thanateia:

writernotwaiting:

shakspaere:

rosewaterghost:

Not to be a decolonialist marxist but the concept of emotionality and compassion being incompatible, the opposite, and unmixable with intelligence is very fucking white.

I think about this all the time. I’m Indian. When I was growing up, my mother always taught me that that ‘vidye’ (kannada for skill, intelligence) and ‘vinaya’ (compassion, humility) were in some sense coupled. I grew up thinking that if I was a shitty person, knowledge I learned wouldn’t stay with me. Cut to white media actively advocating the idea that intelligence is deliberately aloof and morally neutral, white media rewarding talent without regard for its morality. Like no. Fuck that. Knowledge is kind. Knowledge is compassionate.

Blame the Enlightenment for this, when male intellectuals decided to divide everything into dualities— emotions, irrationality, physical weakness, softness and femininity on one side; rationality, learning, physical prowess, hard angels, and masculinity on the other.

Okay, Cracker McWhite. Teach my savage little self!

My response was not a “no, you’re wrong, let me correct you”
response.

My response was a “yes, you’re right, and it’s even worse
than that because this is something that has been deeply ingrained in western
thinking for at least 400 years.”

Western thinkers like John Lock divided the world into good
things vs bad things.

“Good things” for them mean: white, Christian, male,
rational, educated, “civilized,” physically strong

“Bad things” for them mean: dark-skinned,
pagan/non-Christian, female, irrational/emotional, uneducated/illiterate,
physically weak

Stop insulting people who agree with you. It’s not helpful.

First of all, I think @writernotwaiting is basically correct, though maybe I’d say Plato really started it with the dualities, Aristotle ramped it up, and then Enlightenment thinkers took it and ran with it. During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance feeling and thinking were less sharply divided, especially in the tradition of meditation on the sufferings of Christ, in which there were many prominent women writers (including Julian of Norwich and Teresa of Avila).

Second, it seemed perfectly clear that writernotwaiting was agreeing that the division is an innovation of European culture, which is to say, white people. She was just elaborating on the point of origin, making it more precise. Or is that in itself offensive? An expert in historical thought and literature sharing her knowledge becomes condescending and racist when she’s white and the issue involves cultural differences across racial groups? Anyway, why did the previous reblogger assume she was white? Just because she knew stuff about European intellectual and cultural history? That’s a pretty racist assumption, considering the fair number of people of color I know who work on European history and the history of western philosophy.

Or is the problem that by providing a precise historical point when the division between intellect and emotion became established in Europe, writernotwaiting actually challenged the notion that it’s somehow essential to the White race, part of the racial Volksgeist, as it were? It seems to me that contemporary Leftist identity politics is reintroducing racial (and gender) essentialism, but in a way that’s supposed to be beneficial to the historically disadvantaged and detrimental to the historically privileged groups. Flipping the script, so to speak, but not actually challenging the basic ontological assumptions behind racism, but in fact reproducing them.

( @touterd, I’m sorry I still haven’t answered your question because I’m terrible and I procrastinate, but here’s another start at an answer)

I attribute the sparcity of Ragnarok criticism to tumblr’s obsession with identity politics. You simply cannot criticize a film directed by POC, staring 2 POCs in main roles, with female final boss and implications of queerness of 2-3 characters without overzealous teens too young to have seen Thor and Avengers back when they premiered yelling accusations of racism, sexism and homophobia (and fetishization of abusive relationships if you ship Loki with anyone).

philosopherking1887:

I agree that that’s probably a large part of it, especially in light of my experience of being called a racist for my criticisms of Ragnarok.

I think now is a good time to trot out a term I’ve been using in private to describe this aversion to criticizing any work of art made by a POC: benevolent racism. I coined it (or maybe reinvented it) modeled on the existing term benevolent sexism, which refers to the attitude that women are delicate and fragile and morally pure and must be protected. Benevolent sexism is what leads some academic advisors to go easy on female students and not push them to improve their work as much as they could, because they think they’re too fragile and can’t handle tough criticism (and maybe aren’t capable of getting their work as good as a man’s). Similarly, benevolent racism treats creators of color as something less than full agents who can take responsibility for their work and its flaws. (There’s a start to answering your question, @touterd, though there’s a lot more where that came from…)

I have stuff to say about the “fetishizing abuse” thing, but I have somewhere I need to be… I’ll get back to it later.

Hey, I’m back. As @fuckyeahrichardiii remarked on this post and I addressed here, I don’t think Ragnarok deserves a lot of credit for its portrayal of queer characters; it’s either swept under the rug, as you remarked in your reply, or it’s stereotypical “villainous queer-coding” and “dead lesbian” angst (fyriii’s words) + an exploitative relationship as the only overt representation of queerness.

Regarding the major POC characters, I have also made clear (maybe in other places) that in spite of my objections to Ragnarok’s treatment of the pre-existing heroes of the franchise (including the W3, who were unceremoniously slaughtered and never mentioned again), I really liked the roles played by Valkyrie and Heimdall. They are both badass and awesome (and hot), and I really do appreciate how Valkyrie is permitted to take on characteristics of male archetypes and hasn’t been slotted in as an unnecessary romantic subplot.

However, for those taken in by Tumblr identity politics, that will not matter because I am daring to pass overall negative judgment – however incomplete and qualified – on the first Marvel movie to be directed by someone other than a white man. They will also find it offensive that I am passing such judgment primarily based on what I see as the injustice to two white male characters: Thor and Loki. Well, here I stand. Thor and Loki are the reason we, the pre-Ragnarok fans of the Thor franchise, are invested in the films, and a great new character and good treatment of one secondary character aren’t enough to make up for the failure with the two central characters.

I had mixed feelings about Hela as the “female final boss” (LOL). To some extent her story was interesting: her feeling of betrayal at being being imprisoned by her own father and former accomplice, her sense of grievance at being denied her birthright (there’s a theme we’ve seen before!), and her exposure of Asgard’s shameful imperialist history – all that was very cool. On the other hand, some of her motivations were pretty hazy. Why does she want to conquer shit? I sort of got the sense that she just enjoys bloodshed… and maybe that makes sense for the Goddess of Death, but it’s a little unsatisfying to have the first female major villain be your standard “I want to take over the world!!” kind of cartoonish villain.

Hoo boy, I haven’t seen much of that thing about shipping Loki with anyone being abusive (though I have seen people saying that shipping him with a woman is problematic because he’s a misogynist, which I kind of see but think is debatable), but I know what you’re talking about. Yeah, Loki is pretty screwed up, but I think he’s been presented as redeemable, and it’s unfair to say that such people should be excluded from relationships. I also think people are capable of distinguishing fictional relationships they find narratively interesting or even just sexy from good models for real-life relationships (see this post, which I came across earlier today). I have no illusions about Thor/Loki being a healthy or pure relationship as the characters are presented in canon (though I also think that with a lot of work and maybe some therapy they could figure it out). Honestly, though, I’m not sure what to say to the charge of fetishization aimed at people who find abusive and/or power-imbalanced relationships interesting to write and read about because of the complicated interpersonal dynamics they present, or who find such relationships sexy to fantasize about. It’s a kink, it’s not everyone’s kink, and that’s fine; and I don’t think that kinks, if acknowledged as such and appropriately hedged about with warning tags and explicit consent, perpetuate abusive power relations in real life.

I attribute the sparcity of Ragnarok criticism to tumblr’s obsession with identity politics. You simply cannot criticize a film directed by POC, staring 2 POCs in main roles, with female final boss and implications of queerness of 2-3 characters without overzealous teens too young to have seen Thor and Avengers back when they premiered yelling accusations of racism, sexism and homophobia (and fetishization of abusive relationships if you ship Loki with anyone).

I agree that that’s probably a large part of it, especially in light of my experience of being called a racist for my criticisms of Ragnarok.

I think now is a good time to trot out a term I’ve been using in private to describe this aversion to criticizing any work of art made by a POC: benevolent racism. I coined it (or maybe reinvented it) modeled on the existing term benevolent sexism, which refers to the attitude that women are delicate and fragile and morally pure and must be protected. Benevolent sexism is what leads some academic advisors to go easy on female students and not push them to improve their work as much as they could, because they think they’re too fragile and can’t handle tough criticism (and maybe aren’t capable of getting their work as good as a man’s). Similarly, benevolent racism treats creators of color as something less than full agents who can take responsibility for their work and its flaws. (There’s a start to answering your question, @touterd, though there’s a lot more where that came from…)

I have stuff to say about the “fetishizing abuse” thing, but I have somewhere I need to be… I’ll get back to it later.