Wow, I finally opened up my feed reader and was welcomed with a lot of items. I heard some very distressing news today about the women & trans centre at my university, the details of which I can’t share with anyone right now, so I’m full of unfocused anger.
Muslims can’t sell clothes to white people! [Jezebel]
A Muslim teenager was turned away from a job at Abercrombie & Fitch in Oklahoma because of her headscarf. What was she thinking when she applied for that job? I mean, it’s not like it takes skill or work ethic to sell merchandise or to provide customer support. Didn’t she know that all the white people would be distracted by her hijab and might walk into a mannequin or something?! She could be bald under that scarf! Women can’t be bald!
I have no idea how the person(s) hiring could justify this. Not fitting an image is now grounds for not hiring? So what if she’s wearing a hijab? So what if she’s Muslim? Oh, but that matters all in the world. She isn’t white, and she isn’t blonde. Well, they could relax the blonde part, but people don’t want to see a Muslim girl all covered up in Abercrombie & Fitch. She’s probably super conservative and prudish and backwards because she happens to cover her head.
Apparently I can’t rage about this without using sarcasm. I think I would rather that no one worked at Abercrombie & Fitch.
Them Africans sure have pretty things we can morph and engrave on our blood diamonds! [Racialicious]
DeBeers has released a line of “African-inspired” diamond amulets. Mmm, smell that sweet appropriation. Let’s forget for a moment that DeBeers was founded by a white colonialist who would have fallen in love with Hitler (maybe even literally, although Hitler would’ve had him killed) for his dedication to the Aryan race. Oh, and it’s not like those diamonds were mined using the labour of indigenous people of Africa for maybe some pay and high possibility of being maimed or killed.
I can see one of those amulets gleaming on a Western person’s neck already, thinking they’re oh-so-worldly because look, it’s from Ah-frih-kah.
That is ALL I have to say about THAT. Read the post at Racialicious. It’s way more informative than I am.
Make sure those dirty “trans” people are sterilized otherwise they’ll create a bunch of Swedish freaks! [Questioning Transphobia]
So, Sweden wants to make sterilization mandatory for anyone requesting sexual reassignment. Hey, hey, hey. Let’s not freak out about this too much, blogosphere. I mean, trans people are the greatest national threat to Sweden right now. The Swedish government have learned from other well-to-do countries and now understands what it takes to raise a child! No, it’s not parenting, or even plain ol’ love, you silly goose. It’s having the ‘right’ genitals. Everyone else is a fucking weirdo freakazoid.
I’ll tell you what’s freakish. Mandatory sterilization. Admittedly, any time I hear the word ’sterilization’, I think of eugenics before thinking about people who request to be sterilized. In this case, we know it’s a lot of the former and none of the latter. The choice is quite clear: either you get your SRS and never ever be a parent (because we won’t let you adopt anytime soon), or you stay with what the big guy in the sky gave you and birth beautiful, “normal” children in your beautiful, “normal” body.
That’s not really a choice, is it? Certainly, you can choose to get sexual reassignment surgery, as not all trans people do, only with all the hang ups of cutting off your testes or ovaries and the removal of any freedom you had over your body. That is the main rage-inducer – apparently no one gets a say in what happens to their body anymore. Great job, Sweden! Too bad your football team’s böghögs can’t make up for this transphobic shit!
Quit being so black, Beyoncé Knowles! [Sociological Images]
How dare you, Beyoncé! People might get ideas that maybe the lighter you are doesn’t mean you’re more beautiful or better!
I am so sick of this shit. When is the world going to catch on that lighter skin isn’t better? To be quite honest, I do not blame anyone who has ever wanted or wished for lighter skin. I don’t blame anyone who bought lightening cream or bleaching cream because they were so desperate. Lighter skin comes with many privileges. I blame racism. I blame apathy to racism. I blame people not giving a shit that it hurts to walk down a street and see the only representation of a person of colour on a billboard, ad, poster, magazine, and so on, being the lightest brown one could imagine.
Chances are, these POC don’t look like that in real life. I know, photo manipulation and adjusting is out of control in our commercialized world today. It’s heavily geared towards women. Breast enhancements, skinnier waists, flawless skin — they all hit white representations too. As with the girl turned away from Abercrombie & Fitch, a judgement call on race is being made. Being dark is bad. Being dark does not sell.
See this video. Or this one. And this one. Much material has been written on this.
Side-rage: it is not the same, opposite behaviour when a white person makes a habit out of tanning. They aren’t usually trying to become another race and inherit racism. They want to stay white, but look a little darker, like they’ve visited South America for a few weeks. People of colour who look to bleach their skin are trying to escape racism. Plus, the obsession with white skin tends to manifest in sexism. Women of colour are disproportionately told that they need to be ‘fairer’ or more light-skinned than men of colour are pressured.
Oh, now I’m tired.
Please keep ranting about anything you want in the comments!
iteresting post