Something that I think we need to call out more in fandoms is the blatant racism towards black female characters, especially when they are love interests. I feel that everytime there is a black female love interest, the fandom completely neglects her and rushes to ship the MC with another character that is most of the time white. And then racist fans try to hide behind “oh well I just don’t ship them!” and it’s pathetic. Adding onto this I think that a lot of ppl in fandoms try to deny/ignore that female black characters can be feminine. People try to default being black as an inherently masculine thing when not only is it not true but it is just downright racist. Let black characters be fun and feminine and let them be loved!!!
okay, this is sort of related to a post i was sent yesterday in relation to samira's teaching styles. i don't want to pick apart the post, but i think when it comes to how samira teaches people in season 1, especially dennis in relation to joyce, we have to take into account what case she's talking about, and who she's talking to.
because with the sickle cell patient, joyce, dennis tells her 'not to go crazy' with the pain medication, and doesn't take her pain seriously. a black woman with a serious disease who just experienced police brutality and mistreated for 'drug seeking' was not taken seriously by him at all. if you know anything about medical racism, you'd know that people like joyce get treated awfully on the regular and even die because people think they are drug seeking when they are in need of serious medical care.
samira, as someone mentioned to be researching these kinds of cases, is clearly aware of this and recognises dennis' biases when he minimises joyce's pain. we see her visibly get upset and tells him that she needs to confer with him to address this.
she teaches him by first asking him why he was surprised by the amount of pain meds she was getting, and then when he tells her he thinks it's too high, she tells him the truth. she describes how severe the situation is, that he wasn't taking her pain and sickle cell crisis seriously, reassures him that he'll learn to spot the fakers, but that he needs to be more empathetic for those who clearly are suffering, even if they are drug seeking.
for such a serious thing like medical racism, which samira has a lot of experience with as a doctor, as south asian woman, and with her dad dying from it; her way of teaching dennis was completely appropriate. calling it overdramatic just feels like we're not taking the severity of ignoring a black women's pain as seriously as we should.
did she give him tools on how to improve this? no, she didn't. she could have, but i think in this instance telling him that he will learn to spot the fakers was enough; especially considering this was his first instance of expressing bias in front of her and considering he was still a med student at the time. if it were to occur more often, i'm sure she would be more serious about it or take more time to actually change this behavior by sitting down with him. it's his first day, samira is not an agressive or uncaring person like some think.
she's giving him space to grow and learn from his mistakes instead harrassing or mocking or belittling him for it; something several other characters still struggle with. that's all i have to say
being an autistic woman of color is fascinating bc i genuinely did not think samira's feedback to santos re: comforting patients was condescending or rude at all 💀 i'm someone who pushes back on feedback as my first instinct similarly to how trinity does, and the instructors that i've worked the best with are women who are strict, blunt, and calm. samira wasn't mean about it, she just didn't let trinity push back on the feedback. which (imo) is exactly what is needed with trinity's personality type in order to gain her respect—langdon gets into arguments with her from the beginning so trinity doubts his merit as an instructor from their first interaction, but you can see in her scenes with samira that she gains a lot of respect for her after samira dresses her down. and imo that's specifically because samira was so cut and dry about it
like maybe i'm drawing too much from how it is when teaching younger kids LOL but i do feel like the universal rule for teachers' first days with new students is that your first impression HAS to be that you won't tolerate bullshit. you can be nice and do all the fun teacher stuff for all the days after, but if students fuck around and don't find out on the first day of class, you are going to go through hell for the rest of the year 😭 if samira had tried to word her feedback kindly trinity might have smiled and nodded but she would NOT have formed the respect for samira that she develops in canon imo
I really do not understand how using Trinity's first name as part of that conversation came off as condescending. It was part of the conversation, that's it. Trinity, in turn, calls her by her first name during the MCI later in the season, "Samira, what you got?"
It wasn't a power play on her end, and she is perfectly fine with Trinity using her first name as well. If anything, it seemed as though she was locking in to level with her, and removing the bit of distance from Dr. Santos/Dr. Mohan.
noah wyle saying in an interview that he doesn’t care about fan feedback because “we put a purity test to our heroes that nobody could pass and a pass to our villains that forgives unbelievable behaviour” noah wyle what they’re talking about is racism. racism and sexism. all people are asking is for your show to stop being racist and sexist. the only reason the show has a fan base at all is because people are willing to overlook robby’s abuse of the woc on his staff because he’s white and mentally ill
you’re SO close to getting it. replace heroes with any marginalised community and villains with cishet white men and you literally have the problem that everyone is complaining about.
i agree that pittfandom is crazy and that 9/10 we are not to be listened to in terms of crafting quality storylines that are actually in the show. but when the thing people have issues with are racism and sexism then maybe it’s time to get off your executive producer high horse and take a look at why people are upset.
the way you guys so easily fall into the trap of yet again of eating up a post that is overly critical of a brown woman and calling her aggressive just because it’s in a meta post fucks me over so bad. using a lot of careful words to be weird (and racist and misogynistic) about samira doesn’t mean it isn’t a weird fucking post. i’m begging you guys to clock the word ‘agressive’ being used for a woman(of colour) and to examine that
if your mental health advocacy stops once the conversation isn't centered around robby and you're unable to get yourself to empathise with the mental health of the people he's lashed out to, to the point of even shitting on people like samira, dana and baran to defend him, you suck btw. and specifically if you try to refute and rebuke any criticism of robby with the 'you don't care about mentally ill people' line, you suck more. and if you bring up hypothetical healthcare workers who are hypothetically upset at any hate directed at robby, you suck extra. signed, a healthcare worker with ptsd
i don't know, it's interesting how people keep saying that robby needs to be given grace for his treatment of his coworkers (especially javadi or mohan or al-hashimi) because of his severe mental health crisis. i don't disagree but he's already been given a massive amount of grace.
and kinda a double-standard to me. sepideh talks about this with dr. jilani - a woman could never, EVER, lash out the way dr. robby has been this season, at least not without being painted as hysterical and incompetent.
both things can be true: dr. robby is having a SEVERE mental health crisis AND the way he treats the women around him is unacceptable and inexcusable.
Incredibly violent take of mine but I actually don’t think you need to relate to a story in any way to enjoy it. You can enjoy a story even if you can’t point at a character and insert some aspect of your personality or identity into them. In fact I would argue the need for a character like that to be present in every single story you experience is a sign of stunted growth.
robby and langdon really acting like they've invented the trauma wheel and that facing responsibility and asking for/accepting help is the most sisyphean task ever, meanwhile every woman in that department has experienced discimination and pressure to constantly be composed and palatable and therefore have either been shamed for their mental health, be denied help, or be pressured into it to keep their job title and the credibility from their superiors/colleagues. and we're supposed to have sympathy for these guys who have access to all the support they want without risking their title or future job opportunities even after committing literal crimes or working while severely suicidal or and emotionally distressed. top three things that women could never get away with. alriiight
Can’t reblog the post going round containing these two screenshots:
So I’ll put my addition here:
This also applies to women who complain about feminism requiring them to work, rather than being ‘ladies of leisure’. Women equivalent to them in the past always worked - who do they think were the maids, housekeepers, cooks, nannies, wet nurses, governesses, washerwomen, spinners, weavers, seamstresses, nurses, midwives, etc - and today’s equivalent of the past’s ladies of leisure can afford to be ladies of leisure now. Feminism fought for women’s work to be acknowledged, valued, and fairly paid, and that fight is still ongoing.
So I'm going to be pedantic here because, while yes, F Elno Muskrat, this is a wildly game of telephoned scenario.
No one person has enough money to solve world hunger. Period.
This scenario with Muskrat was when he responded to an official who claimed 2% of his net worth would solve world hunger. He then asked the UN to show him a plan for $6 billion would solve world hunger.
$6 billion was not enough then, and it will not be enough now to solve world hunger. The proposal the UN gave back was a proposal that would save 42 million people in 43 countries from starvation for one year.
Yes, fuck him for not following through on it. And fuck him for what he chooses to do with his way too high on paper net worth.
But reducing "solving world hunger" down to "one man can solve it with a few billion" is a wildly simplistic take and also places the onus to fix it on one person when it's a deeply entrenched, global systemic issue.
How wildly off is that $6 billion figure?
We need billions to end extreme hunger. But we need to transform our food systems to reach Zero Hunger.
Mind, this is from 2022. Environmental disasters have spiked that total since then, with estimates upwards of $93 billion a year. Also, mind, we still grow enough food to be able to feed everyone.
This is not a "fuck this rich asshole who could've fixed it". That's the easy way out. Fuck the systems in place that prioritize profit over people, and the current global hegemony that exists and gets to decide who is more "important". Why are we spending, as a society, 20+ trillion dollars on military funding?
Again. Fuck Elno.
Also, again, reducing the problem to Elno is grossly oversimplifying the issue, which is going to take widespread, global support from citizens demanding that we can't be a species that knowingly lets people starve, so we can instead blow up civilians with the biggest, shiniest bombs money can buy.
That's hard work. That's exhausting work. That's arguing with people who will vote against their own interests because they're ruled by fear or willful bigotry. That work is painful, and dirty, and thankless. We come up with a million different reasons why it shouldn't be OUR job and go about our day focusing on things in our immediate circles because if we didn't, it would be overwhelming.
It's easier to blame Elno.
But that's not the full picture. It's structural, and it's calcified.
