... @stuffedeggplants - Tumblr Blog

buddhistmusings-deactivated2025

The idea that all we hear about life in China being Sinophobic propaganda is genuinely so insulting - most of all to Chinese people, who are living under an authoritarian regime, who's traditional culture was forcibly suppressed, and who are unable to speak freely.

I've spoken to people, personally, who have been DEEPLY harmed by the CCP. Stop spreading authoritarian propaganda. Seriously.

You know what Sinophobia looks like? Ignoring the human rights abuses Chinese people face just to dunk on Americans. Being more than comfortable with censorship preventing honest discussion about the occupation of Tibet, the domineering attitude towards Taiwan (which didn't suppress traditional Chinese culture, by the way), or the active extermination of the Uigher people.

Anyways Free Tibet. And Hong Kong. Uighers deserve to live and practice their culture. Taiwan deserves independence. Forced abortion is wrong. Protesters shouldn't be hosed into the gutter. Privacy is a right. And Chinese people deserve better then China is giving them.

Stop eating up the propaganda.

stuffedeggplants

Similarly, videos showing people having fun, enjoying themselves, doing cool things, or generally being normal are not revealing ""suppressed"" information that ""they"" don't want you to know if you live in a country with basically free access to information and a diversity of media sources. People are still people no matter where they live, and will still try to have fun, enjoy themselves, do cool things, and be normal even if they live under certified Not Great ™️ governments engaged in all manner of oppressive nonsense that the average person has little to no say in. It may be that there is a psychological stage of development that people need to go through where they realize that Others are Like Them in certain fundamental ways, but I promise you that this same revelation is possible--even for those in "homogenous" areas--through cultural materials like literature, music, and art, and through an overwhelming amount of internet content like Tumblr where people from a dozen different countries can freak out together over their love for the same shows and hobbies.

Another thing you can find on Tumblr is years' worth of posts sharing negative things from different countries/about different governments--especially their own governments and countries--many of which are bitingly critical of those countries, sometimes even crossing over into full-throated bigotry against people who live there or whose families come from there. That sort of content on apps like TikTok does not exist in the same way it does on sites like Tumblr; that is for a reason. Certain types of content are boosted and promoted on TikTok over others for a reason.

My post is not about the people of China. If you ever find yourself in an environment where all the information you're getting about an issue dehumanizes and demonizes another group of people, whether that's based on ethnicity, religion, simply where they were born, etc., you need to seriously ask yourself whether you're getting an honest, nuanced picture of what's going on, and what the motivations of a person who intentionally dehumanizes and demonizes others might be.

stuffedeggplants

Never going to forget how many people on the English internet were mocking matcha as an ingredient in desserts or whatever at the same time that Japanese social media posts that broke containment showed endless permutations of matcha in everything too.

stuffedeggplants

Now I have actually been to Japan and it has only reinforced how ridiculous all those English internet pearl-clutchers were over non-Japanese people adding matcha to foods rather than strictly consuming it at tea ceremonies or whatever. Japanese people literally do the exact same thing, matcha-flavored things and the dreaded "matcha latte" are available everywhere.

I now even have a gachapon of a plump rabbit holding matcha.

#I swear these fools were getting all their information off Wikipedia or something #Even the most CURSORY research reveals that Japanese people have been adding matcha to things a hundred years #before any of these critics were even born #I might sound oddly upset about this but it's part of my broader frustration with ignorant people #making claims about cultures they have NOTHING to do with and know essentially nothing about other than the fact that they exist #Oh you've also heard about this culture and one specific thing they have congratulations bro I'm sure that knowledge #implicitly bestows upon you the equivalent learning of a lifetime scholar of such matters from within the culture itself

I was only in Japan for two weeks so it's not like I'm a sociological expert on any of this, but after being there and thinking about some of the friends I grew up with, I'm now 85% sure that the stereotype that "Asian women are submissive" is almost entirely due to foreign men arriving with zero understanding of the cultural expectations for how you should behave in public when interacting with other adults in countries like Japan.

People in customer service roles there were very gracious and polite to me, but I understood that to be part of their job and probably also a result of the cultural expectations they have there for how you should treat random strangers so that daily interactions can mostly run pretty smoothly regardless of everyone's actual personal opinions and emotional states at the moment. I never thought that their behavior was reflective of their actual thoughts about me as a customer or whether they "liked me" or anything about their personality and how they would interact with, say, their sister or boyfriend or their best friend of ten years. Thinking that Japanese women are "submissive" because all the waitresses were nice to you is like applying "she looked at me bro, she totally wants me"-tier logic to all the women in an entire country.

#This could be a separate post but IMO this is also part of why people from different culture think others are 'fake' or something #because of differences in how you treat strangers and what sort of information and interactions are considered normal l to share #It's incredibly obnoxious when someone from a culture with one perspective on this finds a country with a very different perspective #to be completely 'fake' and full of 'fake people'#They're not fucking fake when they're operating within their own cultural expectations which YOU are blind to and not a part of #Being fake requires intentional deception #You being an outsider have little insight into the cultural standards/expectations of communication for them #so what to them is implicitly understood and completely expected is confusing to you because you do not share their baseline #So you misunderstand it and think people are being 'fake' with you and each other when really you're just an outsider #who does not understand what's going on #and you aren't even aware of it #It's fine to have preferences according to what you grew up with or how your personality naturally is #But it's wrong to judge them as 'fake' even if you don't like their communication style #The analysis is incorrect even if you are entitled to your opinion of not liking it #And it's not even like you can't have real frustrations with each cultural style even if you live in it #I'm sure people on one end of the spectrum sometimes wish they could be more open while others on the opposite #feel that it might sometimes be better if people restrained themselves and masked some of their actual thoughts and feelings at times #Japan #Culture

hwylish

I've gone through so much media (video games, movies, etc.) inspired by Tokyo that actually being in Tokyo for the first time is giving me this strange sense of something a bit like deja vu but not quite.

#Like there's another layer of reality over and beyond the actual layer of the city but that layer doesn't exactly exist physically #It's entirely in your imagination #diary post

arte-artem-artibus

Herbert Bayer - Chromatic intersection, 1966, acrylic on canvas, 101 x 101 cm

fishbphotography

Fingies

Bau, Sarawak, Malaysia

heartpeacenquiet

enki2

redstonedust

i guess DNI lists do work in the sense that sometimes i see a user with a DNI full of so many crazy specific discourse topics and opinions that i immediately think "this person is extremely exhausting to be around and/or fourteen years old" and lose all desire to follow them. so like. it did its job. in a way.

homochadensistm

The textual version of poisonous frogs with batshit crazy colors

victoriantomodern

Coptic Egyptian tapestry with a shepherd milking a goat, late 5th to 6th century, linen and wool in tapestry weave, Saint Louis Art Museum (JSTOR)

dragon-in-a-fez

the ashtrays in airplane bathrooms are a fascinating harm reduction metaphor. yes it's illegal as hell to smoke in there. yes there's a smoke detector that will snitch on you the second you light up. so why is there an ashtray? because if there weren't, your single momentary dumbass crime could kill 300 people. it is fucking vital that if someone does have a lit cigarette on a plane, they have a place to safely put it out.