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Please don't tell me this is a dead blog 😭

It is, sorry

the cooking show I’m watching is rated PG-13 for language and nudity

no it’s not cutthroat kitchen or gordon ramsey it’s a documentary exploring the anthropological & historical significance of cooking, and the dangers of the mass industrialization of food.

and i misspoke it’s rated TV-14 (for language and nudity)

biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist

this guy is so fucking angry about sliced bread (justifiably) that he really came out on camera with this absolute banger of a quote:

“And this is really how capitalism usually works. It creates a problem, and rather than fix the problem, it creates a new business to solve the problem.”

utterly scathing and yes this is from a 60 minute documentary episode dedicated entirely to the subject of Bread

indigokyra

You can’t just not tell us why sliced bread is terrible D8

biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist

right ok so technically it’s not sliced bread but industrial, mass-manufactured bread that is…causing problems. Here’s the theory as the show presents it:

For about ~10,000 years bread was a fucking staple of the human diet. we evolved to eat this food, our bodies, our societies were built on this food, but all of a sudden we’re seeing a rise in gluten sensitivity* (distinct from celiac disease). Aka our bodies are rejecting this food we’ve spent 100 centuries eating. Where is this coming from?

Well, a big part of it is probably that less than 100 years ago corporations changed the definition of bread. (Like, figuratively and literally, they petitioned the FDA to change the legal definition of bread so they could put in additives.) In fact, industrialization has changed the process and the ingredients used to make bread, to the point manufactured bread is a profoundly different product from what our ancestors knew as bread. Let’s start with:

1) The Process: For thousands of years, humans relied on naturally occurring wild yeast and bacteria found in the air to make (leavened) bread and bread starters (fermented dough used to “start” new loaves. hence the term “sourdough”). you can still do this at home–all it involves is leaving a mixture of water and flour lying around for a few days. notice something missing? that’s right, YEAST. this process of making bread involves yeast–yeast from the air around you–but it doesn’t involve concentrated baker’s yeast. Baker’s yeast refers to various strains of yeast that are added directly to flour & water mixtures as a leavening agent. This allows the bread to rise more quickly and cuts down on the overall production time. Convenient, right?

Now, adding yeast is not automatically a bad thing, and bakers have been doing it for a damn long time in interesting ways (such as using yeast from beer brewing). But lately we’ve taken it to extremes–we’ve gotten too good at creating more and more efficient forms of commercial Baker’s yeast, specifically for industrial use on a mass scale. Manufacturers want bread to rise as fast as possible, because that is how you get more product on the shelves. Making bread in factories now takes a small fraction of the time it used to.

And why is this a problem? Because it turns out a more traditional “long fermentation process allows bacteria to fully break down the carbohydrates and gluten in bread, making it easier to digest and releasing the nutrients within it, allowing our bodies to more easily absorb them.” [1] This (added to the fact that some commercial breads contain extra added gluten) has the unfortunate result that the product you buy from the grocery store is less digestible and nutritious than the bread human societies traditionally relied upon. Hence the rise of gluten intolerance–the gluten we are eating is simply more difficult to tolerate than gluten in properly fermented bread. (This is the reason many people with gluten sensitivity don’t experience symptoms when eating more traditionally made, longer-fermented sourdough.)

That’s not the only issue though. There’s also:

2) The Ingredients. not just the countless additives, but specifically: the flour. See, a grain of wheat is…incredibly nutritious, honestly. It has almost everything we need to sustain life and health. Civilizations did–and do–rely on bread as a fundamental dietary staple, to the point that you can track political instability with rising wheat prices. It’s essential. Look at this:

In a single grain, the essence of life.

So yeah, wheat is nutritional. We can build bodies and civilizations out of wheat. But it’s also, like…super difficult to access that nutrition. Well, more so than with most foods. If you eat a handful of wheat grains, a spoonful of flour–your body can’t digest that, you get basically nothing out of that (also raw flour isn’t safe to consume, don’t do that). Unlike many crops, wheat relies on being carefully and correctly processed in order for the final product to be as nutritional as possible. As stated above, part of that process is about fermentation. Another part is the quality of the flour, what it contains and how it has been milled and treated.

And that quality has changed a lot in just a century or two. Take white flour, for instance. White flour has been around for a long fucking time actually, but until the late 19th century it was considered a luxury item, a treat for the very wealthy. White flour was never considered a staple food–until industrialists learned how to manufacture it cheaply. [2] And then it was everywhere. And suddenly, surprise surprise, we started to see a rise in nutrition related illnesses. Because the bran and germ have been stripped away, white flour has only a fraction of the nutritional value of whole grain. But because this gives it a higher shelf life, it was more convenient (and profitable) for manufacturers. So when they learned about the health issues, what did they do? Go back to making healthier flour?

Pshaw. Of course not. No, instead they kept removing nutrients, then artificially adding them back in. And that is how we got enriched flour–flour which is still significantly less nutritious than whole wheat flour. [3] And this is what the previous quote about capitalism was referencing. The food industry created a problem, and rather than undoing the problem, they created a whole new business to “fix” it:

And thus came the mass rise of “enriched” foods.

Eat Wonder Bread! It has as much protein as roast beef! As much calcium as cottage cheese! As much iron as lamb chops! No need to eat real foods, when you can eat highly processed foods instead! Don’t cook your own meals, let trustworthy corporations feed you! Mass-produced factory foods are easy, are healthy! There will be literally no downsides or long-term repercussions to public health & wellness!

So yeah. Much of what we think of as “bread” is chemically and molecularly distinct from traditional bread, and is very different (and less nutritional) than what our ancestors were eating even just a century ago. (On an individual level, I’m not sure how to mitigate this, other than by purchasing the healthiest options available (e.g. whole wheat, sourdough), buying from small bakeries/farmer’s markets, or baking bread at home. Lately there has been a rise of small health-concious brands focusing on traditional fermentation and whole ingredients; some may be available in your area. But ultimately, it’s the entire wider system that needs to change.)

And there you have it! I have never been so incandescently furious about wonder bread. This documentary will do that to you–and will change your whole understanding of modern food. It’s a 4-part netflix series called Cooked (2016), based on Michael Pollan’s book of the same name. Most of the info above comes from the third episode, and is accurate to the best of my knowledge (but let me know if I got anything wrong).

*I want to be perfectly clear though, gluten itself is not inherently bad. It’s being demonized in the press on no scientific basis, just to push yet another diet fad. Unless your body has actual issues with gluten (e.g. celiac disease, gluten sensitivity) there are no proven benefits to eating gluten-free. There are, however, benefits to eating less processed, more nutritional (delicious delicious) bread.

tip jar :P

a-book-of-creatures

Honestly the biggest disappointment I had researching ABC was that medieval authors did not, in fact, see the creatures they were describing and were trying their best to describe them with their limited knowledge while going “what the fuck… what the fuck…”

a-book-of-creatures

Instead all those creatures you know came about from transcription and translation errors from copying Greco-Roman sources (who themselves got them from travelers’ tales from Persia and India - rhino -> unicorn, tiger -> manticore, python -> dragon, and so on).

downinmybeastheart

So unicorns are real

a-book-of-creatures

behold… a unicorn

gallusrostromegalus

I always thought animals in medieval manuscripts looked like the result of having to draw say. A Tree Kangaroo, but your only source for what it looked like was your friend who heard it from a fellow who knows a man who swears he saw one once, whilst very drunk and lost, and I am SO PLEASED to find out this is, in fact, the case.

glamourweaver

Questing Beast

- Neck of a snake

- body of a leopard

- haunches of a lion

- feet off a hart (deer)

So is it

Or….

weaselle

don’t forget that some of the legendary creatures they were describing were from other people’s mythos which were passed down in the oral tradition for gods know how long. You know what existed in Eurasia right around the time we were domesticating wolves into dogs?

these beasties. For a long time, science had them down as going extinct 200 thousand years ago, but then we found some bones from 36 thousand years ago. Which, y’know, is quite a difference. Since you can bet that any skeleton we find is not literally the last one of its kind to live, many creatures have date ranges unknowably far outside the evidence.

In South Asia there were cultures that described a man-beast/troll forrest giant who’s knuckles dragged the ground, and everybody from the west was sure it was superstitious mumbo jumbo, but you know what used to live there?

And did you know that some of the earliest white colonizers of the Americas heard accounts that there were natives still alive who had seen and hunted and eaten a great hairy beast, shaggy like the buffalo but much bigger, with a long thin nose like a snake and two giant fangs… so, like, mammoths, you know? but they were totally discounted because europeans of the time were like, elephants live in Africa and aren’t hairy, you can’t fool us, pranksters!

Anyway, the point is between the early writing game of telephone description thing talked about by OP, and the discounting of native cultural accuracy, I’m pretty sure most legendary creatures are in fact real animals one way or another

historyisntboring

It can’t explain every single legendary creature, but yes, this is super important. Because History relies on written sources, it tends to sweep oral tradition under the rug, even if there’s a lot of interesting informations in it.

And it’s not just living animals that were badly described, or which descriptions got exaggerated over the course of centuries or through translation errors. Sometimes, people finding fossil bones of extinct animals might have also influenced some myths!

By now this is pretty well-known but it has been theorised that the Greek myth of the cyclops was started when people found Deinotherium skulls. Now you might say, uh, how is it possible to think a cousin of the elephant is a huge human dude with one eye?

Well-

- the big nasal opening kinda looks like an eye if you have no idea what kind of animal had this kind of skull (you can read more about this theory in this old National Geographic article if you like).

Here’s a less well-known one; the griffin is a mythological hybrid with the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle. The earliest traces of this myth come from ancient Iranian and ancient Egyptian art, from more than 3000 BC. In Iranian mythology, it’s called شیردال‌ (shirdal, “lion eagle”). Now, it’s been the subject of some debate and it’s not confirmed, but there’s a theory that people might have seen some Protoceratops and Psittacosaurus fossils in Asia and might have interpreted it as “a lion with an eagle’s head”:

Check the “origin” part of the wikipedia page for “griffin” if you want to find more sources for this theory and for the arguments against it! Again, it’s just a theory, but I think it’s super cool.

excessively-english-jd

This is a pretty well accepted theory for why dragons (or animals we group as like dragons, eg wyverns and drakes) are seen in mythos almost worldwide - because people found dinosaur bones, looked at them, and went “oh fuck what’s that? some big…. lizardy thing?” and then created dragons.

autisticexpression

Also many deagon legends are simply exaggerations of well-known living reptiles like snakes and crocodilians.a

injuries-in-dust

It also explains why dragons can look so different in the myths of the various regions.

In asia, Dragons tend to look very long and snake like:

One of the most common dinosaurs that used to like in the asia region, so would have been the most common fossils found by people:

The Mamenchisaurus, this thing is just all neck and tail! You find just half a fossilised skeleton of this monster, you can easily end up thinking of a long snake-like beast.

South America also has legends snake-like dragons among some of its peoples:

What fossils from pre-historic south America could be found?

The Titanoboa, which can easily grow to be 40 feet long.

In North America there is the Piasa Bird

Which wikipedia tells me comes from “ the large Mississippian culture city of Cahokia,” it’s describes as

What fossils could have been found in that region:

Pterosaur, and Triceratops. Features of both sets of skeletons could have been merged into one legendary creature.

Then we get our European style dragon:

One of the most common fossils that could have been found was a Cetiosaurus

which, despite being a herbivore, looked to have a mouth of sharp looking teeth, consistant with a dragons.

Dragons amongst the peoples of Africa are even more varied, but most revolve around some kind of giant snake-like creature. As a quick example, we’ll take Dan Ayido Hwedo commonly found in West African mythology.

Fossils in that area could have been included the Aegyptosaurus:

A quick google search tells me that most Sauropods: well known for being long necked and long tailed, are found in Africa.

If you found only a half complete skeleton of this thing; which is likely, because it’s rare to find a complete dinosaur skeleton, you could easily think of a giant snake monster.

randomslasher

IIRC, another possible explanation for long snake-like dragons/sea serpents in Africa could’ve been Basilosaurus, a whale from the Paleogene whose skeleton looked like this:

A lot of the most complete specimens have been found in Egypt.

a-book-of-creatures

You know what, I’m tired of getting notifications for this post and not saying anything about it. I know that last time I complained about this sort of thinking, I got called out by revretch, who called me a gatekeeper and then blocked me. But I don’t have anything left to live for anymore so I’m going to let my science and education background take over for a moment and discuss this in depth.

Okay, not in depth, I’ll try to be brief.

Yes, I know tumblr likes to believe scientists are silly old fools for refusing to accept the truth that is right in front of them. Fine. Believe in what you want. But the problem is that a lot of the information in the above post is either long discredited, not taken seriously by archaeologists/folklorists for good reason, or

Animals have inspired a lot of mythical creatures. That is true.

Fossils have inspired a few mythical creatures. That is also true.

Fossils have not inspired the creatures in the above post. Not provably, at any rate, and certainly not enough for any self-respecting archaeologist to take them seriously.

Why not?

There’s a popular misconception about how fossils are formed. People tend to think they look something like in Jurassic Park 3, where a Velociraptor is being excavated in Montana (that already makes it impossible, but bear with me).

Look how nice that fossil is. It looks exactly like an animal. You can see the head, the shape of the body, the arms and legs and tail. You easily picture what it looked like alive.

This is NOT what fossils look like.

Real fossils tend to be disarticulated. Broken up. Spread over a large area. Believe me, I know! I’m a paleontology washout who’s volunteered on at least 3 digs in 3 different countries! The only information an average person could get out of most real fossils is “this was an animal”, and “this was a BIG animal”. Nobody would have deduced frills and wings and stuff like that.

The griffon hypothesis up there? We owe it to Adrienne Mayor, and it’s popular among paleontologists but not archaeologists. It makes sense on a very superficial level – It Stands To Reason, after all – but once you start looking at it in detail it breaks down. Even if, somehow, someone saw a Protoceratops skeleton in enough detail to see wings and beaks and stuff, why would they leave out the teeth? The stubby-toed feet? The ridiculous tail? Mark Witton, a person actually connected to paleontology, has done a great article on the subject.

Griffons were inspired by a number of things, including Mesopotamian royal art, and there’s at least one real animal behind the griffon (and it’s not a fossil). But that’s another story.

What about elephant-skull cyclopes? Again, it sounds like it makes sense! Certainly more so than the griffon-Protoceratops. But here we run into another problem… complete lack of proof. It sounds reasonable, but it can’t be proven. And “one-eyed giant” isn’t exactly a colossal feat of imagination - giants are one of the standard baddies in legend, and making them one-eyed makes them just more monstrous. You can just as easily argue that cyclopes originated in solar wheel imagery associated with the gods, which is why their name means “wheel-eye” and not “one-eye”, and that also ties nicely into their association with metallurgy. Again, Mark Witton has more on that.

Creatures LEGITIMATELY based on fossils typically look nothing like their progenitors, and tend to incorporate features based on their fossil location.

Mammoth remains, for instance! Those are found sticking out of eroded riverbanks, so there must have been a big animal underground! In China they are the yin shu, an enormous mouse or mole that digs underground but dies as soon as the sun touches it. (My interpretation below. Note that I couldn’t resist making it mammothy anyway)

In Siberia the witkes is a horned lake monster that demands offerings of the people who cross its water. Note that the “tusks” are seen as horns, and because the fossils are found near water, it becomes a water animal. See how the facts of the fossils become part of the legend? (Again, my interpretation below, and same comment as before)

The lindwurm of Klagenfurt was based on the discovery of a cave rhinoceros skull. Again, you can see how little the creature has to do with the fossil! People already have dragons on the brain, so finding a skull reinforces that, instead of altering it. You’ve got crocodile skulls in castles in Hungary displayed as dragon remains. Same story. Everything’s a dragon if you want it to be.

Brontotheres (thunder beasts) are named so because of the legends of the Great Plains people! Their remains were seen as the casualties of great battles, and the name honors that legend. Again, they aren’t described as being big rhino-like horned animals, just as… big animals that are now dead.

As for the others, again, those are incredible speculations that require, once again, to dismiss far more obvious things that would have inspired them. And there’s a whole lot of cultural evolution that goes on that isn’t taken into account.

The unicorn in particular. There’s no reason to think that it was anything other than the one-horned Indian rhinoceros. Elasmotherium tends to get dragged into the discussion, but all the original unicorn stories tell of a one-horned Indian monster. Not something that lives underground.

The Piasa? The above post compares it to pterosaurs, but the original did not have wings! It was a version of the “underwater panther”, a mythical underwater lynx of the Northeast Woodlands and Great Lakes regions. There’s a long story behind that but that’s, again, beyond the scope of what I wanted to say.

Of course, if you want to consider the underwater panther a dinosaur as well, be my guest.

Regarding the sauropods (and Titanoboa, and whales) inspiring giant snakes thing.

If only there was some terrifyingly large, reptilian, legless, snake-like creature in South America…

Or Africa…

Or Asia to fire people’s imagination and cause them to think of giant snakes?

And it’s not like rainbows aren’t associated worldwide with snakes because of their, well, long and thin and curvy nature.

Now if you think I’m a big horrible gatekeeping meanie for saying all this, that’s fine! There’s still a lot we don’t know, and there’s still a lot of things that could very well be based on fossils, so you can keep your hopes up!

Like the ketos of Troy, for instance!

That… looks awfully like it could be a skull! Adrienne Mayor thinks it’s a fossil Samotherium, which sounds like a stretch. It looks more like a pterosaur to me. But still, that’s something that could indeed be a fossil!

The other thing about all this is the “scientists didn’t listen to native people who told them about monsters they’d encountered”. And yes, this is true and a noble thing to believe in. But also consider that one of the reasons dinosaurs were believed to exist in “darkest Africa” (all the scare quotes) is that it was held that native people couldn’t possibly be creative enough to imagine them. Europeans talk about giant reptiles? Myths, legends, folklore. Non-Europeans talk about giant reptiles? OMG LIVING DINOSAURS. It goes both ways, sadly.

Mythical creatures are the product of culture, literature, and biology. Reducing their creation to “sees weird fossil => invents monster” is, to me, just sad, and cuts out a lot of the process and wonder and translation errors and sheer mistakes that intervene.

anthrocentric

Last reply is super important! Thanks for adding it in, I was just about to say the previous reply was a bit of a stretch/over simplification

What is wrong with using the word cunt?

Depends where you are (for example, the USA vs. Australia), but generally it's not very polite to use words with a history of discrimination towards a certain group of of people (in this case, women). "Cunt" as a word dehumanises women by narrowing them down to their sexual organs (in this case, uterus/vulva). For more information, you should ask your mum or something.

But like all language, its use is contextual. Cunt is not really used in the above way in Australia and it is quite common to hear it in good nature :)

deadeyesopened

iloveicecrexm

Wat is dat

foreveriallyzombified

i’m pretty sure it’s Australopithecus afarensis

ptsilenthill

a. afarensis had a more gracile skull with a protruding jaw and smaller brain. that looks like a h.heidelbergensis skull cuz of the double-arched brows but the super thick jaw makes me think it could also be a Neanderthal but my educated guess is it’s from the homo genus

foreveriallyzombified

i didn’t even know about heidelbergenis

ptsilenthill

they’re kind of a flop if you think about it same with floriensis and that species found in Siberia that no one knows what it even is

foreveriallyzombified

fuck imagine being a member of a species later considered a “flop”

aquaticpaleo

its a. aferensis, i found the image source:

foreveriallyzombified

my hominid identification skills know no bounds

lesbianshepard

do you ever see paleolithic art and go “oh fuck that’s good” like they hadn’t developed agriculture or the wheel but god damn could they paint horses real good

lesbianshepard

look at this pretty accurate horse art. this is from chauvet cave and is between 31,000 to 28,000 years old.

990000

read your article about cultural appropriation and tattoos, I'm interested if your beliefs apply to someone who has at least 10% Chinese, but was born and raised in Hawaii, and wants to get a Chinese dragon tattoo. Is that still considered cultural appropriation if someone has Chinese blood, but wasn't raised in Chinese culture?

Hello,

I feel like your use of “Chinese blood” probably already explains why it would be inappropriate for you to get this tattoo at this point in time. Blood quantum ideas around race are really harmful and inappropriate to use to justify actions. Being “10% Chinese” isn’t actually a thing, and even if it was... It doesn’t quantify how much attachment you have to that culture as part of your identity or heritage.

Only you can answer how much you identify with being Chinese. But given your focus on blood quantum, I feel like you’re pushing it just to justify getting a tattoo without the guilt of participating in cultural appropriation.

Listen... I don’t have a straight forward answer for you. Cultural appropriation isn’t okay! It’s not okay to participate in other cultural behaviours while those groups of people that the culture belongs to are being exploited, undermined, hurt, forced into poverty, killed etc. However, celebrating other cultures is great! It’s important to appreciate other culture and uplift other people. It’s okay to appreciate other cultures’ artforms and want them tattooed on you.

I think, before going ahead with this tattoo design, you should ask yourself if those communities, or groups of people, that this culture belongs to would be negatively affected by you having this tattooed on your body? How would your privilege affect you having this tattoo vs. Someone else from that culture having this tattoo? Would you having this tattoo be disrespectful of the cultural rituals around this tattoo?

Again, I don’t have a straight forward answer.

In terms of tattoo designs and cultural appropriation, I think there are definitely more clear-cut answers around which designs are okay for anyone to have and which ones are okay for only certain people to have. For instance, it’s generally accepted in Aotearoa/New Zealand that only people who identify with Māori culture and heritage should receive tā moko on their face. This is because tā moko literally displays your family history. It would be incredibly inappropriate to receive tā moko when you don’t have any Māori heritage to show.

However, kirituhi is a form of moko that has come about in recent years specifically for non-Māori. This would be more appropriate for non-Māori to receive.

In terms of a Chinese dragon, I’m not super sure. I would think that, at this point in time, this design has a cultural origin but it’s not going to offend people in the way that a tā moko on a non-Māori person would. I only think this because I am under the impression that Chinese culture does not have the same rituals around tattooing dragons on people that Māori, and other cultures, have with their cultural tattoos.

I would suggest doing more research and probably speaking to more people who identify with the culture in question. I also would suggest doing some more internal musing because again... The blood quantum thing is SUPER dangerous. Don’t fall down that hole. It’s not what cultural appropriation is about.

Readers, feel free to chime in - But kindly!

Cheers,

beyonce-knowles-carter

22 YEARS AGO ON DECEMBER 18, 1998 - DREAMWORKS ANIMATION RELEASED “THE PRINCE OF EGYPT”

Because DreamWorks was concerned about theological accuracy, they decided to call in Biblical scholars, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim theologians, and Arab American leaders to help the film be more accurate and faithful to the original story. After previewing the developing film, all these leaders noted that the studio executives listened and responded to their ideas, and praised the studio for reaching out for comment from outside sources.

The animation team for The Prince of Egypt included 350 artists from 34 different nations. Careful consideration was given to depicting the ethnicities of the ancient Egyptians, Hebrews, and Nubians properly.

Both character design and art direction worked to set a definite distinction between the symmetrical, more angular look of the Egyptians versus the more organic, natural look of the Hebrews and their related environments. The backgrounds department, headed by supervisors Paul Lasaine and Ron Lukas, oversaw a team of artists who were responsible for painting the sets/backdrops from the layouts. Within the film, approximately 934 hand-painted backgrounds were created.

THE PRINCE OF EGYPT (1998)

jangojips

So recently this book was published in the year freakin’ 2020. It’s called “Repatriation and Erasing the Past” by Elizabeth Weiss and James W Springer.

It’s bad. It’s gross. It’s racist and full of white supremacist rhetoric and also colonialist narratives and entitlement. It’s embarrassing. It concerns forensic anth–aka where I live. It’s gross and uses dehumanizing language. Basically an all around disgrace. Dr. Kristina Killgrove posted screencaps of the chapter summaries in a twitter feed. I’ve been told the book is also on Jstor. .

Here is an open letter condemning the book that was co-authored by Dr. Killgrove. In case any anthro and archaeology people wanna give it a look over and sign their names: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScl44V3125po-vz9oX6wp5I8evKk0ECxTAKhJ2kvSBUpOhn9A/viewform?fbclid=IwAR1jAsCptHDxK9Pzv_1K0zUqLyyeyVHrQVCHEJZNpIJP0cMWgQ9U6qGdJ_Q

alphacaeli

This book is foul and what it advocated is antithetical to the core ethics of modern anthropology. Please sign the letter.

remnantglow

cant stop thinking abt ursula k. le guin’s essay abt the carrier bag theory….. she’s like, maybe the first human tool was not a weapon, but rather something that holds, a bag, a pouch, a vessel, something for gathering and storing and sharing. let’s shift the narrative of humanity from that of violence to that of safekeeping. and i’m like

crossdreamers

Renowned Feminist Philosopher Judith Butler Tears Transphobic Feminism Apart

Judith Butler says that J.K.Rowling and the transphobic TERFs do not speak for feminism at large.

If you haven’t heard about Judith Butler before, here is a short summary: She is one of the most important gender theorists in modern times.

When right wing extremists despair about postmodern gender theory, she is probably one of the thinkers they are referring to (not that they have ever read her).

She has shown how social structures, language, the stories we tell and the roles we play strengthens the oppression and marginalization of women. In other words: For her gender is definitely a cultural and social phenomenon, and because of that she is on a collision course with the so-called “gender critical feminists” (TERFs) who want to reduce gender to biological sex.

I strongly recommend that you read the recent New Statement interview with Butler, where she addresses the thinking and the tactics of TERFs in very clear terms. The interview is behind a paywall, but you should be able to access a couple of articles for free.

Still – in case you are locked out – here are some important excerpts.

She refuses to think of transphobic TERFs as mainstream feminists.

I want to first question whether trans-exclusionary feminists are really the same as mainstream feminists. If you are right to identify the one with the other, then a feminist position opposing transphobia is a marginal position. I think this may be wrong. My wager is that most feminists support trans rights and oppose all forms of transphobia.

So I find it worrisome that suddenly the trans-exclusionary radical feminist position is understood as commonly accepted or even mainstream.

I think it is actually a fringe movement that is seeking to speak in the name of the mainstream, and that our responsibility is to refuse to let that happen.

She dismisses J.K. Rowling’s idea that allowing people to identify as they want will be a threat to women in women’s bathrooms.

The feminist who holds such a view presumes that the penis does define the person, and that anyone with a penis would identify as a woman for the purposes of entering such changing rooms and posing a threat to the women inside. It assumes that the penis is the threat, or that any person who has a penis who identifies as a woman is engaging in a base, deceitful, and harmful form of disguise.

This is a rich fantasy, and one that comes from powerful fears, but it does not describe a social reality. Trans women are often discriminated against in men’s bathrooms, and their modes of self-identification are ways of describing a lived reality, one that cannot be captured or regulated by the fantasies brought to bear upon them.

She dismisses the idea that the term “trans-exclusionary radical feminist” (TERF) is a slur.

I wonder what name self-declared feminists who wish to exclude trans women from women’s spaces would be called? If they do favour exclusion, why not call them exclusionary? If they understand themselves as belonging to that strain of radical feminism that opposes gender reassignment, why not call them radical feminists?

My only regret is that there was a movement of radical sexual freedom that once travelled under the name of radical feminism, but it has sadly morphed into a campaign to pathologise trans and gender non-conforming peoples.

My sense is that we have to renew the feminist commitment to gender equality and gender freedom in order to affirm the complexity of gendered lives as they are currently being lived.

She does not accept the idea that the term gender can be defined once and for all, for example in reference to biology.

We depend on gender as a historical category, and that means we do not yet know all the ways it may come to signify, and we are open to new understandings of its social meanings.

It would be a disaster for feminism to return either to a strictly biological understanding of gender or to reduce social conduct to a body part or to impose fearful fantasies, their own anxieties, on trans women… Their abiding and very real sense of gender ought to be recognised socially and publicly as a relatively simple matter of according another human dignity.

She also says:

It is painful to see that Trump’s position that gender should be defined by biological sex, and that the evangelical and right-wing Catholic effort to purge “gender” from education and public policy accords with the trans-exclusionary radical feminists’ return to biological essentialism.

It is a sad day when some feminists promote the anti-gender ideology position of the most reactionary forces in our society.

So there you have it: One of our leading feminist philosophers are comparing TERFs to the transphobic extremists of the right. And she is right to do so.

It is important to stress this: TERFs are not representative of feminism. They represent a toxic fringe movement that at this point in time does more to help right wing misogynists than women.

Judith Butler on the culture wars, JK Rowling and living in “anti-intellectual times”

Pink News has also covered this interview.

Butler criticized TERFs back in 2014, as well, as reflected in this interview.

Judith Butler: the backlash against “gender ideology” must stop

Photo: Adorno Preis

cipheramnesia

By the way, if you’ve ever jumped into debating with radfems or other exclusionists, this is a must-read.

Look at how Butler is dissecting the TERF position. She isn’t arguing on their terms - half the goal of exclusionists is to draw you into an argument over their false premise, in order to get you to legitimize their position. No, Butler is doing exactly the right thing, and pointing out their whole foundation is flawed. Her deconstruction of TERF ideology is most cutting because it’s effectively, concisely, and clearly explaining that the premise of their beliefs is wrong at every level - that what they propose is not for debate because it is fundamentally false.

Anyway, I’m just absolute in adoration over how she talks about these topics. She’s not just tearing down TERF rhetoric, she’s dismantling it with the precision of a master.

personalgremlin

this makes me want to cry

euryalus-deactivated20220430

This is true, they painted everywhere, and most of the example of outdoors rock art is found in other continents aside from Europe. Some examples:

The Zuojiang Huashan Rock Art Cultural Landscape, in Guangxi, southern China.

The Helan Kou Valley carvings, north of China.

Kakadu National Park, Australia.

Saimaluu Tash, Kyrgyzstan.

Gobustan, Azerbaijan.

Horseshoe Canyon (Utah)

paradiseismade

Whatever they once said to their authors, they scream their message of no message across the millennia to us now.

The quote is from “What the caves are trying to tell us” by Sam Kriss. It’s a gorgeously written article and I highly recommend reading it.

ithelpstodream

dandelionofthanatos

If ever there was a paragraph that described Canadian-Brand Racist Jackassetry, THIS IS VERY IT.

yournewfriendshouse

‘When you believe niceness disproves the presence of racism, it’s easy to start believing bigotry is rare, and that the label racist should be applied only to mean-spirited, intentional acts of discrimination. The problem with this framework–besides being a gross misunderstanding of how racism operates in systems and structures enabled by nice people–is that it obligates me to be nice in return, rather than truthful. I am expected to come closer to racists. Be nicer to them. Coddle them.’

It’s so good to see this articulated!

thatdiva

The cause of many things wrong with the world (X).

Pin this on Pinterest.

dovekiss

The most comprehensive link to donations, petitions, resources and information. Silence is compliance in violence.

gahdamnpunk

American Girl stories were the best tbh

that-catholic-shinobi

Dude, read the books, she and her mom freed themselves in Book 1. We don’t disrespect American Girl in this house

allthefandomss

Don’t you dare disrespect Addy, or any of my girls for that matter. American Girl used to be legit. Good stories, good dolls, good movies.

smugkoalas

Felicity’s story was set in the beginnings of the American Revolution, and addressed the conflict that she faced when her loved ones were split between patriots and loyalists. It also covered the effects of animal abuse, and forgiving those who are unforgivable.

Samantha’s stories centered around the growth of industrial America, women’s suffrage, child abuse, and corruption in places of power. Also, it emphasises how dramatically adoption into a caring family can turn a life around.

Kit’s story is one of my favorites. Her family is hit hard by the Great Depression, and they begin taking in boarders and raise chickens to help make ends meet. Her books include themes of poverty, police brutality, homelessness, prejudice, and the importance of unity in difficult times.

Molly’s father, a doctor, is drafted during the Second World War. Throughout her story, friends of hers suffer the loss of their husbands, sons, and brothers overseas. Her mother leaves the traditional housewife position and works full-time to help with the war effort. They also take in an English refugee child, who learns to open up after a life of traumatic experience.

American Girl stories have always featured the very harsh realities of America through the years. But they’re always presented honestly, yet in ways that kids can understand. They just go to show that you don’t have to live in a perfect time to be a real American girl.

chaos-in-the-making

Dont you fucking dare disrespect the American Girls in my house. ESPECIALLY Addy!! That was my first REAL contact with the horrors of slavery, as I read about her father being whipped and sold and her mother escaping with her to freedom, but also how freedom was still a struggle.

A slave doll. Please. Read the books.

ironwoman359

Don’t forget Kirsten, the Swedish immigrant who had to deal with balancing her own culture and learning the english language and customs of her classmates, or Kaya (full name Kaya'aton'my, or She Who Arranges Rocks) , the brave but careless girl from the Nez Perce tribe, or Josefina, the Mexican girl learning to be a healer.

And then there are the later dolls, that kids younger than me would have grown up with (I was just outgrowing American Girl as these came out), like Rebecca, the Jewish girl who dreams of becoming an actress in the budding film industry, or Julie, who fights against her school’s gender policy surrounding sports in the 70s, or Nanea, the Hawaiian girl whose father worked at Pearl Harbor.

These books, these characters, are fantastic pictures into life for girls in America throughout the years, they pull no punches with the horrors that these girls had to face in their different time periods, and in many cases I learned more history from these series than social studies at school. And that’s without even mentioning the “girl of the year” series where characters are created in the modern world to help girls deal with issues like friend problems, moving, or bullying. We do NOT disrespect American Girl in this house.

razzleberryjam

American Girl is probably going to be the only exposure young girls are going to get to history from a female perspective. This is actually kind of important considering that in history classes we dont really get that exposure. We dont hear about what women felt and endured during these time periods cause schools are too busy teaching us about what happened from the male perspective, which is not unimportant, but we need both. Girls need both.

star-linedsoul

These books were such a crucial part of my childhood and shaped my love of history, which still ensures today. These books can be a young girl’s first lessons in diversity and cultural awareness (hopefully burying that insensitive “we’re all Americans” tripe) and looking at history from more perspectives than just that taught in school. They also are an example of how women have ALWAYS been part of history, which some people would rather us not believe.

I think Kit and Kaya were the newest American Girls when I started “aging out” of the books, but hearing about some of these kinda makes me want to revisit them!

breezeinmonochromenight

I wasn’t gonna say anything, but you know what?

Nah.

OP (of the tweet thread) was either a actively trying to start shit or is just a huge fucking moron. Probably both.

I’d like to point out that the company that makes American Girl dolls actually doesn’t skimp when doing their research and they don’t make the dolls with the intent to be offensive in any way:

physicsandfandoms

And they departed from the norm in Kaya’s doll to fit her culture! The other dolls all show their teeth, and Kaya does not because that is considered rude in the Nez Perce culture!

It is absolutely true that these books covered the stuff in history that was absent from our history books. I still distinctly remember reading about Addy being forced to eat bugs she missed on tobacco plants, and that started me out from a different perspective and made it easier for me to know to reject the sanitized version of the slave trade we’re taught in school. And these books are targeted at ages 8+, which is a pretty critical time for developing your own thinking and morals.

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