Earlier this year, street artists in San Francisco began
covering up anti-Islam advertisements on city buses
with images of Kamala, alongside slogans calling for free speech and an end to racism. Ms. Marvel
writer G. Willow Wilson
didn’t know until someone brought it up on Twitter. “To see a character
for whom I had very conservative hopes—I expected the series to run for
seven or eight issues, ten tops, if right-wing backlash didn’t kill it
sooner—become a symbol of hope and renewal, has just been incredible,”
she told me. “If nothing else, it shows you how much is changing, not
just in the comics industry, but in our culture as a whole.”
Meet the Muslim superhero fighting bigotry on San Francisco buses
That sure is strange, it makes the original ad look SO DANGEROUS that people are afraid of seeing it and finding out what it has to say. So what does that original ad say? Here it is uncensored:
Nothing that’s incorrect. If anything, it’s too tame about the realism of muslim countries and sharia law, and it’s religious faith demands of hatred of jews and of countries that refuse to be ruled by sharia law (the koran states plainly and openly that any non-muslim country must be conquered and subjugated, and don’t say “so does the bible” because then you’re evading the point).
Dear social justice quislings: what does this ad get wrong about islam? Can you actually name anything? No, you can’t, because you don’t know anything about islam except that you think “the republicans” are anti-islam which to you means islam must be a good thing. You are made ignorant by your dogmatic religious faith in your social justice progressivism, instead of being informed by objective fact, that thing “objectivity” which you hate so much because it leads to things like “hate facts” and “evidence” which you all claim is racist and bigoted.
Fighting bigotry, by supporting the murder of women and homosexuals. Yes, this happened. Yes, this is the left wing in a nutshell: feminist superheroes being used to censor objective reality by supporting fascists and murderers in the name of “fighting bigotry.”
The nazis were safe to attack because they were white. Islamic terrorists, who objectively have the exact same motivations and results as the nazis, are unsafe to attack because they aren’t white. That is progressivism. That is social justice.
And where is the objectivity in the media reporting? Instead we get a fawning complicit media that openly presents a false narrative and demands that you swallow it or else you’re a bigot too. The false narrative is given away by several telling words, such as “innovative” and “brave” and “bigotry.” Yet when it comes to muslims throwing homosexuals off the roofs of buildings or throwing acid in girl’s faces, suddenly there’s all this moral equivocation and “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.”
This is going to create a massive new era of conservatives. The left has become so objectively incorrect that the majority of free thinking people will feel they have no choice but to go to the right wing for rational thought. That will be your legacy, social justice. Don’t like it? Blame yourselves.
Here’s also a gentle fisking which I think makes good points, although I think it’s questionable to call the people behind the original bus ad “assholes” just for pointing out the truth, but then again the ultimate form of trolling in today’s society is to tell the truth, so I guess that’s fair.
Disclaimer: I have nothing against moderate Islam, but fundamentalist of any religions need to be held accountable and told “No.” Otherwise no matter how many moderates you have the radicals will be the one’s who matter, not you.
Social justice, REAL social justice, is much more than posting on Tumblr and policing other people’s language and behavior. It’s contributing to making our communities better places, where ALL people can live happy, safe, prosperous lives. It’s working to end real life racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, abelism, etc., so everyone is able to reach their fullest potential.
In that vein, ask yourself - what have I done to advance social justice in my community today?
Some ideas for you, with the understanding that not everyone has the time, resources, or ability to do a lot, but almost everyone is able to do SOMETHING:
Tutor kids at an underperforming school.
Volunteer to do street outreach with homeless LGBT kids.
Call one of the politicians that represents YOU to talk about legislation/policy you care about. Remember that you always have the right to make an appointment to meet with them and talk about these issues.
Organize your neighborhood about something that affects everyone in the area, like safer streets, or police brutality, or new park playground equipment.
Volunteer as a women’s clinic escort, a childcare worker at a domestic violence shelter, a phone banker for a political campaign, a parade marshal for your local Pride celebration…
Organize your fellow students at your college or high school about an issue you care about. Example - a group of students at a high school in my area created a group to raise awareness of and prevent teen dating violence. They now have support groups in three schools, a speaker’s bureau, a fleet of male prevention mentors, and train other emerging groups around the state. They started very small ten years ago and now are a force to be reckoned with.
Go out and meet people who aren’t exactly like you. Listen and learn from their life experiences. Gradually realize you’re not always right and that’s okay.
There are a million things you can do that aren’t on Tumblr. Go forth and do them!
(And just to give my bonafides to people who say, “That’s great, but WTF are YOU doing, Dasha?”: I have worked in a social justice field for more than a decade and currently volunteer more than 15 hours a week for a wonderful and progressive agency that works to advance the health and safety of women.)
Thank. You. Dasha.
Great. I also want to add that “posting on Tumblr and policing other people’s language and behavior” can actually be quite harmful and counterproductive to social justice causes.
Here is my exclusive interview with the student who was suspended because his middle school bully used Tumblr’s social justice warriors to her advantage.
It’s so Kafkaesque.
What the actual hell? 1. Great article, well written. 2. Did they seriously just punish this guy for having an opinion? And because some whiny ass girl was offended. This is idiotic and the punishment is beyond that.
Thanks!
They want him to go for psychiatric evaluation. For his political views.
Sometimes I feel like social justice customs go to far.
For example, there was a post about an admitted rapist, explaining her abusive tendencies and using the rapist’s posts in which she admitted to raping someone to show how terrible of a person she is.
There is no question to whether or not this person is a rapist… they admitted it. They talked in detail about it. The post I’m discussing here was made by a third party, exposing the abusive tendencies and manipulation within the rapists’s confession.
The immediate response to that post, that third party, was you didn’t use the right pronouns.
The rapist is a trans woman, and the third party who created the secondary post messed up her preferred pronouns a little bit.
Fuck that though.
This is an admitted rapist. I don’t care what gender you are. I don’t care how you identify, or how you want to be called. You deserve no respect. I’ll call you an “it” for all I care. Not because you are transgender, not because I don’t respect transgender people or their preferred pronouns. Because I don’t respect you, a rapist.
Yesterday on Twitter I was called “one of the most annoying feminists on Twitter,” a “bitch,“ an “insecure bitch” as well as “bitter" several times by Black men whose dating “preferences” I decided to challenge. To challenge men is to be called “bitch,“ or ”bitter“ if you’re a Black woman; that’s a favorite insult from men, especially from Black men. It was rather ironic too since just yesterday in my essay Pop Culture, Social Justice and Race: When Black People Love Whiteness More Than Fellow Black People, I wrote about Black people who openly spew venom at me in their defense of White stars and anti-Blackness. The mass conversation occurred literally within a couple of hours after my essay was posted.
Many heterosexual Black men are genuinely clueless as to how their dating “preferences” are based on anti-Blackness more than love or interest in anyone not Black, and how this anti-Blackness is shaped intraracially and interracially because of how White supremacy, internalized racism, colourism, Eurocentric beauty myths as standards and misogynoir impact them and are proliferated by them.
White supremacy is the overall culprit. Because Whiteness is set in juxtaposition to Blackness and mixed Black women as well as other women of colour who aren’t Black are placed on a sliding scale of what is considered not only beautiful but worthy in relation to how close to White they appear, can assimilate to be or how far away from Blackness they are, ultimately even when Black men decide that a biracial woman, a fair skinned Asian/Latina woman or even a darker woman of colour yet lighter than dark Black women is “better" than a Black woman, they are engaging in White supremacist logic, which by design is anti-Black.
White supremacy accompanies racism. By continual anti-Blackness propagandist messages (for centuries) being pumped out through media, marketing, art, legislation, and general popular culture, avoiding absorption of these messages is futile. It’s impossible. What is possible is to learn how to recognize, deconstruct, challenge and reject these messages. What is possible is to learn how to create and embrace counter-messages that speak to the wholeness of Black people. But it is a challenge. And many Black men are incredibly unequipped for this. They refuse to challenge hegemonic ideologies designed to infer that Black women are the “worst" women, the “ugliest" women, the “meanest" women and the most “worthless" women. They internalize this racism and since it’s easier to agree with White supremacist power structures that convey these messages—ones they accept as truth—than to challenge White supremacy and give up the myth of assuming patriarchal power as a partner with White men, they rather join in with the world and attack Black women.
Now some will ask how can they think this despite having Black mothers. Easily. Patriarchy is most easily facilitated through rigid binaries. Thus, some create god/devil binaries where their mothers are examples of “exceptional" Black women but any other Black woman is “undesirable,“ so Black men are off the hook. But there’s a more complicated side as well. Some of them genuinely hate their mothers while they simultaneously feel guilt about this. They blame their mothers for their Blackness that they subconsciously want to reject. But it’s practically unconscionable to speak against one’s own Black mother, especially as a Black son since preference for sons and protection of sons over daughters is common not just in Black culture but within many races. That’s just a facet of patriarchy. In some cases, the mother who stays is hated over the idealization of the father who left. There’s a conglomerate of negative feelings that they have for their mothers but cannot project them on their mothers without debilitating guilt. Thus, these feelings are projected onto any and all other Black women. It’s not far-fetched that some Black men could feel this way about their mothers. Black motherhood—outside of the loyal mammy figure for White families—is demonized as “emasculating,” welfare-ridden, or hypersexual. To think that all Black men separate negative messages about Black motherhood from Black womanhood itself is to not understand how controlling images work. Many of the characteristics that Black men claim that they hate in Black women are actually ones their mothers have. But they will simultaneously claim that they love their mothers.
Colourism, or “prejudicial or preferential treatment of same-race people based solely on their color” (term coined by Alice Walker) is a facet born out of White supremacy. (I reviewed the recent film Dark Girls that attempted to educate on this topic, albeit problematically.) Whether examining the one drop rule or past terminology such as “mulatto,” “quadroon” and “octoroon,” it can be clearly seen that the proximity to Whiteness within Blackness is deemed as “above” Blackness but still below Whiteness. When Black men decide that a Black woman can’t be “too Black" to be attractive they’re engaging in colourism. They’ve adopted the message of the inferiority of Blackness, which is especially portrayed via music, television, film and advertising/marketing. The sheer unwillingness for Whites (who dominate Hollywood, news media and Madison Avenue etc.) to cast/hire dark Black women for a variety of roles/jobs AND continually cast light or White women in juxtaposition to these roles—and portray them as beautiful, feminine and worthy—reveals the dual edged sword of racism and White supremacy. For Black men to suggest that these messages that they absorb in abundance from birth and in every sphere—just like everyone else does—doesn’t impact them would be comical if it wasn’t tragic.
Eurocentric beauty standards are more than just about how “White" women look or preferring only White women. Beauty and beauty privilege are complex and I’ve written about this before in Conversations About Beauty and Beauty Privilege Need To Be Intersectional and Continuing The Conversation About Beauty and Beauty Privilege. Some Black men reject both White and Black women. But beyond this basic rejection is anti-Blackness and sexism. Viewing women outside of the White and Black races as “exotic,“ and being able to tap into the same phallocentric power that White men do (who by far tend to treat any woman who is not White as sexually exotic and deviant compared to the White supremacist myth of the purity of White womanhood and White heterosexuality) and do this as a peer is where White supremacy meets patriarchy. This can clearly be seen by the latest trend of Black men who treat Brazilian women as exotic sex objects that are “superior” to Black women in America, even if they’re paying sex workers to perform a hegemonic patriarchal relationship as a fantasy. They conflate the paid work of some women with how Black women should be, in general. This action makes them a “peer" of White men versus subordinate as they may be through status or class in America. A lot of Black men find power in being able to treat a woman as exotic and be a phallocentric peer to White men. When push comes to shove, even racist White men will align in patriarchy with Black men before ever siding with a Black woman. The Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill incident is one of the most timeless examples.
Misogynoir (from the word misogyny; [miso-: hater, gyn-: woman, noir: Black]; term coined at Crunk Feminist Collective**) or specific anti-Black misogyny—where race and gender together are factors and often this misogyny creates a binary with White women (where White women represent “good" womanhood and Black women do not) or has levels that include other women of colour, but only insofar as Black women are the most degraded and placed at the bottom—is also a factor when many heterosexual Black men assert their dating “preferences.“ They rarely can verbalize what they desire without also making it known that they don’t desire or that they even hate Black women. Like I mentioned on Twitter yesterday, some sage wisdom from @bad_dominicana, Black men loving Black women isn’t enough. They also have to actively unlearn the hatred of Black women. The hatred of Black women IS taught. Whether it’s buying into Strong Black Woman narratives that dehumanize us, believing that we are “unrapeable” because our sexuality is deemed inherently “deviant,“ accepting the message that the further away from Black that a woman is, the more beautiful, kind and worthwhile she is, that Black women, not imperialist White supremacist capitalist patriarchy destroy Black families and an incredibly long, could fill a book list of anti-Black woman propagandist myths, misinterpretations and lies, Black men and the rest of the world are actively taught to hate Black women. And since so many Black men already don’t love Black women and can’t unlearn the hatred of Black women because they don’t have the tools to even recognize they’ve absorbed White supremacist propaganda as absolute truth, they can’t recognize how misogynoir shapes their dating preferences and how they proliferate misogynoir.
Certainly interracial couples (of a variety of races and ethnicities) exist that openly discuss race, aren’t based on fetish, White supremacy or self-hatred and even recognize how propagandist messages can shape their preferences away from their own race. They most certainly aren’t all toxic. However, when Asian women, for example, (who marry out the most, to White men) don’t recognize how imperialist, racist and patriarchal constructions of masculinity and manhood impact how they perceive Asian men and when Black men (who marry out the second most, to White women) don’t recognize how patriarchal, racist and misogynoirist constructions of womanhood impact how they perceive Black women, they’re literally going to proliferate White supremacist thinking. When White men and White women are positioned as the “best” and “normal" choice for a partner, even over that person’s own race, and when the idea that the closer to White/furthest from Black that any person is, the “better,“ is added to this, it’s where White supremacy meets dating and marriage.
Black men unwilling to do the work of examining their “preferences” against Black women and how they are shaped aren’t as comfortable in their ignorance as it would seem. If so, declarations of what they hate (Black women) wouldn’t be as critical as declarations of what they “prefer.“ And sadly, some of them have also bought into another facet of White supremacy—the idea that preferring Black women, their own race, is “racism.” This is more than about them not understandingwhat racism actually is; many people, usually White but not always, don’t. This is about how White supremacy makes loving a Black woman “dirty" and “wrong" at worst and “revolutionary" at best.
Black men like I have described here never stop to question why preferring or loving Black women is “racist" (a wrong, albeit serious word to use here) but rejecting or hating Black women is “just a preference.“ White supremacy is sinister in that it often cannot even be recognized. It convinces some Black men that they are “freely choosing” to reject or hate Black women and this choice is not connected to anything else.
**This term was coined by Moya Bailey. Tumblr evades chronology, so my subsequent writing on misogynoir with her name credited is somewhat ignored. However, it was not CFC but Moya writing at CFC who coined the term. My subsequent posts on misogynoir reflect this. Again, this essay is from 2013; latter posts reflect correction.
none of your faves are unproblematic. none of your friends or family are unproblematic. you are not unproblematic. there is literally no point during the process of learning about social justice type stuff and unlearning internalized bullshit and dismantling power systems at which you magically become enlightened and unproblematic. it does not exist. there is no tangible finish line, there is only endless, arduous work and it’s hard but it needs to be done.
To kick off the start of the my retirement from Tumblr, I am going to post an enormous list of everything tumblr has taught me about myself and the world around me. You can thank the infamous Social Justice and Feminists on tumblr for these truly inspiring life lessons.
1. All men are rapists. No exceptions. Even Transwomen are rapists.
2. A woman should NEVER be subjugated it criticism or punishment no matter what her actions are. It is misogyny for a woman to be held accountable for their actions. This included and is not limited to:
-Murder
-Acts of terror
-False rape claims
-Raping men
-Molesting children
-Assault
3. If a man is castrated and fully surrenders his heart, mind, will, and body to a feminist, he is no longer declared a pig, but he is still a rapist.
4. I should care more about the feminism that fights the systematic oppression enforced by school dress coded because those are so much more important that the women in other third world countries that have acid thrown on to their faces and prevented from going to school.
5. The definition or rape is anything that can cause a woman to feel slight discomfort.
6. Women are goddesses and I should give into her completely no matter what her actual worthy I society (or lack of) is.
7. Beyonce is a goddess for producing shitty music and using feminism for marketing purposes.
8. It is okay for black people to murder white people for jokes.
9. Rich white men are the reason why women everywhere suffer from oppression and inequality.
10. People with minimum wage should have increased pay for doing a bare-minimum, entry-level job because they contribute so much to our economy.
11. The minimum wage needs to be raised to 15 dollars so everyone can have a decent living despite what Economics 101 tells us.
12. Dictionary definitions are created by white, “cisgendered,” straight men and therefor, should NEVER be trusted.
13. All republicans oppose equality because they’re, once again, rich, white, old men.
14. Men planned the creation of words women find offensive to purposefully make them feel worthless about themselves and to put down women. Women should never be put down. ANY word that can offend a woman is there with the sole intent and purpose of shaming women for any thing she can/will do… And I thought Moon Landing conspiracy theorists were crazy.
15. Father’s Day needs to be abolished because some daughters don’t like their dads.
16. Anyone who is black must be worshiped nonstop for no apparent reason what-so-ever.
17. There is no Cuban, Spanish, Polish, Russian, Indian, Chinese, Australian, Colombian, or Mexican. Only White and POC.
18. Adding lesbians apparently makes everything better. Murder, or anything else may disagree with you on that.
19. It is perfectly acceptable to want, if not, force a straight person to convert to being gay, but god forbid that you ever want a gay person to be straight. That is a mortal sin!
20. Olive skin is actually a very slightly slighter version of black skin, despite what Google searches would yield.
21. It is perfectly okay to make all fictional characters gay, but straight fictional characters are an enormous “no-no.”
22. Games must appeal to every demographic excluding white straight boys.
23. Headcanons override actual in-media evidence.
24. It’s okay to dress up and sexually explicit as you can, but if a female in a video game, movie, TV show is dressed the same, it is sexism and it MUST be changed.
-Furthermore, if you tell me I need to change my outfit, YOU’RE OPPRESSING ME YOU SHITDICK!!!!
25. Apparently, it is “White Privilege” to not have to be around black people, according to some sociopathic idiot who, in the same conversation, told me it was okay for black people to murder white people.
26. Liberals are totally not dumbasses.
27. All republicans are evil.
28. Apparently, comparing two things that are completely different from each other is eye opening.
29. Anything that I deem important is, in fact, important to the entire human race and must be acknowledged by everyone.
30. Black people can’t be racist against white people.
31. Despite what the actual dictionary definition says, racism = power + prejudice + state enforcement.
32. There is a rape culture despite the fact that rapists are practically jailed for even being closely or falsely accused of rape.
33. Facts and statistics will get you nowhere, only screaming over the Internet like an angry child will.
34. Logic and reasoning is oppressive.
35. If you don’t support bad hygiene, you are a fucking Asshole who deserves to die because you don’t support body positivity.
-FUCK THE SKINNY BITCHES FUCK THR SKINNY BITCHES FUCK THE SKINNY BITCHES
36. There aren’t any female scientist because patriarchy, not because a lot of them are majoring in Women’s Studies, a very useless degree.
37. Criticism should be banned. It is literally worst than murder.
38. Children should never have to grow up. Shower them with toys and name them after shitty TV show references.
39. Blurred Lines is all about rape.
-What? Pharrell Williams was actually the one who wrote the song lyrics? But he’s black. He’s innocent. It has to be Robin Thicke. He’s white and he’s a man. HE SUPPORTS THE ALREADY DEBUNKED RAPE CULTURE
40. Letting your period blood leak on everything is a totally reasonable, sensible, socially acceptable, and logically thing to do when you are mad you can’t afford pads or tampons.
41. Comment are now rape, and warrant an automatic death penalty.
42. South Park is hurtful to us despite the fact they accurately portray the way we erratically act online.
43. We hate all white men except for the protagonists or Supernatural, Sherlock, and Doctor Who. They’re hot.
44. It’s okay for men to be almost completely naked. It’s only a little fun after all right? Just don’t do it to women because that misogyny.
45. Everything that disagrees with my opinions is sexist, racist, misogynistic, or a combination of all three.
46. It makes perfect sense for me to flash my PTSD “triggers,” which are usually only suffered by war veterans, in everyone’s faces.
47. All white people’s opinions are wrong.
48. You can identify as a fucking plant or animal or fictional being despite the fact you are a fucking human being.
49. You’re misinformed about feminism. Now, have you heard of the 1 and 4 statistic?
50. Bowl of MnMs makes sense despite the shitty nature of its logic.
51. You can fucking make up genders and be those genders.
52. Anything and everything is a slur.
53. Anything that is insulting to be is ableist.
54. Making up obviously fake stories will empower women, no matter how bullshit is in the story.
55. Not dating someone who’s black or whatever else because of their looks = Racism.
56. I can compare myself to a fucking cat, a fucking animal. If a cat can be fat and furry, why can’t I? Why is it seen wrong to try to be like a fucking animal.
57. Apparently, simply living contributes to humankind’s progression. And by that, I mean sitting on my computer complains about my mom being oppressive is contributing to the betterment of society.
58. Parents shouldn’t try to raise you.
59. Wonder Woman, the most boring female super hero in the entirety of comic book history, is a feminist goddess.
60. Everything apparently had a culture. Including rocks.
61. Obsessing over anything and letting it consume your life is normal and perfectly comfortable.
62. You should do nothing to help you get over your fears. Just live in fear forever.
There you have it, I’m sure I missed a lot but tumblr has taught be shit about life. Don’t fucking listen to anything they say. They do nothing but spew shit from their mouths. Please experience life for yourself and don’t let pathetic low lives on the Internet tell you how to live.
some teenagers on the internet: *have poorly formed and poorly expressed opinions on social justice, because they are children and have limited life experience*
adults who still use 4chan: so as you can see, Feminism is fake
