Icon by @ThatSpookyAgent. Call me Tir or Julian. 37. He/They. Queer. Twitter: @tirlaeyn. ao3: tirlaeyn. 18+ Only. Star Trek. The X-Files. Sandman. IwtV. OMFD. Definitionless in this Strict Atmosphere.
Eh, while it’s great that these characters are independent, something about all these princesses of color not finding love at the end of their movies rubs me the wrong way. Just like how Disney patted itself on the back for a black princess but she was Frogger damn near the whole movie.
And it would’ve been a great opportunity to cast moc in romantic roles from that culture :/
^^^ I’m so conflicted because yes, always having a love interest is annoying but poc never get to have a love interest
Having the princesses of color not find love reinforces the idea that we have to strong and independent and aren’t needing of any support
But I do like it because it deviates from the norm
It might be cool if they had dudes in the movie who were interested and they had the princesses be like, “naw, I got shit to do, but maybe later!”
Cause then it would obviously be a choice, instead of a worldstate that WoC don’t get hetero love (I’m not even gonna wish for queer love).
This is actually a good example of the need for intersectional feminism.
it is very common that white girl characters have love interests and finding love be the plot line and basis for all their stories and interactions.
It is uncommon for a girl character of color to be seen as a potential love interest, in need of defense by a male character and/or support from a male character full stop.
This is because of the history of social devaluation of woc and infantilization of white women.
Thusly:
it is subversive for white female characters to not have love interests for once and to focus on strength outside of male attention.
while at the same time
is it subversive for woc to be love interests and treated with care and reverence and with support in relationships on screen.
The “norms” for two groups of women are different based on the historical interaction both groups have had to suffer under patriarchal and sexist/racist media.
This is why its okay to feel hurt and roll your eyes when you see people screaming about how michonne from the walking dead “dont need no man” because she’s too “strong” to want to be desired and cared for, while at the same time feel hurt and roll your eyes when Black Widow is suddenly too helpless to get herself free from a basic ass cage and needs to be rescued by her randomly inserted love interest.
It doesn’t feel all that good even while you’re doing it. Then, after the Republicans’ idiot child king gets into office, it feels even worse.
I voted Green in the 2000 presidential election, for many of the same reasons that I see a lot of Bernie supporters talking about now. And for my sins, I actually have a record of my thinking at the time, because I have been old on the internet for a long time now. Here is a chunk of something I wrote explaining my decision to vote for Ralph Nader in 2000:
“Especially now that almost nobody is voting these days, the defection of a particular block of voters, even if it’s small, is of serious concern to either party. That’s why you see George jr. out there whoring himself for the Christian right, just like his father before him. But Gore doesn’t whore for the liberal left, because he doesn’t have to. He knows that as long as he doesn’t actually start talking about criminalizing abortion and rounding gay people up in cattle cars, we’ll stick with him just out of fear. Which means we’ve already lost any power we had. We can’t influence the Democratic party’s agenda; we can’t impact Gore’s platform; we can’t put any kind of pressure on him. All we can do is concede, concede, concede. Telling ourselves while we do it that it’s all right, it could be worse.“
Ah, the pugnacious pungency of my younger days, how I miss it. Anyway, rereading that has reminded me of how BAD it feels to be in the position of having to choose between two candidates who don’t seem willing to fight for anything you believe in. And I actually do not disagree, generally speaking, with Young Plaidder’s assessment of the evils of the two-party system. So, you know, it curbs my desire to yell at the Bernie Sanders supporters who are still not willing to vote for Clinton. They’re already in pain, it’s neither helpful nor strategic to make them feel worse.
Here are some things I know now that I was wrong about then:
1) I SEVERELY underestimated the amount of damage that an unqualified and incompetent President of the United States can cause. SEVERELY.
I have seen a number of comments from the Bernie or Bust perspective suggesting that if Trump got elected, he’s so uninterested in the whole business of government that he might not actually bother implementing what passes for his platform. Friends, you may be right or you may be wrong. But I’ll tell you what: the eight disastrous years of George W. Bush’s presidency, during which I am 100% convinced Dick Cheney made most of the major decisions, are all you need to teach you that incompetence at the top can be just as destructive and dangerous as malice. It’s very, very unhealthy for any organization when the person who has all the executive power is someone who either can’t or won’t use it effectively. It leads to factionalism, infighting, and corruption, because his subordinates know they can get up to whatever shit they want and nobody will bother stopping them. If you want to imagine a Trump presidency, try imagining a Trump cabinet. He doesn’t even know enough Republican politicians to fill it with. It’ll either be cronies from his ‘business’ dealings or names that Mike Pence fed to him figuring he won’t know any better. Who wants to see what a gang of evangelicals and profiteers get to do to this country while the boss is out golfing? I don’t need to. I’ve seen it already. It’s hideous. We’re still trying to recover from it. I mean this is the reason that New Orleans was essentially destroyed by Hurricane Katrina…and nothing was done about it. Because Bush put in some chum of his as the head of the EPA who could not have found his ass with both hands and a flashlight if you gave him a week to do it. And that is why there were corpses floating in the streets of New Orleans days after the hurricane was over. Incompetence kills. It doesn’t have to be evil. You’d be amazed how much damage stupid and untrained can do.
2) I didn’t expect that we would experience a massive terrorist attack on US soil during the next 4 years.
That was not an unreasonable assumption to make in 2000. It’s a completely unreasonable assumption to make in 2016. I think it’s also pretty clear which candidate would, given the opportunity to wreak VENGEANCE! that such attacks always provide, do the most damage with it. The entire twenty-first century, nearly, testifies to how catastrophic it is when the person in charge of responding to a terrorist attack on American soil is an idiot who has no understanding of dipolmacy or foreign policy and no way of making decisions apart from listening to his own ID.
3) I didn’t appreciate the importance of the one issue Gore would actually have made some significant movement on: climate change.
I honestly still think Gore only did all the other crap he did–like, say, choosing Lieberman as VP–because he wanted to have a chance to GET to the Oval Office and do something about climate change. He grasped the importance of it long before most other American politicians wanted to talk about it. I really wish he’d been in the Oval Office in 2000 to get the ball rolling. I really, really, really wish that.
Here’s the good news from that paragraph: the Bernie Sanders campaign has already changed some of the things I was complaining about in 2000. The platform has moved left. The agenda has changed. There is pressure on the Clinton campaign, to which they have responded. In other words, just by running the primary campaign, Sanders has already achieved a lot of what I was mistakenly hoping my protest vote in 2000 was going to achieve.
Bernie Sanders’s speech last night was basically a bunch of variations on that theme: that the Sanders campaign itself has already had a greater impact than a protest vote (or protest abstention) would have, because it has changed the party. Has it changed Hillary Clinton? Who knows. But if the past 8 years have taught us much, it’s that in terms of shit you can get done, Congress matters just as much as the presidency if not more. Get enough left-thinking Democrats into Congress, and they can lead even if Hillary Clinton won’t.
So anyway. I’m voting for Hillary Clinton. Because I don’t want to have to say that I did not do everything I could to prevent George W. Bush from becoming the SECOND WORST ever President of the United States.
this is especially important because historical precedent tells us that conservatives overwhelming back a single party while liberals/progressives/radicals split their vote, trump doesn’t need 51% majority to win
jifty: I want to be convinced, I really do, but I just see as much danger, long term, with voting for Hillary. If we give in to the guilt trips and fear-mongering, we are sending them the message that their tactics work. That they can abuse us and silence us and we'll still fall in line. That all they have to do is hold up a right-wing boogieman and we'll come to heel. If we vote for her without any real change in the way things are run, liberals will be no better off in 2020. Convince me, please.
If it was anyone other than Trump, I’d agree with you. Trump is that dangerous, and the movement he is leading is that destructive.
Someone who is a GOP writer, I forget who, said something like, “Hillary is wrong about everything, but she’s wrong within acceptable parameters. Trump is wrong about everything and truly dangerous.”
Now, I don’t agree that she’s wrong about everything, but she’s wrong about some things that are important, like Iraq and her embrace of neoconservative foreign policy.
But Trump is a clear and real threat to America and the world in a way we haven’t seen in almost 100 years.
This isn’t about tactics and rewarding a system that is gross and really needs to be changed. This is about stopping not just Donald Trump, but all the white supremacists and radical right wing nationalists he’s leading.
And remember that we can still exert influence in Congress, and at the state and local level.
And and AND remember that Reagan inflicted Scalia on us for OVER THIRTY YEARS. Who the hell knows what kind of whackjob Tump and Pence would nominate to SCOTUS? I doubt Clinton will nominate someone who is liberal enough for me, but I know with absolute certainty that she will nominate justices who won’t be a catastrophic nightmare.
This election is about so much more than Clinton vs. Trump. This is about what we want America to be, and who we want to lead it. We don’t have the luxury of waxing philosophical about tactics and sending messages. We must defeat and destroy Donald Trump and the movement he leads.
He’s consistently said again and again after the primaries that his #1 goal is to: STOP DONALD TRUMP FROM BECOMING PRESIDENT.
So, with that goal in mind, it would be an absolute fuckton of a disaster if Bernie were to run third-party or begged his supporters to vote for him write-in, you know why? Because it would split the Democratic vote up in half. And because of that this would give them way less votes in order to beat Trump, and because of that Trump would lead in national votes in most states, and thus lead in the electoral vote, making him president.
Don’t believe me? Look at the 1912, 1968 and 2000 elections and tell me I’m wrong.
Bernie knows this too, that’s why he’s urging his supporters to vote for Hillary. He wants the Democrats united so Trump will be defeated.
He’s not “selling out”, he’s doing this so no supporter of his will either vote Trump or abstain from voting, and to make sure America continues progress. Progress that, unfortunately will be thwarted or reversed with Trump as president.
The political revolution fails if Trump is elected.
Good luck telling folks in Honduras or Iran or Libya or Syria, or black folks stuck in for-profit prisons because of laws she supported, that she gives a fuck about nonwhite people. There are many nonwhite Bernie or Bust folks.
I’d love to, but real quick - are you one of the nonwhite ones or the one of the white who is just basically telling me he has a black friend? Your blog makes me think you’re the latter but I don’t wanna make assumptions.
As for all the places you just stated… Where was your outrage four years ago when Obama ran? I mean, maybe you didn’t notice this but Clinton served as HIS Secretary of State, she wasn’t just some loose canon running around the White House making unilateral decision when it came to foreign affairs, she was his representative to the international community who carried out HIS agenda. Moreover, you do realize that Bernie’s home state, where he served as both a representative and a senator since 1990, has some of the most regressive for-profit prison systems in the United States, right? They have so many for-profit prisons that they ship prisoners out of state to other for-profit prisons when they have a surplus, which is known to put a ton of stress on the families of incarcerated individuals because they can’t visit and calling long distance is expensive. Who am I kidding though, of course you knew that because you Bernie or Bust fuckers are just soooo much more enlightened than the rest of us.
Look, there is a monumental difference between the Democratic and Republican agenda, if you can’t see that then it isn’t because it isn’t there it’s because you are being willfully ignorant of that fact. Is it everything you ever dreamed of? No, but you don’t get to throw a temper tantrum and say “let it all burn” because you didn’t get exactly your way. Change takes time and come November you can either act like a petulant child throwing a temper tantrum, or you can grow the fuck up, recognize the tremendous danger that your self righteous absolutist rhetoric is putting people in, and vote to save the lives of god knows how many people who might suffer or die as a consequence of that fascist cheeto puff taking over.
Listen to people of color who are almost begging for Bernie or Bust voters to see reason, it’s not because everyone thinks HRC is a dream candidate, it’s because people in vulnerable and marginalized positions know what Trump’s rhetoric leads and they are trying to prevent it at all costs. If you’re voting for a third party then you simply aren’t an ally to people of color.
I’m disgusted, I have a big ol’ mason jar full of wine, and this Southern motherfucking Democrat is about to go off on some rude ass fuckers up in Philly tonight.
I don’t give one single fuck about your moral purity. I don’t give one single fuck about how much you think the DNC is corrupt or that Hillary is a liar or that she’s a fucking war hawk. I don’t give ONE SINGLE FUCK that you can’t support someone who didn’t support same-sex marriage until 2013.
I spent a whole fucking week listening to people laugh about how Trump’s third wife plagiarized a speech. I spent a whole week listening to people joke about how the Republican convention was a dumpster fire. Y’all didn’t give a shit that their platform is going to literally fucking kill queer people, young people, people with disabilities, and people of color.
Y’all wanna stand in Philadelphia at the fucking Democratic Convention and shout down those who are standing up against the tyrannical, antediluvian beliefs of the pasty-ass GOP who decided, last week, they wanted to send people like 14 year-old me to a camp where I’d be tortured into believing I wasn’t worthy of life.
Y’all gonna shout down the fucking black man who’s on stage advocating for a future that includes a president that believes that his life matters, while y’all spent a whole damn week quiet about how Donald Trump couldn’t care any less about the lives of Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Philando Castile…
Y’all were invited into this room. I was at a Trump rally. I saw that shit. You know what happened to protestors there? They didn’t get to hold up signs and shout down the speakers. They were hauled out on their heels by off-duty cops getting paid to take out their aggression on protestors. Your voices are welcome, your voices are heard.
But now is a good time to shut the fuck up and listen.
My life depends on keeping Trump out of office. The life of my friends, my family, the people I love, depends on keeping that rat away from the White House. You know what your choices are this November? Depending on your state, you got up to four choices:
1) The libertarian who supports deregulating banks and healthcare and vaccines, who would lead to a future America that features such hits as corporate slavery and inaccessible healthcare.
2) The green who has no experience and also doesn’t believe in vaccinations and called the racist, xenophobic Brexit a victory for British people.
3) The fascist, xenophobic, homophobic, hateful demagogue who genuinely has a chance of winning this election because 50% of this country is disgusting and awful.
4) Hillary Rodham Clinton.
In many states, you don’t even get choice number 2.
I’m scared that so many of you are gonna go out and vote for 1 and 2 that y’all gonna let 3 win and then guess what?
14-year-old me is dead. You killed him.
When these people stand up to address the country this week in Philly, you know what you need to do? Listen. Learn. Understand. This is the most progressive platform in the history of American politics. There have been queer women of color, women with disabilities, black men, children of undocumented immigrants, sharing the stage with the first lady and the president. This is a platform that includes raising the minimum wage, eliminating college debt, ending police brutality, standing up for the rights of queer Americans and children.
And y’all wanna shout NOW?
Go home. Get the fuck out. You do not own this country. You do not own this struggle. You do not get to decide how the fight is fought.
You need to listen.
Bernie Sanders ran a messy campaign on clear, powerful ideals and I respect that shit. But the people on stage, the people with the microphone, those are the people who are going to lose everything because you won’t let this shit go.
You won’t vote for Clinton? You won’t stand up for the party of people of color, of people with disabilities, of queer people, of women?
Okay, fine, but don’t you fucking speak to me. Your moral high ground means shit to me when it could mean leaving my loved ones in graves.
I’m not done. I’m never done. But I’m tired. I’m scared. I wanted to see Michelle Obama speak to me and my heart and give me hope, but I couldn’t get the fear out of my heart. Ask me a month ago and I would have said that there was no way that we’d see Trump in the White House, but ask me tonight and I just don’t know. I don’t know.
