newwavefeminism:

important tidbits from the article:

In the 1980s, Crenshaw was trying to understand why US anti-discrimination law was failing to protect Black women in the workplace, and she discovered it was because the law distinguished between two kinds of discrimination: gendered discrimination and racialized discrimination.

That is, US law distinguished between discrimination against women (on the basis of their gender) and discrimination against Black, Latino, Asian, and Indigenous people (on the basis of their race).

But in her study of discrimination in workplaces, Crenshaw observed that Black women were discriminated against on both bases – their gender and their race – at once.

So, for example, Black women were the last group to be hired at a workplace she studied – after white women and Black men. When the boss decided to lay people off, Black women were fired because they were the least senior – the last to arrive. But that they were hired last was itself due to discrimination. This group of Black women took the company to court and the judge said, “there’s no gender discrimination here because white women weren’t fired. And there’s no race discrimination here because Black men weren’t fired.” 

So, Crenshaw concluded that discrimination against Black women in the workplace – as Black women – was invisible to legal concepts of discrimination that saw it in terms of “gender” only or in terms of “race” only. Black women’s experiences of discrimination were rendered invisible by these ways of categorizing discriminatory practices.

zuky:

readnfight:

White people need to find ways to form relationships with people of color, based on what white people perceive as love, that are not also relationships where their own domination over the person of color is unacknowledged or taken for granted. That ain’t love! Is The…

glamaphonic:

How media clearly reflects the sexism and the racism we cannot see in ourselves.

bana05:

I wanted my first-year film students to understand what happens to a story when actual human beings inhabit your characters, and the way they can inspire storytelling. And I…

downlo:

Great piece. Totally recommended:

…[C]alls for strong female characters start to run into trouble with trans women, nonwhite women, and women of colour in pop culture. Because women in all three of these categories are automatically expected to be strong. It is, in fact, part of their characterisation. Trans women are frequently framed as secret men (ah!) and thus can be expected to display physical strength and emotional toughness, because it’s part of the game the creator wants to play with you. These women aren’t ‘real women,’ because they’re strong. Those masculine traits aren’t empowering, in this case, aren’t an affirmation that girls can do anything. Just the opposite. They are dehumanising and violent. They are a reminder to viewers that trans women are not real because they are really, at heart, masculine. Yet, to depict them as emotionally vulnerable, even fragile, is to play into other stereotypes about women, leaving them in a double bind; they cannot be strong, they cannot be weak. They cannot exist.

Women of colour and nonwhite women have also been subjected to the physically strong, solemn or stoic archetype since time immemorial. When pop culture bothers to include them at all, they are often heavily masculinised. Loud. Oversexed. Spicy. Overwhelming in their physicality. Or, on the flip side of things, especially for Asian women, meek and submissive; objects of sexual fetish. Bodies inherently charged with sexuality that are treated as objects in pop culture narratives. Do we need more ‘strong female characters’ when it comes to women of colour, in a media that repeatedly reiterates stereotypes about stoic, unemotional, physically strong Black women, for example?

[…]

…[W]hat people are usually talking about when they talk about the need for ‘strong female characters’ is white cis women, specifically. [….] “…you have to be assumed weak in the first place for it to be groundbreaking.”

newwavefeminism:

oshun-girl:

damn. great read.

I came across this over a year ago at a time where I was just starting to understand the impact of damaging racial and gendered social norms. Important read from the voice of a black woman about her perceived place in society and the darkness/purity complex we have where we use the “cult of true womanhood” to pit blackness and whiteness against one another.

exhibitnumber1:

ophiucha:

missturdle:

• So You Want to Write a Fantasy: Writing Female Characters
• So You want to Write a Fantasy: Culture
•  SYWTWAF: Writing What you Don’t know
•  A list of adjectives to describe physical attributes, Or, As it turns out, I could go to Starbucks with half this list
• Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack
•  Some primers
•  More Primers
•  RaceFail ‘09: Or where Deepad’s I didn’t dream of Dragons comes from, and why.
•  Writing characters of Color
•   Writing Outside your experience
• Media Representations Wiki - stereotypes/tropes/culture/etc
•  On A:TLA’s whitewashing - All The World’s White, the Rest of Us merely live in it
• The Face of the Other: Do Manga & Anime characters look “white”?
• Describing Characters of Color pt 1 & Describing Characters of Color (pt 2)
•  I Didn’t Dream of Dragons
•  Shame
•  So You Want to: Avoid Unfortunate Implications
•  Transracial Writing for the Sincere
•  Why Writing Colorblind is Writing White
• What a Girl Wants: Representation
•  An Equal Place at the Table
•  Avoiding LGBTQ Stereotypes
• The Problem With Colorblindness (and the Rest of Racebending.com)
•  Making Movies for White People: A Tongue in Cheek critique of Minority Representation in the Media, or lack thereof
•  From Margin to Center: Writing Characters of Color via Racialicious
•  Writing Characters of Color - a helpful community!
•  Why my Protagonists aren’t white (even though I am.)
•  The Dangers of Telling a Single Story (a helpful Video)
•  The Lack of People of Color in Historical Fictions
•  How to Read and Respond to Literature of Color
•  The Advantages of being a White Writer (in getting published)
•  Writing Characters of Colour (Now With 10% Less White Liberal Anxiety!)
•  Fic and Skin Tone (discusses Nyota Uhura, otherwise relevant)
•  On Problematic Writing
•  Writing Race in YA fiction: Debunking Myths
•  Diversity Writers: How to Write People of Color
•  The Importance of Inclusionary Writing
•  Racialicious
•  Overcoming the Noble Savage and the Sexy Squaw: Native Steampunk
•  The Intersection of Race and Steampunk: Colonialism’s After-Effects & Other Stories, from a Steampunk of Colour’s Perspective
•  Beyond Victoriana: For EVERYTHING Steampunk/1800s/Industrial Revolution that isn’t just Victorian England and the archives Tales of the Urban Adventurer
•  Can I just watch A Game of Thrones in Peace? (A brown feminist fan rant).

1.) It’s not hard to figure out what to do, there are plenty of resources.

People say you have to get it right, do your research, but … what else are you supposed to research? It’s not like people with more pigment in their skin have completely different personalities than those with less, any more than any individual. It’s frustrating when I can’t even figure out what the heck people are talking about.

Bam. Research step one done for you.

2.) Writing characters of color/minorities is a good thing.

I don’t like the notion that fantasy authors are under some kind of obligation to present ethnically diverse worlds. I’m English, and a fair sized part of English history consists of unwashed beardy white people in mead halls. If I’m inspired by my own history and cultural heritage, then that’s what I’m damn well going to write about. I’m not writing about some other culture just to appease the people who think there aren’t enough black characters in fantasy, or whatever. You want it, you write it. Nothing to do with me.

You’re wrong.

3.) Your all White Fantasy Land Didn’t Exist in Real Life:

…the rather medieval one has more diversity than real medieval Germany probably had […] In a world with medieval means of transport, it just doesn’t seem natural to me to mix dark-skinned people with blue-eyed blondes in one setting. I just try to give the people a colour that fits the place where they live.

You mean like the people from Africa and the Middle east who began to take over Southern Spain, as well as the Jews who were pretty well spread out throughout Europe, the Middle Easterners they would have met on the Crusades, and the incoming Mongol Hordes who spread to the very edges of Eastern Europe before the empire finally collapsed? Don’t forget that Turkey is right there, and the silk road would have gone from Song Dynasty China, through India, and ended in Turkey before moving further westwards into places like Germany. Also the attempts at the Franco-Mongol alliance would have been pretty interesting. (That’s about the 13th century - arguably smack dab in Middle Ages Europe and definite contact between France/Christian Europe and the Mongolian Empire.)

Unless you’re writing everything in the far reaches of Denmark or something, historically speaking, I call bullshit on people who have societies that are only all white ever, because it’s just inaccurate. Consider the relative closeness of Northern Africa to Spain, or Turkey to the rest of Europe, the conquests of Alexander the Great, the Crusades, Slavery existing in Europe, including England, the slave trade, imperialism, Pax Mongolica, The Silk Road, Jewish Diaspora, the Islamic Empire vs The Holy Roman Empire, Egypt, Algeria, China’s sailing across the world, The Maruyan/Gupta Empires of India, tea trades, Columbus sailing in hopes of finding China, etc, etc, etc.

4.) I mean I just don’t believe you anymore. It’s unrealistic. Seriously guys.

You’d think I’d just denied the holocaust or something. Get a grip. All I said was that I’m going to write about my own cultural experience and anyone who thinks I should do otherwise for the sake of political correctness can bugger off.

This isn’t even about being PC this is just not being wrong about everything.

good lord.

Just leaving this here.

Damn, that is one great list of resources.

ancestryinprogress:

anegroking:

defeatmenot:

The sadness and disappointment in her eyes pierce me.

Author & Professor Melissa Harris-Perry deconstructs stereotypes of African American women and considers the consequences of a white male-centered perspective on the American story.

Below is the link to the episode:

http://bit.ly/wdrSPq

the pain. in. her. eyes.

The stats:

Out of Total Film’s list of the 100 Greatest Female Characters in movies…

Only 79 have full names, and only 73 are listed by their full name.

6 are not human women, and 3 are not humanoid.

38 are a character in someone else’s story. 25 of those are primarily a love interest.

Approximately 1/5 do not survive their film.

Almost 1/2 are victimized or imperiled in their films, and 1/3 are victims of rape, sexual assault, family or intimate partner violence.

There are four women of color. Two of these women (the only adult women of color and the only black characters) are portrayed by the same actor, Pam Grier.

There are three characters identifiable as bisexual and one character identifiable as a lesbian.

More than half the characters are approximately 20–35 years of age.

22 appear in films at least co-written by women. Only 5 appear in films directed by women.

Read more.

basedjaysuave:

• introduce drugs into a low income community
• build liquor stores in a low income community
• don’t build community centers or job centers
• don’t build playgrounds or youth centers
• wait for youth to be rejected for jobs because of background/race
• wait for youth to become desperate and sell drugs or participate in illegal acts
• incarcerate youth & isolate youth from society 
• exploit youth to build signs, dressers, tables etc. in jail for 14 cents/hr instead of paying citizens minimum wage and increasing job creation
• sell inmate made property to companies for 2000% profit
• release youth into the public
• youth is rejected from the public for jobs despite serving time and “justice” being served
• wait for youth to become desperate and sell drugs or participate in illegal acts
• incarcerate youth for repeat offense and give an even longer sentence
• exploit youth for $$ and dirt cheap labor

jalwhite:

paradiscacorbasi:

blacksentai:

It really needs to be stated that, while I’m actually all for punching people in the face, all this praise about it is unsettling. Cause, it’s all about white privilege. I do not have the ability to punch someone in the face at a bar. I…

beatingthebinary:

queerlibido:

As part of a day-long workshop called “Mapping Your Sexual Desire: Liberating Your Sexual Body” we were asked to write our name and what we were “interested in” on our nametags. I was the youngest – and perhaps most inexperienced (though not to conflate age and experience here) — of the bunch,…

This is really long, but definitely worth a read.

rustons:

The dilemma for Anna May Wong was increasingly obvious. Despite her triumph in The Thief of Bagdad and continued good reviews in mediocre productions, her career was stalled in Hollywood. True, she was now a staple in movie magazines, with full-page spreads appearing regularly. But her chances of moving up from supporting or featured player to star were improbable. Production codes against interracial kissing meant that she could not graduate to star billing, even in films with Orientalist themes. Rather, she had to watch as less talented white women took the roles that might have given her more fame, and at least more sympathetic parts. Despite her great beauty, she was cast as a prostitute, an opium dealer, or simply as insignificant color. Her final scenes featured suicide by knife or death by overdose of opium.

Anna May Wong: From Laundryman’s Daughter to Hollywood Legend (Graham Russell Gao Hodges)