#usa-centric

[lionwoman]

It is so easy to recognize when an american person writes a fanfic. This is a continuation of my other "eggs and bacon in Japan" rant. It is... It is not that hard to do research for your fic when it's not in the UUSS... (Been reading a lot of fanfics lately)

[myshitnothingtoseehere]

This site/app is so USA-centric is so fucking annoying. The users are mostly from the USA cause Tumblr is hell and the trending topics are always mostly about USA politics. “Memorial Day” and shit 🙃. Just wish I could see what is trending in my county and connect with the people in my country and not with the gringos.

[360degreesasthecrowflies]

Another disparity that the USA fails to (or refuses to) recognize is the way other cultures fight for equality and recognition, as cultural discrimination and inequality tends to differ. I’m mainly using Japan as an example here since the example is stark. In the USA, the issue is the objectification and over-sexualization of women by men, so American feminism has taken a neo-puritian stance, protesting the ‘male gaze’ and repressing advertising or design that over-sexualizes the female body. Although this neo-puritan movement has gotten so aggressive they’ve attempted to censor and repress women for expressing their own sexual freedom as well… In Japan, the issue is the other way around; the government has been aggressively puritan, repressing and censoring sexual expression and freedom across the board. They crack down hard on men, but even harder on women. So how do the people respond? By unleashing the most of their sexual freedom short of streaking in protest, basically. No really, one woman 3D-prints a canoe seat out of a model of her vagina and takes it for a ride as a feminist protest. (The infamous anime Shimoneta is also a commentary on this.) You can see how this can uh… really put Japanese feminists at odds with American ones. This also shows through in their belief in which anime support or oppose feminism; Madoka Magica is seen by Americans as ‘feminist’ because the characters dress modestly and are powerful, but Japanese feminists criticize the show because it exhibits the old-fashioned and conservative mentality that women are disposable and should sacrifice themselves for the good of others.

Excerpted from this post by explaining-social-justice, discussing Americentrism (over-focus on the USA and assuming that its characteristics and cultural make-up are universal, or very similar in other places) with regard to feminism, sexism, and racism (Sept. 2017)

[idhren]

To be clear, the provision proposed by the Commerce Department could have some impact on fandom activities. If it were to become law it could affect, for example, live group viewings of TV shows or films through unlicensed sites. It could also potentially affect whether certain websites implemented screening mechanisms that didn't allow for fair use, though other aspects of copyright law are likely to be much more important than a change in criminal penalties. But even if the proposed law were enacted, it wouldn't have any direct impact on transformative fanworks like those hosted by the AO3. Such works aren't, and wouldn't become, actionable infringement because “fair use [including in a transformative work] is a lawful use of copyright.”

[idhren]

Initiated by the Global Development and Environment Institute, Tufts University (GDAE) and the Washington, DC-based Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), this economist statement calls for negotiators of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement to recognize that capital controls are legitimate prudential financial regulations that should not be subject to investor claims under trade and investment treaties.

Following a number of official and academic findings that show capital controls are legitimate tools to prevent and mitigate financial crises, an increasing number of governments around the world are using capital controls and other macro-prudential measures in responsible ways to deal with heightened international financial instability. 

Meanwhile, the Obama administration is negotiating the “Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement” with the nations of Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, Peru, Singapore, New Zealand, and Vietnam. The treaty has been hailed by the Obama administration as one that will right past wrongs and be a trade agreement “for the 21st century.” It is imperative that 21st century trade agreements leave all nations with the tools to prevent and mitigate financial crises.

"Thus, we recommend that the TPPA permit governments to deploy capital controls without being subject to investor lawsuits, as part of a broader menu of policy options to prevent and mitigate financial crises."

Trade agreements that put local, state & national governments at risk of corporate lawsuits for exercising the very kind of government regulations that might have averted the 2007 financial crisis? Holy frick. I strongly recommend reading the resources at the link - this is something worth calling one's representatives about asap.

[idhren]

[idhren]

Things I Never Knew About US History, #201

Most Americans have a vague idea that D. W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation is a landmark film in US history. Savvy students of film history can pinpoint it as a 1915 silent film in the vein of Leni Riefenstahl's later Triumph of the Will, i.e. "a great film that argues for evil" (Roger Ebert). In the case of Birth of a Nation, the film helped launch and recruit for the second coming of the Ku Klux Klan.

This I knew. What I didn't know? African-American director Oscar Micheaux wrote, produced, and released his own cinematic take on the aftermath of the US Civil War  - 'Within Our Gates' - within five years of Griffith's film.

From Why I’ll Watch Oscar Micheaux’s Within Our Gates until I Wear It Out  by historian W. Fitzhugh Brundage:

Yet one silent movie that consistently stirs my students’ imaginations is Oscar Micheaux’s Within Our Gates (1920). Crammed into 80 minutes is a complex plot of love, betrayal, murder, rape, lynching, gambling, miscegenation, racial uplift, white bigotry, and black migration from the rural South to the urban North. Translated onto film are the hardships of blacks in the Jim Crow era United States, the promises and disappointments of black freedom, and the emergence of the “New Negro.” The film is one of the earliest examples, and certainly the most ambitious extant example, of black appropriation of the emerging technology to contest representations of African Americans in mass culture.

[idhren]

a collection of funny, strange, poignant and just plain bizarre personal ads from the nineteenth century

Matrimonial. - A young unmarried cavalry officer, who intends to serve his country till "this cruel war is over," desires, should he be slain during the war, to leave an heir to his name and inheritance.  He therefore wishes to open correspondence with a view to matrimony with a patriotic young lady of intelligence, accomplishments, common sense, &c.  Address K, Nineteenth New York cavalry, Manassas Junction, Va

A gentleman of a serious turn of mind is anxious to correspond with a lively, good hearted, romping, skating, and withal lovable young lady, with a view to matrimony. Those possessing great beauty need not apply. Address Thomas Phenix, New York Post office.

A young lady who is handsome, highly accomplished, and who on coming of age will possess a handsome competence, is anxious to avoid a matrimonial alliance which her relatives are forcing upon her.  With this view she wishes to make the acquaintance of a gentleman of education, refinement, and pleasing personal appearance, who would rescue her from her impending unhappy fate.  Address, for three days, Dulcina, Madison square Post office.