#implicit bias

Yall will write these long horny posts and always make sure to use “small, tiny” and other descriptors, and don’t get me started on using “pink” to describe EVERYTHING!

Black men if you want to vent your rage at a violent apathetic and IRRESPONSIBLE portrayal of the black man as a monster in film...

Backrooms is your movie , not Is God Is.

Is God Is has black men who are sympathetic.

Is God Is has black men who aid the black women on their journey (albeit begrudgingly)

Is God Is has more than one black person in it (and more than one black man) 🙄

Is God Is has black women who are also villains

Is God Is was made by a black woman with an entirely black cast for black people.

I haven't looked up the creators of Backrooms yet, but I'd bet serious money it was an assortment of white guys.

⚠️Spoiler warning for this fuckass movie (like the whole ending I don't give a shit) ⚠️

My friend told me after we left that based on the YouTube property and the game the original monster was called the LifeForm and it was a bunch of wires

IN THE MOVIE IT'S LITERALLY A GIANT PEOPLE EATING PUPPET VERSION OF CHIWETEL EJGIFOR!!

IT'S HIS WHOLE FUCKING FACE!!!

Oh and also they make the BLACK MAN become randomly cannibalistic?!! And the only person we see him attempt to eat is surprise A WHITE MAN! (or like a stuffing version of him.. y'all I don't fucking know) White people literally have a history of eating US not the other way around who wrote this shit?!!!!!

Also I shit you not the entire climax of this movie revolves around a giant man-eating pirate puppet thing (with a white man underneath btw) that has CHIWETEL EJGIFOR'S (a black man) FACE

trying to eat a white woman................

WHAT THE EVER LOVING FUCK?!!!!

Oh and the lesson the black man learns is that he was destined to be a miserable person because he hurts people didn't want to change (he's also a divorcee with a white wife....I don't need to say anything).

And the white woman gives up on him (she's his therapist) and learns she can't save everybody

😤

Listen ,

Is God Is tells the REAL experiences that black women have within our community while also not absolving the community (including other black women) of its tendency to protect and coddle abusers who hurt our community. It's trying to actually start a conversation, not demonize.

Backrooms is a fantasy psychological thriller that puts white men's evil and irrational fears (based on their own made up fucking narratives usually reflecting their own history) about black men on a fifty foot screen. Every harmful stereotype and every disturbing distortion is done purely for shock value and a dollar.

All for a "and the cycle will just continue 😵‍💫" ass ending.

I'm so glad I didn't pay for this shit.

I feel dirty

She quit in an hour because some people still have a functioning moral compass. And let’s be clear: this isn’t some relic from 1955. Name-based discrimination has been documented for years—same résumé, different name, different response.

As someone who's working on their TADC reimagining, I found myself easily falling into the same writing troubles of the show.

Centering the main storylines around the men, a lack of exploration of interpersonal relationships outside of my favorite characters, Queenie and Ribbit still only being angst bait until recently, and prioritizing an overarching plot instead of filler too.

I just point this out because as easy as it is to acknowledge and critique the show's implicit bias towards its female, POC characters, and preference for dramatic themes; it is just as easy to reaffirm that biases in your own work, notably if you aren't as critical and self-aware of your rewrites compared to the show.

so this actually touches on something I've been talking about for a while: implicit bias

I was first introduced to this concept of the separation of hemispheres & how that impacts your cognition specifically, in an intro psych class a few years ago. this particular professor had a lot of experience with stroke victims and deficits neurocognitive, and naturally, being that I'm at a private university where non-standard curriculum is the norm more often than not, about half of this intro psychology class was about neuroscience and neurocognitive deficits (and how that relates to psychology).

we think about our conscious brains as being the Thing that drives all of our brain's machinery, at least as far as non-automatic processes. we can recognize that there are parts of the brain that do things to maintain our bodily functions that are not under our control (like your heart beating, breathing while you're asleep, most reflexes, etc.), but we ultimately believe that anything we use thoughts to dictate are things that are under our conscious control (and therefore our willpower can be used against them, if desired). and, to some degree, this isn't particularly false in most cases. it's true that you need to tell your brain to grab the glass of water and drink from it. it's true that you can think. it's true that words coming from your mouth first went through some degree of conscious awareness, assuming you're neurotypical. on a functional level, it is true insofar as you need it to be true. it is often beneficial to think this way, for most people.

however, it's still ultimately false in the vast majority of cases, even if some benefits arise from this framework. there is a middle grey zone that operates somewhere between your conscious awareness and your automatic functions. it is moldable and trainable (such as with muscle memory and working to deconstruct harmful biases), at least some of the time. it is both a supportive structure for your psyche, as well as an intellectual highway for your higher thought processes. it allows for the efficiency in learning and knowledge-making and connection-finding endeavors often unique to human cognitive capabilities, while also providing the organization needed to not go insane or become nonfunctional due to information overload. mania and psychosis are actually a very good example of what happens when some of these organizational systems are disrupted, as the supportive boxes used to categorize things in the mind end up left open, like a kitchen with all cabinets open, suddenly exposed to the objects and concepts inside of them, avaliable to link up with one another ⁽¹⁾.

in situations where this structure is fragmented or disturbed, such as in strokes and hemisphere-separating surgeries⁽²⁾, you start to see where and how some of these middle-zone cognitive functions appear.

in strokes, there are multiple types of cognitive deficits relating to loss of language ability (I'm not going to get into all of the various types of aphasia and what they all mean, but the graph below does a pretty decent job at summarizing the specifics in case you want to learn more). namely, you have multiple categories of potential disrupted functioning (which can occur separately or together, and to varying degrees of dysfunction): a) the physical ability to get words to come out of your mouth (motor function; can you tell your brain to move your muscles), b) can you understand words being spoken towards you (and if so, how well? maybe you can only understand simple grammatical structures but not complex sentences, or maybe you have the same ability to understand language as prior to the stroke), c) can you understand your own emotions and feelings and desires and needs, d) can you translate those feelings into language (and if so, how well), and many others

this is to say, there are types of aphasia where you are perfectly cognitively aware in the same way as you were prior to having a stroke--you understand what the people around you are saying, you understand your own thoughts, you still have an internal monolog (assuming you had one before)--but you can't get your body to speak. you are effectively a mind inside in a body. which, tbf, there are plenty of non-verbal individuals with very full lives & I'm not saying this is a doomed sentence or anything, but I think "mind inside in a body" conveys it better than I could otherwise.

there are also types of aphasia where you retain the ability to think and you retain your intellectual capacities, but you struggle to actually put words to your thoughts. you have the same emotions and concepts, but attempts to connect the dots between feelings of love and saying "I love you" results in a 404 error. it just won't happen no matter how hard you try to will it. often, though, it's not entirely destroyed, so people with this type of aphasia end up linking to nearby concepts instead, in some attempt to communicate. this can sometimes result in them being mistaken for the word salad phenomenon of psychiatric disorders, or assumed that the things they're saying are meaningless and that they don't know what is going on around them.

for example, they might know that they're thirsty. they want to ask their caretaker to get them a glass of water, but every time they try to form the words, it just doesn't work out. they end up just repeating the words "river" "ocean" "creek". all bodies of water. they may even have more complicated sentence structures, but it still may sound contextually nonsensical if you aren't aware that this person is trying to communicate with you.

so, when talking about things like implicit bias, being able to recognize these interwoven mechanisms exist, unknown to our conscious mind, is incredibly important to getting a grasp on what truly drives things like prejudice. we think we are in control of all of our thoughts. but, like in the video, we too confabulate explanations for things that we are processing on some other plane of awareness (yet cannot directly access). we just don't have the hard evidence of something like a sheet of paper saying "get me a glass of water". and we fully believe the explanations our brains have given us! our prejudices are a way of our brains trying to make meaning from external stimuli. we see the Black person walking down the street. we do not see the mental stickynote with "Black people are inherently violent and dangerous and threatening, you are in danger", but we still feel it, and we confabulate "that person looks suspicious. no no no, not because they're Black. but because they're walking weirdly and they look suspicious and like they have bad intentions. this isn't anything to do with their Blackness. I'm not racist". we create explanations that work around our morals and still allow prejudice to operate, just putting different labels to it and finding ways of escaping cognitive dissonance.

when I talk about the ways some trans people end up mentally seeing transmascs as pericis women (and using the same prejudiced schemas that are used for that group within society), this is precisely what I mean. those people are very convinced that they're not doing that. they've created elaborate theories specifically to justify against such a thing. and yet, the underlying frameworks expose what's going on. they will repeat misogynistic rhetoric (that, in any other situation, they themselves would recognize at basic misogyny 101) towards transmascs, and not seemingly ever towards pericis men, and be mostly unaware that they're doing it. they don't see the sticky note that says "this person you are talking to is a woman, and women are inferior and dumb and hysterical". trying to convince them that the sticky note exists is nearly impossible. and yet, everybody else impacted by that sticky note... can see the sticky note. in fact, it's almost a neon flashing sign. but they are both unaware and unwilling to consider anything else that may be driving their actions.

Part 1: Moaning Myrtle

(Warning: This is a long post.)

For being a story that covers themes of discrimination, equal treatment and anti-genocide, the Harry Potter series has a lot of hidden racism, sexism, ableism, transphobia, homophobia etc. hidden in between its pages. One of the main purposes of the Marauder’s fandom, at least in my interpretation, is to try to combat these issues. We’ve tried to bring in a more diverse caste, coming up with racial headcanons for characters, incorporating more homosexual relationships and making more characters trans in order to explore their lives and combat Rowling’s transphobia, but there are still a lot of biases that the fandom has unwittingly adopted due to Rowling being the mother. JK Rowling's exclusive definition of ‘feminism’ has been explored in detail in reference to her transphobic views, however I think it is also important to explore how these biases held by the author have impacted her writing, and as a result, the Harry Potter and Marauder’s Fandom.

The way JK Rowling writes women in the Harry Potter series is very telling. While she claims that she writes female characters who are ‘empowering,’ further analysis proves that she does anything but. To me, one of the biggest examples of this is Moaning Myrtle. A girl who is so known for how annoying she is, that she is called by that title more often than her actual name, which is Myrtle Warren. Her characterization is an annoying, borderline creepy teenage girl ghost who is constantly crying and complaining, and always getting in the way of the main characters. She is occasionally helpful, but for the most part, she is just treated as a nuisance. My problem with this is that when I looked more into Myrtle’s backstory, it became very clear to me that she had every right to complain and cry due to what happened to her.

The official canon story of Myrtle is that she was a muggle-born wizard who was sorted into Ravenclaw. Due to her glasses, acne and all around annoying disposition, she was frequently bullied to the point of isolating herself in the girls’ bathroom so that she could have the privacy to cry. On one of these occasions, she heard someone outside of her stall, a boy, and stepped out to scold him only to be instantly killed. This is Myrtle’s account of her death. From there, an investigation is laid out at Hogwarts in order to find the cause of her death. Upon finding an Acromantula in the possession of a half-giant student, Hagrid, it is decided that he was the cause of her death and he is expelled. Tom Riddle, a half-blood boy who helped discover this, is given an award. The problem with this, is that it is very clear that the Ministry did not do their research.

The first thing that stands out to me about this case is that they had a first-hand witness that they did not use. Myrtle is a ghost, and it is canon that she was delighted to tell anyone about her death. I would imagine right after the events she would be less delighted and more desperate for justice, but it is still reasonable to assume that she could have been interviewed about the cause of her death. They literally had access to the victim’s first-hand account, and they didn’t use it. How do we know? Because people don’t just instantly die upon seeing an acromantula. If that were the case, when Aragog was discovered, several ministry workers would have died, and Hagrid himself would have to have some kind of magical exception. While Acromantula’s are dangerous to wizards and cause death, they do not provide the instant death that Myrtle describes. Instead, they likely wrap their victims in webs and eat them alive. As seen with Nearly-Headless Nick, the Bloody Baron and the Grey Lady, ghosts will still sustain the injuries that caused their deaths. Moaning Myrtle’s ghost has no injuries, no bite marks, no missing limbs, no spider webs, so clearly, this was not death by acromantula. If second year Hermoine Granger was able to figure this out, professional aurors and ministry workers should have too. So why didn’t they?

There is a layered answer to this question, but the core of it all is racism. The Harry Potter series explores racism using the metaphor of blood purity. Rather than going into the difference of treatment people receive based on color of skin, it highlights how something as simple as magical parentage can completely change how people are treated and how valuable their lives are. For the purpose of this analysis, keep in mind that the main minority groups that are highlighted in the wizarding world are those whose magical abilities and humanity can be questioned. It has less to do with appearance, and more to do with purity. In Moaning Myrtle’s case, she is not pure. She is a muggle-born, and so according to the general prejudice of the wizarding world, her death is seen as less important. Essentially, due to the fact that she is part of a minority group, one that is ‘less-powerful’ and therefore less important, her murder case is swept under the rug and treated as inconsequential. In the real world, this phenomenon is known as “Missing White Woman Syndrome.” When a white woman or girl goes missing, the media coverage for her case is extensive. This is even more true if she is attractive, able-bodied and from a middle-class family. However, when women and girls of color go missing, the cases are treated as less important. Both in the UK and the US, the majority of missing person’s cases to make the news are of white women and girls, even if there are just as many of not more women of color who have gone missing. What this tells the general populace is that white women are seen as a more tragic loss to society than the loss of a woman of color. (If you would like to further research this phenomenon, I encourage you to watch this video on the subject. It is very short and is made by a white crime sociologist. If you would prefer a more extensive breakdown, this video breaks down this subject as well as several others that relate to it, and is made by a Black woman with a lot of knowledge on the subject.)

If Myrtle was pureblood in the magical world, her murder case would have been seen as much more tragic. It would have likely become an urban legend that the entire school still talks about even in Harry Potter’s day, a case that people know all the intricate details about and make their own little magical true-crime podcasts on. Instead, most students don’t even know how she died, or care. They don’t know that she was murdered, or that her accused murderer was literally the man hired to be their groundskeeper. What I really want to know is, did Myrtle know about that? Did she know that Hagrid was literally there at Hogwarts, living a good life and generally unaffected by the murder accusations thrown at him? If a man was accused of murdering a white girl, or in this case a pureblood girl, would it be possible for the general populace to allow him anywhere near their children without putting up a massive fuss?

Another problem is, did Myrtle actually believe Hagrid did it? Did anyone actually bother to tell her when her murder case was supposedly ‘solved?’ She’s a Ravenclaw student, and they are known to be good at solving riddles and finding hidden messages. Would Myrtle actually believe that it was Hagrid and an Acromantula who killed her? If she was told this by the ministry, why didn’t she mention this to Harry in the recounting of her death? My best interpretation is that either no one actually bothered to tell Myrtle, or that she knew they were wrong. Here’s the thing: if I was accepted to a prestigious school and told it was one of the ‘safest places on earth’ and told I would learn magic there, and then I was bullied and murdered there, and people didn’t even bother to tell me about the resolution of the case or solve it properly, I think I would be pretty annoyed. And, I might start to have something of a victim complex. I might cry a lot, and whine and complain that everyone hates me, especially since there’s so much evidence. I was murdered, and hardly anyone cared. That would sting. She was lied to and told it would be safe, and then she was murdered. And yet every time she whines and cries, it is chalked up to her just being ‘annoying.’ See the problem?

What makes this case even more disturbing is the underlying racism in the accusation of Hagrid in the first place. Hagrid is again, a part of a minority group. He is a half-giant, and is overall a pretty sensitive person who has a strange obsession with the odd and misunderstood magical beasts. On the other hand, Tom Riddle was a known purist, as it is canon that in his years of Hogwarts he created a group of pre-death eaters known as the Knights of Walpurgis. With this clique, he would bully and humiliate muggle-born students on a regular basis. So who sounds like the individual more likely of murder? A low-intelligent, well-meaning but overall useless half-giant, or a cruel, competent half-blood human who was attractive, ambitious, and had a whole life ahead of him to live? Everyone has seen how reluctant authorities are to convict young men of SA or abuse, especially when they have so much potential. But this is only the case when these young men are white. If they are of any different race, people will rush to paint them as horrible villains the minute they get the chance, even if there is not enough evidence to back up the claims. Returning to situations in the real world, this was often the case of lynching black men during the Jim Crow law era in the United States. White men who did not work for the law would see a black man have an affair with a white woman and paint it as assault, because there was no way that a white woman would actually consent to be with a man like that. They would kill innocent black boys like Emmett Louis Till for things as simple as talking back to a white lady, because they were seen as guilty from birth. This again reflects into the Harry Potter universe, since it became so easy for Ministry workers to accuse Hagrid despite the evidence. Not only that, but they rewarded Tom Riddle since he was the one to ‘discover’ Hagrid’s guilt. The only reason Hagrid did not get a harsher punishment is because his victim was just as meaningless and useless to the wizarding society as he was.

If you didn’t already hate Dumbledore enough, it should also be said that he knew about everything the whole time. He suspected Tom Riddle, enough to keep ‘an annoyingly close eye on him’ his remaining days at Hogwarts, and yet he said nothing. The year that these events occurred was 1943. Dumbledore defeated Grindelwald, the cause of a massive world-wide wizarding world, in 1945, two years afterwards. Before this, if we are to believe the events of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them to be canon, he was still an active participant in hunting Grindelwald and had several epic battles with him. In 1932 he had the Qilin bow to him in order to elect him as the next Supreme Mugwump (this scene was ridiculous to me but it is canon), meaning that he had a reputation. He had a reputation of being a powerful and intelligent and well-meaning wizard, so if he had spoken up and said something about Myrtle’s case, people would have listened. He intervened in areas of the law plenty of times during the Harry Potter series, but while teaching at Hogwarts decided not to get involved when an innocent girl was killed and an innocent half-giant boy was expelled and blamed for it. But he did feel the need to keep and eye on Tom Riddle. So he knew. He just did nothing.