I put this post up in drafts last night thinking when I woke up, maybe I'd feel a little better about the world. I don't.
Media; comics, movies, tv, radio talk shows and books (OMG the books), keep showing racist, bigoted, prejudiced, painful, degradation filled, unapologetic 'this is how it is, shut the fuck up and deal' examples of the world we live in. And then idiot, upon idiot upon mindless idiot opens his or her or their mouth and says:
"It's only books, it's only tv, it's only a game, it's only comics, it's not important. It's not like it'll affect real life. You're blowing it all out of proportion."
Let me list the things these idiots find to not be a big deal. Let me list you the things I find exhausting. Let me list you the weight and despair I've been feeling lately so much so that escapism has been increasingly impossible for me.
* Shock Jocks, talking about transgender children as deserving of brutality, physical violence, shaming - in particular shoes flying at their heads and society 'beating them down'.
By the way, the way society beats down queer and transchildren is by bringing guns to school and shooting them, or brutally beating them to death at the side of the road and claiming gay and trans panic ie 'They were so abnormal, fear freaked me out and I temporarily lost my mind and just wanted to get it away'. Society beats them down by calling them freaks, by encouraging their own parents to call them freaks. By having books that suggest stripping a teen naked is the best way to check someone is the gender they say they are. By having talk-shows where ratings go up for every episode where audiences there and at home get a chance to jeer at them. By having an industry set up to set them straight (in all the ways that means) by being 'tough'. And finally, by making them so damn depressed that at seven, and nine and eleven years old, they kill themselves, because they've gotten the message they're not wanted.
* American (& The Western World's RAPE CULTURE). I could not click the link after reading the summary of four youths accosting a child in a locker-room, for two months, where his screams were heard outside but no one did anything, said anything. Not even him. I cannot go into further details because that is so triggering for me personally, so upsetting that discussing it more would make me walk outside and randomly start castrating men.
But let me just say, that screaming for help as the pain continues and realizing that no one is coming, has got to be one of the most demoralizing, spirit crushing things a person can ever experience. And leads right back to seven and nine and eleven and thirteen year olds killing themselves because no one believes that life and school in particularl is actually hell on earth.
What's most, draining, about this, is that this occurrence of a rape gang is not new. It's not. There was the gang that raped a black girl and video taped it on their phone. And the gang that raped a mentally disabled girl, and taped it on their phone. This is what now? The third or fourth year with an incidence of a school based rape gang? Maybe it's the fifth or sixth and I just blocked things out. There's also the prosecutor that promoted the thought a thirteen year old was asking for it.
* Mental & Physical Assault In Schools. An autistic little boy being voted out of the classroom as disruptive, in a vote set up by the teacher meant to help come up with ways to help him, by assessing his needs. A First Nations, American boy, having his parents need to sue to get him into class without cutting his hair which would be against his tribe's beliefs. A Canadian First Nations boy actually physically assaulted by a teacher, who CUT OFF HIS HAIR and then put him in front of a mirror and told him how much better he looked.
You can't be yourself if being yourself is being not white. If being yourself is being non neurotypical.
Where are the books that show how various tribes hold onto their traditions, which are as important as Irish or Scottish traditions, as important as German or Polish traditions? Where are the books that reaffirm that these peoples do exist, and are attempting to thrive and live and love in our modern society and this is how they do it?
Without enough books like that, there's no societal osmosis of information. If there's no baseline of information, there's no respect. No respect and people think they can lay a hand on a First Nations child as if he doesn't have parents, or family or elders or a tribal government that will say anything. Without enough books and knowledge there's no pause for someone white to think their actions are something out of the forced boarding schools many native children (in the Americas, In Australia) were sent to. That they're saying school is a prison and they will be just like the rest or there'll be trouble.
But books aren't important. Right? Books aren't real life. Comics aren't real life. There's no way having a First Nations hero on a tv program somewhere or in a comic book might have made some of the other children speak up; might have clued the assistant teacher who did this; might have clued the Principal or other administrations into how wrong it was.
I'm almost too tired to talk about the * Lack of Equality Among Blogging Feminists In Regards People With Disabilities. If any group needed an intersection of media and social justice, in order to get the layers of social justice (often called intersectionality), it's that group. Women with disabilities? Still women. Mothers with children with disabilities? Still women.
2009 is just draining. It's draining to see who keeps popping up to say that representation has nothing to do with making the world a better place. That presence has nothing to do with acceptance and tolerance, compassion and understanding. Who keeps popping up to say 'But this never mattered to that group before', shameless that their own words show how much they haven't been listening.
It's one slammed door of unwelcome after another. I'm currently still in mild shock, that DC is proudly promoting the sketches, with notes for the SuperYoung Team. I can't even get into the team itself. It's the fact those racist, painful, clueless white man notes are being published under DC letterhead...That they're proud to say it represents them; their sketch version of a Japananse Hero Team, is a Japanese version of Loud, Ugly, Unclean, Rude American Tourist. That is 'Super, Whacky, Anime, Funny Speech, Misused Terms, Fish Eye Lens, Kawaii Gameshow, Celebrity Mash Up' - Don't worry, it's got a theme song to make it easier to remember.
It's the shock of realizing I can't find images of female celebrities anymore that don't have them pushing out, arching back, or some other version of what used to be a boudoir pose, with far more skin covered and far less pouty lip. I'm not sure anymore the porn face tracers and copiers are actually copying porn.
The stories we, as a people in Westernized Civilization have been telling ourselves - well, they're doing their job. Women are hungry, rail thin, hangers for secondary sexual characteristics. They can kick ass(sexily), but they like to have a unique parnormal boyfriend on the sidelines ready to step in, just in case. And the one's without male ownership of some type, are free game. As is any gay male under the age of 21 - what other use do they have but 'practice for the real thing' and to make some 'normal' hero feel slightly uncomfortable. Minorities are mostly invisible, except for when they're making life easy, or potentially complicated for some white avatar; Feisty Latina, Sharp Mouthed Black Woman, Muscle Thug Black Man, Asian Geek Guy, Exotic Asian Love Interest (of few words). First Nations are all dead, but they conveniently left behind a culture to be pillaged and spirituality to be savaged and folk lore goes to the highest bidder. And anybody with a mental illness is either a villain, or a poorly misunderstood, quiet genius, in need of (forced) medication. Oh yes, and anyone with a physical disability, well, they stay inside. There are laws against the 'ugly', y'know. Really.
Wait, not we. Black, gay, some disabilities, female - shoot. I'm a ghost in a basement somewhere. I'm not part of Western Civilization's (particularly American civilization's) mirror of itself.
It's depressing and isolating, but I guess it should give me hope. Except, who do I mirror? Who do I speak to if I decide to tell a story? The other ghosts? Or maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe writing will serve me the way rp serves me, as a way to involve myself with something besides the horror house, twisted images I keep seeing and all the damage they do.
If you've wondered why I'm not talking so much about comics or even animation anymore - well, that doesn't feature much in private shared action fantasy.
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Links:
http://www.glaad.org/Page.aspx?pid=730
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/06/04/florida.sexual.assault/index.html
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2009/05/21/thunder-bay-hair.html?Authorized=1&AuthenticationKey=1_7_b32e0f27-c7ec-4e1f-ab6d-de5de2f4e4b3.pbcddlcgdaeekl#socialcomments-submit
http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2008/may/24/30gtteacher-lets-students-vote-out-classmate-5/
http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2009/mar/31/judge-upholds-alex-barton-teachers-suspension-loss/
http://troubleinchina.livejournal.com/429265.html
http://nenena.livejournal.com/147975.html?style=mine
http://community.livejournal.com/noscans_daily/91349.html?style=mine#cutid2
http://www.cliffchiang.com/2008/05/16/big-in-japan/
http://urbansemiotic.com/2007/05/01/enforcing-the-ugly-laws/
