Largely links.

[stunt_muppet]

1. Via kayliemalinza  (and, in turn, via rubynye ): Chimamanda Adichie, on the danger of a culture's "single story". On the stories that get told and disseminated about non-majority cultures, including African cultures, and why stories exclusively about resistance or suffering are not enough.

2. Via srevans : You've probably heard, by now, about the five teens that committed suicide because they were bullied for being gay. (Though you may not have heard about four more teens - in one high school alone - who also killed themselves after being bullied.) Dan Savage, radio host and columnist, has started a project called "It Gets Better", which encourages bullied gay teens to keep going, invites well-known gay actors, writers, and public figures to speak about their experiences with discrimination, bullying, and suicidal ideation, and, per the name, encourages teens that life gets better after high school.

But the project isn't perfect. Femmephane outlines ten problems here:

9. There is actually no path to change in this vision. Promoting the illusion that things just “get better,” enables privileged folks to do nothing and just rely on the imaginary mechanics of the American Dream to fix the world. Fuck that. How can you tell kids it gets better without having the guts to say how.

Samia has more to say here:

And can I just say I find it weird that suddenly all these straight/cis liberals are all torn up about LGBTQI suicides? These turn out to be a lot of the same people who regularly make and/or let their friends get away with the stupid "harmless" jokes, disdainful innuendos and judgmental gender policing that make transphobia and homophobia socially acceptable.

I post these links after the link about the single story because I think part of the problem with It Gets Better is that it does rely on the single story, which is an overwhelmingly white, upper-class one that doesn't have that many problems after high school, that has an assumed happy ending. Plus, the first point that femmephane raises, about the wholesale rejection of religiosity and small-town life, again speaks to the danger of placing an entire culture - whether a religious culture, urban, or rural - into a single narrative: it is small, it is inherently bad, there is nothing redeeming about it. Which is not to say that prejudice among religious communities is not a problem, but the solution is not asking someone to cast off their home and the culture they grew up in because it is too broken to be fixed.  / $0.02

3. Via ivy_chan  and upstart_crow : Something else you might have heard of: Firefighters in South Fulton City, Tennessee, responded to a call from Gene Cranick, bringing all their fire equipment - and then doused his neighbors' houses to prevent the fire from spreading, while standing and watching as his mobile home - containing everything he had, plus his three dogs and cat - burned to the ground. The reason? He forgot to pay a $75.00 fee.

A PayPal account has been set up to help to aid Mr. Cranick; details on how you can contribute are here.

4. Also via ivy_chan : Pony Black, a woman in Olympia, Washington, was charged with public combat and obstructing an officer after police broke up her fight with another woman. The police in question also slammed her head into the pavement and refused her medical attention when she went to complain (TRIGGER WARNING for physical assault).

Her arraignment has already passed, but there's been no sentence that I can check.

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Going to reply to comments, promise promise. I've just been spending most of my time doing laundry.

Comments

[rainbowstevie.livejournal.com]

Wait, "Plus his three dogs and a cat"? WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK KIND OF HUMAN BEINGS LET ANIMALS DIE HORRIBLE DEATHS. I CAN'T EVEN. INTERNAL RAGE FIREBALL, I HAVE NOT HAD ONE THIS INTENSE IN MONTHS.

[stunt-muppet.livejournal.com]

I KNOW. Just...ugh. And you know they had to be crying out and struggling, and how can you hear that and not go in to help? How can you be that cruel? And what if the guy's grandson had been in there - would they have let him die too?

[rainbowstevie.livejournal.com]

I'm going to believe that they were gone before the firefighters got there. That's the only way I can possibly cope without throwing up.

[stunt-muppet.livejournal.com]

I don't know; honestly, I'm nervous to look it up in case people really did let the man's pets die while they watched. Bad enough that they let his entire home burn down.

[rionaleonhart]

Oh my goodness, that fire story is absolutely disgusting. This is not what the world should be. I am furious.

[stunt-muppet.livejournal.com]

I know. I'm still outraged just re-reading it. Especially with his animals in the house - how can you know they're trapped, and hear them, and not do anything about it? How can you just sit there while someone's begging for help, while their neighbors are begging you to stop?

[curuchamion.livejournal.com]

Re numbers 1 and 2: have I mentioned lately how much I love your meta? You're so good at drawing these awesome connections and making me think. (I like being made to think...) Also I agree with you, especially about the small-town thing.

[stunt-muppet.livejournal.com]

Thank you, and I'm glad that made sense to you, because I wasn't sure if drawing that conclusion was overstepping my boundaries or drawing specious conclusions. It made sense to me, anyway.

[kayliemalinza.livejournal.com]

the solution is not asking someone to cast off their home and the culture they grew up in because it is too broken to be fixed.

I like that. Thank you for saying it. :x

[stunt-muppet.livejournal.com]

Thank you for linking to the article - I found your post on cultural stereotypes really thought-provoking. Because I don't want to be too too privileged here, but unilaterally condemning a culture, deciding that it has nothing worthy about it, is erasing and condescending, even towards a culture that traditionally has privilege. I feel like nothing is that black-and-white, and thus deserving of universal condemnation.

[kayliemalinza.livejournal.com]

::nodnod:: Especially when so many of the problems with small-town and/or Southern culture are getting better. IDK, it's like looking at a smartass, dipshit teenager and thinking "They'll never amount to anything." It's an easy judgment to make, but how many of the people making that judgment used to be that teenager?

And idk, maybe Savannah is different, but when I look at Southern culture today I see a culture which arises from a mingling of races, not the segregation of them; African-Americans are a vital component of society down here. Continually presenting the Single Story of the "backwards white country folk" isn't just condemning them (the people who traditionally have privilege,) it's erasing an entire race. In some cases, people who criticize the South are perpetuating racism far more dangerously and insidiously than Southerners do.


And, hey, if they want to trot out the old chestnut that Southerners are still bitter about the "War of Northern Aggression," consider that the war and Reconstruction devastated the economy. Widespread poverty NEVER helps race relations, and it certainly isn't going to help a group of people recover from being forced to work for generations for no pay. I'm not saying the Union was wholly to blame, but neither was the Confederacy. The Civil War and Reconstruction was a clusterfuck from beginning to end, and things STILL aren't where they need to be. Isn't it possible that the people still "stuck" in the South have a better view of how far we have yet to go?




UMMMM OK I JUST VOMITED CIVIL RAGE ALL OVER YOUR JOURNAL. I'M SO SORRY. D: