#false allies

[hero-israel]

i'm sure this has been said thousands of times and far more eloquently and in a more educated way than i can, but seeing all this fallout just makes me think that many people from other countries wouldn't keep interfering and loudly shouting their opinions (especially hate), is one of the major things making things worse.

i know there are people who legitimately seek peace and do work towards it, but that seems like such a tiny minority, drowned out by hateful people gleeful to dehumanize. it feels so disturbing in ways i can't even put into words, how people seem to be treating this like sport teams or something. all when they will never be affected by the human toll of the actions or their rhetoric.

"allies" for EITHER israel or palestine (especially westerners) seem to do them and the cause they claim to support, the most harm.

Wars end when the loser stops fighting.

The Palestinians lost their war a long time ago and nothing this week changes that. If anything, they are farther away from any of their ostensible goals than ever. (They are succeeding in the goals of killing Jews and leftwashing fascism and genocidal antisemitism worldwide).

But millions of people worldwide keep encouraging the Confederate Lost Cause delusion that Palestinians are just about to win! That if they just keep fighting one more day, take one more F-16 hit, nailbomb one more pizzeria, that will reverse the entire 20th century. These "allies" are nothing but useful idiots for death.

Wise Palestinians recognize how opportunistic and false their "supporters" are. Wise outside observers recognize how doomed their mission is. Other Arab leaders recognize it as well - they just can't say it publicly.

As I kept saying for years, all of this could have been solved with a handshake and a signature, and anyone who truly cared about the interests of Palestinians should have been urging them to do exactly that. Get SOMETHING for yourselves. As a Jew, Yasir Arafat's "Plan of Phases" could have worked. Agree to ANYTHING with Israel, sign off on ANY vestige of statehood, say it's enough - get sovereignty in Gaza and some of the West Bank - then wait 10 years and say it's not enough anymore, say you want more adjoining territory, you want what's next door, you want an airport, you want you want you want, and evil Israel is blocking you from it. Israel would have been left pointing at a piece of paper like Ned Stark. There is really no such thing as a "final status agreement," borders are the most social-constructy things in the history of the universe, and every divorce begins with an "I'll love you forever."

But that doesn't involve killing enough Jews right now.

I like to think of myself as a politically astute person. I've successfully anticipated things enough, particularly regarding people who are so transparent in their behavior and desires and skill levels. I can absolutely see Israel coming through this - worse for wear but recognizable, still fulfilling its mission as a Jewish home, now with some more depressing memorials. But I can't make any confident predictions of the future for the Palestinians right now.

[hero-israel]

I’m Afro-Indigenous as well as a mix of other things including NA Jewish and Palestinian. So I have a somewhat personal anecdote that could explain a little more into why Palestinian-Americans (imo MOST, not just some) are so unwilling to recognize indigenous American sovereignty and the (still ongoing) colonialism of our land.

The not-so-short answer is: they just don’t want to take accountability for their own actions and engagement in settler-colonialism, and they realize how hypocritical they sound when they screech at Jews being settled-colonizers while simultaneously doing the same thing. Sometimes they’ll try to defend this by saying they get a pass because the only reason they are on this land is because the evil Jews kicked them out. But that quickly falls apart when you remember that 1) majority of them are BORN Americans and not refugees (despite them claiming so), and 2) even if their parents or grandparents were actual refugees, being a refugee or fleeing persecution doesn’t stop you from being a settler-colonizer (this coming from their own logic that they use against Jews escaping persecution in Arab countries and after the Holocaust btw). So they are able to ignore their hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance by saying ‘we’ll colonization is done, so that means we aren’t hypocrites for willingly engaging in the same type of oppression we claim to be against!” and then they turn around a buy a house on indigenous native land while doing nothing to show solidarity to Native Americans other than to appropriate our Land Back movement while doing nothing to help us… get our land back. Im thanking I’ve met some Palestinians who are actually active in supporting Native sovereignty and have done tons of work to support Land Back, but the majority of Palestinians do not, whether they are leftist, liberals, islamists or communists.

And yes, many Jews are also not supporting Natives either. And that’s a problem. But Jews also don’t make a habit of saying people should be killed for being settler-colonists while simultaneously being one themselves. And their is much more similarities between Native American history, oppression and goals of sovereignty than Palestinian ones (despite what many claim). NTM the rhetoric Oalestinians use literally being the same rhetoric used to harm Natives. One off the top of my head is “the Jews / Natives were all died off/were expelled so long ago so it’s okay for us to keep their lands” which is super common and is literally the same rhetoric behind why the US considers multiple tribes extinct despite living people being apart of them, and why most Palestinians still refuse to even accept the fact that Jews still continued living in Israel and Judah even after they were expelled and colonized, just as a minority.

This is also where you get another one, the “they were colonized/expelled too long ago for it to matter today and others moved into the land so it’ll be unfair if we give it back to them (despite unjustly settling on and taking it in the first place)” which is one of the biggest reasonings anti-Indigenous people use to defend their opinion that Natives shouldn’t have sovereignty.

Anyway, the whole point is that they are essentially hypocrites and anti-Indigenous. They may use indigeneity politics to defend themselves, but that’s all they care about. I gave up trying to have any kind of support from the Palestinian movement here in the US when I went to a activist organization/meeting and had many of them say I was a zionist (before I even was one) for simply saying it’s not right of them to ignore Indigenous Americans while appropriating a movement (Land Back) created by us.

It actually hurts me a lot that they’re like this. I grew up closest to my moms side, which is the Afro-Indigenous and Palestinian side. It was even until last year when I began reconnecting to my Jewish family and ancestry (my dad was North African Jewish and Bengali-British) since it came from my dad and he died when I was young, so I had no one to teach me about it. So I grew up around Palestinians, so it’s really weird to be disconnected from that side and community now. But I can’t stand the anti-indigeneity and hypocrisy. I do the same with Jews and non-Natives and non-Blacks too, so I’m not a hypocrite, but thankfully it hasn’t happened that much in the Jewish community for me to fully disconnect myself. I literally went to a high school created by Jewish people (literally majority of the faculty were Jewish and the people behind the creation of it were all Jewish iirc) to teach social justice, and for the full four years they included Native American focused curriculum and took us to protests, powwows, indigenous activist groups and so on. So yea they’re much better at this whole solidarity thing 🤷🏾‍♀️

Thank you for that very detailed and personal insight. I am sorry that you saw firsthand what poor "allies" so many Palestiners tend to be, as they relentlessly redirect all attention from other causes (i.e. immigration, police brutality, climate change, Anne Frank...) to themselves.

[rapeculturerealities]

Joss Whedon was never a feminist

Joss Whedon’s ex-wife, Kai Cole, wrote a gutting letter allegingthat Whedon spent two decades lying to her about multiple affairs and using his self-purported feminism as a shield against criticism and scrutiny. Like many women I’ve spoken to, I was sad, but not shocked—maybe a little embarrassed I hadn’t looked more closely at some very clear problems in his work. I love Buffy and Firefly and Dr. Horrible in particular, and I love many of the women characters on Whedon’s shows and what they stand for. I have also been outspoken about the utter bullshit that is Angel’s moment of true happiness being a goddamn orgasm—pleasure, fine, but happiness?—which is to say I’m at least occasionally clear-eyed about Whedon’s work. I’ve been critical, but not nearly as critical as others, like the women of color who have repeatedly pointed out that in Buffy, the first slayer is a black woman depicted as a savage, and her powers are forced upon her by a group of white men against her consent. I am also pretty confident that while straight white men can be great allies in toppling the patriarchy, they will never be the Buffy leading the battle. So why have so few white geek-feminists pried open the cracks in Whedon’s work?

Cole says that Whedon wrote to her:

When I was running Buffy, I was surrounded by beautiful, needy, aggressive young women. It felt like I had a disease, like something from a Greek myth. Suddenly I am a powerful producer and the world is laid out at my feet and I can’t touch it.

“Beautiful, needy, aggressive young women” are the words of a predator, not a feminist. “It felt like I had a disease, like something from a Greek myth” is just a more poetic way of saying “I couldn’t keep it in my pants.” “The world” isn’t yours for the taking. None of these are words you say if you believe that women are equal, and that we have the right to bodily autonomy, and that we are not things for you to consume and play with. (Hello, Dollhouse.) Feminism isn’t a brand, and it’s not something you can wield to deflect criticism.

[rapeculturerealities]

The Problem With Morgan Spurlock’s #MeToo Mea Culpa

The documentarian released a long statement about his past sexual behaviors, and there are several things about it that just don’t sit right.

Last week, John Oliver offered a riveting, uncomfortable example of how to confront other men about their past behavior toward women. Now, Morgan Spurlock has confronted himself about his past behavior toward women–and it’s making me uncomfortable for different reasons.

The documentarian most famous for Super Size Me has just released a long, purportedly unprompted statement in which he admits that he is part of the #MeToo problem. It’s an oddly emotionless account of past infidelities, the settling of a sexual harassment lawsuit, and an encounter from his college days that was, according to the (unnamed) woman involved, rape. Spurlock claims that all of the survivors coming forward in recent weeks moved him to reflect on his own behavior and to blow the whistle on himself so that he may lead by example.

That’s an admirable goal. Self-reflection is indeed something every man should be participating in right now. But Spurlock’s statement reads much more like someone looking to cover his own ass.

#MeToo is meant to refer to the victims of sexual misconduct, but it could also refer to the perpetrators. If most men did an inventory of all of their past behaviors–exploring whether they’ve ever turned a “no” into a “yes” through manipulative persuasion, for instance–they would likely discover that #TheyToo have been part of the problem. It is a wrenching thing to realize, and it’s probably buried beneath several dingy layers of denial. What this kind of introspection dredges to the surface should inspire men to make changes and amends. In Spurlock’s case, it seems to have inspired him to go public. But why?

These are the questions I’m asking about Morgan Spurlock right now. Why is he telling this story at this moment? Why isn’t somebody else? Spurlock’s mea culpa seems designed to make himself feel better about what he’s done, not the people he’s done them to. He’s test-driving potential excuses for his behavior, all while congratulating himself for having the “courage” to do so. By offering his confession and attempted absolution in this particular way, Spurlock seems to be classifying his past actions as “definitely not that bad.” If they were that bad, after all, would he dare broadcast them to the entire world? But for the people he hurt, his actions likely did, in fact, feel that bad. (We don’t know; we haven’t heard from them.)

The woman involved in the college incident–which Spurlock describes as a one-night stand and she described as a rape–clearly experienced something altogether different than what he did. He tries to paint an innocuous picture of that night, all while including the crucial information that she said—twice—that she did not want to have sex with him. His description of the encounter makes it clear that there’s more to the story. Telling it at all feels like more of a pre-emptive strike than a regretful survey of the damage he’s done.

“I am part of the problem. We all are,” he writes. “But I am also part of the solution. By recognizing and openly admitting what I’ve done to further this terrible situation, I hope to empower the change within myself. We should all find the courage to admit we’re at fault.”

Spurlock is patting himself on the back a little too hard in his statement. He’s trying to have it both ways: admit he’s been a shit, while simultaneously submitting himself for consideration in the Good Guy Awards. It’s image rehabilitation disguised as a wrecking ball. Could it also be tactical? Could he be trying to get ahead of some news about him that’s about to come out?

[rapeculturerealities]

The Problem With Our "Good" Men

To thrive at work, women need to trust their colleagues. This week proves we can't.

You can’t trust a man more just because he advertises himself as “progressive.” No matter how good his tweets or how pure his motives seem, each and every one of us is raised under patriarchal rules and therefore conditioned to see women as disposable or a threat or both. Some people will continue to insist that men on the left can’t “really” be harassers, or that the left’s monsters are less monstrous than the right’s. Those people will continue to protect so-called progressive men, despite the rumors of their predatory behavior — because those men do good work otherwise, because admitting the truth would make progressives look bad, because they wish it weren’t true. But when editors of feminist blogs are e-mailing Milo Yiannopolous to fuck up the lives of their professional rivals, it’s pretty clear that the barrier between “our” side and “their” side is permeable at best.

Trust is important. No one wants to fear her male colleagues, or feel unable to accept or believe their friendship. No one can do her best work if she’s scared to be in a room alone with her boss or worried her convictions (or, just the fact that she’s a woman with an opinion) will make her vulnerable to harassment. But if we are ever going to have trust, progressive men — the good ones — need to earn it. The bad ones only succeed because, tacitly or explicitly, other men in positions of power decide it’s fine to keep their sexist behavior secret. If “progressive” men want to earn the honorific, it’s up to them to speak up about harassment in their communities. Without the private email listservs, without the secret DMs and text chains, we’ll still have Breitbart, but these men will have fewer places to hide.

[johnthestitcher]

Yeah. Be sure to watch closely today as a lot of businesses that proclaimed 'PRIDE MONTH' suddenly remove ALL traces of anything rainbowed and suddenly stop playing at being a Gay Ally and go back to business as usual now that they got your gay dollars in their pocket. Support only businesses that support gay people 24/7/365. If you are not WITH us - then you are AGAINST us. PRIDE Forever!

[johnthestitcher]

If this is what happens in your town on July 1 - they were never your ally.

[theflyingrhubarb]

When in one week your depressed, chronically exausted ass get:

-monday: having to work 1/2h sooner

-thursday: 1h15 sooner, got homophobic comments for coworkers

-wenesday: 1/2h sooner et 1h later, got forced co both as gay and as trans, got to deal with "you know I'm open minded you SHOULD have told us before !! It's the proof you don't trust us and you hate yourself #hurtfeeling" transphobic shits