priorities. I have sat in meetings, attended conventions, organized communities, and participated in countless conversations where disagreement was not only expected but necessary. Politics, after all, is not a religion. It is an ongoing argument about how we ought to live together.

Questioning the party is not new for me.

What is new is the growing realization that the questions themselves have become unwelcome.

That realization has been slow and, at times, painful. It did not arrive through a single election cycle, a single candidate, or a single controversy. It emerged through years of watching a political movement increasingly define itself through the language of inclusion while becoming less comfortable with disagreement. It emerged through countless conversations in which difficult questions were acknowledged but not answered. It emerged through the subtle but unmistakable feeling that belonging was no longer rooted in shared values, but in ideological compliance.

As a Black woman, that feeling is difficult to ignore because it carries echoes of a much older story.

Over the last several years, I have watched the Minnesota DFL increasingly define itself through the language of identity. Diversity, equity, inclusion, representation, belonging these words appear everywhere. They are repeated in speeches, campaign materials, conventions, and community meetings. Yet the more frequently I hear these words, the more I find myself wondering whether we have confused representation with liberation and symbolism with solidarity.

The contradiction became impossible for me to ignore as conversations unfolded around Hennepin County Sheriff Dawanna Witt. To be clear, this is not an argument against criticism. Public officials should be questioned. They should be challenged. Accountability is not oppression, and disagreement is not discrimination.

What troubled me was something else entirely.

What troubled me was watching people who proudly place Black Lives Matter signs in their yards, who speak passionately about protecting democracy, who insist that we must believe Black women, suddenly abandon those principles when confronted with a Black woman they disagreed with.

The issue at hand was the federal immigration enforcement surge that swept across the Twin Cities. People were angry. Fear was real. Communities were frightened. But what I could not understand was why so much of that anger became directed at Sheriff Witt, a county sheriff who neither created federal immigration policy nor controlled federal immigration enforcement.

Yet as I listened to accounts from those present, I heard story after story of people literally turning their backs as she spoke. Not debating her. Not questioning her. Not engaging her. Turning away from her.

There was something profoundly symbolic in that image. A Black woman standing before a crowd that regularly invokes the language of justice, inclusion, representation, and solidarity, only to be met with a gesture of rejection. And I found myself wondering what happens when our slogans collide with our actions. What does it mean to proclaim that Black lives matter, that Black women should be believed, and that democracy requires listening, only to dismiss the experiences of Black women when those experiences become uncomfortable?

And I found myself wondering what happened to all of the slogans.

Where were the lawn signs?

Where were the declarations that Black lives matter?

Where were the calls to believe Black women?

Where was the insistence that democracy depends upon listening, especially when we disagree?

Because democracy is not tested when we hear voices that affirm our existing beliefs. Democracy is tested when we encounter voices that challenge them.

What unsettled me most was not the treatment of Sheriff Witt alone. It was what followed.

What struck me was not disagreement. Disagreement would have required engagement. It would have required listening, asking questions, and taking seriously the experiences that were being shared. Reasonable people can witness the same event and come away with different conclusions. That is not what troubled me. What troubled me was the absence of any real effort to grapple with what Black women and Black elders in my community were trying to communicate.

In the days that followed, I listened as people shared their experiences of what they witnessed. I listened to Black women describe their discomfort. I listened to elders whose commitment to civil rights, coalition building, and community organizing stretches back decades reflect on what they had seen and why it troubled them. These were not people looking for an argument. They were not demanding agreement. They were asking a simple question: Can we talk honestly about what happened?

That is the question I cannot shake. Not because everyone must agree about what happened, but because so many people seemed unwilling to even examine why Black women and Black elders walked away with the same sense of unease. What I witnessed was not a debate. It was a refusal to engage. And I keep returning to the same unsettling thought: What does it mean to invite people to share their lived experiences if we have already decided which experiences are worthy of our attention?

What troubled me most was not just the treatment of one sheriff. It was the realization that many of the same political spaces that insist Black voices matter often appear uncomfortable when Black people exercise independent political judgment. Blackness is celebrated when it confirms the movement’s assumptions. Blackness becomes suspect when it complicates them.

This is not a new phenomenon. Black Americans have spent generations navigating institutions that welcomed our participation while attempting to regulate our autonomy. Historically, this took obvious forms: legal exclusion, segregation, voter suppression, and discrimination. Today the mechanisms are more subtle, but the underlying question remains remarkably similar: Who gets to determine which Black voices are legitimate?

That question has been sitting heavily on my mind because I increasingly see a form of politics that claims to celebrate diversity while quietly narrowing the range of acceptable thought. The expectation is rarely stated outright. No one hands you a list of approved opinions. Yet the boundaries become clear enough. Certain conclusions are rewarded. Certain questions are discouraged. Certain forms of dissent are interpreted not as disagreement but as moral failure.

As a Black woman, I find that deeply unsettling.

I have spent much of my life watching other people project their expectations onto Black bodies. I have watched institutions tell us who we should be, what we should prioritize, and what forms of expression are acceptable. What I did not expect was to encounter a progressive version of the same instinct. Different language. Different intentions. The same impulse to determine which forms of Blackness deserve validation.

Increasingly, it feels as though support is conditional. Representation is conditional. Solidarity is conditional.

We are told Black lives matter, but I find myself wondering whether what is actually meant is that Black lives matter when they remain politically useful. Black voices matter when they affirm prevailing narratives. Black women matter when they arrive at approved conclusions. Once disagreement enters the picture, the celebration often fades.

The irony is difficult to ignore. Movements that speak passionately about dismantling systems of power can become remarkably uncomfortable when marginalized people exercise power in unexpected ways. Organizations that champion diversity often struggle with genuine diversity of thought. Communities that celebrate authenticity can become suspicious of anyone who refuses to perform the identity they have been assigned.

This realization has forced me to confront an uncomfortable truth. The political tradition I inherited taught me that coalition building requires humility. It requires accepting that people who share your values may disagree about solutions. It requires the ability to remain in relationship with those who challenge your assumptions. What I increasingly see instead is a politics of litmus tests a politics where belonging depends less on shared principles than on ideological conformity.

That is what grieves me.

Not that people disagree. Disagreement is healthy. Disagreement is necessary. What grieves me is the growing sense that many institutions no longer know how to hold disagreement without interpreting it as betrayal.

And so I find myself asking a question I never expected to ask of the Minnesota DFL: If your commitment to Black voices disappears the moment those voices challenge you, what exactly is it that you are committed to?

Because there is a difference between supporting Black people and supporting a particular performance of Blackness.

There is a difference between representation and agency.

There is a difference between inclusion and obedience.

Stratt looked up from the titanium shipment invoices. “Yes?”

I knew I was supposed to be checking the titanium alloy specs before she signed off on them, but I couldn’t concentrate. “Did you know people think—”

“Yes. That was an answer.”

“You know?”

“Yes,” she said, her tone tinged with impatience. “Is there a reason you’re raising this?”

“People think we’re—together. Like, together together.” Her expression didn’t change. “Sleeping together.”

“They do,” Stratt said. “Did something happen, regarding this?”

my partner was a TA for an intro-to-subject course in grad school. finals week rolls around and the students are required to submit this big module assignment they've had like a month to do for a decent chunk of their grade. if you've submitted everything, you'll see a summary screen with a star beside each module name showing it's been completed.

an hour before the assignment deadline, he receives an email from a student claiming they completed the assignment, but the system is not allowing them to submit. there's an image attached to the email. partner goes to open what he assumes is a screenshot of that summary page.

instead, he sees that the student has taken a photo of their laptop from about 2 feet away, with that page open. strange, but it wouldn't be the first time a college freshman has lacked the tech literacy to take a screenshot. he almost doesn't look twice at it, but he realizes something about it just feels a little bit...off. so he zooms in.

the student had CUT STARS OUT OF CONSTRUCTION PAPER and TAPED THEM TO THEIR LAPTOP SCREEN BESIDE EACH MODULE NAME. you could see where they actually had completed the first couple of modules, but the stars for all the subsequent ones were like, double the size of the first two and exactly as uneven/irregular as you'd expect if you were freehanding them with scissors.

"omg, she's such a girl boss"

She kills babies like it's her job, if that's a girl boss?

"I'm a witch and my patron is Lilith"

She's a rape/SIDS demon. You actually do not, under any circumstances, "gotta hand it to her."

Like, bluntly, it's not just that Lilith isn't a misunderstood girlboss goddess who was tarred with an association with rape and SIDS. It's that it's literally the opposite of that. Lilith was the mythological embodiment of rape and SIDS, and her association with feminism is entirely due to a misogynist in the Middle Ages claiming that feminism was bad and should therefore be associated with the rape and SIDS demon.

Claiming that Lilith is your feminist girlboss patron is like claiming that your biggest personal inspiration for the fight for trans rights was the totally 100% true story of the "down with cis" bus, which btw wasn't actually about people committing violence, it was instead the heartwarming story of how people wearing "down with cis" t-shirts drove a bus to Washington and convinced Congress to give trans people equal rights. Like 1) that's absolutely nothing to do with what the "down with cis bus" story was about, and 2) the "down with cis bus" story was an obvious lie which was created by someone who was trying to discredit the movement you claim to support.

It's not actually particularly feminist to claim that the an anti-feminist screed is true and real and important (they just got some little details wrong).

Like it's really really important to recognize that!

She was not subsumed into/incorporated into Christianity at all, and so she cannot be a subversion of "Judeochristian patriarchal mythology."

Judeochristian is a highly problematic term for a VARIETY of reasons, and people shouldn't use it (outside of, perhaps, the first three centuries CE, where Christianity was still defining itself as a unique religion) because they will inevitably say/imply some shit that just isn't true! Like suggesting that Lilith is a part of Christian mythology in any way. She isn't.

Like @penrosesun mentioned, the idea that she was Adam's first wife is from a deeply misogynistic text. She's not really a girl boss there. She actually leaves and is told if she doesn't return 100 of her demon children will die every day. And she agrees to that and declares she was basically made to bring pain and death and likes this. So. Not exactly a good thing.

Things associated with Lilith in various jewish texts:

Tragic death of infants / committing infanticide (particularly of disabled, unhealthy, or "strange" children)

Birthing demon babies that will die in the hundreds (possibly even killing her own children)

Miscarriage (especially with genetic defects)

Giving children epileptic fits

Causing death in childbirth

Having hundreds of agents of like...evil and badness

Being the partner/consort of a demon prince/king (Samael/asmodeus)

Nocturnal seminal emissions

Adultery

Possibly the first mention of Lilit is just referring to a screech owl/night bird. She does show up in the talmud (predating the alphabet of Ben Sira, aforementioned misogyny text) but all of those earlier mentions seem to be limited to her being a horrifying demon.

Ex: shabbat 151b:

Rabbi Ḥanina said: It is prohibited to sleep alone in a house, and anyone who sleeps alone in a house will be seized by the evil spirit Lilith

Niddah 24b discusses miscarried fetuses that resemble the form of "a Lilith", who appears as a woman who has wings. But this suggests it's a category of creature, not a singular woman.