moringmark:
I am in the fog for the rest of my life
Thank you
No, you should genuinely get assassinated though
Really, I appreciate it
the problem with being Native or Jewish is your population is so small that people often never meet one of you so they come up with all sorts of comforting lies about you and your culture so they don't have to face you. And because some of these lies are about ethnic appearance (such as "Native people have straight hair" and "Jews are white") they never are able to recognize you when you are in public. This leads to being invisible.
I’m not Jewish but I am native and boy lemme tell you what. They’re never ready for it when I play that card. I don’t really look like the Native American stereotypes so throughout my life I’ve gotten various levels of “really? Are you sure?” And “prove it” whenever I disclose that part of my identity. It’s wild how many people just,,, don’t think we even exist anymore? Too many times have I had people literally say “wait, I thought they went extinct?” Like COME ON PEOPLE WTF.
One time in school I literally had a classmate say “wait,, I thought Indians went extinct east of the Mississippi?” To my fucking AP Gov teacher. To which I replied “dude, I’m literally sitting RIGHT HERE” and my asshole of a teacher said “yes, some people CLAIM native ancestry this side of the Mississippi” as if my appearance was enough to discredit my ancestry to my face. It’s insanely frustrating and equally infuriating for me and always has been. My family literally runs one of the only powwows left in my state!!! This kid once literally met my father who undeniably looked VERY native!!! I have baby pictures of me and my family in regalia and dancing in the circle!! I’ve literally NEVER been quiet about this part of myself!! It’s dehumanizing, belittling and disrespectful tbh. I hold the same rage in solidarity for all the Jews who get accused of being white in addition to all the other things people do to erase and harm them.
I only ever had one teacher in high school that took my word for it without me being That Bitch and doing an entire presentation calling everyone out on their racism towards me (of which I did MANY, and called my teachers out on it in class regularly too) and it was my AP US History teacher. He made me feel so seen with the smallest of actions like shutting up people who tried to talk over me on topics related to my heritage, and giving my voice priority over everyone else’s when he asked the class questions in that area. It really doesn’t take much and it’s so sad so many refuse to do even that.
So yea, it’s a struggle, and being rendered invisible to most can be a blessing and a curse, at least in my case. Mostly it’s just hurtful and enraging for me though. It allows so much hate and bias fester within communities and then we have no choice but to body the repercussions of their racism and antisemitism at any moment.
holy shit imagine the absolute cojones on a guy who looks a native american in the face and says "yeah, you might claim native ancestry, but we all know your kind went extinct" like you're a fuckin parakeet talkin about being a velociraptor or something. where the hell did that professor get off saying that. what the Fuck.
Being Native confuses people.
Once, our history teacher decided to try and guess our nationalities/race based on our appearance. What compelled him to make a game out of Phrenology Lite that day, I'll never know.
He was confused when he got to me, because I'm pale with very dark hair and eyes. Based on his reaction, I learned that I read as "white" but not "white white." He guessed Italian and Eastern European based on the fact that German and Italian immigrants mostly live here. I'm mixed white and Native.
What's even more depressing is that our school had Native kids in it. Our rez literally sits across the street from the high school, and yet "Native" wasn't even an option on his mental list. He was neighbors with us and still couldn't have us in the forefront of his mind.
The inability or unwillingness to contend with Nativeness as though it exists in the present day is a problem. People will literally clock you as anything else because they were systematically made to believe we're all "extinct."
My friends, coworkers, and family tend to be confused for Asian. I just get clocked as Mostly White for the most part. But even then, folks might register something faintly Not White about me, and their inability to pin down what part that Isn't 100% White bugs them.
Sometimes it feels like they're sifting through your blood, dividing you into parts rather than taking you as a whole. And this entire thing becomes extra stupid when you consider how blood quantum laws were designed to breed us out of existence. So chances are you're not likely to find a 100% "full-blooded" Native in this day and age anyway.
I always thought that lesson was a waste of time, but in hindsight, I think I did learn something valuable: how fragile and conditional notions of whiteness are, how easily the privilege of whiteness can be granted or revoked, and how phrenology is generally just fucking stupid.
Because his reaction to "this girl doesn't look Anglo-Saxon; must be some Off-Brand white" also says volumes about what the dominant culture thinks of everyone who sits adjacent to whiteness but not completely, such as Eastern European people. You're either a WASP or you're Not a WASP.
^^^^ "white" but not "white white" is such a perfect description for how people see me. I typically described it as "white but something is wrong with you".
I have lived in multiple states and the guesses people come up with are different in different places. When I lived in Alabama people used to think I was Southern European. When I lived in Maryland I was usually mistaken for white latina. And me telling them I was Jewish was almost always met with confusion. One guy tried to argue with me that I had to be latina because "Jew is not a race at all and you are definitely some kind of race" which ????? Multiple people expressed shock that I was "just a Jew" because they were sure I was [insert race here].
Separate from skin color I have definitely had people who believed wild shit about Jews and therefore believed I wasn't one. Freshman year of college a girl straight up told me she thought all Jews have horns but "I guess it is only some of *you*" [clearly said derogatorily]. And of course there is always "wow a real Jew? Please write a 16 page essay on your beliefs regarding Israel and include 20+ sources indicating that you are sufficiently sorry for being Jewish and not being dead".
I think ultimately the reason that Jewish people and Native people are treated so similarly is not just because they think we are dead but because they *want* us to be dead. Us being alive is very inconvenient and we *should* be dead. Or at the very least be willing to lie down and die quietly. The narrative that we are gone is because it is easier to excuse horrible things done to corpses rather than living breathing people who still feel the pain of what they lost.
Anyway this got way longer than I wanted it to but basically I feel y'all so hard. Native and Jewish solidarity 🤝
to add in to the voices of solidarity,
i pass as white real well, enough that for a while I considered myself white. but i never really Fit In and i chalked that up to the autism, until i started hanging out w/ jews more often and i was like "ohhhhhhhhh wait a minute im not failing at masking my neurodivergence im failing at Performing Whiteness im actually pretty normal for people in my community". so I decided f that, stopped straightening my hair, and am SO MUCH happier. it would not surprise me if my sorta cultural reconnecting journey was something native ppl also experience because of the whole cultural erasure etcetera thing
also people say the most insane myths about jews around me and i do make a similar face to the guy (coast salish iirc) who my ex mansplained teepees to
seems like the conclusion is:
jews + native people = people mistake us for latinos or italians or greeks
Do you know how many times people have told me upon finding out I'm Jewish, which is not something I hide, that they knew I had so kind of ethnic in me or a variation of that.
I've also gotten the where are you from and I when I say America they go no, but really or like where is your family from type of thing.
And lets not forget the where is your accent from. Which sure I'll admit that some of my words are not the American English version because my dad is immigrated so his English is a different style and I'll sometimes pronounce them the way I grew up hearing them such as Zed vs Zee and others. But usually I do it the 'American' way because I learnt to break the style I was used. But like otherwise my speech style/accent is a just a Jewish style of the place I grew up.
So it is distinct if you are familiar with that accent, but otherwise if not it shouldn't ping as not being from 'here'.
And I very much have the conditional white thing going, but even with that there is still that whole hmm something not quite white about you. Something too vaguely ethnic happening here, thing going on.
Which is just like yeah duh.
But also the other side of this whole thing that drives me crazy is that there is refusal to explore why we might have these features particularly by those who do not belong to our peoples. Like why might Jews and Native Americans have features that are not typical to us? What might have caused certain genetic to get introduced to our gene pools? Like what violation and atrocity was done both on an individual and mass scale to our peoples by those who had power over us to show said power and as mean to try and humiliate us as both individuals and as a people that would introduce certain genes to our gene pools that did not exist before? Hmm, what could it possibly be.
Coming back to this post a while after I added anything and finding people who just, Get It™️ is honestly a really nice feeling in a way? Like I’m not alone and even if I knew that conceptually having others agree with me and validate my experiences is SUCH a nice thing sometimes, especially if you’re like me and live in a rural area with very few other people outside your family who share any kind of heritage. I was the only native person in my graduating class of several hundred kids, both in high school and college. (Or at least the only openly proud and loud native kid)
And, just for funsies, to add to the Experiences™️ I’ve mainly had latino/Mexican people clock me as being anything other than “White+?” And that was mainly when I worked a shitty gas station job lol the Mexican construction workers who frequented my store often just… assumed I know how to speak Spanish and got VERY confused when I, in fact, didn’t. It was very affirming in a way, especially when I had been denied any kind of recognition from any other demographic of people outside my own tribal community.
But if all else fails, at least we have each other. Other people who can relate to and understand what it feels like to be denied some of the most fundamental parts of ourselves by people who cant seem to conceptualize the fact that mixed race people exist or that sometimes people of certain ethnicities just don’t look like how you’d expect them to. We know, and idk about anyone else but I take solace in knowing other people can see it even if most cannot. (In fact, my girlfriend (who is Jewish) was one of the first people to ever clock me as not being fully white without being weird or asking me about it, and only brought it up when I had started a conversation related to it <3 it’s really Native American x Jewish solidarity hours here)
if i were a dead wife i would want my husband to fag out kinda. i would be fujoing out from hell
ALTim am SO obsessed with this beautiful beautiful scene you conjure youre getting peer reviewd holy shot
I love that this emoji is recognizably an homage to "unless ☝️ you eat a lemon"
I need y'all to see how this porn spelled ménage à trois
Idk, I think the spelling adds a certain junuh say qwa
woke up this morning, rolled over, and very confidently tried to blow out my alarm clock like a candle. absolutely no precedent for that.
Ebeneezer in 1742 wakes with a start as for some reason he has put out his guttering candle by slapping atop it ith the palm of his hand. His hand is burned and his nightgown and cap are spattered with hot wax.
Fascinated by the perceived necessity of an Equivalent Exchange
classic scifi novels by men r always like. page 1 here’s a cool scifi idea i had. page 2 i hate women so much it’s unreal
ALT
ALT
ALTguys if one more person leaves a tag like this on my post im gonna lose my mind. There Are Science Fiction Authors Who Are Not Misogynistic Men
ok i’ve gotten one too many ‘this is why i don’t read sci-fi’ comments so here’s a rec list for the people convinced all science fiction is bad and misogynistic (with something for everyone, hopefully!):
(also, btw, the book links are to the Storygraph, which includes content warnings for each one!)
- smth funny and lighthearted about a security robot who’d rather watch TV then do its job? all systems red by martha wells (first novella in the The Murderbot Diaries series, 6 books, ongoing)
- a complex, intricate political space opera following a warship AI who’s lost (almost) everything? ancillary justice by ann leckie (first in the Imperial Radch trilogy) (fun fact! bc of space linguistics reasons, all characters in this series are referred to with she/her pronouns, making gender a non-factor - it’s really cool!)
- a dark story about travelling between parallel universes and a woman who is dead in almost every single one? the space between worlds by micaiah johnson (standalone) (SO good, i don’t get to recommend it often enough!!!)
- a story about grief and letting go, and a unique take on alien invasion? the seep by chana porter (standalone novella)
- hey, how abt some dystopian YA, for old times sake? specifically, one with sapphics and sick mechas? try gearbreakers by zoe hana mikuta (first in duology)
- or, if you’d prefer something a bit less angsty, YA about a ragtag group of teens and a space heist? the disasters by m. k. england (standalone)
- alternate history steampunk that blurs the line btwn science fiction and fantasy? the black god’s drums by p. djeli clark (standalone, novella)
- a dark gone girl-esque thriller about clones? the echo wife by sarah gailey (standalone)
- poetic sapphic romance and time travel? this is how you lose the time war by max gladstone and amal el-mohtar (standalone)
- a hopeful utopian future and a human-robot friendship? a psalm for the wild-built by becky chambers (novella, first out of two) (this author’s got a whole bunch of hopepunk sci-fi novels in general, if that’s smth you’re looking for!)
- africanfuturism, coming-of-age, and cool jellyfish aliens? binti by nnedi okorafor (novella, first in trilogy)
- spicy lesbian cyborgs? and shall machines surrender my benjanun sriduangkaew (novella, first in the Machine Mandate series, 6 books)
- cosmic horror with an autistic scientist, cyborg angels and AI gods? the outside by ada hoffmann (first in trilogy, 2 books are out)
- also, if you’re a fan of Janelle Monáe, may i draw your attention to the fact that they’ve recently come out with a Dirty Computer short story collection, each story co-written with a diff writer?
this list is long enough, but have some more authors (who are not cis men) also worth checking out: rivers solomon, yoon ha lee, charlie jane anders, aliette de bodard, xiran jay zhao, mary robinette kowal, corinne duyvis
and finally, not all older/classic scifi is written by crusty old white guys who hate women!!! some iconic authors i’d particularly recommend looking into are ursula k. le guin, octavia e. butler, samuel r. delany and vonda n. mcintyre 🥰
I’ll add C.J. Cherryh and her Foreigner series to this! Alien politics, linguistics, adventure and intrigue… Sometimes the aliens aren’t just like us, after all, and that’s ok!
ive read so much shitty scifi because i was a nerdy kid so id get typecast book recommendations, there is a lot that falls onto the either accidental outdatedness or “lets put metaphors that wreck your escapism because the only thing i can think of is dystopia” but there also is a lot that isnt. for every crap nanobot swarm i suffered through there was a Jack And The Geniuses romp to make up for it.
unorthodox recommendation id like to add, i adore the apothecary series by maile meloy (i think thats how to spell it?) because its lovely scifi but the sci is more on the chemistry and herbalism side of things instead of the gadgetry/spacey bits which is a breath of fresh air in the genre. its set in ww2 era so is also a bit historical fiction but still explores
Oh nooo I hadn’t noticed that my cat’s automatic feeder was getting low on food so as usual she dashed off when she heard the machine start but I couldn’t hear the usual sound of her food falling into the bowl so I went to look and my poor cat was just. Sitting there. Staring at her empty food bowl. Then for a second she glanced up at me then right back to her bowl with the biggest, saddest, most bewildered eyes you could ever imagine on such a small creature. I filled her bowl and the machine right away ofc but I still feel a little guilty 😭
Quick artist’s rendition
this bull amulet from 3250 bce felt so familiar and i figured out why
firm believe that not everything happens for a reason, sometimes things are just cruel. and they shouldn’t have happened and it’s not supposed to be a lesson because we never deserved such thing.
hm some people in my inbox got really mad at this specifically. nothing you can say will convince me that some of the pain and suffering we go through is our “fate” no, it isn’t
assdevourer:
gamerbros be like “im not a transphobe but if you acknowledge that trans people exist in your game i will absolutely refuse to play it or stop immediately if i am currently playing it”
Is the post about that one boomer game reviewer who was seething over a game’s dlc having a scene with 2 10 pixel sized pride flags?
This one
You left out the best part
Kinda gay of them to be able to spot pride flags that small🤔
This is my oldest draft and honestly don’t know if the world will ever be ready for it
