Reblogging is My Life

According to The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Studies and Prevention the U.S. has officially been given a red flag alert for Genocide.

the tags above actually aren’t true, and i think we can, and should, dispute this argument without misrepresenting it: the op-ed in question states that chelsea mitchell “lost four women’s state championship titles, two all-new england awards, and numerous other spots on the podium to transgender runners,” and “was bumped to third place in the 55-meter dash in 2019, behind two transgender runners,” although i have to say i find the choice of verb there pretty fascinating—‘was bumped,’ mitchell writes, as though she were a royal who’d been demoted from the position she believed to be her birthright, and not merely a runner who hadn’t run fast enough that day to earn it.

really, i think a more salient point here is one i’ve seen others make before, which is that ultimately, biological advantages are the name of the athletic game—as someone who’s 5′6″, i was never going to have the mechanical advantage of rowers who were 5′9″, 5′11″, even 6′ in some cases. that’s just physics! should i have turned around and said, the women outperforming me don't count as women, they're too tall and i’m going to sue to have them excluded from competing with me on that basis? what a gross, pathetic move that would have been.

as one of the trans girls who beat mitchell in that 2019 race, andraya yearwood, observed at the time: “one high jumper could be taller and have longer legs than another, but the other could have perfect form, and then do better,” she said. “one sprinter could have parents who spend so much money on personal training for their child, which in turn, would cause that child to run faster.” there are an enormous number of factors that shape athletic performance, and very few of them correlate directly to so-called ‘biological sex’—i’m AFAB, and plenty of cis men are shorter or slighter than i am, including classmates i had in high school.

but if we’re talking about testosterone, which tends to be at the heart of athletic gatekeeping: both yearwood and terry miller (the other trans girl mitchell is subtweeting) had started HRT before ever lining up against cis girls, and had, according to court documentation submitted by the ACLU, “circulating hormones... comparable to the hormone levels of non-transgender girls.” what’s more, as the ACLU motion further specifies, neither yearwood nor miller were undefeated in their track careers, nor did either have dominant race times among high school girls nationally—in fact, mitchell herself beat both yearwood and miller at the connecticut state championship in 2020! so clearly the supposedly-insurmountable advantage enjoyed by transfeminine athletes is in fact wholly surmountable, and arguments to the contrary nothing but petulant, entitled prejudice.

but enough of all this—let’s end on a sweeter note. here are miller and yearwood in 2019, at an awards ceremony honoring them for their courage:

lets talk about how captain america, an irish immigrant who grew up poor and ill, channeled his experiences into empathy and understanding and positive action, was made by jewish men to dunk on hitler.

lets talk about how the first marvel and dc comics were mocked up in "yinglish," a mix of yiddish and english commonly spoken in jewish quarters. lets talk about how the format of the graphic novel as we know it was pioneered by an Auschwitz survivor

lets talk about how the first superman comics were clark picking up hitler and stalin, and dumping them at the united nations to be prosecuted for his treatment of defenceless and downtrodden people the world over

let's talk about why x-men resonated with so many people who fundamentally share an understanding of oppression by discriminatory systems, across time and cultures. written by the sons of jewish immigrants.

so jewish people looked at a new, avante garde, fun, different kind of entertainment that had even been founded by a jew, and saw potential. jewish artists and writers positively flocked to the burgeoning comic book industry because they were quite literally blocked out of everywhere else.

When will this end? When will our children be able to live without fear of being criminalized for simply existing?

[ID: Tweet by @/taniel. “When a 6-year old is dragged to court for picking a tulip. Read the North Carolina story: https://journalnow.com/north-carolina-sends-6-year-olds-to-court-why-some-say-its-time-for-change/article_e2a15a82-8383-11eb-91ee-43ce7c88753b.html” 

Screenshot of the article linked above that reads, “The 6-year-old dangled his legs above the floor as he sat at the table with his defense attorney, before a North Carolina judge. He was accused of picking a tulip from a yard at his bus stop, his attorney Julie Boyer said, and he was on trial in juvenile court for injury to real property. The boy’s attention span was too short to follow the proceedings, Boyer said, so she handed him crayons and a coloring book.”

Retweet by @/DearDean22. “He was arrested for picking a tulip while he waited for the bus. Someone called the police on a 6 year old Black boy because he picked a flower. The police arrested him. He had to go to court w/ a criminal defense attorney who gave him a coloring book to sit still. We are hated.” End ID.]

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I used to work at a candy store at the local mall. I’d had the opening shift on a weekday, which meant a lot of sitting around since nearly no one would show up until school got out. The only people who would show up this time of day, most of the time, were very little kids, and because of that I didn’t really bat an eye when a pair of black children came into the store. I was maybe a little concerned cause they were pretty young and they came in alone, but we were right next to a couple clothes stores so it was very possible their parent was just buying clothes and told the kids they could stop by. After that I just went back to doodling. A few minutes later, an old white woman walks in with what I assume was her granddaughter. The daughter immediately went to staring, starry-eyed, at the Elsa Jelly Belly dispenser we were never able to get rid of, but the grandmother immediately stopped interacting with her grandchild when she noticed the two black kids. I was concerned, Texas is a red state after all, so I kept an eye on the woman out of the corner of my eye. She didn’t just cast glances at them while dealing with her granddaughter (albeit that would still be pretty racist,) she actively stopped interacting with her kid to spy on these two little boys. She legit walked away from her just to stand behind a shelf and watch them. This went on for a bit, and I had half a mind to walk up to the woman and be all “Excuse me may I HELP you?” when she started stomping toward me and I had to quickly readjust to make it look like I wasn’t watching her.

She walked up to the counter and passionately reported that she saw two kids STEALING CANDY!!! from the bins. She said this in an extremely accusatory manor, as if I also should have dropped whatever I was doing to spy on children, and demanded I do something about it. I lethargically said “Okay.” and went up to the kids. They’d each taken one of those wax soda bottle candies, which were the one candy in the bins that customers weren’t allowed free samples of, but the store was run really poorly and I knew no one would notice, and honestly even if that wasn’t the case I just didn’t really give a shit. I said “Hey, you’re not supposed to take candy from the bins without asking first.” The one of the kids said “Okay. Can we have these?” I said “Sure.”

I went back to the counter, doing my best to ignore the old woman glaring at me, and shortly after she left with her grandkid without buying anything. People take candy from the bins all the time. If you’ve been to a candy store before and you haven’t, you’re lying, you have. And I’m 100% certain that if those kids were white, the old woman wouldn’t have said a damn thing. But for people like her and my nana, its like they think its their civil duty to keep an eye on black people, like any black person could just cause a crime at any moment for no reason. They seem excited by the prospect of “putting them in their place” or something, like how dare these fellow human beings think that they’re equal to us. It’s disgusting. If you do this, you’re a bad person.

And we all know this isn’t just an old woman thing, unless you all forgot the time a woman called 911 on a man for writing “Black Lives Matter” in chalk on his own home, refusing to believe he actually lived in the house he lived in. Look at that disgusting smile. Look at how eager she is to be confronting this man, as if she’s some sort of hero. People like this are always waiting for the one moment a black person slips up. If their behavior isn’t flawless 100% of the time they get attacked, even if they didn’t even do anything, or if they’re a literal child.