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The Woody Allen Allegations: Not So Fast (WORKING TITLE, MIA FARROW IS FAST: EVERYTHING I KNOW ABOUT HER SEXUAL HISTORY SO FAR)

Read a remix of Bob Weide's misogynistic shit of an article at our sibling site Ableismremixed here:

http://ableismremixed.tumblr.com/tagged/Bob-Weide

#Bob Weide the Daily Beast Woody Allen Allegations adopted Mia Farrow Mia Farrow's sex life coinjoined twins PBS special Golden Globes TWITTE

RIGHTEOUS (BUT GRIEVOUSLY MISINTERPRETED) RETREAT CANCELLED

i have heard you: all who have voiced opposition to my conducting a writing and performing seminar at the nottoway plantation. i have decided to cancel the retreat.

when i agreed to do a retreat (with a promoter who has organized such things before with other artists and who approached me about being the next curator/host/teacher), i did not know the exact location it was to be held. i knew only that it would be "not too far outside of new orleans" so that i could potentially come home to my own bed each night (ONE GREAT THING ABOUT NOT BEING A SLAVE IS THAT YOU GET YOUR OWN BED, AND I REALLY, REALLY Like MINE). and i knew that one of the days of the retreat was slated as a field trip wherein everyone would come to new orleans together (KIND OF LIKE A TRIP TO THE ZOO).

later, when i found out it was to be held at a resort on a former plantation, I thought to myself, “whoa” (WHICH IS KIND OF LIKE THAT TIME I WENT ON THAT WATERSLIDE WHILST ON VACATION. THE SLIDE WAS WAY BIGGER THAN I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE AND WHEN I GOT TO THE TOP I WAS ALL LIKE, ‘WOAH’), but i did not imagine or understand that the setting of a plantation would trigger such collective outrage or result in so much high velocity bitterness (I’M A FEMINIST BUT I HAVE TO CALL IT AS I SEE IT. BLACK WOMEN BE BITTER. AND NOT IN A REGULAR, TWISTED WAY, IN A HIGH VELOCITY WAY). i imagined instead (IN A MORE FORWARD THINKING WAY) that the setting would become a participant in the event (Like A FUN PERSON AT A RIGHTEOUS PARTY).

this was doubtless to be a gathering of progressive and engaged people (I KNOW THIS FOR SURE BECAUSE I GAVE THEM ALL AN EXAM ON THEIR RIGHTEOUS PROGRESSIVE CREDENTIALS BEFORE I TOOK THEIR CARD DETAILS), so i imagined (IMAGINING YOU’RE ANTI RACIST IS AS GOOD AS BEING ANTI RACIST) a dialogue would emerge organically over the four days about the issue of where we were (A BACKDROP OF A PLANTATION IS ABOUT THE ONLY WAY YOU CAN GET SO MANY WHITE LADIES TO HAVE A CONVERSATION ABOUT SLAVERY). i have heard the feedback that it is not my place to go to former plantations and initiate such a dialogue.

tragedies on a massive scale are not easily dealt with or recovered from (I KNOW THIS BECAUSE I USED TO BE A SLAVE. OH NO, WAIT, I DIDN’T.). i certainly in no way expect or want to be immune from that pain or that process of recovery. i welcome (and in fact have always pursued, [SINCE I WAS IN UTERI]) constructive (CONSTRUCTIVE IS THE OPERATIVE WORD, BITTER BLACK LADIES) dialogue about these and all political/social issues. my intention of going ahead with the conference at the nottoway plantation was not to be a part of a great forgetting but its opposite (REMEMBERING. BECAUSE THAT’S THE OPPOSITE GUYS. OF FORGETTING. REMMEBERING. IN CASE YOU HAD NOT NOTICED).

i know that pain is stored in places where great social ills have occurred. i believe that people must go to those places (I DIDN’T MEAN TO GO TO ‘THOSE PLACES’ ORIGINALLY, BUT WHAT’S THE PHRASE? WHEN LIFE GIVES YOU A RETREAT ON A PLANTATION, MAKE LEMONADE!) with awareness and with compassionate energy and meditate on what has happened and absorb some of the reverberating pain with their attention and their awareness. i believe that compassionate energy is transformative and necessary for healing the wounds of history. i believe that even though i am white, i can and must do this work too. if you disagree, i respectfully understand where you’re coming from and your right to disagree. i am not unaware of the mechanism of white privilege or the fact that i need to listen more than talk when it comes to issues of race (BUT I’LL TALK FOR ANOTHER PAGE OR SO ANYWAY). if nottoway is simply not an acceptable place for me to go and try to do my work in the eyes of many, then let me just concede before more divisive words are spilled (NOTE: DIVISIVE WORDS HAVE ALREADY BEEN SPILLED. I’M TALKING ABOUT YOU, BITTER BLACK LADIES. STOP SPILLING THOSE WORDS. KEEP THEM IN YOUR HEAD VASES).

i obviously underestimated the power of an evocatively symbolic (RACISM IS DEAD AND OLD PLANTATIONS ARE SYMBOLS. OR IS IT CYMBALS? EITHER WAY, NOTHING REAL IS GOING DOWN) place to trigger collective and individual pain. i believe that your energy and your questioning are needed in this world. i know that the pain of slavery is real and runs very deep and wide. However (HAHA, BET YOU THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO END IT THERE, DIDN’T YOU? NOPE! THERE’S A ‘HOWEVER’! GOTCHA!) in this incident i think is very unfortunate what many (BLACK LADIES) have chosen to do with that pain (WHEN I’M IN PAIN I ALWAYS CHANNEL IT APPROPRIATELY AND WRITE A NEW SONG. OH BITTER BLACK WOMEN, WHY CAN’T YOU BE AS CREATIVE AND SOULFUL AS ME?). i cancel the retreat now because i wish to restore peace and respectful discourse between people as quickly as possible. i entreat you to refocus your concerns and comments on this matter with positive energy and allow us now to work together (YES ANI LET’S WORK TOGETHER. NO WAIT, I’M TOO BITTER) towards common (STOLEN) ground and healing.

for myself (THAT’S ME, ANI DIFRANCO, BY THE WAY), i believe that one cannot draw a line around the nottoway plantation and say "racism reached its depths of wrongness here" and then point to the other side of that line and say "but not here" (BASICALLY, BECAUSE OF COLONIALISM AND SLAVERY AND EVERYTHING, DRAWING THE LINE ANYWHERE IS IMPOSSIBLE, SO LET’S JUST SAY ONCE AND FOR ALL THAT WHITE PEOPLE CAN GO WHEREVER THE FUCK THEY LIKE AND SAY WHATEVER THE FUCK THEY LIKE WITHOUT THERE BEING BITTER REMARKS ABOUT IT ON TWITTER). i know that any building built before 1860 in the South and many after, were built on the backs of slaves (YEAH, I’VE BEEN READING HISTORY BOOKS WHILE YOU GUYS HAVE BEEN WASTING TIME ON TWITTER. BET YOU DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT THE BACKS OF SLAVES, DID YOU?). i know that in new orleans, the city i live in, most buildings have slave quarters out back, and to not use any buildings that speak to our country's history of slavery would necessitate moving far far away (AND I HATE MOVING. IT’S SUCH A HASSLE. ALL THE BOXES, NEVER KNOWING WHERE YOUR TIN OPENER IS. IT’S TERRIBLE. IT’S ALMOST AS BAD AS SLAVERY).

i know that indeed our whole country has had a history of invasion, oppression and exploitation as part of its very fabric of power and wealth. i know that each of us (EVEN YOU, BITTER BLACK LADIES. YOU’RE JUST AS BAD AS ME) is sitting right now in a building located on stolen land. stolen from the original people of this continent who suffered genocide at the hands of european colonists (YEAH I DIDN’T JUST READ UP ON SLAVERY, I WENT ALL THE WAY BACK TO THE AMERICAN HOLOCAUST. GET ME). i know that many of us can look down right now and see shoes and clothes that were manufactured by modern day indentured servants in sweat shops. i know that micro profits from purchases that we make all day long are trickling down to monsanto, to nestle and to GE (WHO’S WORSE, MONSANTO OR ME? YUP, MONSANTO. I’M LIKE PRACTICALLY AN ANGEL IN COMPARISON. THAT’S WHY I MADE THE COMPARISON). i know that a sickeningly large percentage of the taxes we pay go to manufacturing weapons and to making war. and on and on and on (I CAN’T BE BOTHERED TO LIST ANY MORE ATROCITIES.). it is a very imperfect world we live in and (WHITE PEOPLE CAN’T DO ANYTHING RIGHT. IT’S LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE. YOU CAN’T EVEN HOST A LADIES RETREAT ON AN OLD SLAVE PLANTATION WITHOUT SOME UPPITY BLACK WOMAN MAKING A FUSS ABOUT IT ON SOCIAL MEDIA) i, like everyone else, am just trying to do my best to negotiate it (THEY TOLD ME IN SCHOOL THAT ALL THAT MATTERED WAS THAT I TRIED MY BEST. I THINK THEY TOLD THE BLACK KIDS SOMETHING DIFFERENT, BUT HEY, I’M WHITE. I MEAN, HEY, THAT’S LIFE.)

as to the matter of the current owner of the resort and his political leanings, that was brought to my attention yesterday and it does disturb me. but it also begs further questions: who are all the owners of all the venues i or any other musician play? the performing arts centers? the theaters? the night clubs? i bet there are a lot of rich white dudes with conservative political leanings on the list (WE’LL NEVER KNOW THOUGH. I’M CERTAINLY NOT GOING TO BOTHER CHECKING. IT’S HARD ENOUGH TO BOOK VENUES AS IT IS WITHOUT MAKING SURE THEY’RE ALL ETHICAL AND SHIT. WHO AM I, GHANDI?). is it possible to separate the positive from the negative people in this world? (IS IT POSSIBLE TO ASK SO MANY GENERAL PHILOSOPHICAL QUESTIONS THAT EVERYONE FORGETS THE ORIGINAL ISSUE?) will those lines be clear and discernible with enough research?

is it my job to do this for every gig (BECAUSE I’M TOTALLY NOT UP FOR THAT. I CAN CANCEL AN EVENT EVERY NOW AND AGAIN WHEN BLACK WOMEN GET HIGH VELOCITY BITTER ON TWITTER, BUT I ALREADY HAVE A JOB. I’M A SINGING WHITE LADY, AND I SIMPLY DON’T HAVE TIME TO DO ALL THIS ANTI RACIST BULLSHIT ON TOP OF IT ALL)? is it possible to ensure that no 'bad' person will ever profit in any way from my existence or my work? again, maybe we should indeed have drawn a line in this case and said nottoway plantation is not a good place to go; maybe we should have vetted the place more thoroughly. (GOD I COULD REALLY LEAVE IT THERE BUT I FEEL A BUT COMING. A BUT OR A HOWEVER. MAYBE AN ALTHOUGH? NO, IT’S A BUT) but should hatred be spit at me over that mistake? (ANSWER: NO. I SHOULD BE ABLE TO ARRANGE AS MANY PLANTATION THINKATHONS AS I LIKE WITHOUT INCITING THE HATRED OF ANYBODY. IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK?).

i believe that we need every ounce of energy that we have to try to create a positive change in this world. and to work together. that energy is precious (AM I BEING TOO SUBTLE? THIS IS NOT A GOOD USE OF YOUR ENERGY, BLACK BITTER WOMEN! DO SOMETHING ELSE WITH YOUR TIME! WRITE SONGS OR TAKE MOUNTAIN WALKS OR COOK PIG’S FEET OR SOMETHING, ANYTHING, MY GOD, BUT PLEASE STOP DOING THIS, IT’S REALLY GRIPPING MY SHIT).

my focus for the righteous retreat was on creating an enriching experience that celebrated a diversity of voice and spirit (AND OF PEOPLE GUYS. YOU WAIT TILL YOU SEE WHO I INVITED). i invited my friends Buddy Wakefield, Toshi Reagon (TOSHI’S BLACK BY THE WAY! IN YOUR FACE, PEOPLE WHO CALLED ME A RACIST! THIS IS WHAT I MEANT WHEN I SAID ‘DIVERSITY’) and Hamell on Trial to impart their particular brands of spirit (‘DIVERSE’ PEOPLE ARE SO SPIRITUAL AND WISE. CERTAINLY SPIRITUAL ENOUGH TO OVERCOME OLD PLANTATION VIBES) and wisdom to the conference attendees.

i also planned to take the whole group on a field trip to Roots of Music, a free music school for underprivileged kids (PROBABLY A LOT OF BLACK KIDS IN THAT CATEGORY) in New Orleans. Roots of Music is located at the Cabildo, a building in the French Quarter which was the seat of the former slaveholder government where all the laws of the slave state were first written and enacted. i believe that the existence of Roots of Music in this building is transcendent (THEY MANAGED TO TRANSCEND THIS SLAVERY STUFF. WHAT’S YOUR EXCUSE?) and it would have been a very inspiring place to visit. (UNFORTUNATELY, THE AMOUNT OF INSPIRATION TAKING PLACE AT ROOTS MUSIC WILL NOW BE ZERO BECAUSE I WON’T BE THERE. ARE YOU PLEASED WITH YOURSELVES, BLACK BITTER LADIES?). i also believe that Roots could have gained a few new supporters (THEY ONLY NEEDED A FEW, BUT NOW THEY’LL BE GETTING NONE, BECAUSE I WON’T BE THERE. I HOPE YOU'RE HAPPY BITTER BLACK WOMEN). in short (WELL, TO BE FAIR, IN LONG), i think many positive and life-affirming connections would have been made at this conference, in its all of its complexity of design (NOT ANYMORE BITTER BLACK BITCHES. YOU’VE FUCKING RUINED MY COMPLEX 4 DAY WEEKEND).

i do not wish to reinvent the righteous retreat at this point to eliminate the stay at the Nottoway Plantation. at this point I wish only to cancel (THAT’S MY ONLY WISH).

i ask only (JUST A SINGLE REQUEST. JUST ONE WISH AND ONE QUESTION IN 3 PAGES OF TEXT. DON’T ASK FOR MUCH, DO I? NOT LIKE THOSE UPPITY BITTER BLACK WOMEN WHO ARE CONSTANTLY ASKING FOR STUFF – CIVIL RIGHTS, EQUAL PAY, NOT HAVING RELAXATION EVENTS AT PLANTATIONS – WHAT’S NEXT, I ASK YOU? ME TO STOP PERFORMING ALTOGETHER?) that as we (THAT’S THE ROYAL WE) attempt to continue to confront our (THAT’S ALL OF US) country's history together (THAT’S ALL OF US AT THE SAME TIME), let us (GOD IT’S GETTING COMMUNAL UP IN HERE. ARE YOU FEELING IT? THAT’S DUE TO THE COMMUNITAH VIBES AND SPIRIT OF TOGETHERNESS I KEEP ON BLESSING YOU WITH.) not forget that the history of slavery and exploitation is at the foundation of much of our (AGAIN, THAT’S ALL OF OURS, ONE BIG TRANSCENDENTAL COMMUNITAH) infrastructure in this country, not just at old plantation sites (I BET YOU FORGOT ABOUT THE INFRASTRUCTURE, DIDN’T YOU? YOU WERE TOO BUSY THINKING ABOUT THE PLANTATION TO REMEMBER ABOUT THE INFRASTRUCTURE. WHAT’S THE PHRASE? YOU WASTE ALL YOUR TIME THINKING ABOUT PLANTATIONS AND HAVING A SNOOZE, YOU LOSE?).

let us not oversimplify (LIKE YOU DID) to black and white (PUN INTENDED) a society that contains many, many shades of grey (I’M IDENTIFYING AS GREY HERE). and let us not forget to be compassionate towards each other as we attempt to move forward and write the next pages in our history. our (THAT’S US, COMMUNITAH, ALL OF US, TOGETHER) story is not over and, Citizens of the Internet, it is now ours to write (MINE AND EVERYONE ELSE’S, MAINLY MINE).

(PEACE OUT)

-ani

Dear White People

http://www.gofundme.com/4ztjiw

(image: line drawing. White woman bending down facing right with hands on knees wearing dress and high heeled shoes. Speech bubble from her mouth reads, 'THAT'S AN INTERESTING NAME. WHAT DOES IT MEAN?'. POC child standing facing front, speech bubble from their mouth reads, 'IT'S SWAHILI FOR 'DON'T EXOTICISE ME'.')

#gofundme #Dear White People #Swahili #exoticise

SOME COMFORTING WORDS FROM DEEP GREEN RESISTANCE

http://www.decolonizingyoga.com/how-derrick-jensens-deep-green-resistance-supports-transphobia/

“Well, I’ve personally been fighting about this since 1982. I think ‘transphobic’ is a ridiculous word [NOT BECAUSE IT’S ABLEIST OR BECAUSE IT IMPLIES THAT TRANSPHOBIC PEOPLE ARE EXPERIENCING LEGITIMATE MENTAL HEALTH DISTRESS. I THINK IT’S RIDICULOUS BECAUSE I HATE TRANS PEOPLE EVEN THOUGH WE AT DGR CLEARLY STATE WE DO NOT HATE TRANS PEOPLE LETS MAKE THAT ABSOLUTELY CLEAR]. I have no strange fear of people [WHY WOULD I BE SCARED OF PEOPLE THAT I CAN CHASE OUT OF ORGANISATIONS?] who claim to be ‘trans’. [BESIDES] we are not afraid of your penis but we are terrified of your (male) socialization! YES WE LIKE TO ASSUME AND REDUCE TRANSPEOPLE WHO CONSIST OF A BROAD SPECTRUM TO WHAT GENATALIA THEY HAVE AND THEN CLAIM WE ARE NOT AFRAID OF IT BUT OF WHAT SOCIALISATION THEY HAVE, WHICH WE ARE ALSO ASSUMING TO BE CORRECT, A LOT OF ASSUMPTIONS I KNOW] I deeply disagree with them, as do most radical feminists AND A LOT OF TORIES AND FASCISTS. PRETTY RADICAL, HUH?

Try this on. I am a rich person stuck in a poor person’s body. I’ve always enjoyed champagne rather than beer [I’M BEING SARCASTIC. IT’S OBVIOUSLY COMPLETELY STUPID TO ENJOY CHAMPAGNE OVER BEER. THAT’S WHY SO MANY PEOPLE SERVE BEER AT OCCASIONS LIKE WEDDINGS, CHRISTENINGS AND NEW YEAR CEREMONIES, BECAUSE BEER IS JUST FUNDAMENTALLY STRAIGHTFORWARD AND WHOLESOME AND CHAMPAGNE IS AS RIDICULOUS AND SPARKLY AS NOT STICKING TO THE GENDER YOU WERE ASSIGNED AT BIRTH], and always knew I belonged in first class not economy, and it just feels right when people wait on me. My insurance company should give me a million dollars to cure my Economic Dysphoria [THAT’S A REFERENCE TO GENDER DYSPHORIA, BY THE WAY. I’M PROBLEMATISING THE DIAGNOSIS OF GENDER DYSPHORIA. I’M ONE OF THE FIRST PEOPLE TO ACTUALLY DO THIS. PROPS TO ME. I’M A TRAILBLAZER, FIGHTING THE MEDICAL COMMUNITY AT EVERY CORNER AND NOT WONDERING HOW THIS WILL IMPACT POOR PEOPLE’S HEALTHCARE. ACTUALLY WHENEVER I CONSIDER POOR PEOPLE, IT’S USUALLY TO USE THEM AS AN EXAMPLE OF WHY I HATE TRANS PEOPLE. I DON’T REALLY GIVE A SHIT OTHERWISE.].

Or how about this. I am really Native American. How do I know? I’ve always felt a special connection to animals, and started building tee pees in the backyard as soon as I was old enough [DO I REALLY THINK THIS IS WHAT NATIVE AMERICANS DO, OR AM I MAKING FUN OF PEOPLE WHO THINK THIS IS WHAT NATIVE AMERICANS DO? NOT CLEAR IS IT? BUT ONE THING I AM CLEAR ABOUT IS GENDER AMBIGUITY, IE. I DON’T LIKE IT]. I insisted on wearing moccasins to school even though the other kids made fun of me and my parents punished me for it. [THEY DIDN’T. THIS SOUNDS LIKE IT COULD BE AN ACCOUNT OF GENOCIDE, COLONIALISM AND PRESSURE TO ASSIMILATE BUT IT’S ACTUALLY JUST A STORY I MADE UP TO EXPLAIN WHY I HATE TRANS PEOPLE. AND INTERSEX PEOPLE. AND INTERSEX PEOPLE? IT’S NOT CLEAR, IS IT, BUT ONE THING I AM CLEAR ABOUT IS GENDER AMBIGUITY, IE. I HATE IT]. I read everything I could on native people, started going to pow wows and sweat lodges as soon as I was old enough, and I knew that was the real me. And if you bio-Indians don’t accept us trans-Indians, then you are just as genocidal and oppressive as the Europeans. [INTERESTINGLY, EUROPEANS ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR ATTEMPTING TO ERADICATE TRADITIONAL AMERICAN NON-BINARY SYSTEMS OF GENDER AND SEXUALITY. BUT WE WON’T GET INTO THAT NOW BECAUSE IT’S KIND OF CONFUSING. AND I DON’T WANT ANYTHING TO BE UNCLEAR. I LIKE WOMEN ON ONE SIDE, MEN ON THE OTHER SIDE, AND EVERYONE ELSE CAN HAVE THE GENDER POLICE PICK THEIR SIDE AND STICK TO IT, BTW DID YOU NOTICE HOW I SWITCHED FROM NATIVE AMERICANS TO INDIANS, NOT TO BE RACIALLY OFFENSIVE MYSELF.. OFCOURSE.. BUT TO SHOW HOW TRANSPEOPLE ARE ALSO RACIALLY OFFENSIVE BY DEFAULT EVEN THOUGH THAT MAKES NO SENSE REALLY BECAUSE THERE ARE SO MANY TRANSPEOPLE OF COLOUR…WELL I DON’T NEED TO MAKE SENSE JUST SHOW HOW BAD TRANSPEOPLE ARE, RIGHT?].

Gender is no different [TO ECONOMICS AND RACE. EVERY TIME A PERSON OF COLOUR SAYS: “PLEASE STOP COMPARING GENDER AND RACE. IT’S OFFENSIVE AND ALIENATING TO GENDER OPPRESSED PEOPLE OF COLOUR,” I TELL THEM: “RELAX SWEETHEART. GENDER AND RACE ARE THE SAME FUCKING THING.” I haven’t endured the oppression and abuse that goes along with being a marginalized racial class [SO MAYBE I HAVE NO PLACE TO TALK ABOUT RACE BEING THE SAME AS GENDER BUT I WILL ANYWAY] and so for me to claim that I strongly identify with that [LIKE TRANS PEOPLE DO WITH GENDER] is actually reinforcing those stereotypes and I honestly don’t see what is different about gender? Why, if gender is something that socialisation doesn’t matter[ WHICH IS WHAT WE THINK TRANS PEOPLE CLAIM], its voluntary, you can be transgendered or in the more specific case a trans woman [WE LIKE TO FOCUS ON HATING TRANS WOMEN]why is that acceptable when deciding that I am trans black is not? BASICALLY TRANS PEOPLE ARE JUST LIKE WHITE PEOPLE TRYING TO BE BLACK WHICH WE ALL CAN AGREE IS OFFENSIVE RIGHT? WELL WE AT DGR COINED THIS TERM ‘TRANS-BLACK’ AND IT’S VERY CLEVER. YOU SEE RACE AND GENDER IS SO THE SAME EVEN IF THERE ARE ACTUALLY TRANS PEOPLE WHO ARE ALSO BLACK AND CALL THEMSELVES ‘BLACK TRANS’ PEOPLE, THEY ARE ALSO WRONG FOR BEING TRANS BUT ITS NOT THEIR FAULT THAT THEY ARE BLACK, THEY CANT HELP THAT, POOR THEM, FOR BEING BLACK, BUT NOT FOR BEING TRANS!!! THEY MUST SEPARATE THEIR OPPRESSION INTO GOOD/ACCEPTABLE AND BAD/UNACCEPTABLE OPPRESSION, C’MON IT’S NOT THAT HARD YOU CAN DO IT!] Whiteness is a class experience but that does not mean that one can just decide to stop being white, just as one cannot decide to stop being a man. Gender is also a class condition created by a brutal arrangement of power. I can’t fathom how mutilating people’s bodies [I’M REFERRING HERE TO SEXUAL REASSIGNMENT SURGERY THAT HAPPENS AFTER CHILDHOOD. OBVIOUSLY WHEN DOCTORS PERFORM SEXUAL ASSIGNMENT SURGERY ON INTERSEX INFANTS, THEY ARE DOING US ALL A FAVOUR BY KEEPING THINGS NICE AND CLEAR. ONE THING YOU PROBABLY DON’T KNOW ABOUT ME IS I LIKE GENDER THINGS TO BE VERY CLEAR] to fit an oppressive power arrangement is frankly anything but a human rights violation. And men insisting that they are women is insulting and absurd. [I’M TALKING ABOUT WHEN TRANS WOMEN INSIST THAT THEY’RE WOMEN. WHICH IS ACTUALLY MEN INSISTING THAT THEY’RE WOMEN. DOES THAT MAKE SENSE? Being raised with male privilege IS the privilege, being raised with the knowledge that you are fully human and you deserve rights and that your body is not fair game and that the court system considers you human is the privilege and that doesn’t just go away [WE KNOW THERE ARE COUNTLESS OF TRANSWOMEN WHO ARE IN PRISON, LIKE CECE MACDONALD, OR BETTER, I MEAN WORSE DEAD, BUT THEY ARE ACTUALLY PRIVILIDGED TO STILL BE ALIVE, THE ONES WHO STILL ARE, EVEN THOUGH THEY ARE LOCKED UP AND OPPRESSED AS TRANSPEOPLE AND AS WOMEN THEY ARE STILL DEMONSTRATING THEIR MALE PRIVILIDGE, DOES THAT MAKE SENSE? IT DOES TO US.

We don’t mean this as a personal attack but…BASICALLY, STICK WITH THE GENDER YOU WERE ASSIGNED AT BIRTH. IF YOU WERE BORN INTO A CULTURE WITHOUT A NON-BINARY SYSTEM OF GENDER, DON’T WORRY, BECAUSE WHITE PEOPLE HAVE COLONISED MOST PLACES IN THE WORLD AND THEY TENDED TO TAKE THE BINARY WITH THEM, SO YOU SHOULDN’T EVER BE FAR AWAY FROM GENDER CLARITY.

Gender, instead of being natural, according to us radicals, is constructed. It is artificial and imposed on humans who would inact humanity if given the choice but instead subordination and dominance is constructed upon us. It is not escapable. Just because it is constructed it doesn’t mean it can be deconstructed at will. In order for it to be deconstructed it will take organisation which is something that has not happened on a mass scale which is why patriarchy exists. [WE DON’T ACTUALLY HAVE IDEAS ON WHAT WE AS RADICAL FEMINISTS AT DGR CAN DO TO COMBAT THIS BECAUSE WE ARE SPENDING ALL OUR TIME OPPOSING TRANS PEOPLE WHO CLAIM TO BE ALSO DECONSTRUCTING GENDER AND WHO AT FIRST SEEM TO HAVE THE SAME IDEAS ABOUT GENDER AS US BUT REALLY THEY DON’T AND ARE OUR ENEMIES AND NOT ALLIES. WE NEED TO FOCUS ON THIS RATHER THAN DEALING WITH GENDER OPPRESSION AND EQUALITY]

SO IF YOU’RE CONFUSED, GO UP TO A WHITE PERSON, A CIS GENDERED ONE, SORRY, NORMALLY GENDERED PERSON AS WE DON’T BELIEVE IN CIS GENDER SINCE WE DON’T BELIEVE TRANS PEOPLE EXIST, THEY JUST THINK THEY DO, AND SHOW THEM WHAT’S IN YOUR PANTIES, AND SEE WHAT THEY COME UP WITH. OBVIOUSLY IT MIGHT TAKE THEM A BIT OF TIME. I MEAN IT TAKES THE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP COMMITTEE ROUGHLY A YEAR TO DECIDE WHETHER SPORTING COMPETITORS ARE MEN OR WOMEN, SO GIVE US GENDER POLICE A CHANCE. MOST OF US AREN’T EVEN QUALIFIED IN ANATOMY AND DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT PROLACTIN IS. WE DON’T RECEIVE ANY MONEY FOR TRAINING. WE’RE DOING THIS FOR FREE OUT OF THE HATRED OF OUR HEARTS. BUT WE WILL GIVE YOU A CLEAR DECISION EVENTUALLY. THEN YOU CAN JOIN DEEP GREEN RESISTANCE IN SAFETY. PEACE OUT.]”

#Deep Green Resistance #Racism #Racist #Racists #transphobia #transphobic #antitrans #anti-trans #classist #white people #white person #assimilation #appropriation #colonisation #genocide #male socialisation #male privilege

The Boy Who Cried Racist

http://www.mamamia.com.au/news/delta-goodrem-racist-blackface-controversy/

Here’s a fun fact: there are 178,000 Google results when you type ‘Delta Goodrem racist’ into the search engine.

If by fun you mean batshit crazy [I’M NOT BEING ABLEIST. I DON’T MEAN BEING CRAZY IS BAD, I MEAN PEOPLE OF COLOUR ARE OVER SENSITIVE AND CRAZY. READ ON FOR MORE INFORMATION].

Stop this madness. PLEASE. WE. MUST. STOP. IT. (IF THERE’S ANY MADNESS YOU STOP TODAY, PLEASE LET IT BE THE MADNESS OF PEOPLE GETTING ANGRY THAT WHITE PEOPLE ARE DRESSING UP LIKE BLACK PEOPLE).

I missed this story when it originally happened because I must have blinked momentarily and that’s all it takes for confected outrage to explode on social media. (THINGS THAT HAPPEN QUICKLY ARE ALWAYS CRAZY. FACT).

Here’s what happened in case you too were blinking:

Four fans of the show got dressed up as the Voice judges (Delta, Seal, Ricky and Joel) for a fancy dress party. Or just for fun. Whatever [THEIR INTENTIONS ARE IRRELEVANT BECAUSE THEIR ACTIONS ARE SO COMPLETELY ABOVE BOARD]. They were all white men so the one dressed as Seal painted himself black and the one dressed as Delta wore a blonde wig. I am not about to speculate on their sexuality but one dressed as Ricky [I GUESS BY BRINGING IT UP, I AM KIND OF SPECULATING, BUT GIVE ME A BREAK. I’M ONLY HUMAN].

The other night, Delta retweeted the photo to her followers, adding her own comment: “That is hilarious!! Hope you had fun! Ha!!”

The ‘offending’ Tweet is here:

Delta Goodrem @DeltaGoodrem

That is hilarious!! Hope u had fun! Ha!! Xx

Delta immediately received a social media backlash with accusations that the guy dressed as Seal was in ‘blackface’ and thus racist. Tweets like this began to ping:

Aamer Rahman @aamer_rahman

@TheVoiceAU @JoelMaden @Seal @ricky_martin gosh it must be horrible to work with someone as stupid and racist as @DeltaGoodrem

Michael Brull @MichaelBrull

No blackface is not hilarious, it’s racist. Shame on you @DeltaGoodrem @willyjayy @TheVoiceAU

Nazeem Hussain @nazeem_hussain

. @DeltaGoodrem Nah, blackface isn’t hilarious, Delta. It’s racist. @TheVoiceAU

(The original tweeter of the photo, Will Johnson, replied to Aamer Rahman saying: “Just relax. This was just a dress up party and we wanted to go as something TROPICAL, I MEAN topical. Nothing more to it.”)

The claim by many was that Delta’s retweeting of the image was seen as an endorsement of racism.

Thus: Delta is racist.

There is so much wrong with that last paragraph THAT I WROTE MYSELF that we must pause to briefly unpack it.

For those not familiar with the significance of ‘blackface’ it refers to the theatrical make-up used by white entertainers so they could crudely mock people with dark skin. It began in the 1920s and was popular until 60s when the black civil rights movement in the US helped white people understand how grossly insulting and racist it was. IT’S STILL POPULAR IN MAINSTREAM FASHION MAGAZINES LIKE VOGUE. AND IS USED FREQUENTLY IN ADVERTISING. AND ART. AND IN FANCY DRESS. IN ALL OTHER RESPECTS, IT ENDED WITH THE 60S LIKE FREE LOVE AND MARIJUANA CIGARETTES.

Sounding familiar? This issue blew up in Australia a few years ago when a ‘comedy’ act on Hey Hey It’s Saturday featured blackface performers (right). Back then, media website Crikey detailed the history of blackface and explained why exactly it was offensive:

“The portrayal of black people in these [historical] shows depicted them as “buffoonish, lazy, superstitious ‘coons’ who were thieves, pathological liars and lascivious devils bent on destroying white female purity. These were not light-hearted skits referencing black culture, “blackface” theatre depicted black people in “a degrading manner under the auspices of being accurate portrayals of black people”.

Blackface IS racist, no question. But to me (admittedly, a white girl so I welcome comments from those with a different perspective, I MEAN, APART FROM THOSE 178,000 PERSPECTIVES ON GOOGLE, I’VE ALREADY READ ALL THOSE, please leave them below), there is a huge difference between painting your face black to mock an entire race and painting yourself black to respectfully dress up as someone who has black skin. IT HAS TO DO WITH INTENTIONS. THAT WERE FOR A FANCY DRESS PARTY. OR JUST FOR FUN. WHATEVER, IT’S NOT REALLY IMPORTANT. WHAT IS IMPORTANT IS THAT WE DON’T THROW THE BABY AWAY WITH THE BATH WATER, RIGHT? I MEAN WE SHOULDN’T BE SO AGAINST BLACKFACE THAT WE SHOULDN’T BE ALLOWED TO DO IT EVER. THAT WOULD JUST BE SUCH A SHAME. RIGHT?

There is also a man in the group dressed in drag to impersonate Delta. Is that sexist?

There’s a man dressed as Ricky Martin. Is that homophobic? MORE ON THAT NEVER.

As the only straight white man in the group, it’s presumably impossible to be offensive by dressing up in a Joel costume.

The vitriol was so intense, Delta was forced to delete the tweet BY THIS I MEAN, SHE DELETED THE TWEET HERSELF. NOBODY UPROOTED HER FROM HER HOME AND FORCED HER TO DO ANYTHING. NOT LIKE, IN THE SAME WAY THAT, I DON’T KNOW, SLAVES WERE FORCED TO DO THINGS. IT’S MORE LIKE, SHE WAS LIKE, ‘OH SHIT, I SHOULD DELETE THIS.’ and release a statement to insist she is not indeed racist:

“In reference to a parody of the four coaches that was on Twitter, my retweeting was not intended to cause offence in any way.” IT’S GOOD THAT SHE UNDERLINED HER INTENTIONS IN THIS WAY, BECAUSE INTENTIONS ARE TOTALLY IMPORTANT. OR WHATEVER. BASICALLY WHAT’S IMPORTANT IS THAT WHITE PEOPLE CAN CARRY ON DRESSING UP AS BLACK PEOPLE.

When writing about the story, News Limited have this written note -in bold- on all their online news websites: Editor’s note: This website has chosen not to publish the photo, as it may offend some readers.

I’m having one of those ‘has the world gone mad?’ moments, SORRY, I MEAN, ‘HAS THE WORLD EXPERIENCED MENTAL DISTRESS?’ MOMENTS. Look, I do think it’s fantastic we’re now having conversations about racism, sexism and homophobia that we never would have had a decade ago. I MEAN THAT I WOULD NEVER HAVE HAD A DECADE AGO. OBVIOUSLY PEOPLE WERE HAVING THEM. JUST NOT ME. I love that these terms are being used to measure, filter and judge words and actions that once would have passed without comment let alone condemnation.

I also understand that different people have different thresholds; something I consider sexist may not push your buttons and vice versa. PEOPLE ARE DIFFERENT. YOU SAY TO-MAY-TOE, I SAY TO-MAH-TOE. YOU SAY BLACKFACE, AND I SAY, TOTALLY LEGITIMATE GOOD NIGHT OUT.

But this is what I worry about: using words like ‘racist’ to describe the retweeting of this photo diminishes and dilutes the power of that word. I worry that by over-using it, we render it almost meaningless. I MEAN THIS ISN’T A GENERAL CONCERN OF MINE. I DON’T TEND TO THINK OF WORDS AS A PRECIOUS COMMODITY THAT YOU CAN ONLY USE SO MANY TIMES BEFORE THEY GET WORN OUT LIKE THE ELASTIC IN THE BACK OF AN OLD BRA. I HAVE NO CONCERNS ABOUT 'GRAPEFRUIT' OR 'BOW TIE'. JUST WORDS LIKE ‘RACIST’. I’M JUST WORRIED THAT IF WE OVERUSE THIS WORD, PEOPLE LIKE ME WON’T TAKE IT SERIOUSLY ANYMORE. LIKE THAT BOY WHO CRIED WOLF AND THEN HE LIKE GOT EATEN BY A WILDEBEEST OR SOMETHING. THAT’S WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN TO BLACK PEOPLE. WATCH THIS SPACE.

Does anyone truly believe Delta is racist? Or the guy dressed up as Seal? Come on, YOU THINK EXACTLY WHAT I THINK, WHICH IS THAT I DON’T WANT TO LIVE IN A WORLD WHERE A WHITE PERSON CAN’T DRESS UP AS A BLACK PERSON, ATTEND A PUBLIC EVENT AND HAVE A SUPER HILARIOUS GOOD TIME. Let’s not be The Boy Who Cried Racist. It’s too important an accusation JUST NOT IN THIS INSTANCE to throw it around so carelessly.

#Racism #mamamia #delta goodrem #aamer rahman #blackface #fancy dress #madness #crazy #racist #why can't white people just do exactly what they want all the time?

FEAR OF A BOLLYWOOD PARTY vs FEAR OF A BROWN PLANET

ITS THAT MOMENT YOU DREAD, BEING INVITED TO A BOLLYWOOD PARTY BECAUSE…WELL NO OTHER REASON THEN BECAUSE YOU ARE BROWN AND SOUTH ASIAN AND YOUR WHITE FRIENDS THINK YOU CANT MISS OUT ON IT. YOU TURN UP BECAUSE YOU HAVENT REALISED THAT ITS ACTUALLY GOING TO BE A TRAUMATISING EXPERIENCE, WHAT HARM COULD A FEW WHITE PEOPLE IN COSTUMES DO RIGHT?! ITS ALL MEANT IN FUN AND JEST RIGHT?! YOU ARE GOING TO GIVE THEM THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT, RIGHT?! MY FRIENDS ARENT RACIST RIGHT (THEY SAY IT ALL THE TIME TO YOU)

HOW MANY BOLLYWOOD PARTIES DO YOU NEED TO ATTEND AS A BROWN PERSON TO REALISE THAT RACISM EXISTS AND ISNT GOING ANYWHERE ANY TIME SOON? ID SAY ONLY ONE BUT YKNOW THERE IS ALWAYS A BOLLWOOD PARTY HAPPENING IN YOUR NEIGHBOURHOOD, JUST GOOGLE IT AND SEE. RACIST WHITE PEOPLE LOVE THEM. THEY CANT GET ENOUGH OF THEM AND DRESSING UP LIKE A PARADOY OF THE EXOTIC EAST. MY QUESTION IS WHY DO YOU NEVER SEE ANYONE AT A BOLLWOOD PARTY LOOKING LIKE BOLLYWOOD?!?! I MEAN ITS FULL OF SARI’S AND INDIAN ELEPHANT GODS AND EVEN NATIVE AMERICANS BUT WHERE ARE THE SHAH RUKH KHAN IMPERSONATORS OR MADHURI DIXIT STUTTING HER STUFF? WHERE IS THE ASHA BOSLE SING-A –LIKE, THE BOMSHELL HELEN LOOK-A-LIKE AND RAJ KAPOOR TRIBUTE? WHERE IS ALL THE LEATHER AND PVC OUTFITS?! NOW THAT SOUNDS LIKE A PARTY I WOULD LIKE TO ATTEND (IF THERE WOULD BE BROWN PEOPLE THERE TOO)..OK MAYBE NOT....BUT SADLY THAT WILL NEVER BE BECAUSE RACIST WHITE PEOPLE DON’T REALLY HAVE A CLUE ABOUT WHAT BOLLYWOOD ACTUALLY IS, ITS JUST AN EXCUSE TO APPROPRIATE A CULTURE THEY DON’T REALLY KNOW MUCH ABOUT BESIDES THEIR RACIAL STEREOTYPES AS WE CAN CLEARLY SEE IN AAMER RAHMAN’S, FROM FEAR OF A BROWN PLANET’S LATEST NIGHT OUT….

WHAT IS FURTHER DISTURBING IS THAT AFTER POSTING THESE PICTURES ONLINE, AS IF EXPOSING PEOPLE WHO WERE CLEARLY HAPPY TO HAVE THEIR IMAGES TAKEN *SEE THEM POSING QUITE HAPPILY* BUT NOT HAPPY ENOUGH FOR THE BROWN PERSON THEY INVITED TO ACTUALLY COMMENT ON THAT EXPERIENCE… LETS FACE IT RACIST WHITE PEOPLE CANT HANDLE BROWN PEOPLE OPENING THEIR MOUTHS UNLESS IT IS TO TELL THEM THEY COOKED THEM A CURRY!!! WELL WHITE VIEWERS ACTAULLY OBJECTED TO THIS FASCINATING DOCUMENTATION…IN AAMER RAHMAN’S WORDS...a few well meaning friends of mine have messaged me saying that my decision to publish those Bollywood photos was 'nasty,' and 'disgusting and hateful.' I guess a bunch of people making a complete mockery of South Asian culture for their own entertainment is not nasty, disgusting or hateful. Here it is kids: If you feel unfairly maligned by me, feel free to come out and defend yourself publicly. If you feel your friends have been slandered, be a champ and defend them publicly. Don't send me passive aggressive messages in private or try to guilt me by saying 'these are really nice people, what you did is just so MEAN!' And I'll remember next time I'm in a room of enlightened white people having a good old time in snake turbans, harem pants and bindis to just STFU.

ONE WHITE PERSON WROTE TO AAMER TO KINDLY AND WARMLY WISH HIM LUCK:

"Good luck with your comedy career, please be more respectful of other human beings and their rights not to be humiliated for being white."

MY QUESTION IS SINCE WHEN DID RACIST WHITE PEOPLE DESERVE THE RIGHT TO NOT BE HUMILIATED FOR BEING RACIST. I THOUGHT THAT WAS A GOOD BALANCE FOR ALL THE TRAUMA THAT RACIST WHITE PEOPLE HAVE PUT BROWN PEOPLE THROUGH…I MEAN NOT JUST FOR CONTINUALLY INVITING US TO BOLLYWOOD PARTIES, TRAUMATIC AS THAT IS FOR US, BUT YKNOW FOR ALL THE COLONISATION, STEALING OUR RESOURCES, KILLING OUR PEOPLE, APPROPRIATING OUR CULTURE…YKNOW ALL THAT…RACIST OPPRESSIVE STUFF.

Doing The Right Things (or Failing That Just Doing Things) Launch

‘When he came, in the game, he made his own lane

Now all I need is y'all to pronounce my name’

-- Mr. West

I’m a white guy so I’m not allowed to talk about race.

At least that’s what they tell me (BY THEY, I MEAN THE PEOPLE OF COLOUR WHO APPEAR IN MY DAYTIME SPECULATIONS ABOUT THEM).

Don’t talk about it because it’s a zero-sum game -- and you’ll lose. White guys get all the breaks (I’M BEING SARCASTIC. I’VE WORKED HARD ALL MY WHITE TO GET WHERE I AM TODAY. I MEAN I’VE WORKED HARD ALL MY LIFE.), and as such we can’t contribute to the discourse (AGAIN, SARCASM. I’M ABOUT TO CONTRIBUTE IN AN EXTREMELY MEANINGFUL WAY).

But I believe we’re on the precipice of a post-race world (YEAH, WE’RE POST RACE, EVER SINCE OBAMA GOT INAUGURATED. WELL ACTUALLY, EVER SINCE SLAVERY WAS ABOLISHED. GET WITH THE PROGRAM GUYS), and many of us took the leap long ago (I DON’T GO TO THE GYM ANYMORE – I GET ALL THE EXERCISE I NEED BY JUMPING INTO DIVERSITY). We have mixed-race families, diverse startups and we -- gasp! (SORRY, I’M OUT OF BREATH FROM ALL THIS LEAPING) -- select our music based on how it sounds, not the ethnicity of the performer.

We don’t have hatred in our hearts for people, except maybe for inefficient people (LIKE BREASTFEEDING PEOPLE AND SICK PEOPLE). Oh yeah, and for the people who build bad products -- we have a lot of hate for them! (HAHA! WE HATE THEM, RIGHT? IS THIS A HATE WE CAN ALL AGREE ON? RIGHT? GREAT.)

Sadly, we live in a world where race still is an issue because some folks haven’t made the leap. Those folks are old and dying (UNLIKE ME! I’M ALIVE! WHICH MAKES ME STATISTICALLY LESS LIKELY TO BE RACIST. BONUS!) in many, perhaps most, cases.

Racism exists. Racists exists.

No argument there. But boy do these people look stupider and stupider (DO I MEAN THE RACISTS LOOK STUPIDER AND STUPIDER, OR THE PEOPLE WHO KEEP COMPLAINING ABOUT IT? UNCLEAR, ISN’T IT.). I mean, the “God Hates Fags” church is so insanely stupid that they’ve become a staple in comedy (I MEAN NOT SO MUCH A STAPLE AS THE HILARIOUS GAY BEST FRIEND WITH NO LEADING ROLE, MORE LIKE A STAPLE THAT YOU ONLY EAT A COUPLE OF TIMES A YEAR). We don’t see them as dangerous (I MEAN I DON’T. PROBABLY I WOULDN’T BE AS RELAXED IF THEY WERE ATTACKING ME, BUT I’M NOT LGBT SO I DON’T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT THAT) as much as dopey (WOW I HAVEN’T USED THAT WORD IN YEARS). Like, maybe they’re mentally challenged people (YEAH WHY DON’T I JUST COME OUT AND SAY IT. DISABLEDS. THEY’RE THE REAL BIGOTS). They’re just sad (HOMOPHOBES ARE JUST SAD, I MEAN, NOT DISABLEDS. ALTHOUGH THEY PROBABLY ARE TOO, BECAUSE THEY’RE ALWAYS SICK AND DYING).

However, the tech and tech media world are meritocracies. To fall back to race as the reason why people don’t break out in our wonderful oasis of openness is to do a massive injustice to what we’ve fought so hard to create (BY WE I MEAN ME AND OTHER HARD WORKING WHITES I MEAN TECHS).

It flies in the face of our core beliefs (I SAID FACTS, ORIGINALLY, BUT I JUST COULDN’T JUSTIFY IT): 1. anyone can do it, 2. innovation can come from anywhere and 3. product rules.

And anyone can do it.

And “anyone” keeps doing it.

This idea that Silicon Valley is in some way a closed, secret society is laughable. Ninety percent of the people in Silicon Valley were not born there -- they moved there (TAKE THAT RACISM, YOU BIRTH-VALLEY DEPENDANT FORM OF OPPRESSION). The industry is driven by investment and investment is driven by metrics, THAT’S NUMBERS TO ALL YOU NON TECHNIES – NUMBERS, NOT COLOURS, AND not where you went to school.

In fact, people are leaving their Harvard MBAs off their resumes because they don’t want to seem outside of the classic archetype: outsiders who dropped out and are uncontrollable rebels (THESE ARE THE ONLY CHARACTERISTICS OF THE ARCHETYPE. RACE AND GENDER AND DISABILITY AND AGE DON’T COME INTO IT. HELL YOU COULD BE A BREASTFEEDING, SICK, DYING WARTHOG AND IF YOU WERE STILL AN UNCONTROLLABLE REBEL YOU’LD GET THE JOB).

Now, there’s some truth to me not being able to speak about race. I haven’t experienced racism myself, except when standing next to my wife (who is Asian). I MEAN SHE WAS EXPERIENCING THE RACISM, NOT ME, BUT THAT’S A TECHNICALITY. I had no idea people were as racist toward Asians as they are -- but they are. That makes me sad for my mixed-race daughter, who looks 97% Korean (I WORKED THIS OUT WHILE I WAS STARING AT HER FACE ONE DAY) and 3% Irish -- let alone Greek or Swedish (sorry, Dad).

But she’s going to live in the post-race world we’re shifting to (WAIT, DID I SAY WE WERE ALREADY THERE? WELL, IT’S HAPPENING, IN ANY CASE). Her kids will probably share six or seven heritages -- enough so that no one will matter (BECAUSE THAT’S HOW IT WORKS. THERE JUST HAVEN’T BEEN ENOUGH HERITAGES UP UNTIL NOW TO STOP RACISM). And that’s awesome.

Now, most of the folks on this email list were born in the 1st world (but not all -- and I do know that because you always reply YOU SNARKY BASTARDS. PLEASE STOP REPLYING SO I CAN SAY 100%). About 95%+ of the folks on this email list were blessed with a 1st-world education. We all started on 2nd or 3rd base compared to folks in rural India, China or the tribal areas of the Middle East (HAVE I COVERED EVERYWHERE SHIT? YES? GREAT. MOVING ON.).

Do any of us in the 1st world get to talk about inequality? If I can’t talk about race because I’m white, it would follow that you don’t get to talk about inequality because you were born in the top 20% of people on the planet.

Now that we’ve established that we can all contribute to the dialogue (I LOVE SAYING ‘WE’ WHEN I KNOW IT’S JUST ‘ME’, I’M ALL LIKE, WELL WHO’S GOING TO ARGUE? IT’S JUST ME IN HERE ON MY LAPTOP!), let’s move on (I WAS READY TO MOVE ON AGES AGO BUT PEOPLE OF COLOUR WERE HOLDING ME BACK AS USUAL).

Besides, I like to talk about hard subjects, so let’s really talk about it (NOT JUST FAKE TALK ABOUT IT LIKE MOST PEOPLE).

This all started because of a well-reasoned and written blog post lamenting a race issue in the tech blogging community.

Jamellle, who I don’t think I’ve ever met or read before (BUT THEY ALL LOOK THE SAME TO ME SO WHO KNOWS), meditates on race and the “white male” problem at blogs like the Verge and The Next Web.

His position counters everything I’ve experienced in my career, I’VE NEVER EXPERIENCED ANY RACISM, SO PROBABLY THERE ISN’T ANY OUT THERE -- and I’m one of Engadget’s parents (the other one is Latino -- but that doesn’t matter, right? I’M BEING SARCASTIC. IT MEANS EVERYTHING).

Anyone can break into tech blogging. Anyone. EXCEPT INEFFICIENT PEOPLE.

First, I broke into journalism by starting a photocopied zine, which I wrote on nights and weekends while working during the day. It took me years of hustling (DID YOU THINK THAT WAS JUST A WORD THAT BLACK FOLKS USE? THINK AGAIN) in my spare time to do it and my timing (NOT MY SKIN TONE) was perfect -- I started a magazine about the internet in 1995.

Two of my most successful writers are now high-profile bloggers: Xeni Jardin and Rafat Ali. The first a woman, the second with much darker skin than mine (brown, but not black for those obsessed with the exact tone -- really? (HAHA. THEY’RE SO OBSESSED. I’M TOTALLY NOT. I MEAN MY DAUGHTER LOOKS 97% KOREAN BUT THAT’S MY DAUGHTER, I’M ALLOWED TO STARE INTO HER FACE UNTIL I GET THE PERCENTAGE CLEAR IN MY HEAD. I MEAN, I’M HER DAD. BUT THESE GUYS, THEY’RE REALLY OBSESSED). Both are exceptional talents who started their careers with -- not for -- me. I got lucky enough to recruit two folks smarter than me, the theme of my career I now realize (hire up!) (JUST TO BE CLEAR, THEY DID WORK FOR ME AFTER I RECRUITED THEM, BUT NOT LIKE, IN A, I’M-YOUR-WHITE-BOSS KIND OF WAY LIKE THE OLD DAYS).

We kicked ass together and it had nothing to do with our gender or race. We just all busted our asses and kicked a lot of ass (HAVE I SAID ASS ENOUGH? DO I SOUND COOL YET?). Xeni went on to do BoingBoing and Rafat did PaidContent and now Skift (which I’m investing in. WHAT RACIST PERSON WOULD INVEST IN A WOMAN’S START UP).

Second, I started a blog network in 2003. Again, I got lucky with my timing (SAY IT WITH ME: TIMING NOT SKIN TONE).

We hired 500 bloggers and not *once* (THAT MEANS NOT AT ALL, ABSOLUTELY NEVER, TO YOU NON TECHNIES) did we look at their gender, race, sexual orientation or color. We had no budget so we looked for folks who could write with passion and for a pittance: $2 a blog post. Everyone was a freelancer working from home -- and we didn’t know where their homes were until we sent them a check (THEY DID ALL HAVE HOMES THOUGH. WE DON’T EMPLOY ANYONE WHO’S HOMELESS, THAT’S TAKING DIVERSITY TOO FAR).

Folks thought we were idiots for paying for blog posts at the time, since no one was getting paid. The rate quickly went from $2 a post to $15 and we wound up selling that company for a lot of money in under two years.

If you want to break into writing, you don’t need rich parents to get you a free internship at WIRED. That’s a 1989 thing -- ’94 max.

I know because when I came into the game I used to be very resentful of those rich kids. They lived in Manhattan and went on long vacations to Europe while I took the R train in and out of the city in August. It was hot as hell, and I spent my time writing in journals in between dragging copies of my ‘zine about the internet to startup companies like DoubleClick and Razorfish. My luggage cart was always breaking and I was a bit of laughing stock to some I’m sure: “What CEO delivers his own magazines?” they must have thought. Answer? The one who is going to rank you 97 in the Silicon Alley 100, and who you’re going to be to take to a Knicks game and Nobu in another six months. Boom (YEP, BOOM. AGAIN, NOT JUST A WORD FOR PEOPLE OF COLOUR TO USE).

Those internships are long over. If you want to blog for Gawker or Engadget or TechCrunch the best way to do it is:

a) post highly intelligent comments -- not about yourself -- on those blogs 2-5x a day for three years.

b) start your own blog and write one blog post a day about one subject for three years -- not about yourself, about the topic. Don’t ever talk about yourself.

c) go to any party, meetup or SIG you can find

You do those three things you will break in. Two hours a day for three years.

Anyone who does that is going to not only get a job but might actually build a sustainable business or have a bidding war over them.

You can sit there and come up with all the people stopping you , or you can decide to be unstoppable.

You can sit there and look backwards at the racist old-world, or you can look forward and create the new post-race world. TO BE CLEAR, I’M LOOKING FORWARD, AND ANYONE COMPLAINING ABOUT RACISM IS BACKWARD. I ADMIT IT’S CONFUSING BECAUSE IN THE PAST WE ALSO DIDN’T BELIEVE IN RACIST BARRIERS TO SUCCESS, SO THAT MIGHT SEEM BACKWARD TO SOME PEOPLE, BUT WE’RE POST ALL THAT NOW. THE IMPORTANT THING TO REMEMBER IS, IF YOU’RE NOT SUCCEEDING, IT’S PROBABLY BECAUSE YOU’RE CRAP.

The fact is that the tech industry and tech media should be extremely proud of what we’ve accomplished. We’re the most open meritocracy I’ve ever seen in industry. AND NO, I’M NOT GOING TO GO AND WORK IN A WHOLE BUNCH OF INDUSTRIES OR STUDY A WHOLE BUNCH OF INDUSTRIES JUST TO MAKE A POINT. OBAMA HAS ALREADY MADE MY POINT. RACISM IS DEAD AND TECH MEDIA RULES.

We accept anyone based on their performance WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT ALL INDUSTRIES SAY. BUT WE’RE DIFFERENT. WE’RE SPECIAL WE’RE TECHNICAL.

In fact, the venture capitalists and angel investors I know would blow off their mother’s 70th birthday party in order to close a deal with a founder of a startup with a hockey-stick growth curve -- regardless of their age, gender, color or sexual preference. AND I KNOW ONE OF YOU THIRD WORLDERS IS PROBABLY GOING TO ARGUE THAT IT’S HARDER TO BLOW OFF YOUR MOTHER’S BIRTHDAY PARTY WHEN YOU RELY ON A STRONG FAMILY NETWORK IN ORDER TO COMBAT RACISM, BUT IF YOU’RE NOT GOING TO SHIT ALL OVER YOUR FAMILY YOU’RE NEVER GOING TO GET ANYWHERE IN THIS INDUSTRY.

All you need to make it in this world is hustle (A RAPPER SAID THAT ONCE. I PARAPHRASE FROM ANYONE, REGARDLESS OF THEIR SKIN COLOUR). You need to put in the 10,000 hours (SORRY SICK AND/OR DYING PEOPLE. BUT YOU’RE NOT GOING TO MAKE IT).÷…

Don’t let anyone tell you that some secret cabal of rich, old white guys on some secret golf course is trying to stop you. NOBODY PLAYS GOLF ANYMORE. THE GAME OF CHOICE FOR THIS INDUSTRY IS TOKENISM.

I mean, there are secret packs of rich, white guys on golf courses making fun of and trying to hold disadvantaged people back. They’re just not in the tech industry THEY ALL WORK IN BISCUIT MANUFACTURING OR SOMETHING, and they’re less and less relevant today--and they can’t stop you!

Nothing can stop you if you put in your 10,000 hours building your craft. I MEAN NOT NOTHING, BUT LIKE, ONLY LIKE, NUCLEAR WAR OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT CAN STOP YOU.

It’s all about skills NOT SKIN COLOUR.

Skills = power. SKIN COLOUR=TOTALLY NOT RELEVANT SINCE SLAVERY ENDED

On that measure, I think JB’s piece is a success. I didn’t know your race, just your excellent writing ability, when I got engaged. Now that I know you’re black you know what difference it makes?

None.

YOU ARE BLACK THOUGH.

You’re followed and subscribed to based on your skills. HA! I JUST DISPROVED RACISM WITH ONE CLICK OF MY MOUSE. TECHNOLOGY STILL AMAZES ME.

best @jason

PS - Even if the world isn’t, the LAUNCH Festival is a pure meritocracy! If you know of any stealth or non-stealth companies trying to make it in the world, let me know. If they are minorities, women or from outside the United States even better -- as we run a diverse show by design! BUT IT MAKES NO DIFFERENCE TO USE, OBVIOUSLY. In fact, a female founder won best 2.0 last year BUT THAT IS COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT BECAUSE WE DON’T CARE EITHER WAY.

Other updates:

1. The LAUNCH Festival has so many amazing partners and supporters that we’re able to give scholarships to builders and broke founders -- of any race, gender, etc. (NOT THAT WE CARE WHAT RACE OR GENDER YOU ARE. BUT IT WOULD BE NICE IF YOU ARE A PERSON OF COLOUR, PREFERABLY A WOMAN OF COLOUR, AND THEN I CAN USE YOU TO BACK ME UP WHEN I CLAIM THAT THIS INDUSTRY IS FREE OF RACISM)

http://festival.launch.co/builder.html

2. The greatest hackathon ever held, The LAUNCH Hackathon, has 100+ teams already formed. That’s 300 developers/designers of 400 signed up. There is a $50k angel investment prize from myself and @dharmesh. I’m looking for another VC or angel to put up $25k-$50k and get the prize money to $100k. That would be insane, huh? Talk about an open opportunity!!!

http://launchhackathon.com/register

3. We should do a panel on race and Silicon Valley... who should be on it? ME! HEHE, AW, NO, I COULDN’T. NO, NO, YOU TOTALLY SHOULD! OH GOSH WELL THANKS I’M FLATTERED, BUT I JUST DON’T KNOW IF I HAVE THE EXPERIENCE. BUT YOU JUST WROTE THIS GREAT ARTICLE THAT TOTALLY DISPROVED RACISM! WELL I GUESS I DID. COME ON, YOU’RE TOTALLY AMAZING! HEHE, STOP, YOU’RE MAKING ME BLUSH.

4. Great news episode of This Week in Startups with Mightybell’s Gina Bianchini & Little Bird’s Marshall Kirkpatrick, as well as my interview with David Cohen of TechStars.

5. Follow me if so inclined: @jason and YouTube.

6. Thanks to the amazing new partners of the event!

(There’s still time to reach the 5,000 developers/designers/entrepreneurs/startups that are going to be there. Email [email protected])

* AWS (http://aws.amazon.com/)

* Digital Detox (http://thedigitaldetox.org/)

* Docstoc (http://www.docstoc.com/)

* ESRI (http://www.esri.com)

* FusionPR (http://www.fusionpr.com/)

* Google Developers (http://developers.google.com/)

* LewisPR (http://www.lewispr.com/)

* Ludlow Ventures (http://ludlowventures.com)

* MaRS (http://www.marsdd.com/)

* Media Temple (http://mediatemple.net/)

* Menlo Ventures (http://www.menloventures.com/)

* Micro Ventures (http://www.microventures.com/)

* PivotDesk (http://www.pivotdesk.com/)

* Samsung (http://www.samsung.com)

* Silicon Valley Bank (http://www.svb.com/)

* Venture51 (http://www.venture51.com/)

http://blog.launch.co/blog/doing-the-right-things.html

http://jamellebouie.net/blog/2013/2/3/and-read-all-over

"You're not going out dressed like that," says The Guardian's Hadley Freeman to Beyonce Knowles

Beyoncé: being photographed in your underwear doesn't help feminism

The singer's interview in American GQ offers a perfect snapshot of where the western women's movement is. And it's not pretty

(image: head and shoulders colour photo of Hadley Freeman)

(image: head and upper torso photo of Beyonce wearing a yellow top)

Next month marks the 50th anniversary of The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan's hugely influential study that helped to spark that pervasive second wave of feminism [FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO DON’T KNOW, FEMINISM WAS STARTED BY WHITE LADIES IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY AND WAS REBORN IN THE 1960s BY MORE WHITE LADIES. PEOPLE OF COLOUR WERE NOT INVOLVED AND NOTHING HAPPENED IN BETWEEN] that – for all its faults and stuttering incompleteness – shaped the western world as most of us know it today.

As a book it was – as Friedan was herself – a flawed advocate of women's rights: Friedan had little apparent interest in women who were anything other than white and upper middle-class. Her homophobia became an embarrassment to the women's movement. Her egotistical paranoia about being ousted as the face of the women's movement was captured with wince-inducing brilliance by Nora Ephron in her 1972 essay, Miami.

The feminist movement never did and never will run smoothly. But Friedan's book, as Stephanie Coontz writes in her recent book, A Strange Stirring, rescued "a generation of intelligent women [MEANING, WHITE WOMEN, THE RICH KIND], sidelined from the world". Whatever its flaws, the publication of The Feminine Mystique remains as much of a landmark in the history of feminism as Emily Davison's death 50 years earlier at the 1913 Epsom Derby [EMILY DAVIDSON DIED 50 YEARS BEFORE THE BOOK WAS PUBLISHED, IT’S THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE PUBLICATION – IT’S ALL FITTING TOGETHER GUYS, ALL THESE 50s, IT’S SYNCHRONICITY. UNTIL A BLACK WOMAN COMES ALONG AND MESSES UP ALL THE NUMBERS WITH HER KNICKERS. BUT MORE ON THAT LATER].

And so, 50 years on from Friedan [YES, 50 – IT’S WEIRD, ISN’T IT? COME ON. THAT’S WEIRD. IT CAN’T BE COINCIDENCE], it pleases me to announce that we have a new face to the modern-day feminist movement. That face belongs to none other than Beyoncé Knowles.

Last week the new issue of American GQ came out and it neatly encapsulated where western feminism is today. Inside, Knowles gives an interview that will probably be studied by future generations for lessons in both the loopiness of the 21st-century celebrity world and how hilariously far American magazine interviews have fallen since the days of, say, Gay Talese and Lillian Ross [HAS ANYONE HEARD OF THESE PEOPLE, OR OF BETTY FRIEDAN, IN FACT? NO? GOOD. BEING AN OXFORD GRADUATE REALLY DOES JUST GIVE YOU THAT LITTLE EXTRA SOMETHING SOMETHING]. In this typical piece of puffery [UNLIKE, FOR EXAMPLE, THIS UNIQUE PIECE OF CUTTING EDGE JOURNALISM], Knowles shows off her "temperature-controlled digital storage facility that contains virtually every photo of her", including one video diary entry in which she informs herself that she is going to listen to one of her own songs before having sex with her husband, which is one way to get in the mood, I guess [YES I DO HAVE, FOR A FEMINIST, A STRANGE LACK OF COMPASSION FOR PEOPLE I THINK ARE UNDERGOING UNWANTED SEX WITH THEIR HUSBANDS. FAULTS AND STUTTERING INCOMPLETENESS ARE PART OF THE FUN OF FEMINISM THOUGH].

But there is, the GQ journalist assures the reader, more to Knowles than raging narcissism [ALTHOUGH I AM QUITE WILLING TO BELIEVE THAT SOME WOMEN – NOT ME OR MY FRIENDS – ARE COMPLETELY VAPID AND SHALLOW] – she is a powerful woman with a defiant feminist streak. "Equality is a myth, and for some reason everyone accepts that women don't make as much money as men do," she rails. "I truly believe that women should be financially independent from their men. And let's face it, money gives men the power to run the show. It gives men the power to define value. They define what's sexy. And men define what's feminine. It's ridiculous."

Knowles is right [SHE’S NOT WHITE THOUGH. SHOULD WE TAKE HER SERIOUSLY? PROBABLY NOT]: it is ridiculous that American women earn 77 cents to every dollar earned by men. This is almost as ridiculous as, say, a self-professedly powerful female celebrity ("I'm more powerful than my mind can even digest," announces Knowles) complaining about men defining sexiness in a men's magazine in which she poses nearly naked in seven photos, including one on the cover in which she is wearing a pair of tiny knickers [HAD THE KNICKERS BEEN A LITTLE BIT BIGGER, MORE LIKE MY KNICKERS I’M WEARING NOW, I WOULD BE ABLE TO RESPECT HER, BUT WITH KNICKERS THAT TINY, I CAN’T – I JUST CAN’T] and a man's shirt so cropped that her breasts [HER BREASTS, GUYS. I KID YOU NOT. BEYONCE’S BREASTS. I TRIED TO STOP LOOKING, BUT I COULDN’T – I JUST COULDN’T] are visible WHICH IS ALMOST AS RIDICULOUS AS, SAY, OPENING AN ARTICLE WITH A REFERENCE TO A BOOK WHOSE MAIN OBJECTIVE WAS TO GET WOMEN TO WORK – NOT WORKING CLASS WOMEN OF COLOUR, OBVIOUSLY, THEY ALREADY HAD JOBS (MOSTLY WORKING AS DOMESTICS FOR SAID WHITE WOMEN, THE RICH KIND) – THEREBY HELPING TO CREATE A GENERATION OF WOMEN WITH MORE DISPOSABLE INCOME AND BUYING POWER THAN EVER BEFORE WHO BECAME THE NEW TARGET OF ADVERTISERS WHO USED IDEAS ABOUT FEMININITY AND SEXUALITY TO SELL STUFF. These photos, incidentally, were taken by the bafflingly successful American photographer, Terry Richardson, a man with a penchant for highly sexualised photos of women and who has been repeatedly accused of sexual exploitation and misconduct by young female models, which Richardson has denied [I WAS THINKING ABOUT WRITING AN ARTICLE ABOUT HIM, BUT I THOUGHT TO MYSELF, NO: WHO’SE THE REAL VILLAIN HERE, HIM OR BEYONCE? AND I WENT WITH THE BEYONCE ARTICLE. MORE ON TERRY RICHARDSON NEVER].

To complain about the sexualisation of women in men's magazines may seem like complaining about the weather [ALTHOUGH TO BE FAIR, I’M NOT COMPLAINING ABOUT THE SEXUALISATION OF WOMEN IN MEN’S MAGAZINES HERE, I’M JUST COMPLAINING ABOUT BEYONCE ASKING FOR IT]. But as Knowles rightly says in relation to the pay gap, the status quo should not just be shruggingly accepted if it is wrong. I never fail to be amazed at the high profile, often A-list women who celebrate their professional success by posing near naked on the covers of allegedly classy men's magazines, such as Esquire and GQ, and these covers are, to my eyes, becoming increasingly close to porn [I MEAN, DO I GIVE A FUCK ABOUT ANYONE WHO ACTUALLY WORKS IN THE PORN INDUSTRY? NO, AND THIS ARTICLE IS NOT FOR THEM, IT’S KIND OF MORE FOR PEOPLE LIKE ME WHO WOULD LIKE THE COVERS OF MAGAZINES TO LOOK LESS LIKE PORN AND MORE LIKE THE COVER OF THE FEMININE MYSTIQUE WHICH IS A WONDERFUL BOOK FOR WHITE PEOPLE]. In the past four months alone we've had Cameron Diaz bending over in a pair of mesh pants [I MEAN, THEY WERE THE RIGHT KIND OF SIZE, BUT I WAS ALL LIKE, CAMERON, THERE’S NO USE WEARING REGULAR SIZED PANTS IF YOU’RE GOING TO RUIN THE EFFECT BY PICKING ONES THAT ARE HALF SEETHROUGH]; topless Mila Kunis in leather trousers (while inside she writhes naked on a bed [WHAT A HARLOT]); Rihanna naked [YES FOLKS, COMPLETELY UNCLOTHED] save for a mini leather jacket; Lana Del Rey also naked [THAT’S RIGHT GUYS, SHE WAS TOTALLY SANS SARTORIALS] except for some jewellery (that was on GQ's October issue, which had four alternative covers that all featured men. All of these men, funnily enough, were clothed. BUT THIS ARTICLE ISN’T ABOUT THOSE MEN, IT’S ABOUT BETTY FREIDAN AND THE SKANKS THAT HAVE NOT LIVED UP TO HER WHITELACY. I MEAN HER RICHLACY. I MEAN HER HETEROGACY. I MEAN HER LEGACY).

It's one thing to submit to this attention-seeking nonsense if you're a C-list reality TV desperado [I ORIGINALLY SAID DESPERATE SLAG, BUT I CHANGED IT TO DESPERADO. SOMETIMES GIVING THINGS A SPANISH SPIN MAKES YOU SOUND LIKE LESS OF A MISOGYNIST] trying to get on the cover of Nuts; it's another if you are professedly one of the most powerful women in the entertainment business who has no need of such tactics [ACCORDING TO ME. I MEAN, I’M NO PRESS OFFICER, BUT I HAVE BEEN TO OXFORD, SO.]. Knowles rightly hates the fact that women are humiliated by being paid less than their male counterparts. But they are similarly humiliated by being fed the message that it doesn't matter how successful, powerful or smart you are – all that matters is how sexually available you are willing to make yourself look. [AND THEY ARE SIMILARLY HUMILIATED WHEN THEY SEE THAT IT DOESN’T MATTER HOW SUCCESSFUL, POWERFUL OR SMART YOU ARE –OXFORD GRADUATES WILL STILL MOCK YOU FOR BEING A SLUT IN ARTICLES SUPPOSEDLY ABOUT FEMINISM. OH NO WAIT, NO, THAT’S FINE, AND NOT HUMILIATING TO A N Y O N E.]

I should feel happy, I guess, that Knowles is even willing to speak up about equality considering how notoriously few young women in the public eye are willing to identify themselves as feminists. That her Dworkin-ish call to arms comes served up with photos of Knowles jumping on a bed in a bikini, well, that's the deal these days, apparently, in which famous women can sing about "independence" and "girl power", as long as they're wearing next to nothing. As I said, the feminist movement never did run smoothly. But half a century on [THAT’S 50 YEARS GUYS. COME ON, IT’S WEIRD! RIGHT? THE NUMBER 50 AGAIN?] from Friedan, it should be running better than this. [MAYBE ONE DAY THINGS WILL BE BETTER AND ARTICLES ABOUT GENDER WILL BE MORE THAN AN INVENTORY OF FASHION CHOICES, A BORING RAMBLE ABOUT A DEAD WHITE LADY, AND THE NUMBER 50. BUT PROBABLY NOT.]

#The Guardian #Hadley Freeman #feminism #slut #Beyonce #The Feminine Mystique #Betty Friedan #dead white lady #GQ Magazine #Terry Richardson #nudity #misogyny

Quebecers: the new racists!

by Martin Patriquin on Thursday, December 15, 2011 8:36pm - 43 Comments

IMPORTANT PRE- ARTICLE NOTE FROM RACISM REMIX: "Quebec is Canada's french province, and a whopping eleven times bigger than England. But the English language rules Canada and the world, and french Quebec is a colonial sore loser. They led a victory against the anglophone establishment in the 1970s, by enforcing french signage, establishing francophone employment quotas, and threatening to separate as an independent country.Quebec's extreme elements got carried away with all of this success, and started a racist campaign to accomplish an exclusive white francophone Quebec utopia, with the vernacular slogan "pure lain" or "pure wool". This aryan sentiment established a relatively firm grip on the giant french province. To placate the separatists, the english Canadian media indulges xenophobic Quebec by hiring writers like Martin Patriquin to publicly, freely spout whatever degrading racist material he wants to in the mainstream press."

and now to the thrilling article.......... by Martin Patriquin: As a general rule, academic papers don’t generate much buzz beyond the academics who read them and the parents of the people who write them. It seems Concordia University is trying its mightiest to reverse this disturbing trend, though, by sending out a press release chock full of LEGITIMATE HISTORIC FACTS THAT ANNOY ME. I HAVE A CHILLING EXPRESSION FOR THAT: (race) bait. “New racism in ‘reasonable accommodation’”, it reads. “Smoldering since the Quiet Revolution? Concordia study traces how politicians and media have pitted immigrants against ‘Québécois values.’” Oh, and this helps ME FEEL BETTER. I AM ABOUT TO BELITTLE HIS RACE: the paper is written by a dude named Wong—a surname loaded with meaning IF YOU ONLY KNOW TWO CHINESE PEOPLE AND THEY'RE BOTH NAMED WONG ever since Jan Wong, then a Globe and Mail reporter, interrupted an entirely serviceable account of the Dawson College shooting to POINT OUT LEGITIMATE FACTS - OR CONVERSELY, WITHOUT EXAGGERATING: blame all such mass killings in Quebec on Bill 101. And this Alan Wong WHO HAS TOTALLY NOT HAD THE DECENCY TO CHANGE HIS NAME TO SOMETHING MORE PALATABLE LIKE MARTIN OR PATRIQUIN blames the media and politicians for appealing to Quebecers’ collective inner xenophobe. And the report is published in the Global Media Journal, which is sponsored and hosted by Purdue University. So: we have a paper from an English university in Quebec, in which a non-Francophone IN OTHER WORDS MY OPPRESSOR - NEVER MIND THAT I PUBLICLY DISPARAGED HIS WHOLE RACE JUST NOW waxes academically on the purported racist tendencies of Quebecers, and publishes the whole exercise in an American journal. As colleague Paul Wells likes to say, what could possibly go wrong? Let’s USE SARCASM AS A DEVICE AND delve into Mr. Wong’s opus, shall we? First off, I WILL SUPPORT HIS POINT BY RESOLVING an error: Le Devoir isn’t, as he says, the highest circulation Francophone daily in Quebec. That honour belongs to Le Journal de Montréal. Normally, pointing out a seemingly minor whoopsie of a fellow writer, however high his nose may be, is bad karma. We all make mistakes, after all. But BEFORE I PROVE HIM RIGHT, I WANT TO DEGRADE HIM EVEN MORE SO never mind that this is a bit like mistaking The New York Times for the New York Post; it’s astonishing that Wong would somehow flub this one, since anyone who followed the great reasonable accommodations debate of 2006-7 would know that Le Journal drove the debate, and NOW TO ALTERNATELY JUSTIFY HIS POINT, was arguably the purveyor of the most pungent, race-baiting headlines. Le Devoir, being Le Devoir, wrung its hands over the future of the French language, while oozing disdain at the unwashed sensibilities of the country bumpkins in Hérouxville, home of the famed immigrant code of conduct. Le Journal, meanwhile, was all afroth over Hassid-friendly frosted windows and tyrannical kosher hospitals. Onward. Mr. Wong’s thesis is as follows: I LOVE THIS PART - WHERE I CHEERFULLY AGREE THAT WE HATE FOREIGNERS: Quebecers, being very white and very French, are wary of immigrants at the best of times. Add an incendiary press and a provincial election, and that wariness is coaxed into full-blown, vocalized malaise against those who aren’t very white at all. In the process, the very definition of “reasonable accommodations” changed from an acceptance of certain religious and cultural practices to “a weapon wielded against the disenfranchised in Quebec society.” Relatively minor incidents—like, say, those frosted windows—were taken out of context, blown up and made to represent a sort of immigrant incursion on Quebec society. Er, guilty as charged. HOORAY! The media coverage of the reasonable accommodations affair was certainly outsized; politicians, stuck in the vortex of an election campaign, said some remarkably stupid things THAT I AGREE WITH IN PRINCIPAL. What’s bothersome about Mr. Wong’s take on it, though, apart from the fact that he seems to think all of Quebec is somehow Hérouxville writ large (tell that to your average FACETIOUS WHITE LIBERAL Montrealer, I dare you), is that such a phenomenon could only happen in Quebec. This is a frankly idiotic assumption BECAUSE FROM COAST TO COAST WHITE RACISTS RULE. WE RULE! As this corner wrote way back in 2007, what was going on in Quebec was basically a very noisy version of the discourse occurring throughout the country AND EVERYBODY KNOWS THAT YOU CAN ONLY COMPLAIN ABOUT RACISM WHEN THE RACISM YOU ARE EXPERIENCING IS MEASURABLY WORSE (AND NOT JUST IN VOLUME) THAN THE RACISM HAPPENING IN THE REST OF THE COUNTRY. IF IT’S THE SAME OR NOT AS BAD, YOU CAN SHOVE YOUR COMPLAINT UP YOUR LITTLE BROWN BOTTOM. For whatever reason—some blame our hot Latin blood; I blame Jean Charest—we decided to have a public hearings on reasonable accommodation, thereby guaranteeing that when anyone said anything stupid/mangled/moronic/xenophobic, it would be on camera. CHORTLE. SNORT. Sure, it was embarrassing, but it’s sheer folly to think what was spilling out of many Quebecers’ mouths wasn’t also on the minds of Canadians in general. HOORAY! LA LA LA At least here it was out in the open (AND ISN’T THAT WHAT IMMIGRANTS HAVE BEEN CAMPAIGNING FOR: EXPLICIT, OUT IN THE OPEN RACISM) —and non-violent. Think the collective Québécois spleen venting over Hasids and frosted windows at a Montreal YMCA was bad? I KNOW! GIVE ME THE CHANCE TO GRATUITOUSLY REPEAT RACIST HATE CRIMES - At least it was just spleen venting, and not, say, throwing pork at a mosque in Edmonton or “nipper tipping” on Lake Simcoe. THINGS COULD BE A LOT WORSE, WONG, AND THEY WILL BE IF YOU DON’T KEEP YOUR LITTLE MOUTH SHUT. And yet Mr. Wong gives us delightful little pensées like this. Speaking of the Hérouxville resolution, he writes, “whiteness becomes guilty of… a kind of racial hubris that positions and privileges whiteness as the superior racial discourse in Western culture.” WHICH IS PREPOSTEROUS. WE ALL KNOW JEWS HAVE THE UPPER HAND (CAN I SAY ‘JEWS’? IS THERE A LESS OFFENSIVE TERM FOR THEM?). He also comes damned close to calling Charest a racist AND OUT OF ALL THE THINGS WONG HAS ALMOST DAMNED SAID, THIS IS DEFINITELY THE DAMNED WORST. I DON’T CARE WHAT CHAREST HAS DONE, DAMNIT: THERE IS NEVER ANY NEED TO COME DAMN CLOSE TO CALLING A WHITE PERSON A RACIST (the Preem, Wong writes, has a “supremacist attitude”), and decides “[t]hat authority in Quebec, as implied by the three party leaders [Charest, PQ's André Boisclair, ADQ's Mario Dumont] is held by white French Canadian population, and will always remain inaccessible to ‘immigrants’.” JESUS, WHAT DO THESE PEOPLE WANT AUTHORITY FOR? ISN’T IT ENOUGH THAT THEY GET TO EXPERIENCE OUT IN THE OPEN NON VIOLENT RACISM? WHAT DO THEY WANT, OUR SOULS?? IT KIND OF MAKES ME PANIC. SO I'M GOING TO RECALL ANY TRIVIAL FACT I CAN. Ah. So Quebec wasn’t the first place in the British empire to elect a Jew to public office, then? IN 1807? THAT COUNTS RIGHT? HOLD ON, IS IT DEROGATORY TO SAY 'A JEW'? I'M KIND OF BABBLING IN PANIC. It isn’t the place where, say, the daughter of first-generation Caribbean immigrants can become a cabinet minister just shy of her 30th birthday? SHE WAS PRACTICALLY A BABY. WOULD A RACIST PLACE ELECT A BABY BLACK CABINET MINISTER? I THINK NOT. Or where an overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly Francophone district elected a former actor from Cameroon? DON'T YOU AGREE THAT THAT IS COMPLETELY COUNTER-INTUITIVE? Or where ELSE CAN I SCRAPE TOGETHER TENUOUS EVIDENCE? I KNOW, according to a 2005 poll,”being a woman, a black person or a homosexual doesn’t constitute a handicap in the eyes of the vast majority of voters”? I BARELY GAVE FOUR EXAMPLES IN THE LAST 200 YEARS. I THINK THAT'S ENOUGH. I see. What a bunch of racists.

#Alan Wong #Canada #Concordia University #Herouxville resolution #Ian Wong #Jean Charest #Martin Patriquin #Quebec #Quebec Bill 101 #Quiet Revolution #frosted windows #public hearings #race bait #racists #reasonable accomodation #quebeccers the new racists

Whitney Houston- The Unofficial Inside Story - By PETER TATCHELL

Tatchell has taken Whitney Houston's death as an opportunity to ‘out’ another black person. It appears that ‘Whitney's REAL tragedy was giving up her greatest love of all - her female partner Robyn Crawford’ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2103164/Whitney-Houstons-REAL-tragedy-giving-female-partner-Robyn-Crawford.html

NOTE:PETEY LOVES ADDING CREATIVELY TO OTHER PEOPLE'S HISTORIES AND BIOGRAPHIES, SO WE THOUGHT WE MIGHT, TOO.

I met Whitney and her female partner at the Reach Out & Touch HIV vigil in London in 1991. Whitney spoke movingly in support of people with HIV, at a time when many other stars kept their distance. Her support was much valued. She advocated the welfare and human rights of people with HIV. It was a commendable stand. I have, in the past, declined to name Whitney’s female partner EVEN THOUGH YOU KNOW HOW I LOVE A GOOD OUTING, AND HAVE FOR A WHILE BEEN FASCINATED IN THE INTIMATE LIVES OF BLACK PEOPLE MOST OF WHOM YOU KNOW ARE ON THE DL OR MSM, I MEAN WSW (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/oct/20/malcolm-x-bisexual-black-history). SEE I AM NOT AS SEXIST AS PEOPLE SAY I AM, AND I DO CARE ABOUT LESBIANS, EVEN WHEN THEY ARE BLACK. MOST of the media DO TOO, AND have since named her PARTNER as Robyn Crawford, SO HERE GOES. WHITNEY’S FEMALE PARTNER WAS NONE OTHER THAN ROBYN CRAWFORD. When I met them, it was obvious they were madly in love. Their intimacy and affection was so sweet and romantic. LESBIANS ARE ADORABLE AND MATE FOR LIFE. They held hands in the back of the car like teenage sweethearts. Clearly more than just friends, BECAUSE WHEN LESBIANS HOLD HANDS IT BASICALLY MEANS THE SAME AS WHEN WE ARE HAVING SEX, AND WOMEN WHO ARE NOT HAVING SEX WITH EACH OTHER NEVER HOLD HANDS, they were a gorgeous couple, EVEN I COULD SEE THAT AND I’M WHITE, I MEAN, AND I’M GAY, and so happy together. To see their love was infectious and uplifting. BLACK PEOPLE, FINALLY UPLIFTED IN MY EYES, AFTER CENTURIES OF TRYING ON THEIR OWN. I WAS CERTAINLY UPLIFTED. I FELT LIKE I WAS WALKING ON AIR. IT WAS AMAZING. Whitney was happiest and at the peak of her career when she was with Robyn. I KNOW THIS BECAUSE WE WERE CLOSE FRIENDS AND TALKED ON THE PHONE EVERY NIGHT ABOUT MATTERS OF THE HEART. AND EVEN IF WE DIDN’T, I KNOW TRUE LOVE BETWEEN BLACK PEOPLE WHEN I SEE IT. Sadly, she suffered BLACK family and BLACK church pressure to end her greatest love of all. She was fearful of the effects that lesbian rumours might have on her family, reputation and career. SHE TOLD ME THIS ON MYSPACE. AND EVEN IF SHE DIDN’T, I KNEW IT ANYWAY BECAUSE I’M A JOURNALIST. KIND OF. WELL I WRITE FOR THE GUARDIAN A LOT. AND WHEN THE GUARDIAN DOESN’T WANT ME I’M HAPPY TO GO TO THE DAILY MAIL GIVEN THEIR GREAT RECORD ON GAY RIGHTS REPORTING. Eventually she succumbed. The result? A surprise marriage to Bobby Brown. The marriage was a disaster. Bad boy Bobby was never her true soul mate. I KNOW THIS BECAUSE SHE TOLD ME ON MSN MESSENGER. Giving up Robyn – they’d been inseparable for years – must have been emotionally traumatic. Whitney’s life started going downhill soon afterwards. Previously wholesome AND AS PURE AS THE DRIVEN SNOW EXCEPT THAT SHE WAS BLACK and clean-living, she went on drink-and-drug binges – evidence of a troubled personal life and much unhappiness. I’M NO PSYCHOLOGIST, PERSONAL FRIEND OF WHITNEY’S OR EXPERT ON ADDICTION, BUT it seems likely that the split with Robyn contributed to her substance abuse and decline. There is a known correlation between denial of one’s sexuality and a propensity to self-destructive behaviour. DAN SAVAGE SAYS SO TOO, AND YOU KNOW THERE’S A LOT OF MONEY IN THAT NOW. Homophobia undoubtedly added to the pressures on Whitney and hastened her demise. Soon after her very sad death, I was quoted as saying that Whitney was happiest when she loved a woman. Some fans accused me of ‘insulting’ and ‘smearing’ her. (SMEARING IS ONE OF MY FAVOURITE WORDS EVER, AS MY FANS AND REGULAR READERS MAY KNOW). BUT ACTUALLY THE MOST INSULTING THING I’VE EVER SAID ABOUT WHITNEY HOUSTON IS THE TITLE OF THIS ARTICLE, IMPLYING THAT HER SUPPOSED BREAK UP FROM HER SUPPOSED SOUL MATE IS MORE TRAGIC THAN HER ACTUAL UNTIMELY DEATH. SORRY FRIENDS AND FAMILY, BUT AN OVERDOSE IS NEVER AS SAD AS WHEN TWO SUPPOSED LESBIANS PART WAYS. But there is nothing shameful about a woman loving a woman. It’s not dirty or sordid and shouldn’t be kept hidden. FORGET ALL THE JOKES ABOUT FISH SMELL AND CARPET MUNCHING YOU HAVE HEARD GAY MEN SAY. PEOPLE WHO DO KEEP IT HIDDEN ARE BLACK. I MEAN CLOSETED. OR IS IT HOMOPHOBIC? SELF-HATING? ANYWAY, DON’T KEEP IT HIDDEN FOLKS, BE PROUD AND WEAR A RAINBOW. I did not out her as lesbian/ bisexual. APART FROM WITH THIS ARTICLE, BUT SHE’S ALREADY DEAD, SO. She semi-outed herself by dedicating her albums to Robyn. NO WOMAN EVER DEDICATES HER ALBUM TO ANOTHER WOMAN UNLESS SHE’S HAVING HAND HOLDING SEX WITH THEM. EXCEPT FOR WHEN SOME FEMALE ARTISTS DEDICATE THEIR ALBUMS TO THEIR MOTHERS. BUT EVEN THEN, YOU GOTTA WONDER, RIGHT? Years ago, she was outed by Bobby’s sister, Tina, and by her former bodyguard, Kevin Ammons. THEY DID IT FIRST FOLKS! Bobby Brown hinted in his autobiography that she married him to dispel lesbian rumours: ‘I believe her agenda was to clean up her image ... The media was accusing her of having a bisexual relationship with her assistant, Robin [sic] Crawford ... that didn’t go too well with her image. In Whitney’s situation, the only solution was to get married ... [to] kill all speculation.’ AND IF ANYONE KNOWS THE TRUTH OF WHITNEY HOUSTON’S HEART, IT’S BOBBY NOT-HOUSTON’S-SOULMATE BROWN. Telling the truth does not besmirch Whitney’s memory. It honours the most important relationship she ever had. I KNOW IT WAS THE MOST IMPORTANT RELATIONSHIP SHE EVER HAD BECAUSE SHE TOLD ME ON FACEBOOK. APOLOGIES TO WHITNEY’S FAMILY MEMBERS – YOU GUYS DIDN’T MAKE THE LIST. BUT DON’T TAKE IT PERSONALLY – LESBIANS ARE OBSESSED WITH ROMANCE AND DENOUNCE ALL OTHER INTERACTIONS AS INSIGNIFICANT AND MEANINGLESS. THE LGBT PSYCHIATRIST WHO’S NOW PART OF MY CAMPAIGN SAYS IT’S CALLED CODEPENDENCE. What’s wrong is ignoring or denying the one love that made her truly happy, NOT OUTING PEOPLE AND BELITTLING THEIR DEATHS. Homophobia contributed to Whitney’s fall. I want to see a more tolerant society where people don’t feel the need to marry – UNLESS IT’S A GAY MARRIAGE - to deflect rumours of homosexuality, and where they are not driven to self-destruction because of their inability to accept and express their love for a person of the same sex AND I ALSO WANT MORE FAMOUS BLACK PEOPLE TO DIE SO I CAN WRITE ABOUT HOW THEY WERE REALLY GAY LIKE I DID WITH MALCOLM X. Achieving this goal would be a fitting tribute to Whitney Houston AND TO MY SAVINGS ACCOUNT: sort code - 8-H 5-E 18-R 15-O account number - 19-S 1-A 22-V 9-I 15-O 21-U 18-R

#Whitney Houston #Peter Tatchell #gay #outing #resurrectionists #Robyn Crawford #black people #sexuality #Bobby Brown #Dan Savage #co-dependence #Malcolm X #The Daily Mail #The Guardian

Uncovered: Blacks are the real racists!

Not yet a week has passed since Gary Dobson and David Norris were convicted of the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence and sentenced to 15 years in prison, but the question on everyone’s lips is, are blacks the real racists? Um well lets put racism in reverse and see if it works....

On January 4th (incidentally the same day the murderers of Stephen Lawrence were sentenced, but more on that never), Diane Abbott, in a tweet to Bim Adewunmi, said that "White people love playing 'divide & rule' We should not play their game”. For legal reasons we should add that she put “#tacticasoldascolonialism” on the end, but we’re going to focus on the first part of the tweet only, because words without spaces in between with hash signs at the beginning are not real sentences.

The nation was shocked that an MP could tweet. And even more shocked that an MP could tweet views that showed such open hostility and prejudice towards white people. Several commentators have observed that any white politician that showed open hostility towards people of colour or ethnic minorities would be sacked on the spot, or even put in prison for incitement to racial hatred, and although Michael Gove, Robert Kilroy-Silk and Nick Griffin are all still wandering around Britain editing Bibles, being racist and enjoying freedom and civilian rights, the fact remains that double standards are rife, but so what?

In a dangerous political climate where white people can go to prison for murders they committed nearly two decades ago whilst black people can become MPs and use social media to talk openly about what white people like to do in their leisure time, many (white) people are asking why Diane Abbott has not been asked to resign. The fact is, ever since political correctness went mad and white people have routinely had their mouths treasury tagged shut and their iPads taken away for saying the word ‘black’, it has become all but illegal to sack black people for doing nothing wrong. Whichever Milliband brother is the leader of the Labour Party cannot put the country back to rights by sacking Diane Abbott – the problem goes far deeper than that.

Some double standard apologists have claimed that the country should be focussing on the death of Stephen Lawrence rather than the tweets of Diane Abbott, but this view has been cleverly debunked by commentators that point out that it is possible for more than one person to be the focus of the nation at one time (although to be fair, Britain does find it hard to focus on more than one black person at a time, which is why the Pop Idol finals are always so fraught). Such arguments are used to derail from the real discussion: what is racism. Racism is racism. It can’t be racist for a white person to say something but fine for a black person to say the equivalent. Everything must be the same for everyone, and even if social and economic circumstances are different, black people can’t get away with saying things that white people would not go to prison for saying. Yes, Gary Dobson and David Norris were racist for murdering Stephen Lawrence, but it is also racist for Diane Abbott to tweet about what white people love (regarding politics, of course – obviously it’s not racist to tweet about Brie and wearing beige).

Personally we don’t wish to even engage with what Diane Abbott was saying about white people loving to divide and conquer, but as social commentators, we find it necessary to address the content of her racist hate speech and the spectacular counter arguments that have come after it.

For readers who are not familiar with the term, divide and conquer refers to a political strategy of breaking up one group with power into two or more groups that have less power and are therefore easier to conquer and rule. This explanation alone shows what a ridiculous statement Abbott was making – how can white people love doing something that only rich white political leaders can actually carry out? There are obvious exceptions like Peter Tatchell, who is actually homeless and sleeps on a mattress on his friend’s floor but still loves to play Divide and Conquer on his iPhone and in real life, and companies that only hire one brown person at a time so they can’t form work factions, and my ex-boyfriend’s brother who orchestrated arguments between me and his wife so that we didn’t gang up on them and realise they were racist and dump them, but these are the exceptions that prove the rule, although there are so many of them they could fill this whole article we must press on. As many white people have pointed out, they are just ordinary white men – how can they possibly divide and conquer anyone when Diane Abbott sends her son to a private school outside her constituency and makes comments about walls? Can you believe she, a black woman sends her son to a private school?! How ridiculous! And then she dares to make comments about politics! Even more ridiculous!!

Furthermore, even if some white people do love to divide and conquer, is it really appropriate to say that all white people, or say that white people, love to divide and conquer? No. White people are not some kind of cohesive group that all love to do the same thing. White people have varied and wide reaching interests, ranging from sky diving to making homemade jam to fascism and everything in between, and they cannot all be summarised in one 134-word tweet. Have we got that clear everyone? Diane Abbott has got it wrong: it is not white people who love playing divide and conquer, it is black people who love playing on Twitter and they should stop right now before they incur actual consequences like being asked by a man who looks like he is 12 years old but is actually leader of the Labour Party to apologise to Great Britain (called Great Britain because of its rise to colonial power in the late sixteenth century, more on this never) for making inappropriate remarks on a social networking site.

Let’s forget the past, the future of our Great Britain is in all our hands and a big shout out to the great Metropolitan Police and courts of Justice who deserve a big multicultural pat on the back for finally realising that white people sometimes, reiterate sometimes, do racist despicable things, it took them 18 years but they got there in the end and did we even notice the time it took with so much great stuff happening in our great country, NO of course not.

#Gary Dobson David Norris #Stephen Lawrence #Diane Abbot #Bim Adequnmi #divide and rule #white people love #Twitter #racism #Milliband brothers #Peter Tatchell #Great Britain

Peter Satchel on Saturday’s anti-English Defence League protest Aka Pink Toilet Paper

Like many other people, I went to last Saturday’s protest in East London first and foremost to gain publicity and oppose the far right English Defence League and to defend the Muslim community against EDL thuggery.

But I also wanted to stand in solidarity with Muslims who oppose far right Islamists because when you want to be islamaphobic, it’s best to try to get at least a few Muslims on your side. These fundamentalists threaten and intimidate the Muslim community; especially fellow Muslims who don’t conform to their harsh, intolerant interpretation of Islam. To varying degrees, both the Islamists and the EDL menace Muslim people.

In addition, I wanted to be visible as a gay man, to demonstrate that East London is not and never will be a “Gay-Free Zone” and to show that most lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people are not anti-Muslim; that there are LGBTs who want to work in solidarity with Muslim people to oppose all prejudice, discrimination and violence.

To these ends, my human rights campaign colleague Ashley McAlister and I joined the anti-EDL protest, carrying double-sided placards which read on one side: “Stop EDL & far right Islamists. No to ALL hate” and on the other side: “Gays & Muslims UNITE! Stop the EDL”. (Wow, I’ve said ‘Muslims’ so much it’s starting to sound weird. You know how like if you say the same word over and over again and eventually it like starts to lose all meaning…)

We got dirty looks from a small number of left-wing and LGBT anti-EDL protesters, some of whom said explicitly that our placards were “insensitive…provocative…inappropriate…divisive” and that I am “racist…fascist…anti-Muslim.” A few of them were probably also upset that our placard only mentioned gays, leaving out lesbians, bisexuals and trans people, but you can’t please everyone.

There was also hostility from a minority of Muslims who we identified easily because they all had brown faces who were part of the anti-EDL demonstration, including attempts to snatch and rip my placard. These fanatics mostly objected to the slogan: “Gays & Muslims UNITE! Stop the EDL”. I was surrounded several times throughout the day by angry Muslim youths who ordered me: “You must remove this placard…You can’t walk here with these words…We don’t allow gays in this area…Gays are not permitted here…We don’t have gays in Tower Hamlets.”

When I suggested that LGBT Muslims must also be defended against the EDL, I was told: “Gays can’t be Muslims…We will never accept them (LGBT Muslims)…They can’t come around here…We won’t allow it,” – a sentiment echoed in our placard ‘gays and Muslims unite’ which also implies that gays Muslims don’t exist and that any connection between gays and Muslims must actually come from non-Muslim gay rights activists who want to reach out to the right kind of Muslims in order to make friends and divide and influence people and conquer.

My response was to engage with these Muslims hotheads and argue against them. Yes, that’s right people – I spoke to real life Muslims! And not on the internet or anything – in London! It’s incredible, isn’t it? Photos to follow. The discussions got very heated; at times even menacing and scary which is an occupational hazard when you’re talking to brown people. There were moments when I thought I was going to be physically attacked. Thankfully, this did not happen, probably because there were police nearby who are always willing to represent the interests of people who have the same kind of skin as me and, more significantly, because several Muslims intervened to defend my right to be there and to express my viewpoint. Some Muslims even thanked me for joining the anti-EDL protest. Once again, I knew they were Muslim because they were brown. Good looking out guys.

In the course of the arguments, I diffused the natural inbuilt hostility of quite a few Muslim critics. I suggested that love and compassion were core Islamic values and that even if Muslims personally disapproved of homosexuality there is nothing in the Qu’ran that sanctions hatred or discrimination against LGBT people. Ha! I know, using their own Holy book against them – I came up with that one all by myself! Now I just have to learn how to pronounce it correctly and I’ll be on fire! Several eventually agreed that homophobia was wrong. Some shook my hand and parted with a more ‘live and let live’ attitude – a big improvement on their initial response. Which just goes to show that with the correct training, Muslims can actually act in a civilised manner. Although they should always be supervised.

This change in attitude as a result of Ashley and I being willing to engage in dialogue was really positive and inspiring. It shows how important and effective such an engagement can be. We need more of it. By more of it I mean more public events at which Ashley and I talk to initially aggressive Muslims and then tame them into civilised beings. Maybe we could make it into a TV show kind of like Super Nanny but with a racial twist? We could call it Super Gay?

Interestingly, there was very little overt, identifiable Muslim hostility to our placard slogan: “Stop EDL & far right Islamists. No to ALL hate.” There were a few nasty, aggressive looks but that’s all. Indeed, several Muslims indicated that they also oppose the Islamist far right. They realise that extremist groups like Islam4UK and Hizb ut-Tahrir, which want to establish a religious dictatorship, threaten the human rights of mainstream Muslims, and they came to these conclusions all by themselves! Bless their cottons. These fundamentalists have a similar bigoted agenda to the EDL and BNP. Yes, that’s right, I did it – I compared Muslim ‘fundamentalists’ to the EDL and the BNP. Yes I’m aware this is a public forum.

Our experience on Saturday is further evidence that we need an East End Gay Pride that goes through the heart of the Muslim community in E1, to engage with the Muslim communities and build mutual understanding. Maybe like that one we almost had earlier this year that may or may not have been set up by members of the EDL, in response to anti LGBT posters put up around the area that may or may not have been created by members of the EDL. Either way I need another event to go to so I can write an article in The Guardian about it.

Interestingly, there were lots of LGBT protesters against the EDL. I knew they were LGBT protestors because they were all singing Judy Garland songs. But I never saw a single one with a gay badge, placard, t-shirt or rainbow flag. It was as if they’d all gone back in the closet. Why? Normally, on other demos, they always proclaim their LGBT identity. How strange. Ashley McAlister and I were the only visibly gay protesters in the entire anti-EDL demonstration. And yes, we did stop every single protestor and body scan them for Western symbols of LGBTness, before you ask.

The people who called for the anti-EDL protest to be called off were mistaken. In the absence of a visible counter-protest, the EDL would have been able to rally unchallenged and claim a victory. It would have sent the wrong signal if the EDL had been permitted to claim any part of East London as its own.

Saturday’s peaceful protest against the EDL was important because it showed that most of our communities are united in solidarity and that we will not be divided by the hate-mongering of the far right. Hopefully the only divisions will be between Muslims we approve of and Muslims we hate. By we I mean me and Ashley.

What too many anti-fascists refuse to acknowledge is that Islamist fundamentalism mirrors the right-wing ideology of the EDL (and the BNP). In fact, the Islamist goals are much more dangerous. They want to establish a theocratic tyranny, ban trade unions and political parties and deny women equal human rights. They endorse hatred and violence against Jewish, Hindu and LGBT people. Muslims who don’t follow their particular brand of Islam would face severe persecution in their Islamist state. These fanatical sects condone terrorism and the suicide bombing of innocent civilians. Not even the BNP and EDL are this extreme. At least, not to me.

The failure of many people on the Left to speak out against Islamist fundamentalism is de facto collusion with extremism and a betrayal of the Muslim majority. As an unofficial spokesperson for the Muslim Majority, I should report that this betrayal is very upsetting. It also creates a political vacuum, which the EDL is seeking to exploit and manipulate. I’m calling it the Dyson effect. Basically, think of people who don’t criticise Islam as your household vacuum cleaner bag, and think of the EDL as one of those attachments for doing rugs or upholstery. Or substitute this analogy for one that makes sense – either way, everyone should hate on Islam more.

Some anti-fascists argue that we should not condemn the Islamists because this will fuel anti-Muslim sentiment. Wrong. Protesting against the fundamentalists and defending mainstream Muslims is actually the most effective way to undermine Islamophobia. We know this because we have been criticising Islam for quite a few years now and Islamophobia is pretty much dead as a result of our hard work. Which is a good thing otherwise the ELD would pose quite a genuine threat to Muslims! But as it stands, the biggest threat to Muslims is other Muslims.

In the absence of a left-wing critique of the Islamist far right, the EDL is able to pose as the sole critic of Islamist extremism and to mount indiscriminate attacks on the whole Muslim community. And yes I did mention earlier that some Muslims oppose the Islamist far right, but they’re not left-wing, they’re Muslims. So they don’t count as critics. What we need is some real white left-wing people to hate Muslims. Well, obviously there are already quite a few, but we need more of them. More and more and more white people hating Muslims. And none of them have to worry about looking racist because the EDL are the real racists so just go for it! Fill your boots.

This silence and inaction by many on the left is objectively (albeit unintentionally) colluding with both fundamentalist fanaticism and anti-Muslim prejudice. That’s right: by not publicly hating Muslims, you’re not only encouraging groups like the EDL to hate Muslims, you’re also colluding with ‘fundamentalist fanaticists’ (read: Muslim we don’t like).

To be credible and effective, opponents of the EDL need to be consistent by also taking a stand against right-wing Islamists. I know this seems weird because the EDL also claim to be taking a stand against right-wing Islamists, but trust me on this one – it’s the only way. Only this way can we offer a principled alternative to the EDL that isolates and targets the extremists without demonising the whole Muslim population. Oh did you notice my use of military language? “Isolate” and “target”? Yeah, I’ve been watching a lot of old war movies. It’s been a fun weekend. Peace out.

#Peter Tatchell #English Defence League #EDL #Islamaphobia #Islamophobia #homophobia #LGBT #Judy Garland #East London #Super Nanny #The Guardian

Kinky Salon London

Dear Kinky Salon Friends,

We’d like to take a moment to “apologise” to anyone who we upset or offended in the presentation of our Spring party and to thank them for providing Kinky Salon London with the opportunity for growth and improvement. Isn’t it great how life furnishes white people with so many opportunities? Thanks guys!

For those members of our community who might be unaware of this, some visitors to our Facebook event page raised objections to aspects of the jungle theme that we originally put forward. The arguments are summarised here. Although only a small number of the people who objected have ever been to a Kinky Salon party (and let’s face it: people of colour who haven’t attended a Kinky Salon party have no worthwhile life experiences and don’t know what they’re talking about when it comes to racism), we take all feedback into consideration and have written to each of our critics personally (with a generic message). We acknowledge that some people found our literary references particularly careless (and we do admit that we can be careless – the other day we put milk in the cupboard instead of the fridge. Imagine!) and that for others a jungle theme itself is uncomfortable. By others we mean the other, as in, people of colour, and by uncomfortable, we mean the kind of feeling you get when you wear trousers that are too tight. In failing to take these perspectives into account, aspects of our original theme were interpreted by some as naive and insensitive to issues of race and imperialism (sorry if this sentence is a little long – it’s the result of an informal contest we held to see who could talk the longest about racism without using the actual word racism). We are grateful to those who have opened our eyes to this. We could have gone to Specsavers but we opted to get this kind of eye care for free, from people of colour.

Kinky Salon is all about the ridiculous, playful and risque. Our party themes always touch on pop culture iconography in a way that may not be to everyone’s taste (and yes, we do think Heart of Darkness and The Jungle Book are part of popular culture. We are sure that the kids are reading them just as often as they are watching Southpark and accessing Twitter), but the aim is always first and foremost to poke fun at ourselves and always secondly and subtextually to enjoy racism in new and interesting ways. Disclaimer: We cannot be sure that we will never make mistakes, nor can we guarantee that no-one will ever be offended. We accept no or only moderate responsibility for any offences caused and no compensation will ever be paid. But we can promise that we never have and never will set out to cause deliberate offence or hurt to people in our community. This promise cannot be exchanged for actual anti racism and cannot be used in conjunction with any of our other empty promises. It is our responsibility as organisers, therefore, to ensure that the signals we send to the outside world leave no room for doubt on our commitment to inclusivity (so it’s basically our responsibility to keep up our reputation. We’re more interested in our brand’s name than we are interested in not making people of colour experience our racism).

Accordingly we have decided to cancel (well, we actually decided not to cancel because it’s such a hassle once people have bought tickets and now that we’ve got the venue sorted out and everything… well, you know how it is. So we did a name-change instead.) the jungle themed party and hold a party with a new theme and name – “ECO-SEXUAL: A Nature-ists’ Paradise” – on the same night (you might notice that this theme isn’t as dissimilar to the original jungle theme as, for example, an IT themed night, or a Winchester themed night. The truth is, three of us have purchased matching tree costumes and they were pretty expensive. They are not returnable and we can’t sell them on Gumtree). Ticketholders have already been informed of this change, with a fresh set of dressup inspirations, by email. Even though these inspirations are super fresh, they’re still kind of offensive, so they’re not included here.

The Kinky Salon London crew reflects its wider community in that we are not of one sexuality, nor one colour, gender or political standpoint. As a result it has taken us a little time to discuss and come up with a solution that we can all agree on. Are you wondering how having more than one sexuality or gender present makes it difficult to apologise for racism promptly? We weren’t sure either, but we put it in anyway – we think it makes us look more diverse and less offensive. We thank you for your patience (what we mean is we criticised people of colour who we thought were being impatient and lectured them on how we’re all volunteers [although to be fair it’s not like the people of colour objecting are getting paid by the Anti Racist Council of London or anything] and how it takes time to make decisions about what to do about racist events that we’ve organised. Even though they collectively came up with a solution pretty quickly. But their solution was to cancel the party altogether, and we’ve already talked about what a hassle that would have been) and invite anyone who wants to participate in the work-in-progress that is Kinky Salon to get on board. In other words, even though we are clearly not capable of planning parties that are not completely racist, we have no intention of stepping down. If you have a problem with that, come and work for us for free.

Yours,

The Kinky Salon London Crew

The Spring Event Debate: Arguments in Full (when we say full we really mean we have butchered the very clear arguments made by people of colour)

With reference to our Spring 2011 event at the statement published here we would like to summarise some of the arguments made against the theme that was originally suggested.

Please note that we are not directly quoting from anyone and instead the lines below badly paraphrase arguments that were stated in alternative terms by those who presented objections.

Objections include:

- That putting on a jungle-themed party is inherently racist and cannot be staged without inevitably drawing upon racial stereotypes, even if they are not specifically mentioned. Sorry, did you guys get that bit? That racial stereotypes weren’t specifically mentioned? Not specifically? Yeah, you got that bit? That last bit in the sentence? About the racial stereotypes? About us not being specific about the racial stereotypes? You all got that bit? Good. Now please put us in a different category to the really bad racists, the ones that would specifically mention racial stereotypes. Oh by the way, did you notice how we keep saying ‘racial stereotypes’ instead of ‘racist stereotypes’? It’s not a typo.

- That putting on a jungle-themed party shows racial naivety and a lack of consideration to the jungle’s historical connections to racism and imperialism. It’s the jungles historical connections to racism that are at fault. In fact, it’s all the jungle’s fault. Not ours. The jungle’s. Fucking racist jungle.

- That we had not sufficiently addressed the way white supremacy is often tied to our ideas about sexuality. see: http://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/jezebel/

In fact, we had not addressed this issue at all! As you can see from our ‘apology’, we don’t intend to either! Isn’t that hilarious??

- That the connection of a party that pertains to be sex-positive to tribal costumes, apes and so on, carries with it a subtext of racism and imperialism, and therefore fails to be sex-positive for everyone, although it is sex positive for white people, and that is something that makes us really happy. That’s why we’re carrying on organising parties. It makes us so fucking happy.

- That the way we presented this particular jungle-themed party, with a title parodying The Jungle Book, drew upon a text that is often interpreted as imperialist and racist. See: http://movies.dowse.com/junglebook_article.html

Just for clarification, when Kinky Salon London use the term ‘parody’ or ‘subvert’ or ‘play with’, you can expect to see themes reproduced exactly as offensively as they were first displayed in their original context. What makes it parody is the fact that we’re so fucking kinky and above everyone else. If anyone else did it, it would, of course, be extremely oppressive.

- That the dress-up suggestions, referencing books/films like Heart of Darkness, The African Queen, and Tarzan drew upon texts containing narratives that are often interpreted as racist – see Wikipedia. Haha, if only we’d seen Wikipedia ourselves, right? Ha! Actually we had plenty of opportunity to rethink our racist party theme. It was drawn to our attention way before tickets were sold and guests were invited. We decided to go ahead with it even though people said it was racist. That’s just the kind of forward thinking, go-ahead people we are.

- That the notion of a party at which some white guests might choose to wear costumes that reference empire or colonialism demonstrates considerable insensitivity to Britain’s history of racism and imperialism. We used the term ‘insensitivity’ here because we’re hoping it will give rise to accusations of ‘oversensitivity’ aimed at people of colour. (For obvious reasons, we try to use the word ‘racist’ as little as possible.)

- That the notion of a party in which some guests regardless of race might choose to wear costumes that draw upon pop culture tropes of ethnic minorities represents cultural appropriation. Again with the euphemisms. For anyone not familiar with whiteyspeak, ‘represents cultural appropriation’ means ‘is racist’.

- That parody, when it references dominant, historical narratives that stereotype race, often alienates and marginalises people of colour. Actually, parody, when it references dominant, historical narratives that stereotype race, always alienates and marginalises people of colour, but ‘often’ just makes us sound so much less racist. Doesn’t it? We think so. Oh, and remember what we said earlier about parody? Don’t waste your time looking for the things that make it parody instead of old school racism – there are no differentiating features. It’s just that whilst Conrad is long dead, we’re alive and kinky, giving us leave to reproduce his racism in the name of parody.

- That some individuals have experienced racial slurs connected to the tropes we made use of in our event text, and found our use of them insensitive and hurtful. Do you like how we’ve made these individuals sound all kind of infantile and childlike with our use of the terms ‘insensitive’ and ‘hurtful’? Poor babies. Let’s pity them and infantalise them and objectify them and exoticise them and cry for them and cry over them and use them as objects in our racist sexual fantasies. Forever.

- That Kinky Salon is an inclusive space and we had failed, on this occasion, to give full consideration to our commitment to inclusivity. We decided to add ‘on this occasion’ so people can give us props for having hosted parties that were not completely racist in the past. Credit where credit’s due and all that. We’re so pleased with ourselves that we’re going to leave the ‘arguments in full’ there, even though we soooo didn’t get through them all, and go and sit in what we call a KSL back patting circle (we basically all sit in a circle and pat each other and ourselves on the back and talk about how great we are.). Peace out.

#Kinky Salon London #racist #racism #Jungle Book #Heart of Darkness #popular culture

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