The purity of Bowlcut Sara and porkpie-hatted Tegan

📸: Christina Mendenhall

no one thinks it’s a racial issue against white people. that’s not why people say to stop that shit. it’s an issue of classism. because the truth is that the majority of y’all who think you’re amazing activists just REALLY fucking hate appalachian people, and i know that because y’all think it’s funny to say “karma’s a bitch!” when something bad happens to an appalachian state.

you don’t care about the poverty in the appalachia and you don’t care about queer people and/or people of color who live in the appalachia. you don’t care about education in the appalachia and you don’t care that these low rates of education mean higher rates of poverty and child poverty, which persist over the years. rural children are twice as likely to live in areas with persistent poverty. you care that poverty stricken children are statistically less likely to not have timely immunizations, have higher delinquency rates, and have lower academic achievement — but only when we’re talking about urban areas outside of the appalachia.

people in our region die earlier than most. mortality rates are higher in the appalachia, and they’re even higher for people of color that live in the appalachia. suicide rates are higher than anywhere else in the country by 17% — it’s 31% higher in central appalachia, and in rural areas within the appalachia, it’s 27% higher than metro appalachia. cancer morality rate is 10% higher, and it’s 15% higher in rural appalachia than metro appalachia. COPD mortality rate is 27% higher, and 55% higher in rural appalachia than metro appalachia. injury mortality rate is 33% higher, and it’s 47% higher in rural appalachia than in metro appalachia. stroke mortality rate is 14% higher — and you guessed it’s, these rates are higher in rural areas vs metro areas by 8%. the rate of Years of Potential Life Lost, which measures premmature mortality from all causes of death, is 25% higher in appalachia, and 40% higher in rural vs metro areas.

the appalachia has an opioid epidemic. in 2015, our rate of death with drugs was 65% higher than the national average. 69% of those drug deaths were from opioids. these deaths have a connection to our poverty and education rates. the poorer you are, and the less educated you are, the more likely you are to die from an opioid death.

when i say “don’t make jokes about rednecks and hillbillies”, that doesn’t mean i think you’re being racist against white people (and again — the majority of people who claim this also happen to be white 🙄). i say that because you are perpetuating extremely toxic rhetoric about our region, you are promoting stigma, you are encouraging blatant classism, and you are furthering the idea that we somehow “deserve” it because our elected officials vote republican. it’s not cute. stop acting like none of us have the right to call you out on your classist bullshit. like i’m sorry if this comes off as too aggressive but i am sooooo sick of y’all thinking it’s funny that our region is suffering.

and before anyone asks me for resources and links: google exists. i did my research and you can do it too.

EDIT: https://www.arc.gov/assets/research_reports/Health_Disparities_in_Appalachia_Trends_in_Appalachian_Health.pdf here, since y’all are too fucking obnoxiously incapable of taking 2.3 seconds google and instead want to claim I pulled random numbers from my asshole

people also act like it’s only appalachian and southern whites that voted for trump and that vote republican and it’s not true - half of all white women voted for trump. the rich ones and the poor ones. it’s not a problem that’s tied specifically to southern and appalachian white people but it’s an easy scapegoat and allows people to not think about what they’re actually saying.

please remember that something like two thirds of all harry potter characters are male. of that small percentage of main female characters, something like one third of them become romantic plot devices for the main male characters, another third are antagonistic, and the remaining third are maternal figures (and there’s lots of overlap in those categories!)

not a single hp character is openly queer, and there are certainly no lesbians in this series.

i think we could all excuse poorly written characters if it simply wasn’t jk’s strongpoint, but the sex and gender ideologies of the books are completely fucked and there’s no excuse for it:

she writes female characters to be attractive and then judges them for being narcissistic. there is literally a character called narcissa.

dumbledore was so traumatized by the ramifications of his homosexuality that he “lost his moral compass and turned asexual”

hermione was 14 years old and viktor krum was 18 when they had a relationship.

lycanthropy is a metaphor for AIDS/HIV within the gay community, and werewolves are considered evil creatures because their whole purpose is to intentionally spread lycanthropy.

it’s heavily implied that rita skeeter is a trans woman and she is judged for her “mannish” looks and portrayed with negative stereotypes.

many of the recurring female characters solely exist to perpetuate gossip and have no direct effect on the plot.

the hogwarts girls’ dorms are enchanted with a security system to automatically lock out any **male** student who tries to enter, but there is no reverse security system for the boys’ dorms. jk’s explanation is that boys are predatory but girls are trustworthy. i wonder what kind of situation could possibly cause a female student to be identified as a predatory male and forced to sleep in the boys dorms? hmmmmmm.

racial prejudices tie into intersectional feminism, so we should also acknowledge the female characters of color and how they’re treated:

cho chang has two last names and her entire purpose was to be a romantic interest to harry and eventually a plot device against him (her betrayal was due to narcissism btw).

i genuinely dont remember if cho’s race is anything other than General Asian but i cant seem to find any specification online. i really hope someone proves me wrong on this one.

nagini is the only other asian woman and she was enslaved by voldemort

we barely know anything about the patil sisters, i think they dated one of the main characters but ultimately had nothing to contribute to the plot

i literally can’t remember any other woc characters that actually matter, somebody add onto this if they know

ok so now think of one native american cartoon character you know of or a sports team relating to native americans whether it’s their actual name or their team logo, or a town you live in or near with a “native” name bet a lot of these things came to you right away i bet you didn’t even have to think 

Intellectual: Vine Deloria Jr. (Standing Rock Sioux) - Read Custer Died for Your Sins, trust me. God is Red is also very good.

Actress: Irene Bedard (Cree and Inuit) - Best known for her role as the voice of Pocahontas, but also in dozens of other roles. My personal favorite has always been Smoke Signals, based on a book by Sherman Alexie.

Actor: Wes Studi (Cherokee) - I’m pretty sure he’s the most recognizable Native American actor? He’s been in pretty much every famous movie about Native Americans, for better or worse, since the late 80s.

Senator: Charles Curtis (Osage and Kaw) - He was a Kansas senator AND President Hoover’s VP!

News Anchor and Television Personality: These I don’t know off the top of my head, someone please let me know if you have someone! (Also I’m not 100% sure what a tv personality is but that’s my own bad :()

Author: Sherman Alexie (Coeur d'Alene and Spokane) - novelist One of my favorite authors of all time! Please read Flight and Reservation Blues and The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven and basically anything else you can find.

Poet: Joy Harjo (Muskogee Creek) - How We Became Human is a collection of her poetry and it’s so so beautiful. She also plays the saxophone!

Singer: Buffy Sainte-Marie (Cree) - I have It’s My Way on vinyl and it is seriously so awesome. She is known for using the mouthbow in her songs, even playing one as a guest on Seseme Street!

Comedian: Dallas Goldtooth (Mdewakanton Dakota and Diné) - Part of a comedy group called the 1491s, he is also a huge activist and a good person to fallow either way. But look to the 1491s YouTube channel for their comedy sketches!

Because, I realize this may be shocking to some of you, but people who live in the same area tend to have similar views.

So

It’s not fair for the people who live in less densely populated areas– that account for wider swathes of land than the more densely populated areas– that they don’t get the “benefit” of living in an area where exponentially more people hold the same views as them. The electoral college accounts for this disparity where the public vote does not.

If that is its purpose, it is SPECTACULARLY bad at it. Two-thirds (273 of 399) of the general-election campaign events in the 2016 presidential race were in just 6 states (Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, and Michigan).   94% of the 2016 events (375 of the 399) were in 12 states.

The reason for this is simple: States that have a strong majority towards one party already are considered “safe” and not worth campaigning in. It doesn’t matter that almost 4 MILLION Texans voted for Hillary. It doesn’t matter that 4 and a half MILLION Californians voted for Trump. Those states, and any state that isn’t considered a battle ground state doesn’t get heard during campaigns because the chance of flipping the ENTIRE state is very low. That means that if you don’t live in a battle ground state, then you really don’t get a say.

On the other hand, if we went to a POPULAR VOTE (ya know, like every other election we have in this country, including your Governor) then all those votes WOULD matter. All the Republicans in “blue” states and all the Democrats in “red” states would need to be targeted; they could swing an election.  Instead of being beholden to what Ohio thinks is important and building campaign promises around that, candidates would have an incentive to visit mid-sized cities all over the country to reach undecided voters regardless of where they live.

Right now we have a system where “states” vote as solid blocks, which intentionally and completely erases political minorities within those states. This reduces voter turn out because of a feeling that your vote doesn’t matter (and like…it really kinda doesn’t) and creates this disproportional power in a very very small number of citizens (those who happen to live in battleground states.) Under the EC, Candidates are rewarded for focusing all of their attention, energy, and campaign promises on the small number of states where undecided voters can swing the majority their way, leaving the vast majority of the country ignored.

What about the BIG CITIES you say?

#1 New York City. 8,601,186

#2LosAngelesCalifornia 4,057,841

#3Chicago,Illinois 2,679,044

#4Houston,Texas 2,359,480

#5Phoenix,Arizona 1,711,356

#6 Philadelphia,Pennsylvania 1,576,596

Those 6 cities, combined, have less than 22 million people. The US has 327 million.

And this is my point- the US is not made of a small handful of huge cities. The vast majority of the country lives in SMALL cities and towns, under a million people each, and their suburbs.

So, no, with the Popular Vote, you could not pander just to the biggest cities and be done with it. If you add up EVERY SINGLE CITY with more than 100,000 people in it (Which is 311 cities), that’s still only 94 million. 28% of the US population.

The EC doesn’t actually help rural populations. In fact, it makes things worse for them. 46 states have an urban majority, and  “winner-take-all” laws that have been enacted by state legislatures in 48 states. So if there is a stark divide between rural and urban populations, in 46 states, the urban votes will win and 100% of the electoral points will go to the urban side.

However, in a popular vote system, no one’s vote would get thrown away like that, and everyone’s vote would be counted equally in the final tally.The popular vote would actually give MORE voice to rural populations that are all but completely erased in our current system.

Why not have a system where CITIZENS elect the president? Why does it matter which state someone lives in, if all votes should count equally?