both of these wonderful people taken so quickly in an act of senseless violence, during a live news broadcast…. praying for their families and loved ones and the WDBJ7 staff. so scary how close this is…. 40 min drive from here to the Smith Mountain Lake area. our world is so so broken….
VA area friends and community…. signal boost this:
Honestly, it’s starting to hurt every time I see someone shitting on About Ray. Like..the trailer wasn’t out for two hours before people started acting awful.
“Cis people don’t see what’s wrong with this!!!!” And I, a pre-transitioned transgender male, don’t either. The phrases used were ACCURATE to a trans person’s experience with family. “She’s not a lesbian, she’s a boy”/“I’m a boy born in a girls body”…those are very, very real things that are said! And, in context, saying “I’m a boy born in a girls body” is the easiest way to explain being transgender to a young child. That isn’t transphobic, it’s accurate. As is another line from the trailer, “Prolonging this isn’t going to keep me a girl, it’s just going to keep me from being who I already am.” The writers aren’t making this a “trans boys are still just girls” movie, they’re making it a realistic movie based on the struggles of transgender males.
“But the writers are both cis!! They wouldn’t be able to capture what it’s REALLY like to be transgender!!” That’s why writers consult people. A good writer will do a million hours of research before writing a script for a topic like this, and after that they will consult hundreds of people, REAL PEOPLE, and ask about their experiences and ask them for advice to make sure that the screenwrite isn’t horribly misinformed or offensive.
“They should have gotten a transboy to play Ray!” Okay, I don’t know how many times I have to say this: The plot of About Ray is a transboy trying to get his father’s consent to start Hormone Replacement Therapy due to a legal snag. They hired a female bodied actor to play a transboy who was still in his female-passing body. They were not going to hire a post-transition transboy to play a female bodied character. In order to have an accurate representation of what it is like to be a pre-transitioned transman in a female passing body, they would have to hire a female passing actor. Character attributes aside, even if they hired a transmale actor for the role, he would still be taking testosterone through the movie. That means deeper voice and more masculine features as filming for the movie goes on. This would be counterproductive, since About Ray is about a transman trying to START testosterone.
“They should have hired a trans boy actor who hasn’t started HRT yet!” Okay, how many of pre-t transmale actors do you think are in the world? For real? And of them, how many do you think are going to put off starting HRT just to make a movie that could cause them massive amounts of dysphoria? Are you seriously trying to make this a valid argument?
“They could have hired a trans girl to do it!” No???? NO. No. You’re wrong. Do you have any idea how traumatic that could be? How much dysphoria that actor would go through, to finally be in the body they tried to hard to get, only to spend months or years (depending on how long the movie takes to film) pretending to want to be a boy? Do you not understand how terrible that idea is?
GIVE THIS MOVIE A FUCKING CHANCE. The trailer came out a week ago and there are people already planning on boycotting the film, which is a bad idea for an entirely different reason: IF YOU BOYCOTT PROGRESSIVE MOVIES HOLLYWOOD IS GOING TO ASSUME THAT PROGRESSIVE MOVIES AREN’T GOING TO MAKE MONEY AND THEREFORE THEY’RE NOT GOING TO GET MADE. It doesn’t matter how “problematic” you think a preview of a script is. You remember the last movie we had about a transboy? How many of you have seen “Boys Don’t Cry”? Probably not very many of you. You wanna know what Boys Don’t Cry is about? A non-fictional story about the r*** and murder of a transman. You really want that to be the ONE movie that we have? About the hate crimes that we face on a daily basis?
ABOUT RAY IS GOING TO BE A GOOD MOVIE. Don’t base what you think on a few lines and an actor that you don’t think is right for the part. Please.Please go see this movie.
Thank you for changing my mind about it. This is for real. Fuck.
talking about 9/11 with white people is literally one of the most frustrating things ever because they won’t stop talking about their experiences (even if nothing happened to them personally), and when i, a middle eastern person, try to contribute to the conversation, i can’t get a fucking word in.
like what the fuck, nothing happened to you on that day – which, you know, thank goodness – so why the fuck do you insist on dominating the conversation? my daily life is still being effected by this even now, over ten years later.
but you’re not interested in hearing about how my fifth grade health teacher never again called on me or the arab girl in my class. you’re not interested in how whenever my family travels, all fourteen of us (a number that used to include young children) get “randomly” searched. you’re not interested in the fact that when i was asked to buy a propane tank for a barbecue, i spent the rest of the day stressed out and worried that the attendants at all the stores visited to inquire were all going to think i was making explosives (all stores in the neighborhood mysteriously were out of propane tanks in the middle of summer). you’re not interested in the fact that whenever my cousin prepares to fly on his own, his mother calls him to make sure he’s clean shaven so he doesn’t look “like a terrorist.” you’re not interested in the fact that when i was you’re not interested in the fact that i once witnessed a whole family of white people bypass the x-ray scanner for the old fashioned metal detector, but when i asked for the same treatment, i was denied; when i pointed out the (many) signs claiming that i had the right to refuse going through that machine, the tsa agent who mere seconds earlier berated me for my request went conveniently deaf. you’re not interested in hearing about how my sister was told “sorry about your leader” when osama bin laden was killed.
i could reference personal anecdotes until i went blue in the face.
there are countless people who have stories like this, stories that are grotesque and demeaning and terrifying. these are everyday occurrences.
but you’re not interested in any of that. frankly, you’re not even that interested when middle eastern and muslim (and sometimes non-muslim desi) people are subjected to extreme violence or killed. you guys got over chapel hill pretty damn fast. if you noticed it at all.
you don’t give a fuck about us, or our ongoing 9/11 stories. you just want to tell me about how horrible it was, sitting in class and listening to other kids get their names called on the pa system.
Please don’t remove the artist’s caption/comment when you reblog a drawing/comic/etc.
I obviously can’t speak for everyone, but in my case the caption is often an addition to the joke, and if you take it away, you take away a part of my comic.
Seriously, guys? Seriously? Why would you do that?
Please please reblog this! This women is deaf and does not have the ability to speak American Sign Language please boost she’s very vulnerable please contact the San Bernardino police or San Bernardino Mexican consulate if found please reblog this!
We continue to receive asks/submissions that ask the same basic question: Can I have/create a pan-Asian country in my work? (We get this question at least two times a week, no joke!)
And the answer is: Our recommendation is that you don’t create pan-Asian anything in your works. So, no. Don’t. Please don’t. Just don’t.
But since we keep getting questions about it, we thought we’d specifically address why pan-Asian themes/cultures/countries are problematic.
GENERIC ASIAN CULTURE DOESN’T EXIST There’s an assumption that there is a generic “Asian culture” that exists. It doesn’t. It goes along with this racist idea that Asians look the same. White supremacy often takes the tack of looking at Asians as robots, and you see see this mentality continually espoused in articles about the education systems in East Asia, or the factories in China and India, or the idea that Asians “naturally” gravitate towards mathematics and engineering. These are lies. The emasculation of the Asian man and the hypersexualization of the Asian woman also treats us all like robots or dolls instead of human beings.
The continent of Asia is gigantic. It boasts the greatest population in the world. It’s huge and it’s extremely diverse. Its diaspora is also extremely diverse.
India’s population alone is over 1 billion. There are at least 17 languages spoken there and over 900 dialects. It’s the birthplace of four major world religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism. India has more than 2000 ethnic groups and EVERY major world religion is represented there. It’s one of the most diverse countries in the world.
Even trying to define a generic “Indian” culture (both in India and among its diaspora) is very difficult to do! So it simply isn’t possible to have a generic “Asian culture” when it’s nigh impossible to do that for ONE country in Asia. India is not a monolith. Indian diaspora is not a monolith. Asia is also not a monolith. “Asian culture” doesn’t exist. When people write pan-Asian themes/countries/cultures into their works, they’re propagating this myth.
HISTORY AND CONTEXT MATTER This doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot of cultural similarity between certain regions in Asia or that there’s never any cultural sharing or melding. If two countries are located close to each other geographically, there’s a good chance that some ideas and traditions have made their way across both countries. This is the same all over the world.
But sometimes, this sharing of culture is not mutual. Asia is no stranger to forced assimilation, colonization, imperialism, genocide, war, and the oppression of native and indigenous peoples.
Pan-Asian works ignore this historical context. They give no regard to the atrocities that have taken place and often align themselves with imperialism. In fact, pan-Asianism (that is, the unification of Asia) was often used in Japanese imperialist propaganda, which sought to unite Asia under Japanese supremacy.*
Also, many traditions, religions and cultural practices have origins in the geography, climate, and ecosystems surrounding the people groups in question. By using only some aspects and not others, you run the risk of eliminating the very reasons why certain cultural traditions might have come to be.
BUT WHAT ABOUT SFF OR ALTERNATE HISTORY? Again, even if your novel involves distant planets “inspired” by currently existing countries or an alternate history, we strongly advise against pan-Asian countries or cultures. If it isn’t possible for many currently existing countries in Asia to have a single homogenous culture, then how is it realistic for the countries in your work to have pan-Asian cultures or themes?
People are often proud of their cultural traditions and history, including things like traditional dress, architecture, religions, and customs. If you are not Asian, then it isn’t your place to separate people groups from their countries and cultural traditions for your artistic work. Asia is not your playground.
*Please do not ever use Japanese imperialism as an excuse for why white supremacy “isn’t so bad” or “White supremacists aren’t the only racist ones!” Yes, there have been multiple people groups in history, on every continent, that have done atrocious things. None of it justifies or excuses current white supremacy. That’s false equivalence, and we do not play that game here at WWC.
Here’s a post I wrote (from ThisIsNotJapan) about this very issue.
Hi! I’m Bunny!! I’m a 17 year old trans girl and i plan on going to go live with my friend when i turn 18 in October. I’ve been homeless for the past 6 months after leaving my abusive father to live with my mom.
We’ve been traveling all around Pennsylvania and Western New York going from homeless shelters, to shitty abusive family, to shitty abusive creeps houses. No one in my family is capable of taking care of me and my mom is extremely irresponsible and lost us about half of the money i raised.
I can’t be around my family anymore because they take advantage of me and are just really bad and i need help financially supporting myself because i am literally starving.
Please donate to my paypal and help pay for my basic needs such as food, hygeine, and clothes. I will also need money for travel expenses in case things dont work out with my friend and to support me in case of any emergencies.
i really really hate to do this and i’m no good at making post like these but im just getting very desperate for a couple weeks now me and my family has been going through some very very hard times. we have been struggling with bills (electricity,water,gas),getting household supplies (laundry detergent,dish detergent,ect.),getting medical supplies (me,my mom,and my little brother all have to meds,me and my little brother has asthma and it’s often difficult to get out inhalers),and even getting food into the house. we have to go without eating for a few days,having no clean cloths,and just hoping me or my brother don’t have to be rushed to the hospital because of no meds,due to these living conditions Ive been in,my eczema has just gotten worse and worse over the past week. this has been a thing that ha been happening to us for years,and i fear with how things are going for us we just might end up on the streets. as i said i really hate to ask you guys for help with this but i just have no idea what else to do it would mean just so much to me and my whole family if you guys would help us out by donating to help us get by,any little amount will do so much,if not donate and least spread this around. ;; u;;
you can donate to my paypal here: jolantapoluksi@gmail.com
thank you so much for reading and helping out(also i’m very sorry for any typos or misspells)
AngelMihe 