Art and RANDOMNESS

4 year old me: why must we do this

Fantastic old woman in the leopard print coat: "Why yes, my tooth IS real silver! Nobody ever asks me that. Do you like cats?"

That means that if the village says you shouldn't get pregnant when you don't have a man to provide for you and you get pregnant regardless, they can refuse to support you. They can reject and stigmatize your child.

When you make a decision—any decision—from what you wear and who you associate with to who you will be romantically involved with and what that will look like, to your education and career, family planning and whether you will leave your partner if they abuse you—the village has a say in all of it.

A proper social state, however, decides which services to provide, how much to fund them etc, there are still cultural biases there, but it won't tell you how to live your life. If all university programs are free, you can go study liberal arts instead of law, your parents can't stop you, and if the state provides a stipend, free housing and free meals while you study and also takes care of your basic needs afterwards, you have the ultimate freedom to do whatever the fuck you want to do with your life.

Want to have 8 children and a trad lifestyle in the countryside? Cool, they'll have healthcare, schooling, meals, competent teachers, after-school activities, public transit, public parks and activities—all for free. And none of that will be dependent on how many people around you like you and your kids personally and what they think of your lifestyle.

You want to be aggressively transgender and live in the city with your 8 person polycule and spend your days doing art and running a café that only does matcha? You can do that too. You'll get free housing for all of you and the business space provided for you, even if everyone in your neighborhood thinks you're weird.

The bureaucrats handing out the collective resources ideally shouldn't give a shit what you do with them.

When I applied for uni and chose a liberal arts degree instead of STEM, nobody told me "yeah no sorry we don't approve of that, you'll have to do something we think is useful or pay for it yourself". I got a free education plus a stipend, subsidized housing and food and everything else.

2) any vegetable is better than no vegetable

So what happened? I’m gonna give the TL;DR version:

April 15, 1989. Hu Yaobang, a former Communist Party Chief dies.

Many people, including  workers, laborer, students and some officials come to mourn. You see, those protestors were originally there to mourn, not protest.

Time passed and there were some hunger strikes, and protests, and a call for accountability and reform from the government.

Eventually, things went south, because the communist party doesn’t have time to deal with these sorts of “demands” and grievances.

Keep in mind, the people wanted not the end of the Communist Party, but for the party to stop with the official corruption, rule of law, and the gross monopoly of information and power.

Incidentally, China still suffers from all of these SAME problems to this day…

June 3, 1989. The massacre started at night to disperse the crowd. Many were shot, wounded, and killed.

June 4, 1989. Some of the parents of the protestors who never came home went looking for them. It was still total mayhem.

June 5, 1989. The iconic image of the tank man was taken. To this day, no one knows what became of this person.

Content Warning for video: blood

“Tell the world…”

I cannot stress how important it is that people remember and know about this event. Do you know how China responded? With lies and censorship.

Even now, in 2016, we do not have an official death toll on the Tiananmen Square Massacre, the Chinese government doesn’t even acknowledge the event as a “massacre”. And they weaves these cover stories of “counter revolutionaries trying to overthrow the government”. Therefore, the violence was necessary to ~protect~ the people. (Or some bullshit like that)

The amount of lying and censorship in China is, quite frankly, scary amazing. Tumblr, which somehow managed to fly under their radar, found itself being blocked in that country.

After all, tell a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.

And those who remember the incident in China? …………well, you tell me.

What the fucking hell.

I just remember thinking it was a happy event, because all these people were out on the street, and at first the army were interacting with these people. And it almost looked like a festival because people were singing and talking, and hopeful. And then tv coverage for the events got cut off.

The blocking of the live coverage had all the adults anxious, nobody said anything for ages, I just remember my grandmother saying, “Just be glad your father isn’t in China, now.”

And that stuck with me to this day. Because yeah, if dad had been in China then he would have been in Beijing studying, he would have been on those streets with those other students.

It was the first time I knew that something horrible had happened to all those people I saw on the television. I don’t even remember how I knew that the army must have shot at the civilians, I just knew. Because when you grow up in China, especially in the 80s you knew there were things you don’t say, that you can’t express in a public forum, because that can get you and your family in trouble. You just knew, and it didn’t fucking matter if your were a child or an adult.

To this day I don’t remember how I found out what happened in Tiananmen Square, because the news covered it up, but people found out. My grandparents knew, my uncles and aunts knew. Extended family visited my grandparents, I remember people telling my mother not to mention my father’s name because my father was a Chinese Beijing University graduate, who had gone overseas. Because there were people who died in the protests that my dad knew.

And it was all just so frightening because nobody was telling me directly what was happening, but I just knew that all the people on the streets was probably dead.

Looking back on it, Tiananmen Square instilled in a me a life long distrust of governments, but especially the Chinese government. I’m ethnically Chinese but I never want to return to China, not even for a holiday, and this has been my attitude even before Xi Jinping took power. Because Tiananmen Square was a peaceful protest that ended up with the army using heavy artillery against their own people. How can you trust in a system, in a government like that? Because if my dad had delayed further studies overseas by two years he would have been one of those students, one of those fucking kids on the streets that would have died.

And you know, when the Umbrella movement was happening in Hong Kong I was deeply panicked and just anxious because I kept on thinking all those people, all those kids are going to be killed. And when that didn’t happen it was such a relief.

When I found out years later that Chinese people a few years younger than me didn’t know what happened in Tiananmen Square I was so fucking angry. I can’t even articulate the rage and the sheer tiredness of it all.

That night, and in the upcoming months, Hong Kong was in perpetual tears, and in literal shock.

Hong Kongers were mostly Chinese, just south of the border with people traveling back and forth. It also shared a language, and so HKers could follow the whole movement and hear news that western media had little access to without the distorting effect of translations. And they followed very closely, because by then, Hong Kong was already scheduled to be returned to China in 8 years time. How the Chinese government dealt with the movement would be a sign of how it’d treat dissent, how it’d treat people who’re used to the idea and practice of freedom.

What they saw was deadly. Ugly. It broke the hearts of millions of Hong Kongers who trusted that The Chinese Government had left its Great Leap Forward, its Cultural Revolution days behind. Those who could leave, left. Everyday the airport was filled with families about to be torn apart, who decided to trade the life they had in one of the richest, most vibrant and freest city at the time with the unknown, just so their own children would have the freedom to speak their minds, to have a higher education and not to be seen as the enemy of the state because higher education always led to independent thinking, to questioning, to asking for a better government as those university students in Beijing in the spring and summer of 1989 did.

The heartbreak and fear was almost palpable in its intensity. Most HKers were refugees from China or 1st generation of them. Unlike the HK youths now protesting who are more generations removed, they felt much more connected to the people in China. They still saw themselves as Chinese, like those students in Beijing. They mourned. They cried and cried and cried. They wore black or white everyday like it was the death of their closest relatives. TV stations played these Tiananmen Square clips all day. I can still play many of them out of my memory, can still recite what the students and government officials said (for example, they didn’t use tear gas because they only had three), the songs played — I know every word of China’s national anthem for that reason; the students were singing it. They were patriotic. They demanded reforms because they wanted their country to do better. 8964 was and still is, etched in my psyche. It is just one of the long list of atrocities this government has done against its people, but this one, I was close enough to feel it.

China censored the June 4th Massacre quickly and thoroughly — if you believe China has censored queer material, for example, I’d say this — the extent of that censorship is not even close to what a true China censorship does. A true Chinese censorship is you can’t find the info, or a hint of that info anywhere. You can’t talk about it in a roundabout away. You can’t change some elements of time/place/person and pretend it’s fictional. It would literally ban the numbers 8,9,6,4 from search results, even though the searcher may really be just be interested in the numbers themselves. Whoever speaks of it may be sent to the police station for a “discussion”; their family would be sent, if the speaker is outside China; the speaker may be arrested, and may never be seen again.

The western worlds pretended to be enraged about the massacre for a while and soon forgot about it, kept its diplomatic relations with China and did business with its government as usual. UK returned Hong Kong to China as scheduled, on July 1st, 1997. The city has been the only place that insisted on the mourning the victims and had done so insistently, consistently for 30 years, holding a yearly candlelight vigil in Victoria Park until this year, when because of the protests, the Chinese government decided to not even pretend to honour the international treaty they signed that promised HK its freedom until 2047 anymore. They shut the vigil down in the name of the pandemic (there were <10 cases/day then). Still, some people risked being arrested to go to Victoria park and lit their candles.

The Chinese government fears HKers for this reason. They are outside their iron curtain / firewall but have always been close enough geographically, culturally and ethnically to know and more so, to care. And there’s nothing more a government like China’s fear than people who insist on remembering the truth. With the National Security Law in place in Hong Kong now, probably the yearly vigils can’t continue. To understand how insane that law is, by writing this reblog, by saying things that make you dislike the Chinese government, I’m already in violation of its Article 38. It doesn’t matter I’m writing it in a foreign country. It doesn’t matter I’m a foreign citizen. That law includes everyone on Earth.

Yes, that includes you. And you. And you. And you. They can arrest you for trying to overthrow the Chinese government if you pass the borders of Hong Kong.

Uncropped photo shows the long, long line of tanks.

Four years ago:

May 35th, 535, and VIIV have all been blocked search terms in China.

thought about this because it's so frustrating when people argue that 'dying in childbirth' is a historical sort of event that doesn't happen nowadays (false) and therefore is irrelevant to the legal status of abortion, since it's not a real danger.

except it super is, and i think a lot of people haven't noticed that this argument in addition to simply being incorrect is basically the same as when people say we don't need vaccines for deadly diseases because no one gets those now anyway.

Are you a religious Christian for whom a Pride parade is considered "work" and therefore something you would not be able to attend were it scheduled on a Sunday? Do you attend Mass on Sunday that takes all day and therefore limits your free time on Sunday? No? So then why is it such a hassle for things to be scheduled on a Sunday? In fact, many workplaces still don't give off Saturday as a given, but they do give off Sunday. Wouldn't you want more people (Jewish or not) to be included?

Jews, whether you like it or not, were and are deeply foundational to the modern LGBTQ Pride and Rights movement. Magnus Hirschfeld was a Jew. Harvey Milk was a Jew. Brenda Howard, the literal "Mother of Pride" was a Jew. They may not have been Orthodox Jews or Shabbat-observant, but Jews of all levels of observance and religiosity deserve to be included. And Jewish religious institutions have been supportive of LGBTQ causes for decades. And even if Jews weren't part of and supporters of the community from the start, Jews are part of the community now and ought to be included, as should people of all ethnicities, races, religions, and nationalities.

But honestly? My views have changed since I made that post that earned it a screenshot and post onto reddit saying "look how crazy and entitled those Jews are". I think the Western LGBTQ movement's exclusion and hatred of Jews now goes far beyond scheduling things on Saturdays. That's just the surface level. Things are far more overt when Jewish interest groups are quite literally banned from Pride events, when Jews are regularly harassed and attacked both off-line and online, when the overwhelming message from the Western LGBTQ world is that an LGBTQ person who is also a Jew is a traitor to their own kind. And it gets worse and worse each year as more LGBTQ people trade in their own safety and welfare and future prospects to spend their time, energy, and money hating Jews. Not only is it disgustingly hateful, it's counterproductive. LGBTQ rights are being attacked and stripped away all around the Western world, but people care more about investing their energy into best excluding Jews, Jews who, LGBTQ or not, would be and are supportive of LGBTQ causes. It's deeply insidious.

My schedule isn't more important than anyone else's. I know that. You know that, and you know that you were reading my post in bad faith. Jews are not the only people who would benefit from important Pride events not being scheduled on Saturdays. People who still have to work on Saturdays would benefit too. And I know you read a tiny snippet of my post and blacked out, because in that post I also mentioned Pride events being scheduled on Jewish holidays (Shavuot often times falls out in June). I think if you are in a community with a large number of Jews who are contributing members, it's only basic decency to be considerate. I am annoyed at conventions that do that same thing, mind you. But "niche interest conventions" are not a broad, umbrella movement the way the Western LGBTQ movement is. A science fiction convention isn't part of the same movement as a WWII history airshow, for example, and they are often not run by the same kinds of people and they are often not even attended by the same kinds of people.

"That's it, you're doing it right, darling, don't worry."

Any guidance through even the simplest of tasks.

"I'm here, I'm not going anywhere."

Feeling weight, like a hand resting on a shoulder or thigh.

Making eye contact and getting a smile and nod back that says, you're doing great, keep going.

Being hushed or swayed while receiving back rubs.

the city of los angeles

the city of new york

sex

how drinking alcohol works

how getting high works

how a child of any age speaks

how nuclear physics work

how [my job] works

how debilitating being shot in the shoulder is

how hypothermia works

things I have never before seen someone fake their way through writing about, until today:

SHRIMP COCKTAIL:

banahbanah: #flashback to that one fic where Peter Parker frets about drinking shrimp cocktail because of the alcohol

generaldeliciousness: adding: what a prawn/shrimp cocktail is

#why is your character turning it down because they're under 21 #do you think prawn cocktail is a cocktail #this lives in my brain rent-free constantly #the rest of the fic was so normal #and good enough that i'll still re-read it #but bro

And then many, MANY, people wondering if this was actually authour mistake, since Peter really would do this!

POMEGRANATES:

zhajhassa: #haha where's that post that was like someone describing someone eating a pomegranate but they ate it like an apple

thornhands: #once someone wrote persephone biting into a whole Pomegranate #had to stop and stare at a wall for a minute

sungsingsanguine: I once saw someone very confidently write about a character eating slices of pomegranate.

FRUIT TREES:

zagreuses-toast: #given a very endearing glimpse into a writers blindspots by seeing them describe someone sitting under a ''pineapple tree''

salatrash: I remember something about picking watermelons... OF A FUCKING TREE

baander: #cranberry trees

DOUGH/BATTER:

maycelium: #I'm a chef so I'm really used to people not accurately describing how to cook food #But I was surprisingly flabbergasted when someone was writing making a cake and was kneading it. Which uh #Not necessary for cake. It was interesting for sure but just bizarre

livebloggingmydescentintomadness: #the one that drove me nuts was when a character set aside a batch of PASTA DOUGH 'to rise' #pasta doesn't have yeast!! #it does need to REST but it will never RISE #you do not want an airy crumb on your noodles

lovesodeepandwideandwell: #THE ONE WHERE THEY MADE COOKIES BY LADLING BATTER INTO A TRAY

Some other topics:

unrelated: gay-ass art on Barbara's walls 👀