No content warning here, because, come on, look at the damn title.
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No, Buzzfeed. No.
Hey y’all. It’s been a bit, hasn’t it? I’ve missed us reaching the end of our Kickstarter and all the celebrating, I missed last Frivolous Friday, I missed an escort day.
Welcome to the delightful world of chronic illness and the special word “flare”. I’m smack dab in the middle of one and let me tell you, I recommend it to no one. My choices this week have been either A) Do a little shit around the house or B) Brain long enough to write a blog post.
Since the cats do appreciate a clean litterbox, and we appreciate an empty trash bin and I appreciate clean clothing, guess what’s been winning thus far?
But today, I’m braining. Barely. So barely, that I’m going to let someone else do the outrageous mockery for me.
So, a couple of days ago, Buzzfeed had the brilliant idea of releasing this video:
Ugh. My head hurts. More.
Thankfully Black Twitter, being Black Twitter, spent the day gleefully dragging the edges right off this mess with the hashtag #BuzzFeedVideoQuestions.
It was glorious.
Now, this would be the part where I would start answering these questions myself, but I can’t brain, so I’ma link to someone else who has done the hard, head-against-the-wall banging work of pointing out the just plain fucked uppery of these questions. Take it away, Bossip:
2. If my dab is on fleek, am I lit?
WTF are you even saying? Black people don’t actually talk like this. Do you know ANY Black people?
6. Why did watermelon become our thing? Like, everyone should love watermelon.
White people made watermelon a Black thing. Black people had zero percent to do with that. I swear to God if the next questions is “why do Black people pick SO. MUCH. COTTON.” I’m gonna throw my computer. But also not be terribly surprised.
10. Why do people with light skin look better than people with dark skin?
Because racism. And also colorism. And also again racism.
23. Why is being educated considered a White thing? Why can’t I love school and also be Black?
JESUS CHRIST WHO ACTUALLY SAYS THESE THINGS?!?! BY AND LARGE BLACK PEOPLE DON’T THINK THIS. WATER YEW DEWING I’M GETTING A MIGRAINE.
And at that point, so was I.
So I’m going back to bed, folks. This was just way too much foolishness for one day.
When You’re Black and Autistic
Hate to start the week with a bummer, so first:
Because I forgot to take a picture of me in my red tights – twice – I decided to make my banner rock Red for Acceptance all month long. Yay!
Okay, stop. Bummer Time.
I’ve written about my fears around being black with a mental illness and being terrified about police abuse before. But in most cases, I am able to communicate, either with my words, or with my phone. And the thought of pulling out my phone in front of a cops just terrifies me so much that it’s one of the reasons why I don’t leave the house much. Hell, I’ve make it clear to local friends that if I’m ever in crisis mode, DO NOT CALL THE POLICE. If I’m dying, I’ll be the one to take myself out.
Then I imagine not being able to speak. Not being able to understand why these people with guns are yelling at me, grabbing me, hurting me. Having my routine interrupted by being thrown into a concrete box for years.
Or why I’ve been shot. Why am I dying?
It’s no surprise that black people aren’t treated very well in our society. We have less wealth, thanks to fucked up laws and redlining that kept our foreparents from investing in homes. Schools in our neighborhoods tend to be even more underfunded. And, as I’ve experienced, you get some real bullshit when you seek medical care.
With that in mind, guess how much later our children are screened and diagnosed with autism? By two years (CN: one of the links below the article goes to that piece of shit Autism Speaks, but the article itself seems solid). Two years that could have gone into early detection and beginning treatment. Two years of not getting a solid answer.
Two years doesn’t seem like much, but for any neurodivergent condition, it could really make a difference.
Also, we’re just not as well informed about what autism is, and how it’s just a difference in how the brain works. Not to mention the usual barriers for care. The number of sites I’ve looked up that still suggest crappy ABA as a treatment to try to make their kids be “normal” was saddening. I fear that the criticisms will reach our community late, subjecting too many children to ABA. Others have moved on to Autism Acceptance; we’re still working on Awareness.
*sigh* I told you this was a bummer. No funny ending here folks. Just, fuck this society that doesn’t value our lives at all, least of all the disabled.
*cackles in black girl pettiness*
What do you get when you add:
1 Mosque
1 Group of Anti-Muslim bigots with guns
1 Group of Nation of Islam protectors. With guns.
Answer: A story that is still making me laugh. Holy balls.
And it’s in Texas, because of course it is.
Racial tensions in South Dallas almost exploded at an anti-mosque protest Saturday afternoon before quickly dissolving when the protesters retreated.
A few hundred South Dallas residents, mostly black, flooded Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard to oppose a planned demonstration by a mostly white group that routinely protests outside mosques.
Both sides were armed.
Damn skippy. This is an amazing show of solidarity.
I can stop giggling long enough to acknowledge that one other group there, the New Black Panther Party (not to be confused with the original BPP, who were fucking heroes to their neighborhoods) are recongized as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center for being really anti-Semitic, which is the opposite of okay. So fuck those guys.
Commences the giggles again.
But the other group joining the NOI in this effort? The Huey P Newton Gun Club. That name alone makes me want to grab a .22 (the only gun I’m even remotely decent with firing ) and find a mosque to defend.
…if the thought of actually shooting a human didn’t make me sick to my stomach.
But other than that, though, this is amazing. This is hysterical. It’s like white people don’t seem to realize that when they cry out for the right to open carry so they can protect themselves, they’re also giving the OTHER races the same right. And when they see that right being exercised, the fucking cowards run.
Today in “My Fav is Problematic” – Kpop Version
(CN: Flashy gifs are in this here post)
(Also, there are a lot of gifs and images below and me fangirling about. You have been warned)
Continue reading “Today in “My Fav is Problematic” – Kpop Version”
It’s Like They Want People Getting Shot
By now, I assume the word has gone out about Ideal Conceal‘s two shot derringer that folds up to look like a cellphone. If not, have a gander:
This makes me facepalm for two reasons, the company’s is in my current state of residence, and the other reason should be completely fucking obvious.
In a country with a motherfucker can get shot reaching for his damn ID, where a 12 year old boy is shot for having a fake gun in a state where having a real gun is legal, is this a good idea? Don’t even get me started finding links on people being shot for reaching for a cell phone, or twitching wrong. Usually while black.
But don’t you worry, folks, the creator Kirk Kjellberg assures us all that it’s okay, as long as people are responsible with their weapons.
“In America, we have lots of children in contact with pistols already. There’s been quite a few incidents long before my product came along,” he said. “For me, it’s not the gun. It’s the people. So if you have a pistol and you have children anywhere near you, it’s your responsibility to lock that stuff up and keep it away from children.”
Yup, and I’m sure buyers of this thing will be super responsible, like every single case of gun fail we’ve seen before.
The Facebook page for this “thing” is studded with ‘right to bear’ arms arguments and memes and shit, and this delightful piece of advice:
WHEN I read these crazy posts about how people will now be more likely to be shot for either “reaching for their phone” or “pointing their phone at a cop”, I still cannot get over the TOTAL ENTITLEMENT exhibited in those statements. Police are here to serve but are not your servants. If your ANYWHERE near a Law Enforcement Officer of any kind DON’T BE AN IDIOT; DON’T MOVE AROUND QUICKLY OR AT ALL, KEEP YOUR HANDS VISIBLE AT ALL TIMES, DON’T “REACH” FOR ANYTHING UNLESS THE NICE OFFICER HAS AGREED YOU CAN DO SO. If you want to scratch your nose or your balls, ASK PERMISSION. If you want to film an officer: “EXCUSE ME WHILE I WHIP THIS OUT” doesn’t cut it with me. Tell them in a reasonable tone you are going to SLOWLY get your phone so you can record, IF THEY SAY NO, THEN ITS NO. You can take it up with their superior, (or the Judge), later. If your an assbag about your interactions with Police, it will end badly, period!
Excuse me while I laugh as hard as I can. Having tears in your eyes and rage in your heart counts as hysterical laughter, right?
Do I have to list the number of people who didn’t do anything and are shot by the police? How the police barge into the homes of innocent people and just blow them away (too many links to even pick one to post)? What did a 7-year-old sleeping girl do? How the police shoot motherfuckers who aren’t even armed? Like naked men who aren’t carrying a weapon and obviously needed help?
Where they all ‘idiots’ and ‘assbags’? And no, you fool, we’ve seen time and a-fucking-gain what happens when we try to ‘take it up with their supervisor’. Have you even been paying attention to the news and the protests and shit? If anyone around here is ‘entitled’, it’s you, creating this shit because you got looked at by some people with a kid pointed out your gun. Oh poor you.
Assbag.
Meet Prof. Click
…because I haven’t. Met her, that is. But a friend of hers has written this amazing post, telling us just who this women is.
The fucking narrative of her as some sort of free speech bully, shoving a “poor” student (who, need I remind you, couldn’t wait for a fucking press release from his ‘subjects’) and even calling for ‘muscle’ to help her smash his freeze peaches, is of course, bullshit.
But let’s focus on Prof. Click now.
A similar incongruity and ignorance confronts us when reckoning with media coverage of my friend and colleague Melissa Click, the recently fired Mizzou professor accused of behaving badly while attempting to protect student activists who rightly continue to insist that black lives matter. A video of Melissa resisting an unannounced student photojournalist went “viral” and was framed as a violation of the first amendment; how soon we forget the right of “the people peaceably to assemble.”
For her actions, she has endured rape and death threats, because that’s just how women who piss of reactionaries are treated nowadays, and tryhards ‘splaining the First Amendment, while they can’t figure out how the free speech actually fucking works.
For many politicians and pundits, Melissa has become the stereotypical “liberal professor” who brainwashes students into left-leaning ideologies when, ironically, the Melissa I know is far from an ideologue: as a scholar and teacher of communication and critical thought, Melissa’s job — like mine — is to help students think about and voice their concerns thoughtfully. Whereas many politicians and pundits characterize Melissa as impeding free speech, I know she was actually trying to promote and protect such speech for students of color. Ironic, indeed.
This is how an ally behaves – protecting the actual marginalized.
(Photo Credit: Lacy Rushin of statuslabs.com)
When It’s Time to Swing
(Content note: I’m going to be using a racial slur here. A lot. And no, I will not be entertaining any bullshit discussions on whether it’s right or wrong or who can say it. Take that basic shit somewhere else)
No, Hoteps, I Do Not “Overstand” Your Nonsense
I’d thought I’d start off the party with something light and cute, just to lure new readers into a sense of peace and calm, thinking “This Niki person is rather delightful” and then SLAM BAM right into the dropping of the f bombs and creative uses of the word “douche”.
Then I was introduced to YADA this week.
And that was the point where I decided to say “Fuck it, give ’em a full blast in the face of some serious Seriously?!?”
Well, yes, YADA, if you starve yourself enough, your periods will indeed stop. But we call that anorexia, and that’s a disorder.
Then I discovered more people, mostly cismen, who seem to believe that having a menstrual period is unnatural.
Guys…I just…I can't.
It's…it's just. Idk anymore. Please, just read the page. It's, so bad. pic.twitter.com/QVIeqhdpWz
— X (@XLNB) March 15, 2016
Yep, that would be another dude telling a woman that periods are unnatural. It’s even in a book, so you know it’s facts!
Oh wait! There’s some words of wisdom for cismen about proper ejaculations and their heartrate. Auuuum, come with the earth, fellas!
Just another day in Hotep Land, where Ashy Ankh Negros romp and play.
(EDITED TO ADD: Now don’t get Hotepery mixed up with Afrocentrism. One can celebrate and honor our ancestry without going all the way to the extreme “White People are the Devil, cleanse your third eye, brother” side. Hat tip to Negrodamus for pointing that out in the comments)
What’s a Hotep, you may ask? Take the sheer fuckery from white supremacists, mix a bunch of Egyptian symbols that are poorly misunderstood, add spoonfuls of misguided black pride, throw in cups and cups of misogyny and homophobia, a dash of fucked understanding of science and medicine and the English language, and then drop it off a cliff. The resulting mess is Hotep.
These folks (because there are women who subscribe to this shit) claim to know about the roots of our African ancestry and must inform us all of how brainwashed they are by the white man. They take #StayWoke to extreme levels, trying to wake us all up with nonsense. They hide their hatred of women and the celebration of toxic masculinity behind the concept of “getting back to our roots”. It’s pretty sad and infuriating as fuck.
Misogyny (or specifically misogynoir)
Hoteps claim to looooove black women. We are queens (or Kweens?). Our wombs are where nations can be built. We are the rock the “blakk” man can rely on in this struggle.
As long as we don’t speak up for ourselves. Or dress sexy for ourselves. Or refuse to put up with their shit. Or expect more out of men. Or are lesbians or bisexual but unwilling to do threesomes with them and another woman (cause that’s hawt). Or claim that a black man raped them.
Then we’re at best, brainwashed and at worst, agents working for the white man to bring the blakk man down. It’s fucked.
And they do engage in basic misogyny too. By bedding women of other races, it’s like poking the “whyte” man in the eye. But heaven forbid a black woman date someone of another race, that’s bringing the downfall of the black race.
If you haven’t noticed, Hotep is all about uplifting the black man at the expense of everyone else.
Toxic Masculinity
Are you a trans woman? Then you’re unnatural, feminized, affected by the society that tries to feminize black men.
Are you a trans man? Then you’re trying to suppress the black man by “trying to be a man”.
Are you gay? Are you a cisman who cares for his kids or enjoys things that are tagged ‘feminine’? Then you can see where I’m going here.
For people who claim that being stereotyped is terrible, they cling to the image of a roughnecked oversexed manly man. A man who engages in “nation building” aka sleep with a lot of women to make babies for them to care for while the man continues to, well, build nations. A man who is tough, not in touch with his emotions, answers insults with violence. Toxic all around.
If you haven’t noticed, Hotep is also about allowing black men to be irresponsible asshats.
Misunderstanding of Science and History
You really want to get a good hard look at Hotepery? Watch the series Hidden Colors. Well, first, get really, really drunk (or high, if you’re able) first and then watch this ahistorical piece of garbage. I’m aware that we’re not exactly represented in history classes, but making up shit like “black people never lived in caves, like white people did” isn’t the way. According to the first two videos in this series, nearly everything good in the world was made by black or mixed people. EVERYTHING.
Oh right, and they dip their brains into Egyptian religion and artistry and claim it’s our heritage. It’s like they either forgot or have no idea that the slave trade of our ancestors came from west Africa. Egypt isn’t in west Africa, but telling them that would prove my brainwashing. It’s already bad enough that I’m partnered with a white man.
As for medicine? It drips with pseudoscience, as you can see from the top image. Periods are unnatural, cauliflower doesn’t contain carbon, relaxers get into your brain, single mothers make their sons gay, and so on. Essential oils can cure everything, white science developed AIDS to depopulate black people…
…hold on, that shit is one of the reasons why there is so much AIDS denialism in Africa. Fuck these guys.
You name a psuedoscience, and you can find a Hotep promoting it in the name of healing ‘our’ people from white man’s medicine.
If you haven’t noticed, Hotep is about twisting what we’ve learned to suit their fucked up agenda.
In Conclusion
Fuck these guys. Again. Fuck their disrespect of black women, fuck their support of the toxic masculinity that is killing themselves and trans women of color, fuck their lack of understanding of science, fuck their lack of understanding of ANYTHING.
Fuck their abuse of English, with substituting “EYE” for “I” and “overstand” for “understand”. Fuck their insistence on calling other people ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ like attempting to establish a kinship would make their bullshit go down easier – also, we’re not at church.
The best way to combat this shit is to laugh at them. As frustrating and condescending as they can be, they don’t have nearly as much power as they claim to be.
No Love, Me – The Clueless Verison
Damn, haven’t had one of these in a while, but it’s Friday and I’ve been serious enough this week.
*ahem*
Dearest Stacy Dash,
SHUT. UP. You sound damn ignorant.
No love,
Me