“Intersectionality as a label combines a level of abstraction with an appearance of value-neutrality”, says one European White Feminist.
Nurturance Culture In Action
Through this work, an advance reader copy of Turn This World Inside Out, The Emergence of Nurturance Culture by Nora Samaran found its way into my hands. And although at 140 pages it’s only little, its impact on me has been disproportionately large. It has helped me find compassion; it has helped me connect fragments of ideas which existed in my brain already, but floated untethered in abstract (where they were of no use at all).
How First-Person Shooter Games Affect Our Kids
As a Mum of three, I confess. The iPad is Mummy’s Little Helper. Quarter of an hour screen time may have been allowed to slip past the thirty minute mark on occasion. Or further.
Brown Paper Packages Tied Up With String
With time restrictions therefore, my options are few; but I’m determined to make it work. After all between an apocalyptic future exploding in glorious glitter, and any other future where presents look like World War Two rations, I’ll go for the latter.
Boy, You’ll Be A Woman… Soon
For a woman like me–a die-hard fan of The Rocky Horror Show who lustfully watched Sweet Transvestite on loop –the news that Chanel launched it’s first make-up for men on September 1 2018 in South Korea, was wildly exciting.
TBINAA | Why We Should Say ‘Female Genital Cutting’ and Not ‘Mutilation’
Mutilation depends on perspective for women who’ve experienced it. They call it Female Genital Cutting and Western feminists should listen.
The Face of a Dying Breed, The European Brit
These are the people we need to focus on nurturing as geographical and technological mobility create a growing crisis of clashing moral standards and integration of cultural opposites. He is the type of ambassador I want out in the field demonstrating the best of what it means to be European Brit.
Why Communists turn into Nationalists
As causes grow in popularity, the original victims are often left behind whilst those already in power claim more space and more status by piggybacking on these issues without having suffered first-hand experience in order to promote their own agenda.
Life without Facebook? Is there any chance for escape?
Depressingly, a portion of those ‘success stories’ who did not return to Facebook had simply replaced Facebook with other social media. Far from extracting themselves from an algorithmic life, they had only jumped out of the proverbial frying pan into the fire.
What Aziz Ansari Did Does Not Make Him A Criminal, Unfortunately
Power is the capacity to influence others which–notwithstanding systemic privilege–fluctuates, sometimes on a daily basis according to self esteem, personality, age, maturity and in every unique relationship dynamic. How can power be measured or compared, when there is no absolute, and perception of power is also a form of power?
Lovecraft Was Racist, So Isn’t That How His Legacy Should be Remembered?
Great art changes the status quo and incites critical discourse. Lovecraft’s work, by this definition, is worthy of continued recognition.
Thor Ragnarök: A Baby Step in Equality
World building, as Marvel has proven it can pull off over the last decade, is a skill I admire, it’s an escapist’s ultimate playground–yet my aversion to imperialism and the influence of a feminist education on how I perceive fictional heroes and supervillains ate holes in the fabric of my appreciation.
Overheard Conversations Are The Most Interesting
A few choose to queue, indicating their impatience by folded arms and tapping feet. Others return chastened to their tables littered with remnants from the first round, but their bodies stay tense, mouths quivering with injustice.
The Local DE | Life in suspense: the refugees in Germany who can’t reunite with their families
Jihad made a bid for a safe life as a refugee, never expecting that protecting his family would mean long term, permanent separation.
TBINAA | How Do We Make Online Feminism Less US-Centric?
I work as an online feminist activist. English might be a common language for the US & UK, but it also erases important differences.
TBINAA | When white people are silent in the situations of injustice, they have chosen the side of the oppressor
It is the balance of power which determines whether an action crosses the line from hurtful to abusive. When the power dynamic is out of balance and the person with the power inflicts harm on the person with less–even when it is unconscious–it reinforces their position of power and becomes abusive.
One Alternative Sex Shop Leads the Way in Consent
Sex shops themselves serve as a kind of a sex-toy curation service and could theoretically buy healthier selections for their clientele. That’s a responsibility few sex shops choose to shoulder in a capitalist system where sex sells.
Bringing Attention to Atrocities in an Apathetic Western World
But there is no victorious ‘democratic’ ending to this story. In Syria the civil uprising has gradually been transformed into a full scale civil war. Sayid and his colleagues have all lost loved ones to this war and their political is personal. Sayid’s own crime–and why he is here–was to film government violence and put it up on YouTube, after which he was put on the list of wanted terrorists.
TBINAA | How Do We Create Consent Culture For Our Children and Ourselves?
Consent is not true consent where there is a power imbalance. You cannot make a free and retractable agreement about something, if that agreement is made in fear of losing your access to income, and resources–financial, emotional or otherwise.
TBINAA | Dear White Women: Why We Need to Stop Crying When POC Call Us Out
Don’t do your crying in the company of people of colour. Don’t beg them for forgiveness, after all you are part of a system which abused them.
TBINAA | What Can We Laugh at Now?: Political Correctness and Humor
What we find funny is indicative of our beliefs, attitudes, judgements and opinions. It is a useful barometer. When we mock those who by birth or circumstance are less fortunate, we become persecutors and make others our victims. We have no less duty of care for verbal abuse even through humour, than we do for physical abuse.
TBINAA | How Racism Fueled the Manchester Attacks
Britain has never taken responsibility for the bloodshed and exploitation which built the empire. This is evidenced by Theresa May’s hardline on Brexit. We want to take without giving anything in return. We make no apologies for our xenophobic attitudes; our comedy ridicules ‘those bloody foreigners’, our narrow-minded and disrespectful behaviour often shames us in the countries we visit.
Harry Potter Normalizes Abuse
Maybe it’s my depression that twists a rainbow world into shades of grey. Or maybe the Order of the Phoenix really is a minefield riddled with C-PTSD.
White Fragility and the path to White Depression
Gone are the days when I positively affirmed every day in the shower, and shared uplifting memes. Now I see these past behaviours as tragic extent of mine and others’ unawareness. I thought if I changed my mindset and concentrated on dismissing the negative and amplifying positive activism, that the world I wanted would resettle itself with my aligned actions.
White woman in the mirror
Privileged white woman pain is more gradual and less dramatic than that experienced by intersectional minorities. It is insidious. Kind of like bonsai trees, white women have the innate capacity to grow to a normal size but our roots and branches are cut so that we grow far smaller. Stunted or trained along a trellis in such a way that few see, sometimes not even us.
Mithridatism and the Validity of White Guilt
Like Mithridates, the ancient Greek King who–legend has it–ingested small amounts of poison to create immunity, it is the art of swallowing what we hate little by little, of being formed by it, developing an immunity to it and even learning to appreciate the rush it gives us so we can make it in this sick world. If it is no longer poisonous to us, it is easier to dish it out as we deny that it’s poison. It’s still poison though.
No Such Thing As Legitimate Democracy in the U.K. & U.S.
Thus a racist, classist and hierarchical society which favours the few over the masses cannot be truly democratic because power is unequally distributed among and through many channels. And where there is a power differential, this compromises the ability of the marginalized groups to consent.
The Violent Birth of The Awareness Baby
Perhaps that’s what’s so fearsome for many, they know that with awareness their current selves will never be the same again, they will be damaged.
TBINAA | The Cowardice of the White Woman
Maybe it was then I first asked the question: would I risk my own life to protect the Anne Franks of this world? The answer was always yes. But hindsight is a flattering bedfellow.
Why Violence is used to Counter Fascism
But the course of your chosen response in the fight against dehumanization is not necessarily dictated by your political stance. Whether you use reasonable discourse or violent protest is more likely be influenced by another factor: privilege, and how your privilege promotes your own survival.