I'm a Sri Lankan desi by way of Dubai by way of Minnesota.
Timely reminder that Jennifer Lawrence catapulted to fame on the backs of Brown girls who could’ve played Katniss because LOL it’s just a tan and some bronzer
Timely reminder that Katniss is never described as brown so shut the fuck up.
How about you read the books
So this is pretty gross. I found this while flipping through the newest issue of New York Magazine. They have a section called The Look Book, which is meant to feature an average New Yorker with a particularly interesting sense of style. They show off their look, and do a brief interview about what inspires them.
This woman’s look is cultural appropriation and her inspiration is “omg I just love India so much”
New York Magazine’s Look Book, July 16-23 2012
Anja Ploetz, Photographer’s Agent
Nice sari.
Yeah, I love saris. I’m just so into it.How’d you get into it?
Three years ago I went to India for the first time. When I came back to Paris— that’s where I live—I started wearing saris. Now it’s been two years of only wearing Indian dresses.How many do you have?
Over 50.Do you go to India regularly?
Two or three times a year. I’m so crazy about it that I’ve started learning Hindi.Are the bracelets from there too?
Yes, they’re traditionally for newly married women in Rajasthan.Are you married?
No, I just love them.And the bindi?
Married Indian women all have the red spot, but now even young and unmarried women wear bindis. It goes with the sari. And it’s also protection— the third eye.Do you like Indian men?
Yeah, but I’m in a partnership as if we’re married. He’s not Indian, but he brought me there and he likes it a lot.What’s your apartment like?
It’s mixed style. Classical French combined with an Indian touch, like me.Wait, New York Magazine showcased a white woman wearing a sari in their “look book” section as if it was new thing? This happened in year 2012? So Indian women literally wear saris for centuries or something; but a white woman does it and it’s suddenly some new thing? I shouldn’t be surprised — but the slap-in-the-face of it is so stinging.
do i have permission to have my mom bitchslap her
Wow lady… your arrogance is palpable.
First of all… do you hear yourself speak? The bangles are for NEWLY MARRIED WOMEN… A faction of which you are not a part of.
The Third Eye represents The Third Eye of Shiva, which represents wisdom and enlightenment… Something that you have no familiarity with…
Fall the fuck back.
I.
Hate.
People.
Like.
This.
(The woman being interviewed, not all the awesome folks who commented about this bullshit appropriation. STEP OFF, WHITE PERSON. Stop reinterpreting our culture and making it acceptable - and not ‘savage’ or ‘heathen’ or ‘backwards’ - by virtue of your skin color alone. STOP IT. You don’t get to be part of the race that enslaved us, stole from us, killed us, systematically oppressed us, and tried to destroy our cultures and religions, and THEN cherry-pick the pretty parts of that culture and make them hip and acceptable, without also accepting the powerful psychological effects of imperialism that we still deal with today, because of our skin color and features, no matter which country we’re born in and which generation we are to be born in that country.)
Uther was a tyrant but most kings were in real history. Compared to many kings in real history he was even a goody! In those times kings ordered many people to be killed for lesser reasons. Uther had a reason - I don’t say his reason justified his actions but I can understand why. The person he loved the most was taken away by magic and so in his anger he destroyed anything to do with magic only because he had the power to. But I don’t think he was all bad.
SHUT THE FUCK UP OP
SHUT THE FUCK UP
I DON’T GIVE A FUCK IF HE WAS A LITTLE BETTER THAN THE OTHER HORRIBLE KINGS (HE WASN’T), HE WAS STILL A BAD KING WHO DID CRUEL, UNFORGIVABLE THINGS AND HE DOESN’T DESERVE ANY FUCKING LENIENCY FROM OUR JUDGEMENT. FUCK THAT SHIT.
YOU CAN UNDERSTAND WHY HE DID WHAT HE DID? YOU CAN UNDERSTAND WHY HE SYSTEMATICALLY OPPRESSED AND KILLED AND ENTIRE GORUP OF PEOPLE JUST BECAUSE HE WIFE DIED BECAUSE OF A DECISION HE MADE?
REALLY, OP?
YOU CAN UNDERSTAND WHY HE KILLED COUNTLESS PEOPLE JUST FOR BEING ABLE TO USE MAGIC?
GOOD AND BAD, CHILDREN AND ADULTS, ALIKE?
FUCKING REALLY?
AND DESPITE HIS RESPONSIBILITY FOR ALL THAT, YOU DON’T THINK HE WAS ALL THAT BAD?
SIT THE FUCK DOWN, OP.
WHERE IS THE BOOZE.
The Lilly and Laurry Show~: I’m not hating on Morgana
But white feminists need to understand that from where I stand as a WOC, Morgana’s character is hella more complex than ‘she was abused therefore she’s not responsible for her actions’. Her…
The way Gwen is treated in fandom is nothing to do with any of her physical traits, skin color included. It has everything to do with the fact that the way she is written is ridiculous and they do not give her a chance to develop as anything other than ‘Arthur’s love interest’ which is more offensive to women in general than any of what Morgana does to Gwen as a WOC.
*blinks*
*rubs eyes*
*looks again*
Sorry I’d take being ‘only a love interest’ (not my personal thoughts on Gwen at all) over almost burnt at the stake or roofied ever day of the week. And this isn’t about women in general, it is about WOC specifically. The treatment of WOC is very specific.
#being a love interest is more offensive than nearly being murdered or raped #please tell us darkies what to be offended by#intersectionality wut??
^^^ Your tags are superb and so are you. This is what happens when a white feminism with no meaningful engagement of intersections attempts to speak for ALL WOMEN. Like their white feminist analysis is totally falling apart when it comes to discussing Gwen relative to Morgana and they can’t admit it because they have no concept for HOW.
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN PRESENTS: A STORM OF UNRESOLVED SEXUAL TENSION
Davos: I am your man, Your Grace. So it is your tongue, to do with as you please.
Stannis: It is.
^^^
BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
LOLing at Merthur shippers’ thoughts on 4x09
Like they’re biggest reason for being pissed is not so much the skeevy magical-roofie bracelet, or the physical violence or sexism or slut-shaming, it’s that THE LEGEND IS NOW RUINED BECAUSE GUINEVERE WON’T CAUSE THE FALL OF CAMELOT SINGLE-HANDEDLY oh noes.
And also, apparently ALL REALTIONSHIPS ON THE SHOW have suffered because of the hideous and rushed A/G romance.
Lawd.
Summer children being summer children. Come September, they’ll be falling like leaves.
this ain’t livin’: What’s With the Fanfic to Book Hate?
People sneering at both authors are definitely playing up the ‘ew, gross, fanfic’ factor. They want to make it clear that they disdain fanfic and the people who write it. Intriguingly, many of those people are women, so there’s a subtle embedded misogyny going on here in the way people discuss fanfic; female creative endeavors are dismissed, while male literary fiction is embraced and celebrated. Just like romance as a genre is trashed (‘ew, gross, it’s for women’) and literary fiction is considered high culture (‘it’s about dudes, you know’).
The issue with Cassandra Clare is not that her work is loosely adapted from her Harry Potter fanfic. The problem is that she got a book contract because of her popularity as a fanfic writer—which wouldn’t be a problem except for the small fact that her fic was outright plagiarized from a bajillion different other works, and not just in the sense of using the same set of characters. Clare used other people’s ideas and in many cases their actual words liberally in the fanfic which got her the book contract.
That she now enjoys success as a bestselling YA author, with a movie deal, etc., while some of the writers whose work Clare stole don’t even have their works in print anymore, is outrageous and upsetting.
I personally would love to see more fanfic writers enjoy commercial success. There are so many of them who are really talented, work hard to produce quality works, and deserve to have their writing read more widely.
But Clare, in addition to being an unpleasant person in general, built her fanfic and commercial success by taking credit for other writers’ work. This needs to be condemned.
I just noticed that Clare’s main wikipedia page doesn’t have any references to her plagiarism and mentions her fanfic only in passing. Urgh. I suppose she, her lawyers/publicists, and her fans watch that carefully to ensure that this story stays buried. But it shouldn’t.
This this THIS. Especially the bolded. Fanfic has its highs and lows JUST LIKE ANY OTHER LITERARY GENRE.
If we can consider The Three Musketeers classic fiction (when we know that Dumas wrote genre fic featuring swashbuckling adventures and sex because that’s WHAT SOLD), we can accept that fanfic writers are also capable of creating worthy literary works.
Also, as a woman of color fanfic writer myself, I have to add: for folks who’re socially and culturally marginalized, fanfic is one of the few places where we can take ownership of our images and speak back to hegemonic media. Characters of color who get shoddy canonical treatment have reams and reams of glorious fanfic dedicated to exploring and complexifying their stories. The same for queer characters, female characters, disabled characters and so on. So this whole dismissal of fanfic as somehow beneath our literary tastes also smacks hella lot of white, class, heterosexual privilege to me.
The Greatest Pirate Who Ever Lived
BY: JOE DORAN （杜乔）
In 1801, a pirate named Zheng Yi was busy raiding Canton. Aside from the prerequisite plundering and rum-drinking, he had given his men one specific order: to break into a local brothel and bring him the prostitute Zheng Yi Sao (郑一嫂), or “Zheng Yi’s wife”.
One might expect a sinister fate to have awaited Zheng Yi Sao upon her deliverance to the pirate captain (rape, swiftly followed by murder, being the most obvious). In actuality, Zheng Yi’s intentions were considerably more gentlemanly.
He intended to marry her. And recognizing that her current future prospects were rather limited, Zheng Yi Sao accepted.
But Zheng Yi Sao didn’t intend on spending the rest of her days as some plunder-hungry pirate’s eye candy. She wanted to become a pirate as well, and she did – one of the greatest pirates to have ever lived.
That first part doesn’t do justice, here read this:
Right from the get-go, Zheng Yi Sao displayed a staggering degree of cunning. She happily accepted Zheng Yi’s proposal, but only on the condition that he share his wealth and power with her, equally. Then, while her new husband went about his pirate duties – further plunder and rum-drinking, presumably – she focused on the business side of things. The result was that in six years, she had engineered an alliance between Zheng Yi and his former pirate rivals, amassed a force of some 1500 ships (called the Red Flag Fleet) and created a swashbuckling empire that extended all the way from Korea to Malaysia.
Zheng Yi certainly knew how to pick ‘em.
Unfortunately, Zheng Yi was killed in 1807 after a misunderstanding with a typhoon. Unfortunate for him, but extremely fortunate for Zheng Yi Sao. Refusing to step aside like a good, diligent widow, Zheng Yi Sao took charge of the Red Flag Fleet, convinced her late husband’s First Mate to support her and swiftly set about making herself the most respected and/or feared individual in all the East.
If films/books/video games have taught us anything, it’s that pirates were a rowdy bunch at the best of times, and their attitudes towards women were…less than progressive. Zheng Yi Sao, of course, was having none of that and quickly established a new pirate code to keep her peg-legged men in line. Anyone who looted a town that had already paid tribute had their head cut off and was dumped in the ocean. Anyone caught, or even suspected, of stealing from the treasury had their head cut off and was dumped in the ocean. Anyone who raped a female prisoner had their head cut off and was dumped in the ocean (there’s a pattern there somewhere).
Needless to say, Zheng Yi Sao was not messing around. Not all her laws were quite so decapitation-happy, though. Ugly female prisoners were to be set free, and when a crewmember purchased one of the prettier captives, he had no choice but to marry her.
But if he was unfaithful…head cut off, dumped in the ocean.
After just one year leading her pirate hegemony, Zheng Yi Sao had formed one of the largest navies on the planet, with some 17,000 men under her command. Extorted tributes from merchants across the Chinese seas and from the coastal towns between Macau and Canton swelled her treasury to staggering levels, and her power was so great that she became the de facto government of the region. No longer was she merely a pirate; she was an entire political entity.
Wow. And in Pirates of the Carribean, what do we have? Oh yes, Keira Knightely’s white womanhood is threatened with rape by the evil!Oriental pirate, who’s subsequently killed off so that the white woman who could put on some ridiculous Orientalist garb and take over the fleet. Yea, not gross at all *sarcasm*
