Sanderscats

at the end of 2016 (bear with me for a sec) a member of pussy riot came to my university to do a guest lecture. this was one month after donald trump was first elected.

she said to us “if you have the privilege to pack up and leave the country right now, you also have the privilege to stay and fight.”

i cannot stop thinking about it.

if you heard about neil gaiman’s allegations and thought “i can’t be here anymore,” i’m really glad you made that choice for yourself. sometimes you need to leave, sometimes it no longer feels safe, and neil gaiman deserves to see the consequences of his actions in that way. in all ways. fuck him. i didn’t feel safe anymore either, maybe i should’ve left too.

but i didn’t. sometimes i hate to admit it because i’m carrying so much weight along with the love, but i really do love good omens, so i stayed. i had fallen in love with a world that interested me, characters i connected with, and a love i could relate to. good omens is a great story.

but the thing is, the story is inseparable from the man who helped write it.

so if you’re going to stay, if you’re going to be talking about good omens on a frequent basis, you have to fight. you have to keep speaking up about what he’s done, you have to push back, you have to make this fandom inhospitable for people who defend him.

neil gaiman’s name may be here to stay too, but he is not welcome here. make it clear to him.

there was such a massive influx of people condemning him when the allegations first came to light, and there’s a handful of us talking about it now, and it’s incredible to see that support for the victims, but it needs to be ongoing. keep talking about the harm he’s caused (and continues to cause), keep doing those fan projects for charity, and keep believing survivors.

Look at transphobic hate crime statistics. Notice how many of the victims (rest in power) are black. Black trans women, many of whom were sex workers, are the most at risk.

In USAmerica, black trans women have been integral to the LGBTQIA+ rights movement, but even if they weren’t, they still deserve love, support, and safety.

When racialized people talk to you, white person, about racism, it’s your duty to listen. Don’t get defensive or offended— learn and do better. If you made a mistake, apologize and don’t do it again.

There’s so many resources out there— for example, Me and White Supremacy by Layla Saad (PDF linked) is an incredible workbook designed to help white people address, understand, and learn how to be antiracist and make the world a better place— “to be a good ancestor”, as she puts it. It’s been a great resource for me.

We have a duty to do better, be better, for our black siblings and society as a whole. So, listen and learn. It’s a journey, but one that needs to be taken.

Black lives matter. Black voices matter.

"If you have a racist friend, now is the time for the friendship to end"

On the topic of “teleportation” (chaos snap)

Janus “fierce and seductive tango after dangerous amounts of wine” Sanders was NOT prepared for the effects of Patton “soft slow dance with the sunset” Sanders

Gypsy does not mean wanderer.

It literally means ‘people from egypt’ or similar, as europeans believed Romani people were from Egypt. It has become known similar to nomad due to how our ancestors have been forced to be nomadic due to racism and ostracization, but it is a SLUR.

Romani people are STILL being forcibly sterilized.

Romani people are STILL being forced into ghettos.

Romani people are still facing violence and danger in countless European countries- and recently, I’ve seen the beginnings of the extremes in the United States.

Have a little fucking respect and DON’T USE A SLUR THAT’S BEEN USED FOR CENTURIES AGAINST US.

And for the love of whatever’s up there, ESPECIALLY do not use it to describe your witchcraft. It is playing on the ‘magic gypsy’ trope, and is EXTREMELY insulting.