mind boggling to me that there's a "debate" over whether trans women/femmes/"TMAs" are the most oppressed people in the trans community and therefore need/deserve the most/all of the support and attention when the answer is that the most oppressed trans people are trans people of colour - most specifically but not exclusively Black, Brown, and Indigenous trans people. full stop. both in amerikkka and the rest of the world writ large.
that doesn't mean that if you're white you're not oppressed for your transness and whatever else you've got going on, just that your oppression looks different and you can't claim the same level of oppression as your melanated counterparts. I'm sorry but you cannot lump all white trans people in with all trans people of colour and quantify who has it worse by gender least of all because material conditions like what country you're in, your access to HRT and surgeries, whether you pass or not, what kind of support network you have, and your financial situation have a massive impact that varies wildly between all trans people and is not a one size fits all situation.
a white affluent trans woman (especially one who lives in the imperial core and/or has a stable well paying job) who passes IS more privileged than any given melanated trans man - especially one living in a country that more actively oppresses people perceived as women and girls. a melanated trans person of any material conditions IS more oppressed and in active danger than any given white trans person, EVEN a poor and disabled white one compared to a rich, passing trans person of colour (because "fun" fact: being rich and cis passing doesn't protect you from the cops, the government, and racists assholes if you're not white) - but that doesn't mean the white trans person isn't also oppressed and needing of support, protection, and a voice and might be suffering more in some material ways. just in different ways and to different degrees than their melanated counterparts.
everyone deserves a voice and everyone deserves their needs to be seen and included in the fight for equity and equality but we're not doing that as long as we're focusing on which gender of trans people has it worst. instead of, you know, paying attention to how much worse the addition of racism, living in an aggressively anti-lgbtq country, and/or being a country where people perceived as women and girls are considered property (especially countries under the boot of imperialism).
if you're not focusing on THAT then you're failing at intersectional transfeminism and you need to seriously reconsider some things about your world view and priorities.
if you read this far then you should donate to a trans or lgbtqia+ organisation for people of colour
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you're about to get an impatient version of me but i'm not sorry at all because i've fucking HAD IT. i'm going to come back in a few days with a proper post but for now i'm just PISSED
OK TEAM
we understand that lightening fenris is gross and racist. alabaster isabella we understand is fucking cooked yeah.
but it's so clear to me that you only think this because you learned a list of things that are Racist And Bad and not because you're thinking in any meaningful depth about the form and function of racism and white supremacy
because there's no reason for me to repeatedly come across light skinned davrin and loose curls davrin and nightmare thin nose davrin posted and/or reblogged right into my fucking eyes. get your watery davrins out of my face and GET IT THE FUCK TOGETHER
I want to meet the person who decided that it'd be a good idea to inexplicably make the fish person "become male" and darker skinned when angry. It's truly one of the choices of all time that could have just... not been made.
i feel like Sir Pentious & Alastor's human designs kind of give very unfortunate implications, bc like, now it's canon that dying & going to hell made Pen's skin go from pale to literally the colour black, & becoming a powerful demon made Alastor's skin lighter & hair pin straight
also, it means we have 2 human backstories, 1 where a white guy arms dealer is portrayed as just a scared lil bean that feels so sorry & was the first redeemed soul, & 1 where a mixed race Black man is an evil irredeemable serial killer who delights in killing white people before being humbled & turned into a pet
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- Pakistanis were also calling their Miss Pakistan an Indian woman cuz she was dark skinned. The colourism and hate for Indians in Pakistan is next level.
Colorism seems so bonkers-level normalized in Thailand, and that makes it incredibly hard for me to wrap my head around.
Like, I already hate it when fans and publications whitewash Singto*, but Krist is already considered lighter-skinned*, and they even do it to him.
* which is partially why I'm excited for "Write You Again" because Parbdee's postproduction actually seemed to augment his melanin in the pilot teaser rather than bleach it away
* Tha even went out of his way once to say that the first thing he noticed about Krist was his skin tone and "Chinese look"
This video below was posted to laud CapCut Pro for its color-grading features, showing a side-by-side comparison of the original video where Krist is, like, one or two shades darker than the snow I was made out of, next to an altered video where his skin has been edited to a shade whiter than my feet after a winter spent in socks.
[source]
I mean, the existence of colorism hopefully isn't news to anyone, but I just found this video genuinely baffling because it's…absurd. Why do this? He's always been gorgeous exactly as he is. And he already lightens his skin, I'm pretty sure. So stop encouraging more of it?
Anyway, this is the original tweet:
[sources: 1, 2]
Nearly 6k likes for a video showcasing how software can make a pale person even paler! [audience applause]
Wild.
Now, I only just found out last year while learning about the nuances of colorism in Thailand that there are types of makeup (like powders and foundations, I think) that reflect light back at the camera. That explains why certain actors look different in life compared to photos even when the photos haven't been edited. Apparently, that makeup is popular in Asia because it assists with skin-lightening practices on top of skin-bleaching creams and more intense treatments.
And like, if tweets like that are so favorably received, what does that do psychologically to literally anyone with melanin? Not only the actors, but the general population who see this going on in their media, too.
This is a country in a tropical climate close to the equator, and whenever I go to Thailand, I see quite a lot of people with tan skin, so it's just…genuinely baffling to me that this has such a stranglehold there.
Singto's even talked about (iirc?) getting blackout curtains for his house so he can mitigate the effects of the sun on his tan skin. And even though I'm pretty sure he hasn't done anything to lighten it, fans and media outlets go ahead and do it to him instead:
[sources: 1, 2]
The photo on the left was posted by the makeup artist and I think it represents him pretty close to how I remember him looking, and the photo on the right was posted by a fan.
In addition to whitewashing being inherently disrespectful, whitewashed photos just look bad to me because that's not what Singto looks like. I know what he looks like! I've been blessed by every god in existence to have met him more than once! He's viscerally stunning because he's tan! But if you go through his photos throughout the years, so miserably many of them are just…wasted opportunities. Because people have made him almost unrecognizable by stripping him of one of his most gorgeous attributes.
This is one of my favorite photos of them and look how stunning they are with melanin.
I've been working on a script for a video on colorism for almost a year, and I think I need to break it up into smaller ones to make it a less daunting project. I also need to stop trying to make it educational since I can't even understand the nuances of it yet, so that framing is disingenuous right off the bat.
I just know it's not right, and I want to see, I don't know, thoughtful reflection?
Like, something I read is that Thai-Chinese (the largest minority group at roughly 14% of the population) are not only widely represented in media, they also hold a significant amount of the wealth in Thailand:
67% of the nation’s wealth is held by 1% of the population (Wechsler, 2020). At the top are about 150 wealthy Thai-Chinese families with the Chearavanont, Chirathivat, Yoovidhya, Sirivadhanabhakdi, Srivaddhanaprabha, and Bhirombhakdi clans having a combined net worth of about USD 93.5 billion or around 2.83 trillion baht (Wechsler 2020).
— Alexander Franco, "Colourism as a Catalyst for the Skin-Whitening Industry in Thailand"
So even though Chinese people themselves have a wide spectrum of skin tones, I think the implication is that the Thai-Chinese community chosen to work in front of the camera are themselves pale.
A lot of this seems very deeply rooted in classism, and it's about as thoughtfully depicted in media as you'd expect.
Last year, "Memoirs of Rati" had Aou in brownface throughout the series as a Class Marker to show that his character was poor. At the end, his character Becomes Pale to signify a Class Upgrade. This is so paint-by-numbers obviously wrong, and yet…it's there. Around the same time, Krist's movie aired with an opening set in the distant past where both his and his costar Yada's characters were also put in brownface as a Class Marker to indicate their poverty. Then 95% of the movie goes on to take place in the modern day where they're filming a movie about the past, but they're just their normal skin tones. So that 5% of brownface at the beginning was totally unnecessary? And on top of that: all three of the actual directors are tan.
Needless to say, both productions would have been stronger without it, and I'm surprised Aou, Krist, and Yada didn't see enough of an issue with it to turn down the roles or at least challenge the use of darker makeup.
Over the past year, however, when I asked lighter-skinned people in Thailand about colorism, I got the sense that most of them don't perceive colorism as harmful. The way they described it, lighter skin is just another beauty marker achievable with enough money and capitalism-happy products. It's like how Being Thin is desirable around the world with various nuances depending on the culture (fatphobia is a whole other conversation).
So in a culture that normalizes colorism so deeply, where do people learn that it's wrong and that it causes harm? Because it seems obvious to me, but I didn't grow up in an Asian culture, and I had my own prejudices learned at home to unlearn. I'm just an outsider trying to wrap my head around this.
It's like an unfinished equation with the middle part missing.
When I was still on Twitter, sometimes I made tweets asking other fans not to whitewash the actors, and I'd get replies from people in Asia saying it's not offensive there. But it one billion percent is.
At the very least, I'm offended by what they pressured Earth into doing.
Like, do I know why he chose to lighten his skin? No. I don't follow EarthMix closely, and I don't know if he's ever talked about it. I certainly don't blame him for doing it considering the extent of all of this and how much competition he and Mix are facing. Earth might have looked around at the increasing number of actors at GMMTV, most (if not all?) of them with lighter skin tones than his, and did what he thought he needed to in order to keep himself employed.
I think Tay is the only tan-skinned actor I've heard of who has asked fans not to whitewash his photos, but I've never been able to track down where and when he said it. (If anyone has the original source, please please please let me know.)
So what I'm doing now is looking into the historical origins of colorism so I can start at the root of it all. Because when I lived in Japan, I heard a lot about only classism being the source of the Beauty Standard there, and that does seem to be the heaviest influence, but people I've talked to since have also said that racism and even white supremacy have had modern influences on Asian cultures through colonialism. Even though Thailand (and Japan) narrowly avoided direct colonization by European and American countries, they were impacted by it culturally. Thailand and Japan both seem to have done some preemptive self-"""correcting""" in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as they watched Europeans ravaging the sovereign lands around them.
I've also been talking to friends outside Thailand about their own personal experiences with colorism, since it's entrenched pretty much everywhere around the world, and it was eye-opening to me how differently colorism can manifest from culture to culture.
Like, at its core, all colorism is just a form of othering. The same as any form of discrimination. I have no idea what to do about it on a personal level apart from what I'm already doing. I just think understanding it is the first step. At least then passing on knowledge is easier.
And hey, if people are using CapCut to edit actors paler, then maybe we should use different software that doesn't use AI to restore the actors' melanin. Fans get very protective of the photos they've taken, but I feel like magazines and official photos are fair game? I just feel like there's got to be some kind of large-scale thing people can do to raise the volume.
At the heart of this, I just don't want to see people hurt, and this is hurting people.
