Triggering Snuff

Boy oh boy, that’s gonna pop up on someone’s search, and they’re gonna haaaaate reading this.

Oh well.

Alright, I realized I though I’d said something, when I actually didn’t so here goes:
For my allies and friends, yes, showing clips or pictures of black people dead by police hands might get someone you know to wake up and smell the racism, but for me, given how often it’s happened, it’s like sharing bits of snuff porn, like Faces of Black Death, except they’re all real.
“Here’s this large black woman slumped over on the ground, dead or dying due to police neglect”
“Here’s the body of that kid with the Skittles and Iced Tea”
“Watch this cop shoot this black man to death!”
What I’m asking for here is for people to keep in mind that for some of us, this is tiresome and (yup, gonna say it. Hold on to you hats) TRIGGERING. Gasp, I know, I used the terrible word that shows that I’m fragile snowflake that cannot handled Real Life.

You know, like I haven’t been bombarded with this photos for fucking YEARS already.  I’ve had enough Real Life.  I’ve had enough of our dead being used to “prove” that we’re being slain unfairly. Can you, just for a moment, try to empathize that maybe I…or we…have had enough Real Life, plxthanks.  Too many people, too many thoughts of brothers and mothers and fathers and grandparents and sisters pop in my own mind.  Too much Real Life will traumatize a motherfucker.  Like college students who have had Real Life thrown into their faces before they step one foot onto campus, lives of poverty, assault, rape, physical abuse, raising siblings, holding down jobs of their own.

Have some fucking empathy.

At the very least, put the article or picture in a comment. Find an article that has a picture of the victim alive, so we can see them as a person, and not a hunk of dead dark flesh to gawk at. 
Please?
Please? Please?

(And yes, I do make use of my “Hide Post” button. That’s not the fucking point.)

150 Armed Assholes

Hey, y’all.  I had a fever this weekend that got up to 102F. Fun! Now for the point of this post:

I don’t have words to describe how I’m feeling about this current fuckery up on Oregon. Not for the hypocrisy of the media treating these assholes not as the terrorists they are, not for the assholes on social media twisting the very definition of “terrorist” to not include this so-called militia of piss pants regressives who just don’t want to pay taxes, but want to use federal land that’s marked so they don’t use it all up raising their damned cattle. Not for the hypocrisy of these piss pants whiners defending two poaching arsonists who COULD HAVE FUCKING KILLED SOMEONE with their attempt to hide their poaching attempt. And certainly not for the hypocrisy of these assholes to show pictures of the uprisings in Ferguson and Baltimore, like white people have never overturned a car or raided a store ever.  I guess pumpkins and sports teams matter more than black lives.

When they’re not using pictures from Venezuela and calling it Baltimore. 

This gent, Julian Long, took all the words, made them beautiful, and then gratefully shared them with the world.

We keep being shown that violent, outrageous protests lead to decidedly delicate treatment from the authorities. We keep being shown that armed might is and must be respected – that secret wars and personal vendettas and organized forces with weapons and agendas get the benefit of being treated like humans while people with placards and megaphones are taken down like dogs. And we keep being told that this is how the system works. We keep being told to trust the system. Follow the system. Be aligned to the system.
So what comes next? What happens when this cloud finally bursts?
Explain that to me.
Please.

And I’m glad, because that means I don’t have to repeat anything.

I Got Nothing, Y’all

No Charges for Cleveland Police Officers in Shooting Death of 12-Year-Old Tamir Rice.

 

I got nothing but tears and rage right now.  This boy was executed and lied about.  His murders not only walk free, but with badges and jobs intact. Tamir’s mother and sister will have that wound, that loss, for the rest of their lives.

All because our children, our black children, are never treated like children.  A 12-year-old with a toy gun becomes a dangerous armed suspect in the eyes of our racist police system.  And that system becomes judge, jury and executioner in a matter of seconds.  SECONDS.

Look at this child.  LOOK AT HIM.

 

I don’t care if he was tall, I don’t care if the gun didn’t have some sort of “I’m not real” indicator.  I don’t care.  THIS IS A CHILD. And now he is dead, and will have no real justice for his murder.

We have failed him.  As a country, we have failed Tamir.

I’m sorry, kid.  I’m so sorry.

 

 

Helpless

So, while I was at Skepticon, shit was going down in my own town.  Black Lives Matter has been protesting in front of the 4th Precinct in reaction to the death of Jamar Clark by the police.  Some of my local friends have been out there, helping out and being awesome or being awesome allies.

And then last night, shit got worse. Five people shot by cowardly agitators.  They want to provoke their little race war so badly, provoke us to a response just so they can have their war as “self-defense”.  They’re cowards and fuck an entire bowl of them.

I could get on a bus right now and be there.  I could have been part of the response march.  I could be there, supporting those victimized by the police after the shootings with mace and nonsense.

But, thanks to fibro and anxiety, I can’t.  And that shit makes me feel helpless.  No, I can’t walk in a march.  No, I can’t be around huge groups of people, especially with the fear of violence with each breath.

And I feel, again, helpless.

See, back during Secular Women Work, myself and the ever awesome Trinity did a workshop about activism while disabled.  There are things you can do, if you can’t do what is seen as standard “activism”.  And I find myself trying to keep that in mind tonight.

I can retweet information.

I can put stories on blast.

I can write this post.

There are things I can do.  There are things that you, if you sitting here looking at a cane or a wheelchair or your stack of meds or your whatever is keeping you keeping on, can do to help those on the ground.  Got extra blankets?  Or can get to a thrift shop to get cheap blankets/hats/gloves? Can you get them to an occupation?  You don’t have to stay. Can’t get out of the house?  Do you have a friend who can do this for you?

Have access to social media? Share these stories. Share announcements. Given how bullshit the media can be (looks at her local paper and sets it on fire. Passive voice my black ass), social media is where you can get what’s going on and spread the word.

And, most importantly, if it’s too much, you can break away.  You can rest.  This goes double if you CAN show up.  Self-care is a very radical act.  No one is any good when burnt out.

(UPDATED) Dear Businesses Run by White People:

Hey.

Come here. Have a seat. We need to chat.

Look, I’ma need some of y’all to not use Black Lives Matter to sell your shit. Your beer, your apples, your what the fuck ever.

You wanna slap “#Caramel Apples Matter” on your sign, Minnesota’s Largest Candy Store in Jordan, MN? Join the movement?  Fuck you and the horse you rode in on and the stable you got that horse from and the mare that gave birth to it. You can join the movement of my foot up your ass.

“Dark Beers Matter”? Really, Wynwood Brewery Company? Yeah, you canceled the event and apologized, not being aware of what the promoters were even doing, but still, someone thought this up, thought it was a good idea and went with it.  Who was this person?  They, that promoter, can fuck themselves and the entire damn stable.

It’s not funny, it’s not cute, it’s offensive as all fuck to a movement that demands police responsibility. It’s offensive as all fuck to the families of people who have been murdered by the police due to racist bullshit. Is this a joke to y’all? Is this so simple to you, something funny you can pick up to get attention.  Because boy oh fucking boy are you getting it now.  We’ve noticed what shitstains you are.

And still, there will be people who will actually DEFEND this bullshit.

“Don’t be so sensitive!”

“It’s just a joke!”

My response:

One more time…

Call me a humorless liberal, but this bullshit needs to stop.  NOW. If you can’t support BLM, then leave the fucking name alone.  Stop selling your shit on the backs of our dead.

Got it? Good talk. You can go now.

No love,

Me

Update: So a few people have left negative reviews on the store’s Facebook page.  A friend ended up getting this as a response:

Bravo, Facebook.  Pointing out racist actions by businesses: bad. Allowing racist, sexist, harassing groups to keep on keepin’ on: good.

Oh, and apparently everyone who objected to Caramel Apples Matter is a BLM ‘thug’ according to comments on the page as well.  Isn’t it super great when racists show off their true colors with their language?

Super great.

---

UPDATE the second: News of the sign made it to local press, with the owner claiming, as per usual in these cases, that it was a “mistake”.  At least there was an apology made, along with a desire to “move past this”.

No, sir, you don’t get to decide when we “move past this”.  And how the hell was this a mistake? Someone tossed the letters up at the sign and they just FORMED that randomly? Please.

Look, white people, just leave any and all things Black Lives Matter alone unless you’re offering support and allyship, and you won’t have these problems.  

Seriously.

The Angry Black Chick

Once upon a time, I was an Angry Black Chick.

I know, some of you are saying “You’re an ABC right the fuck now”, but hold your horses, I’m telling this story.

I did a segment on a friend’s podcast where I affected a ‘ghetto accent’ and ranted about whatever was on my mind.  It was fun back then.

I look back on it now and realized I was doing a weird version of Chill Black Girl, performing for my white friends.  I’ve since dropped that, gained more friends, lost a few and am now at times Angry, at times Disappointed, at times Disgusted, and at time Mocking.

I tire of the stereotype of the Angry Black Woman, constantly militant and on edge, ready to yell “racist” at the slightest hint of wrongdoing.  For starters, it’s an off shoot of that other pernicious stereotype, the Strong Black Woman, constantly wearing the problems on the world on her back without complaint.

Fuck, if you had to carry that much shit, wouldn’t you be just a little pissed?

Also, it tells people that we have only have a few emotions, angry being the most prominent one.  It dehumanizes us, turns us into caricatures that can be dismissed.

And now I’m gonna talk about Nicki Minaj.  Nice swerve, yeah?

I’m so-so about her music.  “Anaconda” makes me wanna dance (if you haven’t seen someone twerk with a cane, you’ve not lived), and her verses on “Monster” and “My Chick Bad” make me feel like the eldricth creature I secretly am (shhhhh, don’t tell my partner. His sanity is too delicious). “Looking Ass Niggas” is amazing and the video is too.  I’m meh with her other songs.

I appreciate her weird style, her not-so-weird style, her insistence to young girls to finish school and don’t depend on no man, her insistence on doing shit her own way.  Love her or hate her, you gotta respect that from an artist.

I also didn’t watch MTV’s VMAs last night.  That requires cable, which we don’t have and watching TV, which I don’t do. Don’t worry, I’m not one of those snobs, I just can’t deal with the medium in a way that I still can’t explain, so our lovely smart TV is used by my partner when he wants to watch Netflix and me when I want to run the Pandora app or play YouTube bird videos for the cats in the office.

But, like most TV moments I want to stay informed on, I watched the hell out of my Twitter feed, and oh boy oh boy did  it light up when Miss Minaj called out human joke Miley Cyrus upon receiving her award.  Don’t get me wrong, Miley’s done good stuff with homeless teens and all that stuff, but her bullshit on Twitter is straight up White Feminism (TM).

And Nicki was awesome for calling her out on live TV. That captured video is just magnificent.

But of course, before the show even ended, keyboards were going with the thinkpieces.  About how Nicki savaged Miley, about how Nicki was “throwing shade” (wrong terminology, if you must use it, that was a straight up call out). Once again, for defending herself, Nicki gets thrown into the same box we all get thrown into when we act even a little “out of line”: The Angry Black Woman.

For defending herself, let me say that again.

When is this shit going to stop? I know that answer.  As long as that term is used to silence us, to make us the bad guy, to make us worth not listening to (like we’re children having tantrums “not until you straighten up that attitude”), that box will always be there.

No matter what message we’re trying to convey, people, usually white people and sometimes black men, will fear our anger so much that it’s not worth listening to the message.  And that’s bullshit.

So much bullshit.

*sigh*

Today in “shit I can’t believe I have to say”:

ATTITUDE IS NOT A CRIMINAL OFFENSE!!

Attitude will get you in trouble socially.  Attitude will get you fired.  Attitude will get you detention. Attitude will make you lose friends and gain enemies.

But it is not a crime. For too damned long, it’s been treated like a crime, though.

Recent case in point, the murder of Sandra Bland.  Now there’s video (that may or may not have been edited).  I’m not going to link to the video here, if you haven’t seen it yet, you can make use of the search engine of your choice.  Personally I tire of seeing Black death at police hands broadcast over and over.

According to the video, she was asked to put out her cigarette.  Not a lawful order, she didn’t have to obey. She asked repeatedly what she was being arrested for, and received no answer.  She stated that she couldn’t wait to sue, which is not a crime.  She outright stated that she had epilepsy, and the cop didn’t give a shit (I could write about how dangerous it is to be Black and disabled and having to deal with cops in this society, but that will have to wait for another day).

He didn’t care.  He didn’t get the respect he thought he deserved, and she paid the  price.

Yes, she coped an attitude.  Still not a crime.  But as we see over and over and over again, cops love to treat it like it is.  They act as if someone disrespecting their authority (insert Cartman impression here) is a crime to be punished from a beating up to death.  You know what other organizations treat disrespect as a lethal offense?

Gangs.

We have cops acting like stereotypical gang bangers, walking around openly armed and expecting the people to cower in fear of them and never say a bad word about or to them.  And that’s some bullshit.

What’s worse is that people actually play along with this shit.  We have people claiming that is Ms. Bland had just quietly complied with the cops unlawful and unreasonable requests, she would be alive today.  That coping an attitude with a cops is grounds for a beatdown, to be treated like a criminal when no crime had be committed.  Bow you head, say ‘yes sir/ma’am” and “No sir/ma’am”, don’t make trouble, don’t stand up for yourself.  It’ll be over sooner if you just behave.

And to that I say, Oh Hell Naw.

People get all up in their feelings when we talk shit about cops?  “Being a cops is so hard”, they say. “It’s the most dangerous job out there”, they say.  First of all, it’s not – ask an oil rigger who’s more likely to bite it on duty. Second of all, of course it’s a hard fucking job (so is being a brain surgeon or an air traffic controller).   That doesn’t give anybody license to act like damn fools with huge egos. The point is, they’re not special and we should stop treating them as such when one of them fucks up.

It’s time for the cops to get a goddamn reality check.  You have been given your authority by the People, and they are the ones you need to damn well respect.  I don’t care how many shit talking law enforcement agents you see on TV, here in the real world, giving you a “disrespectful look” ain’t a fucking crime.  It is your job, your duty, to be more responsible than the average citizen, because you have the authority to kill a motherfucker (and get away with it).  Do I need to quote Uncle Ben here?  “With Great Power Also Comes Great Responsibility”?

That mean, yes, if a clerk at a retail shop can’t punch a mean and nasty customer in the face, you can’t either.  Yes, even if they ran and made you run and catch them and you’re pissed off.  Yes, even if they called your momma everything but a child of god.  Yes, even if they make a pig and/or doughnut crack at you.  That means each and every time you strike a perp with hand or baton, you need to be held accountable (frankly, I think if you have to hit a motherfucker that ain’t tried to hit you first, that should be an instant investigation).  That means each and every bullet you fire needs to be held accountable.  That means every time you’re seen acting a fool, you get disciplined. That means remembering that yes, YOU CAN BE RECORDED ON DUTY (like a lot of other people with jobs have to put up with), so you better act right each and every time you go on duty.  We don’t want perfection, we want accountability.  We want to trust you again, and we can’t if we’re scared that the cop coming out of his car is going to be Officer Friendly or Deputy “Got Something to Prove”.

You want to improve the way we see cops?  Make them more accountable.  Toss out the heavy handed motherfuckers, the blatant racists, the homo/transphobes, the ones with a rap sheet full of complaints.  They are supposed to be serving the people, ALL OF THEM, and they damn well can’t if they’re bigots.  Take the wrongful death settlements out of their pension fund, make them feel the burn of each and every wrongdoer.  Stop punishing whistleblowers who are trying to do the right thing by exposing bullshit. Train your people on how to deal with all members of society with respect, including the disabled. END THE WAR ON DRUGS and the fucked up incentives to punish addicts just to fill the town’s “too fucked up to raise taxes” coffers.

I could go on forever, but I think it’s a start.

Linky Roundup! (aka Feminace is Exhausted and Too Much Has Happened)

Hello.

How was your 4th, Americans?  Nice?  Good.

I was at CONvergence. It was fun, but also very, very exhausting for me with the whole fibro plus GAD thing.  But I did remember my self-care, so I got through it.

All while dressed in a very eye catching outfit.

…told y’all I loved me some Dragon Age: Inquisition.

Anyway, that happened and then the week of mental and physical recovery happened and now I’m here.  Still tired in the brain, but holy shit stuff happened and I can’t let it all pass without some commentary, so I’m dragging the Linky Roundup tag out of storage just for you.

** First of all: The ever awesome Iris Vander Pluym has awarded Seriously?!? a Very Inspiring Blogger Award, and I am very pleased as punch.  Thank you, Iris!  If you haven’t given Perry Street Place a gander, you simply must. And if you haven’t also given any of the other blogs on the list a gander, see previous sentence.

** I apparently missed an amazing Twitter clapback, or should I call this a clapBLACK.  There’s this hashtag that got some notice, #whitegirlsdoitbetter.  It in the vein of those “Post to make a black girl mad” BS nonsense that has white women try super hard with their attempt to copy our dance moves, gratuitous booty shots and picture of adorable interracial children.  Personally, the first two make me giggle (I’m not into body shaming, but if you’re trying to prove that your ass is better than your average black girl, HAVE SOME ASS. Otherwise, stick with what you know you’ve got and do you, okay?), and the last makes me roll my eyes.  Congrats, you have bedded a black man and have born his children.  I’m supposed to be ‘mad’ why?

So, this hashtag. I have no idea when it appeared on Black Twitter’s radar, but it did and the reactions were priceless. Blavity has the highlights.  Lesson, don’t come for us if we didn’t send for you.

** Speaking of people on Twitter who I think are amazing and should be followed by everyone, actress/comedian/general hoopy frood who knows where her towel is Pia Glenn delighted her YouTube subscribers by bringing back her trifling cousin Yvonne to explain why Black Twitter is pissed by people who pull from them without compensation.

“What’s going on with Black Twitter? The rent, bitch!”

Seriously, watch it.

** Bringing the mood down, another day, another reminder of how Black Lives Don’t Matter.  Add “exercising your own damn horses” to the list of shit we can’t do without getting some shit and then death from cops  Rest in Power, Jonathan Sanders.

** Bringing the mood up a bit, Obama’s ‘screw you’ to the Hobby Lobby decision is glorious. Fuck your ‘closely-held religious beliefs”.

** Homophobic and just plain foolish county clerks are reacting to gay marriage being a thing everywhere in this country by refusing to do their jobs.  Again, fuck your “closely-held religious beliefs”.

** In “shit I can’t believe I have to say to people news”: Ladies, a man in a kilt is not an invitation. Keep your fucking hands to yourselves, for fuck’s sake.

…and to round things off, Rest Well, Satoru Iwata-san, president of Nintendo. The gamer community will miss you terribly.

Please understand.

A Prescription from Dr. Feminace, PH.D of Done With This Shit

(This was a Facebook post I did a few days ago, edited for your reading pleasure)

This moment of education is brought to you by a moment’s ire while trying to relax and save Thedas.
Look, ‪#‎SouthernLivesMatter‬ and ‪#‎BlueLivesMatter‬ and ‪#‎WhiteLivesMatter‬, here’s some seats. You need to take all of them. Consider it a prescription from Dr. Feminace.

(other campaigns that focus on actual marginalized groups – #nativelivesmatter and the like, are of course exempt from this ‘script. *raises solidarity fist*)

You’re missing the point so hard that you can’t catch a fucking clue with clue bait, a clue hunting rifle and covered in clue pee in the middle of clue hunting season. So you have to copy an effective campaign and try to look clever when you might as fucking well just use ‪#‎notallwhites‬, ‪#‎whataboutus‬, and ‪#‎imacluelesspieceofshit‬

Why do we say “BlackLivesMatter”? Because, if you bothered looking at the news longer than the latest ZOMG new story of someone getting shot by the cops, it’s bloody obvious that black lives don’t matter. If someone shoots and/or kills a cop, people go out of their fucking way to celebrate their lives, to mourn, to pull up happy pictures of good time, and (most importantly) to find the fuck what shot/killed them. Hell, people do the same thing when POLICE DOGS are hurt in the line of duty.

On the other hand, black victims do not even get the courtesy. Let’s look at that video of the cop throwing down a 14 year old girl while she screams for her mother over and over again. That black male that was shot two seconds after the cops stopped was obvious a dangerous 20 years old man with a really real gun instead of a little boy with a fake one playing in the park. Did that dead black guy have a criminal record that had fuck all to do with his murder? Any pictures of them holding their hands up a way that we can call a gang sign? Say, maybe they had weed in their system. You know how wild and violent they get when they’ve had their pot. So scary.  Shoot/harm first, ask questions later, if not never.

White killers get more sympathetic press than black victims.
Killer cops fucking up at their job get more sympathetic press than black victims.
ANIMALS get more sympathetic press than black victims.

That is what we are talking about when we say “black lives matter”, because it’s fucking obvious that they don’t in our society. Do you fucking get it now? It’s not about hating cops or white people or Southerns or what the fuck ever.  It’s a cry for help, a cry for attention (the right sort, the sort that requires change in our society), and it’s only getting louder.

But you can’t deal with that reality, can you? The press caters to your narrow-minded view of us, leaving you capable of calling our rage “stupid” and whining when we put our protests in your face so you CAN’T ignore our presence. You wag your fingers at us, but remain silent when your token Black friends express their feelings, then turn around and repost/reTweet racism memes that you and your White friends can nod their heads about.  You easily ignore our pain – and that is what copying that slogan is. Hide your lack of empathy by whining like petulant children upset that a sibling got a piece of a cookie compared to their whole one. Even if that sibling has been locked in a basement and beaten most of their life. Even if that sibling made the fucking cookies in the first place.

Because who cares, you’re not getting the attention right now. You’re scared and trying to make shit about you so you feel better. You try to co-opt movements because you need to not think about anything but yourselves (or have a single original thought, for fuck’s sake), because empathy is oh so hard, and you might have to work on seeing us as humans like you, and we see you.

Oh, we see you.

…okay, back to sweet talking Solas. I feel better getting that out.

Black Women Can’t Be Mammies Right Now.

Another tragedy has hit the Black community.  Race-based. A terrorist attack in a house of worship.

I’ll leave it for others to talk about the details, because I’m still full of so much anger and rage and misery just thinking about it.

What I want to rant about is something related.  Look, White people, I know one of the stereotypes you hold about Black women is that we’re happy to hear your problems and hold your hand as you try to process how shit it is to be us living in this world, but we can’t right now.  To be honest, we’ve never been able to, and it’s caused a great deal of social media strife.  White people accusing us of being angry, of lumping all White people together, of not being civil enough. White people waving their burnt asses around after they stumble into a conversation and try to make it about their ignorance – and get the roasting they very well fucking deserve.

#NotAllWhites this and #NotAllWhites that.

And we need that shit to stop.  Post-haste.  I know we’re scary when the Blacks are angry, but you’ll just have to fucking deal.  “Reminding” us of #notallwhites isn’t even for us, it’s for you. You want us to reassure you that you’re one of the “good ones”, and that’s some fucked up shit when we’re hurting, which makes us even angrier and more hurt. We don’t have mental space or spoons or whatever to tend to your owies.  If you were really as much of as ally as you claim to be, you’d understand that and gives us the space and support we need to process when more Black bodies are added to the groaning pile of proof that racism isn’t over.

What should you do?  I’ll happily give you some suggestions, for free.  You don’t even have to thank me.

This racist shitstain was reported as saying some “You rape our women” BS while he was murdering folks.  That claim was for you, White women.  That claim spoke for you, White men.  Don’t agree?  Time to make that known.  Post it on FB, start a fucking hashtag on Twitter or Tumblr, write a blog post (the two linked are great), share a blog post that already states your disagreement on your social media.

Aww, you don’t think you have to go that far?  Everyone knows that you don’t agree with RacistFuck McBowlCut?  Are you sure?  Maybe your non-White friends would at least appreciate that sort of reminder.  I know I’d appreciate it a lot more than yet another #notallwhite plea that insults my intelligence.

Not fair? Think about what Black people and Muslims have to do when one of ours fucks up.  Posts, speakers, hashtags, all disowning the fucker, and if we don’t do it fast enough, we’ll have folks wondering why we’re not speaking up?

It’s not like we’re asking for the moon and fucking stars here, White friends, supposed White allies.  Nothing more than what we have to do.

Now get to it.