Le Coin de Cachou

It's currently close to 4 AM now that I'm posting this, and I've been crying non-stop since midnight because my friends came back online one by one through an unstable connection and said: "Hi, I'm alive." I had prepared myself for the funeral of so many of my friends. Some haven't come back online yet, and we've formed small "search and rescue" groups to find their contacts or families to check if they're okay.

What remains a fact amidst all of this is that nobody in the world ever gave a single fuck about us. I was one of the lucky ones to connect during the complete shutdown via some newly invented way we were too scared to even publish on GitHub for fear of getting arrested. In the time I was connected, I felt immense guilt for having access to the internet, and I begged you all on my socials to be the voice of the people who were about to get executed.

Not even once did I see someone talk about the internet blackout in Iran, and it enrages me.

We've been massacred, mass executed, and then silenced by getting our only way of communicating with the world shut off and the world treats it as some background noise, some irrelevant news that isn't even worth spending time hearing about.

and like. do we have to keep gently phrasing things to protect naturally-thin people's feelings. in my life it has never been fashionable to be fat. "fat" is still a bad word. there has never been institutional power pushing people to gain weight; no trillion-dollar industry to "fix" skinny people. a larger body type has never been over-represented in models, influencers, celebrities. sure, people might say "i'm worried for your health," but they do it with respect and gentleness, like they're talking to a scared deer.

every single fucking time i talk about this, i have to be so careful with what i say, in case i offend even one skinny person. it is just true that skinny people have social capital across many cultures. there is a reason you almost never hear someone say "i wish i was fat," but you will constantly see people say "I wish i was thin." and yet inevitably some skinny person will tell me: i thought you wanted body positivity. it is the same fucking attitude as when a cis man says "when you say men have power, well, i've been bullied for being a man. i thought you believe in mental health awareness. don't you know men have a higher suicide rate?"

two things can be true at once: your experience being bullied for being thin was terrible. and people with larger bodies probably have it worse.

i have been big and small. i know many other people who have been big and small. trust what i'm about to tell you: being small is much easier. the world is kinder to you. people treat you better. honestly, this pattern occurs pretty much regardless of gender - my guy friends have confided that they'd rather be bullied for being thin than be bullied for being fat. if you're skinny, the pressure might be to gain weight, sure, but it's often to do so in a way that keeps you skinny - to gain muscle, specifically.

thinness is seen as innate and natural, genetic. whereas carrying any fat - that is a moral failing. it is assumed to be related to your character, your personality. i have seen people equate it to discipline, to hygiene. that bias is why we need to talk about this.

America and England and France and Saudi Arabia still exist despite their histories of AND CURRENT violent colonialism. South Africa still exists after one of if not the worst apartheids in history. Jews are outlawed from or even will be killed if they enter any number of Arab Muslim countries - how is that not an outrageous double standard? And do you know how many people America bombed in the middle east?

I’ve been standing up for Palestine for years now, literal years, for fucks sake I am a Palestinian, I center Palestinians. And just because I come to a different conclusion than the majority, or I find out about something that was actually really hard for me to come to terms but is true, I have gotten over 30 death threat anons in the last 3 hours, cursing me for:

1. Humanizing Israelis

2. Humanizing Jews

3. Having a conversation with a Jew (that was months ago yet somehow it’s news now)

4. That Jew being Israeli

5. Having a convo with a different Jew

6. That Jew not being Israeli (they actually got mad that a talked to a non Israeli Jew)

7. Calling myself a Palestinian (even though I am one…)

8. Wanting peace

9. Not encouraging the Hezbollah-Israel war BECAUSE I DONT WANT MORE DEATH (and I’m in Lebanon and I swear I’m gonna pass out if I hear about another bomb)

10. Existing

11. Not wanting death in both sides (it’s ok if I don’t want death on the Palestinian but the second I also don’t want death in the Israeli side suddenly I’m a mastermind spy that’s been working against Palestinians since day 1)

I would like to remind everyone:

IM A PALESTINIAN. Just because I’ve had conversations with Israelis, just because I view them as humans deserving of life, just because I genuinely see no problem living side by side with them, just because I don’t want to kill them all.

DOESNT MEAN I SUPPORT WHAT ISRAEL (the government BY THE WAY) DOES. I can criticize a country without actively wanting to mass murder its people, without actively wanting to make their individual lives hell for being born into said country (which they can’t control JUST LIKE I CANT CONTROL BEING BORN INTO A PALESTINIAN FAMILY WITH FAMILY IN GAZA)

If these racists cared about Palestinians they would never support Hamas or excuse their brutal abuse of Palestinian people and they wouldn’t be making their rallies safe for Nazis but not for Palestinian activists like Hamza Howidy and Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib and many others.