Internet is back at it, again…..

When someone says harem to people, these kind of paintings come up in people’s mind.

L.F. Comerre. (1850 - 1916)

But, people who drew these paintings, they are called orientalists, have never seen a harem because NO STRANGER WERE ALLOWED TO ENTER THE HAREM UNLESS THEY WANT TO LOSE THEIR HEAD. So they painted what they dreamt of, since they were grown up with Western beauty concepts, they painted Harem girls as what their culture accepted beautiful.

BUT, at 19th century Persia, the Western beauty standards were not dominant. So of course, they had their own beauty standards and their own concept of beauty.

The more masculine a woman was, more beautiful she was accepted. The opposite was also true for men. Women with heavy brows and faint mustaches considered so attractive that they were sometimes painted on or augmented with mascara and young beardless men with slim waists and delicate features. In 19th century portraits of lovers, the genders are barely distinguishable, identified only by their headgear.

Young men without beards were the idols of beauty that time. Sexual mores and erotic sensibilities of 19th century Iran permitted homosexuality between these young men and older men.

BUT, after Iran started to be more modern, aka more Westernized, this beauty standards were lost. West beauty standards started to be more dominant and homosexuality was no longer permitted. Today, it is a crime to be homosexual at Iran.

This book, women with mustaches and men without beards, is about the beauty standards of Persia at Qajar dynasty. If you are interested, you can buy it and read. HERE is an interview with the author, Afsaneh Najmabadi.

At that time, Qajar princess was considered beautiful. Today, uncultured internet memers are making fun of her.  Shame @ all of you.

Pseudonyms! Use them! Even if it’s a nickname, a favorite character’s name, a letter, your username, use a pseudonym. Especially if you have a unique name

Private information is PRIVATE. Last name, age, full birthday. Things that could be used to identify you should not be shared. Remember those “enter anyone’s name and learn everything about them” websites? They aren’t kidding around, and they’re dangerous.

Your house is your business. Don’t share your home address, school name, city, even sharing what state you live in could be risky. There’s no reason for people online to need to know this, there’s no reason for people online to ask for it. This is a red flag

Pictures are worth a thousand words. Take note of what’s in pictures you post. Can you see a state flag? A pet’s collar with a home address on it? Does that screenshot have your phone number in it? Be careful with EXACTLY what you post.

Once you post it, it’s not yours anymore. Anyone on the internet can share a post, take screenshots, repost to other websites, send to other people, etc. Once you post something, what happens to it is out of your hands. Make sure you be careful with what you post.

Face and voice can reveal a lot about you. They can reveal age, agab, in some cases they can be used to determine where you live (accents anyone?) be careful.

If autocorrect dislikes a word but you KNOW it’s right, double-check it.

I once had a kind adult contact me via private message and tell me that she could literally tell me what county in Pennsylvania I was from by the way I spelled diner (dinor) and the fact that I still used certain kinds of archaic verb constructions (e.g., “I’d boughten it for dinner but that’s okay”). Then she named the county. THEN she told me that based on the fact that I’d used the phrase “train car dinor,” SHE COULD FIGURE OUT WHAT TOWN I WAS IN, and it was a town of only 5000 people at the time, so that was pretty dire.

These books were about an indigenous woman (with a brain injury in book 3) living in poverty overthrowing a corrupt white government.

She was demisexual, had stomach hair, was not even remotely romantically driven (and canonically didn’t even find romance until after she had finished a revolution.)

And Peeta was disabled and physically abused as a child and they both suffered from mental health problems and the parallel between the Capitol and the ruling rich was so very transparent.

And I’m seeing fun coloured makeup in stores labeled “Capitol colours from the Hunger Games”!

These books were about the revolution of the most oppressed taking over the extravagance and elitism and decadence of the ruling class while citizens starved.

These books were a parallel to our current social dynamics, they were a call to arms. They were a battle cry for the impeding ruin of the rich white ruling class.

When Katniss thinks about running away in the second book it is the memory of Rue that makes her decide to stay and “cause all kinds of trouble.”

That is an indigenous woman deciding that the death of a Black child is so horrific and unacceptable that she needs to start an entire uprising about it. That is WOC solidarity.

Then again, when Katniss is talking with Peeta about not leaving he literally, canonically and verbally SAYS it’s because of Rue.

The movies did not lend enough weight to the injustice and violence that Black women face; they didn’t waste any time in deciding the rebellion came from their White Katniss’s determination to overthrow the Capitol.

The movies purposely and aggressively erased all of the racial oppression and power and dynamics that were so apparent in the books.

They made Katniss white, they made Gale white, they erased Peeta’s amputation, they seriously diminished the PTSD both of them faced (which was actually one of the more accuract accounts of PTSD I had ever read in the books), they drastically lessened the weight and importance of Rue’s death.

ESL or You Weren’t Here (2018)

ESL or You Weren’t Here tells the story of a queer Pinoy who immigrates to New York in the 1990s in order to be reunited with their parents. What follows is the poet’s awakening to the legacy of American imperialism & colonialism in the Philippines, and to the experience of living between languages, cultures, temporalities, and genders―untranslatable. ESLasks the reader to bear witness to embodied histories of forced immigration, separation and abandonment rooted in patriarchal racism.

by Aldrin Valdez

Get it here

Aldrin Valdez is a bakla Pinoy writer and visual artist. Their first book ESL or You Weren’t Here was a 2019 finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Best Gay Poetry. Aldrin has been awarded fellowships from Queer/Art/Mentorship & Poets House.