sugarfool

Alright. So someone made a thread on Twitter talking about “Why Dan and Phil are problematic” and one thing they mentioned was (wait for it): queerbaiting.

Now, this pissed me off so I’m here to talk about why Dan and Phil don’t queerbait. 

(This is gonna be a long ass post so go under the cut to see)

after that new vid this is how i imagine @danielhowell’s university “laundry days” went

There are times when I have a very real sadness for Dan. 

You can tell that intuition and communication are two of his natural strong-suits and passions, and those two qualities often work together to create influential people. Since Dan is already an influential figure, those two characteristics could launch him into having a greater impact in the online world than he currently has. But I truly feel bad for him because he is so established in a certain type of demographic that he can’t speculate freely about the world or speak openly about his opinions for fear that he will lose everything if they are divergent from his fandom’s worldview. I hate that the current social climate is this ready to vilify the hell out of people. Because of this, we don’t get to see authentic insight from Dan on anything whatsoever unless he happens to be making a positive commentary on an extremely broad and mainstream issue. I have seen glimpses of actual, organic thoughts coming through in his more carefree moments, but he quickly throws disclaimers on them if they’re too risky. (IE: when he tags “Joking…” on a comment he’s just made or feigns mock defensiveness when he says something ambiguous.)  If he’s on his guard (which is usually his baseline), he just dodges everything. I’m not sure if anybody else has noticed this, and there’s a real possibility that I’m the only one who feels this way. But what I’m trying to say is that Dan seems to be a highly communicative and observational person, and I know I would feel utterly miserable if I couldn’t exercise those qualities out of fear of damage to my entire livelihood. That’s called a trap. Dan is probably an extremely insightful person, and I’ll never get to hear him say anything real. 

In the meantime, we can hear more about The Sims and album releases.

(And I’m very sorry for it.)

- Shades of white in Europe range from ‘freshly fallen snow’ to ‘I am frequently mistaken as being from the Middle East’

- White European is a thing. When you fill out a form, under ethnicity, there are several options for white; white British, white European, white other. Because people make that distinction

- There are Europeans who don’t class their ethnicity as their skin colour, but as their nationality. I have family who don’t think of themselves as white, they just think of themselves as Italian and don’t really give much thought to their skin colour

- People here in Britain always question if darker skinned white Europeans are ‘actually white’. I get it a lot myself. My response is always ‘well I’m not anything else, so obviously I must be’

- Despite being white, a lot of Europeans from Italy, Greece, Spain etc, don’t feel white in the traditional sense. We’re not white like white British people. We’re not white like white Americans. We’re our own white. White British is one thing. White Italian is another thing. White Greek is another, etc

- Which is why we have this notion here in Europe of ‘nationality over race’. Being white isn’t as important as where you’re from

- So this really only becomes an issue if you’re an immigrant

- So being white in Europe doesn’t save you from racial discrimination, because sure, you’re technically white, but you’re not white white. Not the right white

- Here in England, Europeans with really blatantly foreign names, such as myself, find it more difficult to get job interviews, because they take one look at our name and don’t bother reading the rest of the CV. A guy I know was actually told by his boss to reduce the pile of CVs he had by ‘chucking away any with a name you can’t fucking pronounce’

- And then even when you do get an interview, half the time you walk into the joint several shades darker than everyone else and feel like you’ve walked into the ‘Swedish supermodel’ clubhouse and you just know you’re not getting hired

(That’s Mila Kunis. She was born in the Ukraine.)

(Sebastian Stan. From Constanta, Romania.)

(Mia Wasikowska, from Poland)

(Nina Dobrev, who was born in Bulgaria.)

They are white! Just because they are white, it doesn’t mean people from their countries cannot face horrible discrimination, and it doesn’t mean that they can’t be constantly told that they don’t work as hard as people from Western Europe, and that they don’t deserve basic human rights.

But as somebody who has lived in England and the US, I can vouch for all of this. The race issues in Europe and the race issues in the US are not the same.

For the last few years, there has been an awful backlash against immigrants from Poland, with some of the same language used that Americans use about “Mexicans” (By which, half the time, they mean anyone from south of the US/Mexico border).

It’s worth understanding that

1. Racism and discrimination are everywhere.

I was yelled at in the street because a lady thought I was Polish. People have pushed their chairs into my parents and insulted them in a restaurant because they were recognised as Germans.