#caste freedom

[blackoutlandish]

friendly reminder that if you try to get someone in trouble for ooci then you’re an asshole

[edit: MURDER IS BAD]

[strawberry-poison-frog]

I get why you've hate blues, but that caste freedom song could have used an acknowledgement that there are blue children who are hurt by having to be blue too. The blue kids aren't the ones that hurt y'all. I really liked what you did with the orange kid- acknowledging both that she's being hurt by having to be orange, and that forcing her into an orange job she's not suited for will involve her hurting other people. That's how you talk about systems that create dangerous authority figures.

Hey, thank you for the thoughtful response.  

I don’t ‘hate blues’.  I’m opposed to castes generally, and criticisms of the caste system are often hard to express and worse to translate.   A lot of arguments get started when “I don’t think the blue caste-as a set of laws-should exist!” gets misread as “I don’t think the blue caste-as a set of Amentans-should exist!”  I want to see other states follow us in abolishing caste-related restrictions, I don’t want to unleash violence on any caste in particular.

And looking back at the song, I actually thought that it did?  The blue child is getting hurt. The blue child is arbitrarily restrained, and being blind and deaf to important things going on around them-well, that’s clearly not good for them. The caste system does hurt everyone (even if it doesn’t hurt everyone equally).  But it’s entirely possible I failed to communicate what I meant.   

(I’m looking at the date I wrote it and wondering “alright, when was that, what country was doing something horrible to their reds that week.”)

And thank you for the compliment!  I think the orange verse may have worked better just because I was writing from more experience. 

[imperialtrellis]

Someone, apparently: did you know that some greens are marrying other greens? This is amazing news and not what happens a majority of the time and what you’ll see in most wedding pictures with greens and in couples with greens walking around and in the media and in fiction and...

I mean, this is like if I said ‘blues should be represented in government decision making!’ I mean, yeah, because everyone should be, but they’re the ones who actually are so.

ETA: ‘oh and while I’m at it why don't I weird-passive-aggressively insult people a lot, in case it wasn’t clear why I was actually making this.’

{context}

[thoughtfulphlox]

I think it’s really unfortunate that the people who talk about red stuff in a certain way call themselves pro “red rights.” It feels like they’re claiming victory in the thing being disputed, like their enemies are against reds having whatever rights they’re entitled to. Of course, in actuality people just disagree about what rights reds have. To give an absurd example, if you think that reds have the right to commit murder, you aren’t defending red rights, you’re just claiming a right that doesn’t exist. The whole point of red political discourse to have a reasonable discussion about how rights work for these people, and claiming that you’re pro red rights is as condescending as claiming you’re pro being right. This is a similar problem for the caste freedom buffs. It’s hard to convince people that castes should mean less, so why not just imply that people who disagree with you hate freedom? I didn’t think I’d ever say this, but the caste abolitionists are doing it right here. At list an abi isn’t trying to stack the deck with their own name.

[blackoutlandish]

And of course the first casteless country would be founded by the people who both (1) have been more badly wronged by the caste system than anyone else, and (2) have been allowed a greater measure of freedom with respect to caste than anyone else.

[blackoutlandish]

i’m glad they’re doing cleaning but it makes me so angry sometimes that r*ds get the freedom we should all have before anybody else

R*ds aren’t getting caste freedom, ex-r*ds are.

The government is (rightly) cautious about trying new things. Cleaning presents an unusual opportunity to see how people handle entering the adult workforce without having been raised as a member of a caste, so it makes sense that this would become a pilot program.

(Caste freedom of course still falls short of caste abolitionism, but it’s still a heartening step in the right direction.)

[imperialtrellis]

I don’t understand why people feel the need to try to ‘support’ opinions that are already accepted by most people with things that are just blatantly false.

Like - ok, you hate reds. Most people hate reds! (Which like, is fucking awful, but it’s also the case). Why do you need to try to argue complete bs for the position?

It’s like if I said ‘we should not add flexibility to the caste system because having the right hair color stimulates neurons in your brain to make you better at your job’. Like - what?

[imperialtrellis]

So I have a friend who doesn’t like board games. Often they’re actively sucky for her, at very best it’s a somewhat draining way to spend time that she could spend doing something she actually liked.

My friend also spent years playing board games. This isn’t because she liked them - she didn’t. It’s just, everyone would go play board games, and she experienced that as just a thing that’s how that is, so she went and did it too. And it took her years to notice that actually she didn’t like to and would prefer not to.

Imagining instead if she lived among people where some people go to play board games, and others don't like board games or like other things better so during the same time they read books/knit/etc. I strongly suspect that under that circumstance she would have figured out a lot faster that she doesn’t like board games and would prefer not to play them.

My non-board-game-related point here is: people often talk about intercaste kids being unsuited to their caste, having trouble with it, etc, in a way that makes it feel like this is something particular about intercaste kids.

I don’t think this is the case*. I think that what actually happens is that not fitting into their determined caste is more legible {that’s not the word, what’s the word} for intercaste kids, both externally (society keeps talking about it) and internally (as in the board games thing) - intercaste kids are more likely to know that particular things are things that can be different, what some alternatives are, to be exposed to that, etc. I think there are plenty intracaste children who are in my friend’s position - having this source of unhappiness about which they don’t consciously notice what it is, maybe don’t consciously notice in general - but it’s there. 

(*I’m perfectly willing to accept that the ratios might be higher, but I think this is more than offset by the legibility aspect in terms of experiences).

(Obviously I think the way to deal with this is caste freedom, but even if you don’t, the point stands.)