Sunday, June 12, 2011

Gay Girl In Damascus Is Fake

Via DV: It's a white guy from Turkey in Turkey possibly from Georgia USA, happily appropriating revolutions, west asian culture, social justice woman's culture and all the rest and he's sorry for the trouble he caused for claiming she'd been kidnapped. BBC interview here with the woman whose picture was appropriated/stolen/misused etc... Extra info over in this link .

I would say something about white men; white cis, hetero, privileged men, appropriating/taking/stealing/absorbing/claiming to be giving a voice to while smothering real true voices with their other hand - but I'm just too upset, really. It's always easier to add the dressing; to guess, to fantasize to hypothesize than to listen and raise up and bring the spotlight to actual individuals.

You give a PLANT a voice, a dog a voice, a chair a voice. That is anthropomorphism. People of colour, women, people of varied non dominant gender identity or non dominant sexual identity or non dominant ability levels (mental, physical or otherwise and other non dominant individual societies) don't need to be 'made to seem human'. We already are.

And we don't need other people trying to tell the stories we do have to tell - because they're too busy imagining how it could be to hear how it really is.