Ok, I dislike talking about discourse but as an East Asian myself I felt too strongly about this to let it rest.
i posted this on instagram but a lot of the examples Are from tumblr so i feel like it’s appropriate to put it here too. to reiterate my ins
I am not directing this post to the poster of the text in this screenshot, I’m just pointing out how everybody grossly over generalizes this point. I am by no means defending the usage of ‘rats’, but I am not going to stand for having this problem get out of hand with this kind of white knighting.
NON-East Asian people dictating how “Rat” should be used/shouldn’t be used is pretty harmful and frankly very patronizing. Our experiences and opinions are not for you to decide.
I feel that the statement/comparison in the image above would be an over generalization/lumping of (BI)POC people’s experiences. It is not always the same, or equivalent.
Calling Black People “Monkeys”
Nobody would use this unless they deliberately meant it. The roots of this is deliberately racist, back to when Black people were considered “nonhuman”. Anybody who uses this is obviously using this to harm people.
The “Rat Slur”
The root of the general insult of “rat” isn’t exclusive to being used on East Asians. In order for “rats” to be racist, it will need additional anti-asian/anti-POC context. It’s been used before WW2 and beyond, but not always necessarily against a group of people.
Calling a fictional character (Hyde, most often depicted as a) white man “rat” isn’t racist, it’s just the same as calling somebody a snake for being a liar. It’s an insult, but it’s not a slur in this context. Calling it out in this context wouldn’t really be helpful or activism, in fact it just might make people become de-sensitized/not take it seriously anymore and use the slur as a meme DELIBERATELY against POC/East Asian folk in the fandom.
It does become a slur/problem if: the character being called a rat in question is headcannoned/portrayed to be POC/East Asian. That’s just blatant dehumanization and lack of awareness. This should be be called out. (( With this said, I expect you all to know I’m NOT giving you a slur pass on asians.))
⭐️ Just to be safe, when it comes to a POC/East Asian character, you should probably use other words than rat, (stinky, cryptid etc.) and people should definitely be more mindful about the word’s usage and context, and again, I am glad this was addressed.
Please reblog this.
I don’t want people going around claiming that ‘rat’ is the ‘asian n-word’, all while talking over my people’s experiences and opinions of the matter and getting needlessly mad for “our sake”. Not only that, but people are needlessly getting harassed online for this.
I feel that the call out post linked two unrelated things that just happen to have the same word, and potentially caused more harm to a group of people that weren’t even a part of this to begin with.
I’m really sorry to any of my followers that didn’t sign up for this kind of discourse, but as I said, I felt too strongly to ignore it. Answering asks and drawings will be back on schedule!
jekyll from the original novel is a sonic the hedgehog character and jekyll in desperate doctors is a deviantart sonic oc that’s just a shameless ms paint recolor of said pre-existing character.
pixelskylines
vaporwave
theartofmadeline
andulkaphoto
dailybridgerton
titsay
