(Warning: police brutality, murder, and erasure and victim-blaming against women)
“I want to mourn the deaths of Mike Brown and Eric Garner and Trayvon Martin, and I want to question why the deaths of Renisha McBride and Islan Nettles and Kathryn Johnston haven’t gotten similar traction. Why the beating of Marlene Pinnock isn’t on all of our lips. Why the nation is not familiar with the names of Stephanie Maldonado, or of Ersula Ore. And how many women’s names do we not know because they don’t dare come forward? Because the violence they experience at the hands of the police is sexual, and the shame and stigma around sexual violence silences them?
The truth is that, in the predominantly male-led civil rights organizations who lead efforts to respond to police brutality, in the male-dominated media that covers them, and in the hearts and minds of many people in this country, women who are of color, who are sex workers, undocumented immigrants, transgender (or, god forbid, more than one of those at once) are rarely candidates for “innocence,” and are often blamed for their own deaths, forgotten, or hardly counted at all. Women of color who are targeted by the police, and black women in particular, are seen as so disposable, so far from being moral actors, that their lives and deaths are just passed over by the mainstream — their victimization and murder just another facet of the American landscape. Aiyana Jones’ case is the last time that I can remember a black girl’s murder by the police gaining significant national attention; she was seven years old.
I stand with the people of Ferguson. I see and share their rage. And I want to also see national rage for the deaths of women of color. I want to see widespread rage for the staggering number of trans lives lost. As a nation, we’re at a tipping point on racist, state-sanctioned violence, and we have the opportunity and power to turn our collective rage into systemic change. We must be diligent that demands that come out of this historical moment are for all of us, from all of us.”
(Warning: police brutality, murder, and erasure and victim-blaming against women)
"I want to mourn the deaths of Mike Brown and Eric Garner and Trayvon Martin, and I want to question why the deaths of Renisha McBride and Islan Nettles and Kathryn Johnston haven’t gotten similar traction. Why the beating of Marlene Pinnock isn’t on all of our lips. Why the nation is not familiar with the names of Stephanie Maldonado, or of Ersula Ore. And how many women’s names do we not know because they don’t dare come forward? Because the violence they experience at the hands of the police is sexual, and the shame and stigma around sexual violence silences them?
The truth is that, in the predominantly male-led civil rights organizations who lead efforts to respond to police brutality, in the male-dominated media that covers them, and in the hearts and minds of many people in this country, women who are of color, who are sex workers, undocumented immigrants, transgender (or, god forbid, more than one of those at once) are rarely candidates for “innocence,” and are often blamed for their own deaths, forgotten, or hardly counted at all. Women of color who are targeted by the police, and black women in particular, are seen as so disposable, so far from being moral actors, that their lives and deaths are just passed over by the mainstream — their victimization and murder just another facet of the American landscape. Aiyana Jones’ case is the last time that I can remember a black girl’s murder by the police gaining significant national attention; she was seven years old.
I stand with the people of Ferguson. I see and share their rage. And I want to also see national rage for the deaths of women of color. I want to see widespread rage for the staggering number of trans lives lost. As a nation, we’re at a tipping point on racist, state-sanctioned violence, and we have the opportunity and power to turn our collective rage into systemic change. We must be diligent that demands that come out of this historical moment are for all of us, from all of us.”
THE TIME STAMP ON THE VIDEO IS FROM FUCKING JUNE! THIS WAS NOT THE SAME DAY! BOOST THE FUCK OUT OF THIS!
meanwhile the police fill the block with tear gas. who’s protecting and serving here
i just wanted to put this out there since im sure it’ll get written about differently tomorrow.
its been about 24 hours since i made this post and since then i have observed in the tags and in the comments
- homura akemi dio brando and tohru adachi all did nothing wrong
- people quoting counterexamples from the text to prove that a character did, in fact, do something wrong
- a disproportionate amount of people tagging chihiro fujisaki
- people being unironic apologists for bad characters
- someone tagged this with ‘jesus’ im not sure if that was a reaction or an example
- people getting very emotional over their favs
- i think there were like some warrior cats characters in there so i guess that must get pretty intense
- this was an ironic solicitation not a challenge to actually come up with innocent characters…its a meme you guys
someone at school today said ‘xD’ out loud like EX DEEEEE and i didn’t think i’d ever have to be faced with that
A Guide on the Word “Weeaboo”
Hello, you may be wondering why I have the text “If you’re not East Asian and call youself a weeaboo, don’t follow me” in my side bar. Here are a few quick disclaimers:
- I am well aware that many people do it, especially in anime-related and related fandoms.
- If you have ever called yourself a weeaboo at some point in time that does not mean that you can never follow me or that I will never follow you. I follow people now who do it or have done it in the past, which is part of why this page exists.
- I am Chinese, not Japanese. I cannot specifically speak about the pain that this causes me from a Japanese standpoint, but because many East Asian experiences with racism overlap, I am still affected by this.
Origins of the Word
The word weeaboo comes from a webcomic. It is literally a nonsense word. The word became popularized when people on 4chan were getting upset about being called “wapanese” (wannabe Japanese). The mods put in an auto-censor so the “weeaboo” would appear rather than “wapanese.”
Why Do People Call Themselves Weeaboos?
I have several explanations/theories.
- People use this to refer to their past selves when they come to realize that what they were doing was racist and harmful. This usage is okay as long as you realize that you may mess up in the future and are willing to correct that too!
- East Asian people use this word to joke about their experiences and joke about weeaboos. This is an okay usage as long as they are doing this for catharsis! If there are other issues about East Asian people doing this, it’s an inter-community discussion.
- People do not understand the origins of this word and mistakenly believe it means that they are into anime/manga rather than being connected to a fetishist viewpoint of Japan.
- People do not understand that anti-racists use this word to call out fetishists.
What is a Weeaboo?
A weeaboo is somebody who fetishizes Japanese culture, but it may not be limited to that. A weeaboo also may conflate multiple groups of Asian people, randomly start speaking Japanese at anyone that might look Japanese, put down non-Japanese Asian people for being the “wrong type of Asian,” and even promote imperialism because of their inaccurate viewpoint of Japan!
Why Non-East Asian People Should Not Call Themselves Weeaboos
- Weeaboo is a term that Japanese people and other East Asians use to describe those who do them harm due to fetishized viewpoints.
- It is a term that people use in solidarity with Japanese/East Asian people to recognize this specific harmful behavior. When you are against fetishization/racism/oppression, and you claim to be this word, you are stripping it of the meaning that we assign to classify people who are harmful to us.
- To be clear, you are not specifically appropriating Japanese by doing this, but you are undermining East Asian people who try to steer clear of harm. I have experienced a lot of cognitive dissonance about what I will encounter since creating this blog.
What Is Really Wrong with Being a Weeaboo?
- The amount of harm done varies, so I will speak from my own lived experience.
- I live in a 99% white area, but in a place with a lot of weeaboos. People will get unfriendly fast where I live and have grown up; if you are not their complacent Asian fantasy when you are around them.
- When my school had a Chinese teacher teach Mandarin, the children bullied her so ruthlessly that she quit halfway through the year. Some of the white kids were angry that the district did not bring in Japanese and showed it (though I doubt a Japanese teacher would have been treated any better). This environment was very alienating and made it hard for nonwhite (especially East Asian students) to speak up to all the white kids.
- Weeaboos’ fetishized viewpoints of Japan can be very misogynistic specifically and build up a fantasy idea of what Asian women are like, “submissive, docile, etc.” and cause them to sexualize people on basis of being Asian. This has caused a great deal of harm to my education personally for speaking out against injustice because I am expected to be docile, and I have developed retroactive ways of coping with attention I do not want pulled to my ethnicity.
- Weeaboos can influence people into thinking they are the “wrong kind of Asian” with a strange policing of someone’s Asianness that centers on whether or not they are Japanese.
- Weeaboos will thoughtlessly call people inappropriate and alienating things for wearing their traditional clothing because it is vaguely Asian and start fawning over it because they think it’s Just So Cool That You’re Asian. This may or may not wear off if you are a different type of Asian than Japanese. Either way it can be humiliating or uncomfortable.
- Weeaboos don’t understand how painful it is to be ostracized for not blending enough and trying to connect to your cultural roots and will act like it is the same thing when Japanese people speak up about appropriation.
- Weeaboos have also defended Japanese imperialism and neofascism, nationalism etc. without any idea of the context and get upset when people who have heritage connected to the countries hurt by this call them out.
If you read this list and thought that you would never do any of that, maybe it is time to stop calling yourself a weeaboo and evaluate your behavior. I am not insinuating that you are doing these things by listing them. I am saying that these are some of the things weeaboos do. Even if they are being less violently harmful than harrassing, they still buy into and perpetuate a larger culture of fetishization. These are the type of people that I, and other East Asians who speak about racism talk about when we refer to weeaboos.
If you are in anime/manga or related fandoms and this is the first you have heard weeaboo used in a negative manner regarding fetishism, I strongly suggest that you do some reading. If you want referrals, I am happy to provide them. Just ask me privately because I am not comfortable setting racist anons on blogs that already deal with enough vitriol.
There is this website called Thrift Books and I just got $66.90 worth of books for $19.93 (five books). Shipping was free. You’re welcome.
please don’t use this website it does not follow through on orders and if it does the books are in bad condition. there are multiple accounts here: http://www.resellerratings.com/store/Thrift_Books
Before today it had never occurred to us that birds and bananas are at all similar. Now that we’ve seen this wonderfully weird and ridiculously cute series of parrot-banana hybrid Epoch Gashapon toys, we’re dying to see how other fruit and fauna pair up.
According to RocketNews24, these banana birdies are selling so well that the manufacturer has plans for a whole series of “parrot-foodstuff mash-ups.” The parrot-mushroom hybrids seen in the bottom image are coming out next.
Photos via @mel__t, Netorabo, @suicarin, @yasuu22, @akky_1981, and @nyairu1.
The parrot-banana series actually includes a number of birds from the parrot family from little cockatoos to the splashy Macau.
[via RocketNews24]
Live tweet from a witness to the shooting who was living in an apartment right in front of the scene. This is heartbreaking to read and made me really emotional so I warn those reading to take heed. Read from bottom to top and the pictures are in order (The one with the arrows is a conversation where he states Brown was shot approximately 7 times, two in the back and 5 after turning around exactly like other witness accounts) Spread like wildfire.
