Resentful White Dude Who Cannot Handle Rejection Does What They Do

Content Warning: Violent misogyny. Ableism. Racism. One non-flashy animated gif.

 

Greta Christina saved me the grueling task of compiling links discussing the entitled sexist skidmark who killed a bunch of people over not getting laid. I have been trying to compile these but this whole thing just makes me feel too awful to pay it the kind of focused attention it deserves. Much love and gratitude to Greta.

Here’s my addition:

Of course, rather than get into any of the killer’s stated reasons for murdering his fellow humans, the news is calling him a “madman” and speculating about autism, divorced parents, miscellaneous mental illnesses (despite him having been in therapy for years with no diagnoses), you name it. This can’t be any kind of indicator of a problem in what sorts of people we encourage men to be, right? It must be just another isolated case of a misfiring brain that’s Not Even Remotely Representative Of Ours Ever. Right? No, what the fuck.

Sure. There’s no pattern here.

Scholars for a while now have been linking a particularly-masculine sort of aggrieved entitlement to acts of mass violence.

In this theoretical essay, we examine school shootings that culminate in the suicide of the assailant(s). We do so to elucidate how the culture of hegemonic masculinity available to young American men encourages the use of violence to avenge a perceived challenge to their masculine identity. When these attacks to one’s masculine identity affect someone to the point of suicidal ideation, committing mass murder can be an instrumental way to achieve a sense of power; and framing one’s suicide with violence and aggression may serve to make it appear a more potent act.

AlterNet has Chauncey DeVega’s The Santa Barbara Mass Shooting, [shooter], and Aggrieved White Male Entitlement Syndrome with more, and crunchier analysis from Mother Jones’s Mass Shootings Map.

Or, to put it another way:

I hang out on a pretty great corner of the internet so most of the people I know are not refusing to make the connection about how often these incidents look super similar. See for example Kat Haché:

Attention news media: if a man puts out a manifesto talking explicitly about revenge on women that have rejected him and identifies with an ideological movement that encourages that violent resentment, then maybe you shouldn’t act like he’s just cuckoo crazy and his ideas came out of nowhere. Like other people have said, that stigmatizes mentally ill people AND is an abdication of responsibility to actually analyze the cultural influences that made this man think his actions were acceptable.

Someone in the comments of a friend’s status about this actually seriously typed and entered these words as a contribution. “Don’t worry be happy. It will never fully go away. Nobody said they were nice guys [OP]. In fact they are pieces of shit, but those people will never go away. So why bother yourself with worrying so much about it?”

JT Eberhard posted the following to his Facebook page:

A privileged young man afflicted with mental illness of some sort goes on a shooting spree. In the wake of the rampage I see few people pointing out how mental illness doesn’t discriminate, and that even the financially fortunate are no more immune than the poor, and the need for more awareness. I see several people insinuating that his privileged male status, rather than his sanity, was responsible.

This makes me sad.

Well, shucks. Now we’re both sad. I’m sad in that “burning down in my bones” way that leads to kinda clumsy upset linkdump blog entries, so I apologize for that and JT Eberhard probably should too.

When people say why they commit acts of violence, why not believe them? I can tell you that as a result of my own studies–which unlike for some people are studies I engage in not as a thought experiment but in a serious attempt to prolong my own survival–I worry far more about people (generally men, because men are more likely to be taught this in a strong systemic way) who believe that the appropriate response to being denied sexual access to me is to kill me.

As @SallyStrange put it: “[shooter] was not mentally ill. [shooter] was a terrorist fighting for a world where women can’t say no to sex. ‪#‎hatecrime‬”

Many sorts of mentally ill people are definitely inclined to believe some obviously counterfactual things. Many sorts of mentally ill people have difficulty reasoning in straight lines. Mentally ill people are, however, more likely to be victims of violence than they are the perpetrators. I had trouble believing this to because all the people who’ve abused me personally have been mentally ill, but you know what we say about the plural of “anecdote” not being “data.” That’s counter to my personal experiences, but when it comes to my own survival, I have to take data seriously because men killing me for not fucking them is actually a legitimate threat I live with. So it’s not mentally ill people who pose the biggest threat.

There are people who can be perfectly “sane” (in that they are reasoning from what they believe to be facts in a rational way and in accordance with the dominant values of the peer groups they associate with) who are nonetheless absolutely goddamn terrible. As Miri put it, “before you call [shooter] ‘crazy’: it is not actually ‘crazy’ to believe stuff that’s been shoved down your throat from birth.”

A man who thinks that being denied sex is a catastrophe for which he is owed reparations by all womankind is not delusional; this is a set of ideas he’s been taught. A man who thinks that women exist in a just world where all misfortune that befalls us is happening because we choose to sleep with other people is not delusional; in a lot of peer groups for men this is an entirely reasonable thing to believe.

See also Jessica Valenti’s [shooter]’s California shooting spree: further proof that misogyny kills

It was reported on Saturday that [shooter]’s family had contacted the police about his violent and strange videos “weeks” before the shooting The family attorney said that police interviewed [shooter] and thought he was a “perfectly polite, kind and wonderful human”.

I have to wonder how much police dismissed [shooter]’s video rants because of the expectation that violent misogyny in young men is normal and expected.

“Dismissing violent misogynists as ‘crazy’ is a neat way of saying that violent misogyny is an individual problem, not a cultural one,” feminist blogger Melissa McEwan of Shakesville tweeted.

The truth is that there is no such thing as a lone misogynist — they are created by our culture, and by communities that tells them that their hatred is both commonplace and justified.

This results in antisocial behavior, yes. This is because certain kinds of people go their whole lives never learning that the ideas driving them are absolutely goddamn ghastly, and they never learn that because there quite frankly are not enough people in their culture who believe it. We don’t have the saturation of anti-rape culture advocates we’d need to consider every single person who acts reasonably on toxic beliefs some kind of kooky broken-brained outlier. There just aren’t enough of us who see this as a serious problem, because the right people can hurt the right people and not be terrorists, can not be committing a hate crime.

I’m sorry that some people are getting sick of hearing about how masculine entitlement is a major factor. I’m sorry that some people have heard this enough times that they think we are all done teaching it. Mostly I am sorry because of how many supposed allies this means are totally missing the point. The point is that this keeps happening because our culture supports this behavior in a lot of ways; it’s not a fringe sort of a thing. This is not outside the realm of mainstream ideas and behavior. I think that scares a lot of people, so they try their damndest to convince themselves that no “normal” person would behave this way.

You know who can go through life with that idea? People who don’t have to live in fear of dudes like this one who respond to rejection with violence. Joreth Innkeeper is one of us who has to pay attention and do realistic threat assessments. Here’s hers.

This is why I’m so hard on the Nice Guys. From his language, he is indistinguishable from any other Nice Guy I’ve met on the internet and in person. The only way I can tell him apart is after the fact that he slaughtered 7 people.

After the fact is too late to be able to tell the difference. If there is no difference before between a harmless Nice Guy and a mass shooter, then the problem is with the Nice Guys to change not me to suddenly develop mind reading skills and guess who is whom. If I were to guess wrong, I’d only be blamed for it anyway. I should know karate, I should carry a gun, I should learn urban tactical skills, I should have pity-fucked him because he deserves to get laid and I’m so mean for not being attracted to him and the friendzone is cruel.

For my own safety, I have to assume that anyone who behaves like an entitled homicidal misogynistic killer is or could become an entitled homicidal misogynistic killer. So stop defending the Nice Guys. Stop giving entitled homicidal misogynistic killers places to hide and excuses and permission to be.

A “normal” person would behave this way. That’s why it keeps happening. That’s why the same sorts of people keep doing it and the same sorts of people continue to be the targets. These are not coincidences. Armchair diagnosing this particular mass-murderer relies on guesswork; taking him at his word when he writes a lengthy manifesto EXPLAINING CLEARLY how and why this happened does not.

“If I can’t have you, girls, I’ll destroy you.”

Don’t ask me to pretend I didn’t hear that, and that I haven’t heard it before from “normal” men. Don’t ask me for that. I can’t. You know why you don’t see this guy’s name in here? You know why I am not using it? Mass killers want notoriety. I’m happy to talk about what’s wrong with him and how people like him are created and sheltered by the culture we’re all swimming in, but I don’t see why anybody should give half a damn about his name. I don’t want to erase his motivations because they are reflective of a broader problem. I just want to erase his individuality. It’s exactly what a violently self-centered egotistic bitter little pissbaby of a misogynist deserves. People like him are a breed, and that’s all I need to know about any of them.

And let’s face it, it isn’t easy to distinguish this pigfucker from all the other guys who declare war on women for declining to fuck them. Who can remember the name of every single one?

Alyson Miers makes a great point.

Misogynist violence usually kills women who have been in the killer’s life. It’s mostly a matter of men who kill their wives or girlfriends, and sometimes take the children with them. What we have here is a brand of misogynist violence that threatens women who are total strangers to the killer.

What makes this dude remarkable is not that he took the ideas of his peer group to their predictably murderous conclusions; what makes it remarkable is that he went after strangers. Most guys like this get near us first. Him? He didn’t even bother. Any woman would do.

Men can be different than this, and many already are. Unfortunately… well. StrangeInk’s Not All Men covers that. Some major figures in the “manosphere” like Roosh V. are still trying to defend their misogynist political leanings from association with the shooter, because that is their priority for some reason. (Don’t worry. I used Do Not Link, and if you wanna read it, I suggest having this open in another tab as a soundtrack).

The only things in common that [shooter] had with us is that (1) he wanted sex with attractive women, and (2) he had a functional penis. That’s it. The overlap of thought and belief between [shooter] and feminists, however, should convince you beyond a reasonable doubt that [shooter] was in fact a feminist, even if he didn’t himself know that his peg fit snugly into the feminist hole. I’ve actually met self-described feminists who were less feminist than [shooter] was.

While I stand by my argument that game would have helped [shooter], I am beginning to wonder if being a feminist was the seed that drove him to desperation and delusion, eventually leading to a tragic loss of life. This line of thought is worth pursuing by people who want to understand why a man felt that taking other lives and his own was seen as the best solution. You definitely won’t read about this conclusion in the media, which is too busy trying to toss [shooter] to our side like a hot piece of coal, even though [shooter] shares absolutely no similarity in thought and behavior to game practitioners.

I have logically come to the conclusion that [shooter] was in fact the first male feminist mass murderer that we have seen in America. I’m afraid that if the feminist ideology contained within [shooter]’s head is allowed to continue spreading, we are likely to see more violent acts by men who believe in the exact same things that feminists do.

I don’t even know how to make the words for how screwed up that is. If only The Landlady of Pig Sty Alley were here. She’d know what to do.

Failing that, fortunately for us all Andrew Ti at Yo, Is This Racist has some choice words.

But this UC Santa Barbara killer brings up a way that this type of shit can affect people. Because, when you co-opt the rhetoric of revolution and struggle, it’s more than just “trolling” or some bullshit to make, you know, actual decent people angry. It’s language that can make a disturbed person think that defending bigotry is a legitimate struggle, that, in [shooter]’s case, that owning and subjugating women is a cause worth killing and dying for. Because that’s what those words mean, you fucking garbage assholes, those words are for people who struggle from real oppression, to inspire people to sacrifice and never give up. The fact that straight white men have taken these words to rally around calcifying the bigotry that’s slipping from their fingers is truly disgusting, and now it’s more clear that it has fucking consequences.

The last thing I am going to include is something I am very deliberately closing with because it is quite possibly the only thing I have read on this subject that made me feel better. The author was angry and needed to get that anger out, but having read this with that expectation… I had no idea just how very much closer to healing I’d feel afterwards. Please, if you feel too terrible to take any more of this, set this link aside and read it instead of anything else. Read it as soon as you can, and read it whenever you don’t know what to do or how anything can possibly be better.

You want to talk about misandry?

Be good to yourself. Take care of yourself. And yes, live.

Harry Potter Wizards are Useless Assholes and I Hate Them

Okay, so the Harry Potter universe? I hate the wizarding world. Hate hate hate. I would go absolutely barmy there because I actually give a damn about anybody but myself and people exactly like me. Maybe I’m not always going to do a great job of getting past the various privileges accorded to me because of my race, level of ability, or the fact that my gender and orientation are generally able to pass cultural muster. That’s fair. However. I am at the point in my basic humanity where I understand that I am not the only real person in the world and that other people’s experiences matter even if I am not having them.

I would probably be a Gryffindor because I am probably too RARRRRRRRRRRRRR INJUSTICE I WILL FIGHT IT for any other house, but here’s the thing. Even Gryffindor falls dismally short by my standards. Even people who aren’t overtly whitewizard supremacists still don’t really see muggles as anything but an exotic non-magical Other who must be prevented from having access to magic at all costs, because… apparently they thought that without any real witches or wizards, religious fanatics would stop killing each other over accusations of witchcraft (hahahahahaha yeah okay) and, no shit, because then wizards might have to help muggles.

No, I am not kidding. That’s why there is a Wizarding Masquerade. Those are the reasons. The first one pretty much just means they don’t know how religion works, which… y’know, whatever. I can excuse that, because I actually wouldn’t mind living in a world where I didn’t need to know about religion as a survival skill. So I won’t hate on them for that. But the latter? Muggles will make them cast magic “for their own ends.”

Well, yes, you assholes. Because you have all this magical shit and muggles have actual real world problems that you could be helping with given your superior access to magical resources and training. Yes, actually, muggles might expect you to use your privilege for anybody’s benefit but your own. DAMN UPPITY MUGGLES AMIRITE?

*siiiiiigh*

Philanthropic Wizards and What They Could Really Do If They Didn’t Suck

Sadly, muggles cannot actually mix potions, but a lot of powerful potions in the Harry Potter universe are literally stuff children can make. Some will require more precision and a more-educated intuition about them, but the amount of raw power required seems fairly minimal. Nonetheless, a wizard who graduates toward the bottom of his class is still a wizard, and you wouldn’t have to be much of one to make potions provided you had the skill to compensate for a lack of raw power.

Muggle studies teachers need to be doing fieldwork, or else they need to get actual muggles to teach the course. Before you tell me there aren’t muggles who know what magic is, where exactly do you think Hermione Granger’s parents think she’s going to school? And yes, her mother and father both know what witches are and think it’s keen that their daughter is one.

Considering that it was apparently standard procedure to tell the parents what is really going on, consider how many wizards are not pure-blood wizards and then consider how many muggles that means they have in the hiring pool. In fact, if it were important to people in the setting to keep this secret, they’d have a huge problem.

Let’s get right into what wizards can actually do, what they choose not to do, and why that means they are useless assholes that I hate.

Either the girding potion or strengthening solution would be literally a performance-enhancing drug. You think that shows up in drug tests? I bet it doesn’t. And even if it does, I can think of plenty of legit uses for it besides cheating at sports. Then again, the most important accomplishment in the Wizarding world seems to be Quidditch, so perhaps by wizard priorities cheating at muggle sports is an absolutely brilliant way to make yourself significant to history through magic.

Personally, though, I would be more likely to try any number of these goddamn antidotes for things.

Look at that list. Look at that list. If you can find a cure for malaria or this miracle drug for amputees or people with serious skeletal injuries or a memory potion that you could at least offer to people with Alzheimer’s or any number of the stuff that phoenix tears could save you from provided there’s any phoenix in the world that considers muggles worth the trouble of shedding a single tear–something that I’d like to point out they can do voluntarily and without anybody needing to torture them for or anything–or any of the things which are clearly magical psych meds and not think, “I can actually make the world a better place for millions of people,” you are an asshole and I seriously would hate you if this were actually the Harry Potter universe.

If you as a muggle–which I know you are because this is real life–look at this list and don’t immediately think of helping muggles as a valid use for all this magic, what makes you think that if you were surrounded by wizard supremacists who only ever hear about muggles in a high school elective course you’d give a single damn about how many muggle children die of malaria every year?

And this isn’t even getting into the bullshit about luck potions that allow you to succeed at anything (Such as actually going and killing Voldemort since even a small dose is clearly enough to protect you from insta-death curses? Or maybe researching a vaccine for HIV? Or for brewing more luck potions?). Keep in mind that potions that never wear off or never run out of doses are a canonical certainty and read those options I listed again.

No, they’re fiercely preoccupied with Quidditch (and other ways of establishing and defending Wizard Cred among other wizards) and magical date rape.

And don’t tell me wizards aren’t smart enough to think of these things. They have potions to make themselves smarter, too.

Wizards are just assholes, that’s all. They’re assholes who clearly just don’t consider “muggle problems” to be worthy of their attention, never mind all the wizards who are themselves related to muggles or dependent on the good graces of muggles willing to help wizards maintain The Wizarding Masquerade.

But! But!

I mean, maybe you’re thinking, “But there aren’t actually enough wizards in the world to meaningfully participate in solving the problems that plague the human race!” Okay, maybe you’re thinking that. Maybe there are just so many utterly-unsolveable-by-muggles problems and not enough wizards to impact those problems even slightly. At that rate, is it really their fault that millions and possibly billions of innocent muggles have suffered and died for lack of access to things like magical medicine? How can we blame wizards for not being able to be everywhere at once? Is that fair or reasonable?

Yes.

I’m just gonna leave this here.

It’s not like those are literally given to children so they can take more classes or anything.

I mean maybe magic is inexplicably and inexcusably useless with NO IN-SETTING JUSTIFICATION, or maybe… just maybe… wizards are simply assholes who can’t see past their goddamn wizarding privilege to the fact that real human people are suffering and dying completely needlessly because wizards have the worst priorities ever.

A Game I’d Run

I was talking to my husband earlier tonight about what I would do if I ever ran a game in the Harry Potter universe. I would play a muggle-born potions or muggle studies instructor who sends students out on philanthropic adventures. Their first mission would be something super simple and innocuous and easy to cover up, like finding people’s lost pets. This would also serve to give an enormous emotional reward to the students for helping a ten year old muggle child get their puppy back. We’d scale this up in their final years at school to disaster relief using apparition to get food and medical supplies into afflicted areas and get survivors out with minimal risk to a skilled user or to the people they’re helping.

Why? Because wizards are citizens of the whole world, not just the wizarding world. I don’t care what the classist wizard supremacist assholes in Slytherin are telling kids, and I don’t care that apparently nobody else at Hogwarts is telling them to quit being so goddamn racist all the time. They’re wrong, and muggles matter.

That’s what I would use for adventure plot hooks. Go help people, kids. Understand that great power doesn’t just come with great responsibility in comic books. If you’re a witch or a wizard, you are a superhero, so get out and goddamn act like it.

Naturally, this teacher would probably get in trouble with the wizard supremacists. So here is what would happen. Wizard supremacists teleport to the outside of this teacher’s house and decide that they’re going to have a duel, because I guess in the wizarding world if you don’t want to get thrown in Azkaban, you settle all disputes by seeing who can toss the other’s wand into a corner, and the one who has to go pick up their wand loses at everything now and… I guess is forced to stop what they’re doing to piss people off by… the honor system, I guess?

That’s what the wizard supremacists expect. Unfortunately, this is a muggle studies professor who actually has done fieldwork among muggles and done shit like watch television or movies and guess what. Professor Not-A-Dick owns a gun and tells them to get the fuck offa her lawn or she’s going to defend herself and her property.

Even if the wizard supremacists start throwing around killing curses, they can get what? One person at a time? What if this professor and her students have… I don’t know… guns? One person on the side of good will definitely die–probably the teacher for dramatic effect–but then the students can retaliate by gunning down an entire crowd of people who expected to be able to win a war by killing a single person every round, because they didn’t take their don’t be a dumbass potion that day, or apparently pay attention in muggle studies.

So now the students are fugitives who have to continue their teacher’s legacy of actually doing anything significant at all with magic. Quite probably I would have them eventually break out Carlotta Pinkstone from Azkaban because until 1996 she was seriously being subjected to Dementors as punishment for civil disobedience founded in her opinion that muggles shouldn’t be denied access to magic, and that is not okay. But hey. It’s 2014. No Dementors to contend with now, so go get her and let the revolution begin.

Meanwhile the wizard supremacists are wanking off to their obvious natural supremacy while accomplishing absolutely nothing with their magic except to own people (I swear if more wizards were farmers they’d have Field Elves, too) and pass those people on to their children who will also pretty much just sit around circle-jerking about how pure their lineage is and how significant they mistakenly believe they are.

I mean, they’ve done everything but set in place a system of squib plaçage.

So fuck Harry Potter wizards.

Except you, Carlotta. You’re okay; I’m not mad at you.

Everybody else, you need to GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER.

Pot, This is Kettle

Thanks to David Neale for helping me pull together these links.

I’m going to preface this by saying I benefit from white privilege like a whitey whitey white thing. I am so white I reflect camera flashes. I look far more like an even paler version of my biological father’s Sicilian relatives than I do anything else, but here is the thing. My heritage isn’t 100% white; my great-grandfather was visibly Native American and was so deeply ashamed of it that he reportedly refused even to discuss it with my mother when she was young. That left marks on my family.

However, I identify as white because I am identified as white. I benefit from white privilege, and I’ve only been on the reservation once. I don’t identify as native because I don’t experience the racism that they experience, but I do take an interest because theirs is the only blood I’ve got that hasn’t ever felt like poison in my veins, straight-up poison. My mother’s father? Shit. All her siblings through him? Shit. My mother’s mother? Shit. My biological father? Shit. His relatives? Categorically all shit. The only people that I never had to feel ashamed to be compared to, the only people whose features in my face weren’t an invasion from the moment of conception by people who wanted to hurt me, were my mother’s relatives among the Penobscots.

So yeah. I care when people don’t think about them, when family-wise they were about the only good blood I received. I guess you could say they’re kith, not kin. How can you not love the source of the only pride in yourself you had available ever?

It means that I take erasure of what Aboriginal people go through pretty hard. See, there’s this meme that keeps popping up whenever the USA demonstrates that this country was built by and for oppression of certain kinds of people; Canadians start looking down on us. Canadians say, “Thank goodness I don’t live in the USA, where racism is a problem,” or “Come to Canada when you’re sick of the bullshit.” Europeans, you do this too and you know it. This is like saying, “Come to Indiana when you’re sick of Alabama. We were a Union state so we are clearly a more civilized people.” The problem with statements like this is that it allows people from certain areas to push racism away like it’s not their problem. After all, if you Otherize racists hard enough, you clearly cannot be one, right? *

The rampant vicious white supremacy visible in every area of life in the United States is worth being blisteringly pissed about basically constantly. Don’t tell me Canada or Europe are off the hook, though, just because they don’t share our lust for capital punishment. I care what the USA does because this is my house and it’s busted all to hell. At the same time, that doesn’t change what you have to do. You know how ridiculous people in the US look when they declare us to be a post-racial nation because we elected a black President? Yeah. Go sit in the corner and think about what you sound like to people who pay attention to the issues First Nations people face in Canada, and that Romani face literally everywhere.

I mean, Aboriginal people in North America have been getting slapped in the face since white people showed up, and as Canadians rightfully remind us down here in the states, we aren’t the only Americans. Aboriginal people have been shafted so badly by the Canadian government that it sparked an international protest movement not decades ago but like last year. Hi.

I know we’re white supremacist as hell and I know that the USA is so pervasively contaminated with racism that there is nowhere which is truly post-racial, because as long as the federal government touches a place, as long as an area shares a media and economy with the rest of the USA, white supremacy will be there. But don’t fricking use us to dodge your own problems, like you’ve got no work to do as long as you can still say we’re worse.

I mean, just the way Canada and Europe treat Romani people alone means that none of y’all get to try and list “not racist” on your list of international qualifications. I’ll start you off someplace easy and once you grok the background you can move on to recently-posted first-hand complaints.

Canada, you have work to do.

In 2005, one sixth of surveyed Canadian adults reported having been victims of racism. One in ten respondents said that they wouldn’t want neighbors of another race.

Blackface appears to be pretty widely accepted as okay in Quebec, which its proponents claim is not a problem because racist caricatures are part of the USA’s history and not theirs.

UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has concerns about treatment of African Canadian children and youth.

The UN thinks Canada needs an inquiry into the “disturbing phenomenon” of missing and murdered aboriginal women.

Toronto police disproportionately stop and document people who aren’t white.

Overall in Toronto, the number of carded young black men between 2008 and mi-2011 was 3.4 times higher than the young black male population. The ratio for young brown men was 1.8:1, and for white young men and those considered “other,” the ratios dropped to 1:1 and 0.3 to one, respectively.

And in case you were thinking, “But at least we’re super nice to South Asians!” you can stop thinking that.

In fact, you know what, just go learn some stuff about the history of racism in Canada. I don’t have enough space in one entry for it all, but I’d hate for you to have to look things up yourself, pumpkin.

Europe, you do, too.

Charity workers in Calais left migrants outside in flooded tents in frigid weather that they deemed too harsh for cattle, all because a more permanent and effective shelter might encourage people to emigrate through Calais to Britain.

Let’s talk about Yarl’s Wood.

No really, y’all, we should talk about Yarl’s Wood.

An Angolan man died as he was being deported, asphyxiated while being “restrained” by people who think racism is hilarious. But I’m sure that them suffocating their black prisoner to death was an accident and in no way reflects a bias in their attitude toward people of color.

As of 2010, Black people in the UK were six times more likely than white people to be arrested for drug offenses and eleven times more likely to be imprisoned, despite no apparent evidence that they actually use or deal drugs more than whites. For context, this is actually worse than in the super racist USA where you’re glad you don’t live.

By the way, the UK also has a problem with disproportionately stopping and frisking people of color.

Border staff in Cardiff have reportedly been encouraged to humiliate and trick asylum seekers, and were themselves singled out at work for the shameful lapse of approving an asylum application.

Ever been to the Netherlands during Sinterklaas? Ever protested blackface during Sinterklaas and had the crap kicked out of you? No?

Don’t even talk like you don’t have a Neo-Nazi problem.

For those of you who have ever clicked your tongue and shaken your head at the United States’ white nativist love-hate relationship with undocumented exploitable labor, I refer you to Italy’s forcible evacuation of over 300 African migrants. Violence broke out after local youths shot at the migrants with pellet guns, and 37 people were injured.

Italy appointed a black cabinet minister and boy howdy did the racists have a lot to say about their new bonga bonga government.

Spain has had race riots–race riots–as recently as 2000.

Check out the racism at these Polish and Ukrainian football games.

Being a black woman in Britain? Shockingly, not actually a wonderland free of misogynoir, despite what you may have heard from white men.

Everybody’s got someone more backward than they are providing them an excuse not to check their own mess. Don’t let us be yours. I’m not saying that Canada being racist too makes the USA any better. Being more pervasive doesn’t make racism okay. Affecting more types of people doesn’t make the racism any particular group faces any more acceptable just because they aren’t suffering alone. But don’t shake your heads at us over the people we oppress while you ignore the people you oppress.

Fighting racism isn’t about jockeying for position as The Most Civilized; it’s about doing the god damn right thing and I don’t know why some Canadians and Europeans are all concerned about racism in the USA while glossing over any suffering that undermines your vision of yourself at the height of enlightenment. I mean, crap. People outside the USA rightly get on the USA’s case for puffing ourselves up as champions of human rights overseas while we abuse our own people terribly. So what the heck, y’all? What is all this?

Even accepting the premise that the USA is more white supremacist than anywhere else on the planet (which could well be true or at least close to true), that doesn’t mean everybody who’s not the worst is good enough, good enough to sit on their metaphorical asses and sigh at us in our backwardness. Are you helping activists and organizations which fight racism when you do that? Would I be helping activists and organizations which fight racism in your country if I pretended the USA isn’t grotesquely oppressive to people of color so that I could sigh and shake my head at how y’all treat Romani? Come on now.

It’s not a competition; you don’t get to stop working just because you’re not at the bottom of the rankings. You don’t get a free pass on understanding how privilege and oppression work just because you’re in Europe or Canada where they say everyone is free, because guess what? They say that here, too.

*I realize that people north of the Mason-Dixon actually do say this because I was born in Maine and it didn’t hit me until I met a student who’d moved from Texas that the south was even still inhabited. I figured that it had been a deserted wasteland ever since Reconstruction failed and to this day I don’t know who I thought was running Disneyworld.

I hope I don’t actually have to explain in more detail why it’s ridiculous for people in “liberal” states in the USA to act like their hands are so clean, but in case I do I’d like to point out that slave states which joined the Union got to keep their slaves, and I live in one. I live in a northern state where Harriet Beecher Stowe saw and heard enough ugliness to write Uncle Tom’s Cabin. I live in a northern state where we still have unofficial Sundown Towns like Martinsville. The Klan isn’t even gone here, unless the four cross burnings that happened just while I was in college were just done by fans, which isn’t better. But damn, you should see us look down on Kentucky!

Everybody’s got someone more backward than they are providing them an excuse not to check their own mess. Again, do not let us be yours.

Feminist Hivemind Links

This blog is all about the goodness, y’all.

Women and Woo

Scepticism and the sceptics have done a good job at demonstrating that those things are not only bogus but also dangerous. What they have failed at is to look at the reasons why predominantly women fall for them. Instead they often go for the easy answers: It’s because they’re women.

The case for open borders

It is not an accident that most of the victims of immigration control across the Western world are people of colour from developing countries. Here in Britain, it is striking to contemplate how many of the people held in immigration detention facilities come from countries which Britain itself once colonized and plundered in the era of the British Empire: as some activists have put it, “we are here because you were there”. In many former British colonies, many of the most repressive laws still in force – including the criminalization of gay relationships, still a reality in much of Africa – are direct legacies of colonial-era legal systems imposed by Britain itself. Global poverty, likewise, is not an accident but a product of economic oppression over the course of centuries, and the inequality between the richest and poorest countries in the world can only be described as staggering. And yet we continue to punish people for fleeing poverty, violence and instability and seeking a better life in another country.

Women in Secularism 2: Breaking News: Even at WiS, we have to defend the purpose of WiS!

If you want some background as to why we even had this conference, Ken Chitwood posted in the Houston Chronicle about it on May 15th about the upcoming event. Female atheists fight for equality in freethought movement

Women are in a bit of a conundrum when it comes to religion. Increasingly, women want more roles, greater leadership and increased participation. At the same time, such vertical movement is harder for women to attain as pockets of religious conservatism tighten control, leaving women with a crisis. It turns out, what is true for women in religion is true for women without religion as well.

From May 17-19 over 300 women will be convening in Washington D.C. for the Women in Secularism 2 conference, a sequel to the first successful gathering the year before. The aim for attendees is to hear from prominent female free-thought activists on this seemingly contradictory predicament.

While the initial conference was about celebrating female secular activists, this year is meant to take the cause one step further. Not only will the convention rally female free-thought voices and call for women in leadership positions in secular organizations, it will combat those in the secular movement who have shown hostility towards emerging feminine secular champions.

Some of you may remember that I dropped a very quick entry about Ron Lindsay’s embarrassing introduction to Women in Secularism 2 (TW: animated gifs).

Now here come all the links and citations and other lengthy ridiculousness. My thanks go out to Mary Ellen Sikes because I got lots of these links from her.