Remember, EM POC only!

Sleepy as hell again, comrades, but I might as well get this posted up before I go ahead and rest.

That aside, let’s get those weekly EM POC vibes going!

blob-sleep

  • khizuo [ze/zir]@hexbear.netEnglish
    10·
    14 hours ago

    Okay I need to rant about this godawful short story that one of my profs had us discuss today.

    It’s called “To the New World” and it’s by Ryka Aoki. It’s really short, if you want to read it; I got through it in less than ten minutes. But you probably don’t want to read it, because it’s bad, lol. The gist of it is that it’s about a Vietnamese-American trans woman celebrating her dead grandma’s birthday and running into her racist white terf “friend”.

    1. This story makes it seem like one can’t be vegan and Asian at the same time. The main character, Millie, has this moment where she heats up a non-vegan food to celebrate her grandma’s birthday and then thinks about how those foods are intrinsically connected to her childhood memories, while the racist white terf character, Sierra, talks a lot about veganism. So as an Asian vegan — am I supposed to draw the conclusion that going vegan is against my culture, or that it’s white terf shit, or something? lol

    2. This story’s ending draws an allegorical connection between Millie’s grandmother escaping the Vietnam war to come to Amerikkka, and being trans. It talks about Amerikkka in glowing terms, i.e. “there’s cheap produce! omg! this is amazing” So am I supposed to draw the conclusion that uhh being trans is cool because it’s just like immigrating to the imperialist settler-colony that commits genocide around the world and at home for the sake of maintaining it’s hegemony?

    3. I think the story is trying to end on a triumphant note, but said triumphant note includes a line where Millie thinks to herself that she should ask Sierra out? I mean personally I would not ask out a racist white terf, but I guess that’s just me.

    4. There are completely unnecessary lines about East Asian people in it for like half the pages. Yes they’re said by Sierra and we’re not supposed to like her, but when I told my best friend some of the lines in this story he said that it felt like my professor had assigned me a microaggression to read, lol.

    5. This is just pettiness, but I really disliked the writing style. The prose was just awkward and there were some really poorly placed similes.

    • Angel [any]@hexbear.netOPMEnglish
      8·
      13 hours ago

      Okay, first of all, for the story in particular, YIKES, WHAT THE FUCK!?

      Second of all, as a vegan of color, I’ve always found the painting of veganism as “racist” and “colonialist” or even simply “white” super inconsiderate in that respect as well.

      Aside from the fact that it’s obviously false, if I take a sentiment like “Veganism is white and racist!” at face value, what’s effectively being communicated is that I’m going against my race, culture, and people just by being vegan. It’s saying that if I’d rather be a vegan than be a carnist, then it’s inherently impossible for me to not be shameful about my blackness.

      I’ve always found that incredibly toxic of non-vegan leftists to do. It’s especially frustrating when done by white carnists, but of course, it still makes my blood boil when done by carnists of color as well.

      I’ve struggled with enough internalized racism by listening to reactionary white queers screech about how they believe that POC have higher rates of queerphobia; I sure as hell don’t want that same cycle repeated but for veganism instead.

      • frauddogg [they/them, null/void]@hexbear.netEnglish
        3·
        54 minutes ago

        Honestly, the western ‘Left’ is fuckin cooked lmao. If we can’t even get on one accord to end a pandemic that could bring humanity to its knees, how am I supposed to believe these westerners will liberate anybody? How am I supposed to believe they can end the patriarchy, or white supremacy, or capitalism at the end of all things?

    • asante [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      9·
      17 hours ago

      still kinda confused on the actual differences between wishing death (eg. “death to […]”) on ppl and wishing COVID on them. couldn’t figure out an answer from the thread either

      • frauddogg [they/them, null/void]@hexbear.netEnglish
        6·
        10 hours ago

        That was the exact moment it dawned on me how absolutely, laughably hypocritical they are. We went off on all kinds of reactionary motherfuckers, all kinds of wishing fucked up torturous deaths on 'em, wishing shootings, stabbings, all the et cetera; but when I identify a reactionary smugging about disabilities, trying to make excuses for antimask sentiment, and I handle them how I handle a reactionary? Alla sudden because the mod staff is cool with them, I’m going off on a comrade when that so-called ‘comrade’ wants to take up for plague rats.

        And it’s like no one listened to “I don’t consider the motherfucker my comrade”. Be damned if some unprincipled larper just demands I vend out unearned camaraderie or respect to someone I’ve already identified as a tacit hazard.

        • asante [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
          4·
          2 hours ago

          great point. had some time to think abt this:

          • every action has a level of validity so it, depending on your moral values. helping someone out is very valid, so is fighting back when bullied
          • wishing bad consequences on ppl may not sound like the right or ““correct”” thing to do, but as an expression of your emotions - sympathy, empathy, trauma, etc. - it is a very valid thing to do and should be welcomed
            • and not recognizing that validity - for example, sites that condemn “death to […]”, “violence against […] is justified”, etc. - tends to come from a privileged, white cis hetero perspective of what are and aren’t valid emotions. quite a few lemmygrad.ml users and the lemmygrad.ml mod to me are engaging in this
          • so wishing COVID on someone is valid as a way to say “fuck you” to ppl who not only don’t recognise the harmful consequences of COVID-minimalism but risk spreading COVID and its harmful consequences to other ppl
            • also i don’t think wishing COVID can really be considered an actual threat because how tf can i give you COVID through a computer screen lol
          • frauddogg [they/them, null/void]@hexbear.netEnglish
            4·
            23 minutes ago

            Why I said fuck it and made a clean break of it moving my account here. Hexbear might be a lot more shitposty and considered less serious as a result; but at least I don’t see the same hypocritical actions here as I did there. If “serious” all of a sudden started meaning “hypocritical when it suits”, then I don’t want it. I’d rather fw shitposters than people who have all this supposed energy against optic politicking only to weaponize optics politics the minute someone they like is getting called to the front of the room. Idk. I have zero faith in lemmygrad anymore and I pray to every divinity with space on my altar those petri dish defenders aren’t a part of the local IRL formations I organize with.

            They might get the whole org put up in a hospital wing otherwise. And while I’m thinking about it, I’m gonna address all the settler shitheads smugging in that thread like “you wouldn’t say that shit to me IRL” “I got ten bucks you wouldn’t”-- yes the fuck I would. Yes the fuck I would, I have been telling you western “leftists” for the last year I only consider maybe FIVE PERCENT of you peckerwood motherfuckers on any kind of motion AND SOMEHOW THESE CRACKERS THINK I WOULDN’T???

            Trick please, I’ll walk a cracker down in the middle of the road if Ion’t claim them. Nothing I hate more than smug-assed crackers.

            • CommunistCuddlefish [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
              3·
              54 minutes ago

              You were absolutely correct and I’m sorry y’all got hit so hard by covid. People don’t want to face how lucky they are if they haven’t gotten some horrible new health condition from covid of acknowledge that it could happen to them

              • frauddogg [they/them, null/void]@hexbear.netEnglish
                2·
                27 minutes ago

                People don’t want to face how lucky they are if they haven’t gotten some horrible new health condition from covid of acknowledge that it could happen to them

                And like that, you landed on exactly why I said what I did. Because I know, full well that the settlers with their noses up about this matter never have.

                They haven’t had their respiratory function cut by a third of its former efficiency. They haven’t had their immune systems so wracked by this bullshit that so much as thinking about going to the grocer could give them a cold. They haven’t had to live through only working for five hours of what used to be a ten to twelve hour work day and then getting absolutely doubled over by rapid-onset brainfog as a daily event. And maybe if they had to deal with a case that severe, they’d finally get it. I sure as shit did!

                But no, can’t tell a settler-leftist what he needs to hear, otherwise you’re the villain, especially when you’re not white. I know what I’ll do; I’ll pay Matt Christman or Hasan Piker or some other treatbrain streamer to relay my words to them; that seems to be the only fuckin way they listen to shit.

      • thelastaxolotl [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        11·
        14 hours ago

        Honestly its strange to treat wishing covid on people the same as a “kys” yet not having a hard policy to crackdown on people with anti-mask opinions or that minimise covid