The standoff with agents happened on Jan. 8, one day after an ICE agent shot and killed Renee Good in south Minneapolis. Wootenβs refusal to comply with ICE was captured on video and posted to Facebook.Β
The agents tried everything to intimidate the guard.
Β βYou canβt come back here, bro,β Wooten can be heard in the video saying to an agent wearing a mask and sunglasses. βIβm talking to your manager,β the agent said. Wooten responded: βNo, youβre talking to security, Iβm in charge.β
ICE left empty-handed. Wooten said he just stood his ground, β10 toes down.β
βI was doing my job like Iβm supposed to,ββ Wooten said. βIf you donβt stand for something, youβll fall for anything. I just want to make my family safe because Iβve been here three years.β
One of the reasons I think theres such a dearth of f/f fics in comparison to m/m is purity culture and the higher standards sapphics are held to. Like rn if I said dubcon devil's minion with Armand walking Daniel like a dog around naked I would have 10 freaks (affectionate) in my dms linking me fics but if said dubcon claudeleine with claudia walking madeleine around naked like a dog I get called either transphobic slurs or told I'm a stupid misogynistic man who transitioned because I don't respect women. Im not even a man I'm transmasc agender. Like we have got to start getting freakier about fictional women i swear you're not antifeminist for thinking that women like nasty freaky kinky sex. Send post
I cannot even begin to describe how badly I need more sapphic fics where they scissor bruh Iβm desperate for it π«©π«©π₯
ME AND THEE BTS WITH BONNIE + WILLIAMEST
omg this settinggggg
Transcription, because it is worth reading:
Thereβs a phenomenon I actually see extremely commonly when literature is used to teach history to middle school and high school students. Letβs call it βpajamafication.β
So a school district nixed Maus from their curriculum, to be replaced by something more βage-appropriate.β IIRC they didnβt cite a specific replacement title, but it will probably be something like John Boyneβs βThe Boy in the Striped Pajamas.β
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is tailor-made for classroom use. Itβs taught at countless schools and itβs squeaky-clean of any of the parent-objectionable material you might find in Maus, Night, or any of the other first-person accounts of the Holocaust.
Itβs also a terrible way to teach the Holocaust.
Iβm not going to exhaustively enumerate the bookβs flawsβothers have done soβbut Iβll summarize the points that are common to this phenomenon in various contexts.
First, obviously, the context shift. Maus, Night, et al are narrated by actual Jews who were in concentration camps. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is narrated by a German boy. The Jewish perspective is completely eliminated.
Second, the emphasis on historical innocence. Bruno isnβt antisemitic. He has no idea that anything bad is happening. He happily befriends a Jewish boy with absolutely no prejudice.
Thus weβre reassured that you too, gentle reader, are innocent. You too would have have a childlike lack of prejudice and you too would be such a sweet summer child that you would have no idea the place next door is a death camp.
In Maus, by contrast, the children are not innocent. They are perpetrators of injustice just like adults.
[ID: Picture of part of a page of Maus where children run away yelling βHelp! Mommy! A Jew!! - the next panel says βThe mothers always told so: βBe careful! A Jew will catch you to a bag and eat you!β β¦So the taught to their children.β]
Maus also smashes the claim that people just didnβt know what was going on in the camps.
[ID: Picture of part of a page of Maus where a Nazi truck is arriving at Auschwitz guarded by men with sticks and a pointing, growling dog, the boxes say βAnd we came here to the concentration camp Auschwitz. And we knew that from here we will not come out anymoreβ¦β βWe knew the stories that they will gas us and throw in the oves. This was 1944β¦ we knew everything. And here we were.β]
Third, nonspecificity. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas turns a specific historical atrocity into a parable about all forms of bigotry and injustice. Iβm sure Boyne thinks heβs being very profound. But the actual effect is to blunt and erase the atrocity.
Thereβs the too-cute-by-half way it avoids terminology: βOff-With,β βthe Fury.β Harsh language becomes βHe said a nasty word.β
Notice how βitβs a fableβ ties in with the goal of eliminating anything parents might object to.
And thatβs our fourth point. Bad things can happen, but only abstractly. Someoneβs dad disappears. Heβs justβ¦gone. How? Who knows. People stand around looking hungry and unhappy and saying βItβs not very nice in here.β
The ending is sad, but itβs sad like a Lifetime movie. Itβs sanitized, itβs quick, there are no details, itβs meant to poke that bit of your heart that loves crying.
Mausβs description of the gas chambers, meanwhileβ¦
[ID: Picture of part of a page of Maus where the process of gassing and then taking out the bodies are described in detail as inmates are working. That it took 3 to 30 minutes to gas people. That the largest pile of bodies was by the door. The worker telling the story mentions βWe pulled the bodies apart with hooks. Big piles, with the strongest on top, older ones and babies crushed belowβ¦ often the skulls were smashedβ¦β βTheir fingers were broken from trying to climb up the wallsβ¦ and sometimes their arms were wera as long as their bodies, pulled from the sockets.β Until the narrator says, βEnough!β βI didnβt want to more to hear, but anyway he told me.β]
A historical atrocity can never be a metaphor for all bigotry because the specifics are what makes it an atrocity. The Nazis didnβt just do βbad things, generally,β they did THESE things. And leaving out the details is simply historical erasure.
Finally, fifth: Fiction.
However much poor little Bruno and Schmuel might rend your heartstrings, you can ultimately retreat into the knowledge that they arenβt real and they didnβt really die.
Now, I write historical fiction, and obviously I believe it has a place, in the classroom and out. But no Holocaust education can be complete without nonfiction that teaches about real people who genuinely did experience it.
One of the striking things about Maus is how big the cast is and how few of them survived.
[ID: Picture of part of a page of Maus where one character describes to another many other people who didnβt make it. Eventually covered over in lower panels by pictures of the dead.]
Because itβs a true story, Maus can also explore neglected aspects like the intergenerational trauma, which simply vanish in a pat fictional story that is just finished when you get to the end.
[ID: Picture of part of a page of Maus where the illustrator sits at the drawing desk above the pile of bodies. The artist says: βAt least fifteen foreing editions are coming out. Iβve got 4 serious offers to turn my book into a TV special or movie. (I donβt wanna.) In May 1968 my mother killd herself. (She left no note.) Lateβy Iβve been feeling depressed.β Someone calls from out of panel, βAlright Mr. Spiegelmanβ¦ Weβre ready to shoot!β¦β]
Thus, books like The Boy in the Striped Pajamas are not an age-appropriate equivalent way to teach the Holocaust, but a false construction of history.
This ends the first part of the thread. But thereβs moreβ¦
The Maus incident is not an isolated case. Itβs part of a broad trend of replacing the literature used to teach history with more kid-friendly, βappropriateβ alternatives.
And outside of the Holocaust, it usually doesnβt meet with much controversy.
It might mean replacing Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave or Solomon Northupβs Twelve Years a Slave with modern historical fiction, for example.
Wars, the Civil Rights movement, Apartheid: any βickyβ part of history can be a target.
But it plays out along the same general lines: Primary sources replaced with modern fiction, victim perspectives replaced with perpetrators, specificity replaced with Star-Bellied Sneetch-style βWhy canβt we all just get along?β metaphors.
the cool thing about this app is youβre never the craziest one here
