Willow is always amazing and you have to read it because I cannot quote it all: Transethnicity Claims, Piracy, Faeries & Appropriation.

The 1st thing to hit me, is how mocking this is to transgendered individuals, that their situation is seen as so damn 'science fiction', somehow, that something as mocking as 'Trans Ethnic' can be set up as part of any kind of conversation. 'So, you think you're not the gender you physically appear to be / were assigned at birth? Ha! I top you. I don't think I'm the ethnicity 'assigned' to me at birth/ that I appear as. And none of this having a damn thing to do with the modification of birth certificates so that NDN people could pass as non-native for a chance at a better life. None of this gets into black who passed as white, to try and life a better, safer life within a white supremacist state. None of this gets into trans racial adoptees and their personal conflicts of identity and how they feel vs how they're treated.

[...]

Cultural appropriation seems to exist, because in order to be white and in order to be USian, various peoples several decades ago decided to put aside their cultural and ethnic heritage in order to fit in. The less you showed some distinct aspect of your identity the more it supposedly meant you were leaving it behind to embrace your new Usian life.

So goodbye, traditions, language, clothing, manners, foods, songs and stories. And now here we are, a couple generations later, with a set of people who want something to belong to, but even in this day and age of Ancestry.com (for white folk) they're not going back to research what they gave up. And I don't know if it's because the attitudes to give it up and leave it behind are still strong, if sub and unconscious. They're instead reaching towards those peoples who've fought and struggled and suffered to hold on to anything at all. And reaching towards peoples whose suffering and oppression has formed a new culture and new identity within this 'new land'. So I suppose it's not surprising so many people want to be Native American - because how much more 'belonging' to this new land could one be? Or that they want to be 'Black' which is an identity that was created on these shores (well these and other places of colonialist import of slaves).

But history and struggle, accomplishment and identity, folklore, stories and song, foods, clothing and culture are not something you can buy in a store.

[...] But whoa. Looking at the terms 'Trans Ethnic', however, makes me feel as if minority/non dominant/colonized culture and societies are somehow as mythical and unreal as fairies, dragons, and spiritual wolves and bears - because ANYONE can decide that's who and what they are and decide to pick it up and somehow 'live by it'. And while you cannot disrespect fairies and dragons, and disrespecting wolves or bears gets you murdered and dead - disrespecting non dominant ethnicities happens, is real, is hurtful and painful and dehumanizing and devaluing.

If your inner self is a water dragon, well, whatever. That's your thing. If your inner self is black? Fuck you. There have always been assholes (particularly teenagers), dressing in certain clothes, copying certain slang, listening to certain music and claiming they were down with __insert ethnic minority here__. New age dressing it up as 'Trans Ethnicism' doesn't change the asshole badge.

[...]

I said I'd talk about Trans Ablism / Trans Disablism, and I will. Disability has a culture, it has many in fact. Deaf culture, isn't blind culture, isn't the myriad wheelchair cultures, isn't invisible disability culture, isn't chronic illness culture, isn't ... the list goes on. Those cultures too? Came out of struggle and strife, dedication, hard work and more. They were created to sustain the myriad peoples who're involved in them. They have their dark ass times, their deprivations and horrors, their triumphs, their moments of weeping for joy and of pain. There are institutions, schools, lock aways, slurs, words, language, music, dance, art, etc, and yes they were all created - some of them only a couple hundred years old. But they? Are REAL. You don't get to go shopping for them either.

Cause this shopping people are doing, has nothing to do with learning the history of anything, it's just another type of entitlement. It's grubby grabby hands. It's trying to fill some lack and hole with someone else's inheritance. It's grabbing someone else's sandwich cause they dealt with the jeers and kept their food, and you threw yours aside.

Awesome thing to share: Infographics. But I'm not finding alt text in those, doesn't seem to be very accessible.

I loved this one: Which Countries Are Making the Most Progress on the Millennium Development Goals. It shows what a good progress are making Developing Countries (most of them African countries) in areas like Maternal Health, Child Health, and End Poverty and Hunger.

ETA:Forget it. Lots of fail on that site. Now it has some shit about, "how higher BMI will kill you!" aaaaaarg.

Right now my dad is watching an Argentinian show about people who compete for money about losing weight. And the hosts applaud and congratulate the contenders (almost all women) and talk about how admirable they are for every kg they lose.

Brain-bleach. Now.

Study: Too Many Fat Women Don’t Even Know They’re Fat.

Of course, no one is also talking about the fact that lots of fat people are also engaging in dangerous practices like smoking, taking laxatives, or throwing up to try to be thin. Because, I mean, who cares — they’re still fat. And no one is talking about thin people who eat foods high in fat and don’t exercise, because who cares — they’re thin.

The point is, this clearly isn’t about health, or we’d be talking about unhealthy habits across the board. And if we want to talk about the unhealthy habits of those thin people who are trying to be even thinner, the problem isn’t that they don’t know just how thin they are. The problem is that thanks to this fatphobic culture we’re living in, they’re so terrified of being fat that they’d rather put their health at risk than be perceived as “unhealthy” and unattractive.

Which is to say that I’m extremely concerned about women’s health, probably a lot more so than most people. I just think that studies like this, and the kind of rhetoric and behaviors they inspire are making women’s health a whole hell of a lot worse.

Also, a blog rec: Socialism and....

liberation for all - an intersectional approach to social and economic justice

Here you can have its DW feed: liberation4all_feed

Via the_future_modernes, some amazing shit: Sex positivity and other lies on Tumblr.

But there was this lie in the whole thing, and the lie was told by blog after blog, webpage after webpage that talked a great game about how we can be open about sex, but seemed to equate sex with the nude bodies of thin, conventionally attractive, blonde white women in male-gaze centric pornography, as though if I really pushed myself to enjoy such titles as Biker Bitches 5 and clinically lit photoshoots of a woman with her legs in improbably acrobatic positions, I’d be making the world a better place. Because that’s what the world needed, more people to applaud the open display of sculpted bodies as though somehow, that would liberate my fat, pansexual ass from the confines of sexual oppression. As though the ways in which society has pushed at me and pushed at me, telling me to keep my fat ass covered and my queer thoughts to myself is the same as what society tells a 5’8, 110 lbs, straight, white woman with no disabilities. Because it isn’t.

[...]

I looked and looked in those sex positivity blogs and sites, in their pictures and stories and I didn’t find a lot of fat people (male or female), people of color, queer people. I have yet to find a mainstream sex positivity site (yes, this movement has a mainstream) that features transgendered people in all their beauty. Forget seeing disabled people displaying their various modes of sexuality. Forget seeing their bodies displayed as revolutionary and world-changing and an example of how sex is really, really awesome.

I learned soon enough that most sex positivity is actually White Straight Thin Able Cisgendered Cissexual Positivity.

And the world is already positive enough on those traits, thank you very much.

[...]

I’m tired of the lies.

If you’re sex positive and you’re not making an active effort to include and celebrate all kinds of sexuality from all kinds of people? You’re a fucking liar. There it is. You’re a liar.

Because sex positivity and body positivity and anti-racism and fat acceptance and the disability movement and queer positivity and womanism are part of the same thing.

Same with any movement. Fat acceptance? If you’re only showing fat white people or fat able people or fat straight people, then you’re not fat accepting, you’re just white supremacy enforcing and trying to bring chubby people under that umbrella of dominance.

I’m tired of the people who put up some Tumblr blogs and showcase the same old, same old and act like they’re part of a revolution. They’re not. They’re part of making sure that lots of other people know exactly who’s sex is celebrated and who’s isn’t.

So I say FUCK sex positivity. I want sex inclusivity.

Preach it.

Kevin Smith got kicked off a flight for "being too fat", and thingswithwings has a fucking ass-kicking post about fat-shame:

this is so much bullshit, I cannot even tell you how much bullshit it is.

The issue, you see, is not that America manages food resources incredibly irresponsibly, that grocery stores routinely throw out tonnes of food, or that everyone - everyone! - in America is encouraged to eat more than they need and encouraged to waste food. It's not that our industrial use of energy and fossil fuel is wasteful, mismanaged, and out of proportion to any other country's use of those same resources. It's not that the fucking health care system is so broken that no one even knows how to fucking fix it, and that practically no one in America is getting adequate health coverage.

It's not that the seats on airlines have gotten smaller and smaller over the last thirty years, or that the airlines care less and less about customers' comfort and more and more about profit margins.

No, it's that I'm taking up too much fucking space. I'm the consumer you can blame; you can tell I'm a wanton consumer by my waist size; if it weren't for me, there would be plenty of health care to go around! Plenty of food for starving waifs, plenty of fuel for thin active soccer moms to gas up their SUVs, plenty of resources. It's not that we need to fix the infrastructure or that there's anything wrong with the way the average American uses food or fuel; it's not that there's anything wrong with giant corporations that will happily trade away resources, dignity, public health, and human life for a profit. None of that stuff is the problem; I am the problem. If I would just fucking go away, there'd be enough food, and fuel, and health care for EVERYONE.

Well, it's not fucking true, is it, and I'm sick of hearing it. I'm sick of being the scapegoated other onto whom this country can slough off its anxieties about consumption.

[...]

And second of all, oh my god, is this what capitalism has reduced us to? Is it really the situation that, faced with the prospect of a corporation having to make accomodations for its customers (either by making bigger seats or by simply allowing fat folks to have two seats for the price of one), the only situation that people can even imagine is that the airline would then have no choice but to raise ticket prices? Is it really the case that American consumers hate themselves that much? That these people see themselves as the only ones who could possibly pay for such a change in airline policy? That it's just completely inconceivable that the airline itself could pay for such changes without passing it on to the consumer, in order to allow all of their passengers access to basic fucking human dignity? That when there's a question of who is going to pay for human dignity, the answer must of necessity be, not the corporation who has denied it to people in the first place? Boo-hoo, poor multibillion dollar corporations, they have it so fucking tough! They have no choice but to pack people onto planes like sardines, they have no choice but to make the seats smaller, they have no choice but to overbook! They need to MAKE MONEY, PEOPLE! Won't somebody please think of the children profit margins?

[...]That's shame that emerges from a North American protestant idea that self-denial is good, that taking up less space is good, that virtue is found in those who go without. If Aunt M is sick, it is obviously because she is fat, because fat people lack self-discipline (self-denial), because self-discipline (self-denial) is a virtue, and god punishes the unvirtuous. And trust me on this one, there are already plenty of ways in which women are told to deny themselves, go without, be modest, take up less space - we don't need to add this one to it.

Well, not only North America, you know, but you get the deal.