Fish on the Tree

The Odyssey movie is not “a Greek story without Greek actors” that’s about as big of a strawman as the Trojan horse. The Greeks and Romans are the poster children for colonialism.

i honest to god don't know why you guys are so pressed about me pointing out actual historical facts. "european culture" isn't real, we are and have always been a bunch of different cultures. if i started talking about "asian culture" you can tell how that would be really weird and reductive, right? "european culture" as a concept is an artifical creation of white supremacy, trying to paint all of that cultural past (but only the good ones. not the bad ones.) as an achievement of the white race as a whole. this is a fact.

ancient greece and rome were big cultural influences to most of those cultures, but that is not the same as actually being OUR constant history and cultural heritage. The West™️ is as much of an inheritor of ancient greek culture as i am the inheritor of the ottoman empire. maybe even less. cultural influence ≠ cultural heritage.

What's the first "big news story" you remember from when you were a kid?

It's something I love to ask mixed-aged groups sometimes because I think it's really interesting to see the responses. I've gotten answers from the Olympics of [whatever year] to Watergate to more recent stuff from my niblings.

like if you are marginalized it is in your own self-interest to interrogate and deconstruct the cultural narratives that position you as subnormal. this is what starts a lot of queer people on wanting to reform the world into something more compassionate and egalitarian.

Misogyny is not just prejudice experienced by a woman. It is not simply something that happens TO a woman. It has nothing to do with the woman. It’s about the misogynist.

Bigotry is not determined or defined by the target of that bigotry. The bigotry is stored in the bigot.

Misogynists will be misogynistic towards any person they associate with femininity, including cisgender men.

When a misogynist cis man tears another man down for liking something he thinks is girly, he is still being misogynistic.

A cis male coach telling his cis male student he runs like a girl is being misogynistic.

A cis woman punishing her son for wanting a “girl” toy or policing her boyfriend’s hygiene habits and interests for anything she considers emasculating, is being misogynistic!

When a woman gets in a car accident and is injured more severely because the safety testing on that car was only done using crash test dummies and models based on men, she’s experiencing misogyny.

When the medication she takes for her injuries doesn’t work right or has unexpected side effects because it was only tested on men, she’s experiencing misogyny.

When the tools she uses at work that are the wrong shape for her hands, and the jumpsuit that’s part of her uniform which she has to take off completely to use the bathroom, and all the spaces she moves through and everything within them are designed with the assumption that an average male body is the only body that matters— she is experiencing misogyny.

Misogyny is the belief that women are inherently inferior, and the systems and institutions built around that belief. It can be experienced by anyone, and anyone is capable of having misogynistic beliefs and doing misogynistic things.

Bigotry is not about the target. It’s about the bigot, and what the bigot believes, and the way those bigoted beliefs have shaped our world.

I don’t care what race gender or sexuality you are, you were raised with racist, sexist, homophobic beliefs. Because it’s literally impossible not to be.

At the start of my employment, my boss showed me videos of people stealing, and we both had a chuckle about it. How silly they were! There was a camera overhead, and it’s not to watch the shoppers. See, we can’t actually stop shoplifters. They get away with it maybe nine out of ten times. But we, who are watched and tallied and witnessed? We are always caught.

At first it was hard to hold one hundred dollars bills. An amount I had never seen before. An amount that didn’t exist in my household. It’s normal now. Here is something that is not for me.

“What the hell, I’ll take another,” says the man, pondering our 200 dollar watches. What the hell. Total comes to 580 and not even a flinch in his face. I have been working for 11 hours today and made only 110 dollars. It will go to my rent. Today I work for free, it feels. When I get my check, I will have 35 dollars left for food and saving.

The six hundreds he hands me go into the cash register. For a moment, I imagine having money. Then I put it away, counting out his change.

I know for a fact we sell our products for double what they are worth. That I could be making commission. That they could hand me those 580 dollars and change my life and not even mark the difference in their checkbooks. He’s not the only sale they make today, but I am the reason they made it. He’s not the only one spending 600 dollars, but if I hadn’t spent two hours with him telling me about his life, he wouldn’t have spent any. I go home. I don’t own a watch.

I have watched and rewatched a video on how to make salmon four ways. My shopping list is always the same. Pasta. Rice. Tuna. If I can afford butter it was a good week. I dream of the world I will never walk in, where I can throw the best fish fillet in the cart with a shrug. I hold hundreds in my hand and look up at the camera. I put them under the cash drawer.

I go to work. I scrap together my savings. I eat my bowl of rice slowly. My manager takes a paid week off from work just for his birthday. He owns a yacht. 

i was part of their college program. i moved to the state for it. they legally owned the building i was living in and still charged me rent. i ostensibly was being charged to work for them. it was a 2 bedroom apartment and they placed 6 adult women in it in forced triples.

as many as one in ten disney employees have experienced homelessness while working for the company. despite huge efforts to unionize, strike, or otherwise demand fair treatment; disney has refused to increase employee quality of life.

disney admits publicly that a good portion of their success is because the employees (“cast members”) are dedicated, passionate, and selfless. this is never reflected in pay. even “face” characters (ie those that are princesses etc) make barely above a minimum wage.

at the time that i worked there, i made $8.50 an hour. at one point i was asked to create a human shield around a bag because a bomb dog had alerted to it. for eight fucking dollars an hour.

i now work a very cushy office job. i have bought the salmon and cooked it all four ways.

i go to the store. i am nice to the person behind the counter. she looks up at the camera while she counts out my change. there is nothing fundamentally different about her and i.

The white raven (originally: A fehér holló) 2025 Ink on paper

This picture was inspired by a song (the title of the song is the same as the title of the picture, and it is performed by the band Omega). What happened actually is that when I was painting this previous picture the other day (involving a very different individual white corvid), that song started playing in my mind, and then I had the idea for this picture.

I translate some of the pertinent lines:

The white raven is the mate of the black one Why is it that no one can see it nowadays Its wings are too blindingly white It's not visible itself, only its absence Nothing but a footprint in the infinite snow Nothing but a mark on the sheet of paper Nothing but the mouth that is by itself speechless The island of invisible in the visible

Happy Disability Pride month from my baby girl Qirri! Qirri's albino, and has the host of medical issues that come with it (impaired vision, sensitivity to sunlight), as well as having a weak immune system and underdeveloped lungs. She's recently learned to take better care of herself, but she can sometimes get a little overenthusiastic.