jamie

And then I met Dominic when I was 12, and people could see how in love we were. And we got the shit beat out of us. The year I met him, some kids in the grade above me held me down against the bleachers in our gym and stomped on my hand until my fingers broke. Instead of sending me to the nurse, the teacher sent me to the assistant principal to explain the situation. She asked why the kids had beat me up. I said, “They were calling me gay.”

Her response was, “Well, are you?”

My, “I don’t know,” earned a call to my parents, and I was outed. Efforts were made to keep me from seeing Dom. Throughout high school, Dom’s stepmother intensified these efforts. He slept in the basement of the house. Although he was an incredibly talented student, he was prohibited from participating in any extracurriculars. He suffered a lot of physical abuse during those years.

The day he turned 18, he packed up everything he had and walked to my house, and we’ve lived together ever since. Things are better, but they’re not perfect. I’ve had trucks pull up next to me at stoplights and, seeing the pride sticker on my car, through old drinks and garbage into my window. I no longer speak to my dad’s side of the family. I haven’t been to see them for Christmas or Thanksgiving in years. One of my uncles had cornered me at Thanksgiving when I was 17 and said, “I’m not going to judge you, but I’d be happy to break your neck so God can do the judging a little sooner.”

I joined a support group for trans and intersex people. When I joined, 40 people attended regularly. Within the year, the group was half the size it had been. Some couldn’t make it anymore, because they were staying at the shelter, where their stay hinged on them agreeing to instead to attend homophobic sermons. Some were put in correctional therapy. Five of them died. Three of those, I didn’t know, but I knew Alex, the 19 year old who was fag-dragged in Kentucky and died a day later in the hospital, and I knew Stephanie, who went home to Alabama to care for her mom in hospice and was beaten to death with a baseball bat by her mom’s boyfriend.

Tumblr is not reality. The dynamic here does not reflect the dynamic out there. Here’s the part where I finally make a point, and it might be extremely unpopular - but guys, value your allies. Value each other. We are met with enough hate in our daily lives to enter an online safe-space and meet more hate from our own, over petty things. Don’t go after one another over every little thing you find problematic.

Learn to see nuance. Maybe the word “queer” bothers you, and you see a gay man using it as an umbrella term. Maybe someone called a trans man a trans woman because they’re confused about terminology, but the post where they did it was voicing support for the trans community. Maybe someone is just asking a question, wanting to learn more. Stop. Attacking. These. People.

Allies are being driven away. Members of our own community are being ostracized. Others are feeling nervous and estranged, and it’s largely because of places like Tumblr, where the social justice movement is quickly becoming violent and radical. I am begging you, stop nitpicking “problematic” things and start directing your efforts to create real change. When it comes to comes to your allies, forget the “social justice warrior” mentality and put down your torch. Educate calmly. Be respectful. Be understanding. Be forgiving. And I’m certainly not saying that your anger doesn’t have a good place - when you are met with bigots on the street, congress members who want to pass hateful laws, violent protesters, abusive parents, prejudiced teachers, that is when you need to be a warrior. That’s when it counts. In the real world. When you have the opportunity to protect people from real harm. Attacking your would-be allies via anonymous asks is just going to lose us ground in the long run. And we don’t have time for that, not when trans women of color are being murdered every day, not when states are still fighting against marriage equality, not when there are politicians in office who believe that trans people are possessed by demons, not when we’ve just lost 50 brothers and sisters to one gunman, not when the media won’t even admit that the attack was homophobic.

It would be more accurate to say “Tumblr is not the entirety of reality.”

Because, and I want to stress this, Tumblr is, in fact, real. It has the capacity to help, and it has the capacity to hurt. Most of the people that have been driven off didn’t leave because they just weren’t having fun anymore, they left because they were being hurt and chose not to continue being hurt.

I’ve seen people absolutely convinced that there’s no room in the world for straight trans men, or asexuals, or bisexuals, or trans lesbians, or gay Christians, in part because the online spaces they dipped their toes into were incredibly hostile. So it’s pretty natural that if that experience was bad, something even more risky—like going to a meetup where they can see your face and might even recognize you as a person—doesn’t feel like a good idea at all.

These encouraged me to draw attention to news that have been circulating on Instagram but surprisingly found no one to talk about it here in tumblr. The matter itself is alarming and I feel we should be more vocal about it. For your reference I attached some Instagram links which contain the details, go ahead and check them out.

To give you the picture of this whole shenanigans of global fashion brands that are threatened by this campaign and collective rage of angry hashtags, western brands such as Kohl's, ASOS have canceled product orders from their Asian (Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Cambodia, Vietnam etc) suppliers. Not only that, these brands (Gap, Arcadia, Primark, Walmart, Fashion Nova, Kendall + Kylie etc, you can find the whole list in venetialamanna's instagram post) are refusing to pay for the in-process goods which is resulting in forced shut down of factories. A major portion of these unemployed workers are women often having no government protection, are even forced to work at rates below living standards (see giving fashion for more details). It's just an irony how Kylie Jenner posted her support for BLM on her social media but her companies are refusing to pay the workers in Bangladesh (where most of the workers are brown women). Not only that, she even went on her way to delete those comments where people used the #PayUp hastag and called her and her sister out. Like bitch, what matters most to you is being a billionaire where you don't give a fuck about the workers whom you're depriving of their rights?

FUCK YOU Kendall + Kylie!

FUCK YOU Cardie B, Diddy, celebrities, fast fashion brands who've bloods on your clothing lines.

Wanna hear a joke? A lot of these brands are even giving sales on their clothes where behind the scene they've millions of dollars yet to pay up and for them people are starving.

This is a small blog but I will request you to spread the words. Please try-

Use the hastag #PayUp on your socials, email the brands, flood them with hashtags

Sign the petition

if you're on instagram follow Who Made Your Cloth, ReMake, Clean Clothes Campaign to stay updated.

Support Remake, CleanClothesCampaign, Labor behind the labels, Asia Floor Wage Alliance, Garments Worker Center, One Billion Rising, Pull Up for Change.

Donate to garments workers and their unions

DO NOT SUPPORT the companies that are sucking the labor force and not treating the employees fairly.

Spread the words, reblog, attack them with #PayUp hashtags everywhere. Kylie, Kendall and these global brands cannot get away without paying up.

Anyways, Breonna Taylor

Breonna Taylor - On March 13, 2020, Breonna Taylor lay sleeping with her boyfriend Kenneth Walker.

Outside police silently gathered, preparing to raid what they believed to be a residence linked to two drug dealers.

One of these drug dealers was thought to be receiving mail at Taylor’s apartment, resulting in a judge signing a search warrant with a “no knock” provision.

The warrant claimed that a US Postal Inspector confirmed that the dealer had been receiving packages at the apartment. Postal Inspector Tony Gooden has said that his office had told police there were no packages of interest being received there.

Taylor and Walker were awoken by a loud bang at the door.

Taylor yelled “Who is it?” multiple times to no response before Walker armed himself with a legally owned firearm.

Walker fired 1 shot before the officers returned with over 20 rounds. Taylor was shot at least 8 times. No drugs were found in the apartment.

Breonna Taylor worked as an EMT. She aspired to be a nurse and had no criminal past. She was working during the coronavirus crisis.

On May 29, Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer indefinitely suspended the use of “no knock” warrants. The shooting is currently under investigation.

This is a map of Asia. North Americans, you may notice this map is not solely comprised of Japan, Korea, China and Thailand. People in the UK, you may notice India is not  a continent. That is, if those of you who generalize entire continents can even pinpoint India on a map. Indians are Asian, gasp! And not all brown skinned people are Indian, also, gasp! There are an alarming amount of people, of all ages, from all backgrounds, who seem to be unable to process this.

I’m ethnically Asian. Since Asia is an extremely large continent, I could be from any number of countries. I am neither from India, China, Korea, Japan or Pakistan, yet not so surprisingly, I am still Asian. 

Yes, there are commonalities across regions, through the conflation of cultures, colonialism, globalization, transnationalism and movement of diasporas. Sometimes these are all the same thing. Rickshaws, rice and curry can be found across the continent. But let’s not overgeneralize. You can also find Buddhists, Catholics, Muslims and Hindus across Asia. Cantonese Speaking Chinese Muslims! English Speaking Indian Jews! 

No, we are not all the same. Orientalism? (Please look up Edward Said for basic concepts) No thank you. 

To the folks wondering about Russia being included, I want to mention that the cultural debates and angst about that has been going on for CENTURIES. While France has been pretty fetishized all the way back from Peter the Great, there is no question that we are not Europe, even with that influence showing really obviously in historical seats of power like St. Petersburg. Nonetheless, the whole country was under control of the Mongols (The Golden Horde) from roughly 1242 to 1480, and that left an enormous Mongolian and Tatar heritage that remains to this day. The ancient Scythians are huge in the cultural imagination as well. And besides… look at the Russians who are outside the standard “Kievan Rus” phenotype (which most folks assume is how all Russians look.) 

Here are three of the 30 distinct ethnic groups in Siberia alone:

Buryat grandfather, photo by Alexander Newby

Evenk children, photo by Evgenia Arbugaeva

Riots in protest of police brutality are the reason that we have more rights today. Do not forget your roots.

There is a bill called “The Anti-Terrorism Bill” which gives law enforcement agents and military personnel to be able to arrest anyone suspicious without any warrant. This bill can be abused and used to target anyone who is giving criticism about the government, the military, the police, etc.

Imagine getting arrested for posting a meme. That’s a possibility if this bill gets approved by the president. The thing is, the president just made the bill urgent. He wants this bill to be made into a law. Doing so will silence the Filipinos.

So please please help us. Especially those out of the country since there’s no chance that you will be arrested.

I will post some pictures for more information including how to help us.

On May 29, the Philippine Congress approved the senate version of the the Terror Bill which posses as a major threat to freedom of speech, especially during this times when dissent in media platforms is becoming a trend for the modern-day Filipino.

(Credits to College Editors Guild of the Philippines, CEGP)

Now, you might think that this bill just happened to come around but the timing is all too convinient. The reason why dissent is rising among the masses is because the executive branch of the government has frankly done a piss poor job at handling the Pandemic. They have continued to keep us quarantined, with only those considered essential businesses allowed to remain for months. It is only now in June that they have allowed people to work as long as they keep at a skeletal system. The main problem comes down to the fact that the government has yet to implement mass testing and even contract tracing for the matter, making the quanratine lose all meaning in the first place. To add up to all this, the administration continues to accumulate debt to “fight the pandemic” but claim they do not have the budget for mass testing.  And to make matters worse, the head of the administration decides to fight a virus the only way he’s been fighting things, with machismo and guns. There have been cases where the police overstepped their bounds under the banner of ‘keeping the quarantine safe’ wherein they broke into a private residential building and also a homeless shelter because these places allegedly did not follow quarantine protocols. There was also a case of a soldier killing a veteran having an episode despite the residents of the area shouting he had PTSD and to leave him be. We cannot also discount the rapid increase of the Extrajudicial Killings fueled by the executive’s drug war that pretty much ramped  up police brutality in the Philippines by quite a lot.

Now, this bill is giving them more power to by-pass the Judiciary which is the only thing keeping them in check. As per Rappler: “ the bill would allow the Anti-Terror Council (ATC), made up of top cabinet officials, to do functions otherwise reserved for courts, like ordering the arrests of people it has designated to be terrorists.” 

Here are some as cited by CEGP. Below are some of the sections of Bill 1083, aka Terror Bill, although it feels rather more approriate to be called Martial Law 2.0. Below are some of the questionable provisions in the bill.

These two provisions are quite questionable as their vagueness could allow tagging of dissenters as terrorists. The head of the executive branch is actually quite fond of using mixed words and blurring the lines between dissenters who only criticize in hopes of improvement of the system as opposed to terrorists who seek to destroy it. This only adds oil to the fire, really.

Here we see that included in the wiring tapping are those individuals accused solely upon mere suspicion that would allow the police to invade our privacy just because we criticized the government a little too much more than they like. Now, there have been restrictions here either like between lawyers and clients or doctors and patients but this still stands that this is an invation of privacy,

Now Sec. 29. Detention Without Judicial Warrant of Arrest that takes the cake out of them all. Persons again tagged as terrorists by the ATC under mere suspicion can be detained for up to 24 days without a warrant, which is the first line of defense you have against a police violating your human rights. Although, if you do look up the entire provision, included is a follow up action of reporting to a court Judge “immediately”, there lacks a specific timeframe around the word “immediately” that again could allow the police advantage via vaugeness of this bill in their favor. 

The purpose of this bill is so obvious that National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers chair Neri Colmenares even spoke up, stating that “ This isn’t really to go after the Abu Sayyaf or terrorists, or whoever they call as terrorists… I think the reason they actually need this bill is for the dissenters, the opposition.” (translated from Tagalog).

Save the voice of the Filipinos. Do not let them change the narrative. Hold the governement accountable for their lapses. Dissent is not terrorism. Dissent is duty. #JunkTerrorBill

Friendly reminder that Queer is approved by 72.9% of the people, and the groups who don’t prefer it’s use as an umbrella term are straight people, exclusionists, transmeds, truscums, sex-negative people, and sex work critical people (x).

Friendly reminder that aros and aces are excluded only 9.2% / 8.1% of the time respectively while being included  78.9% / 81.2% of the time (x)

extremely bemused customer: um...... aren’t you the firelord???

they were not “going to die in a few months anyway”

the average life expectancy at age 70 is 15 years. fifteen years! when i am 70 i can tell you i am going to want every minute of every remaining year i can get because i’m not going to be anywhere near done thinking and talking and traveling and being with loved ones. it’s 2020, 70 is just not that fucking old any more

“okay but what about like an 85 year old” no. fuck you. the average life expectancy at age 85 is 6.5 years. (that’s not a discrepancy ... the longer you live, the likelier you are to be made of resilient stuff.) my father is 84, a bit creaky round the edges, got a few of those underlying conditions, but yanno he’s not fucking done yet either, he’s full of beans, and many many people would prefer him to stay that way