please stop reblogging sylvia plath poetry
For ppl asking why she’s an anti black, anti Semite. She has used the n word and compared her depression to the holocaust
Even not counting her poetry her private journals are full of disgusting, overblown antisemitism. She didn’t just use Jewish people for her metaphors, she outright hated them irl and yet decided to use their suffering for her own gain
okay, I’m Jewish and I appreciate this sentiment. and if someone wants to cut out Sylvia Plath, go for it, I get it.
But. by this logic we’d also need to stop reblogging TS Eliot, Oscar Wilde, and Shakespeare quotes. Virginia Woolf wrote anti-semetic things in her private journals, too. If you only want to read classic poets who liked Jews and black people, that’s fine, but like. good luck? Sylvia Plath isn’t an exception.
idk. Tumblr’s attitude of “consume nothing problematic” just doesn’t work if you’re part of a group that most culture-creators over the last few centuries have hated by default. For people actually in those groups, it’s not like the only two choices are 1) worship authors who hate you or 2) completely cut the majority of literature out of your life. You learn to read critically and acknowledge flaws where you find them.
anyway, as a Jewish woman, I would much rather see a version of this post that said “please read Sylvia Plath poetry critically because she’s anti black and antisemetic” than just “stop reblogging Sylvia Plath poetry.”
IMO, reblog Sylvia Plath all you want, just not unthinkingly.
Sometimes I fell like tumblr has put itself on the the extreme opposite of “consume stuff incritically”
“Don’t consume stuff instead of dealing with it.”
If I ignore its existence then I won’t have to take a layered view on it.
But guys… anti-semitism is a thing and it’s been a rampant thing for centuries. You can’t ignore that the middle ages or the early 20th century existed. Or heck, the middle of the 20th century in the US.
People always are a product of their times. And some times where just racist as fuck! That was normal! And that is something you have to look at and look at critically because these times will return. And very normal people who are talented and nice will have very horrible, unthinking opinions.
That includes you, btw.
So think instead of ignore.
My history professors were always trying to tell us that you CAN NOT view the past through a contemporary lens if you expect to have any kind of understanding of the past. And “understanding” does not mean acceptance, so let’s get that out of the way right now.
We have the privilege–yes, PRIVILEGE–of living in a time that is the product of other people’s grueling hard work, of centuries of people before us being arrested, beaten up, impoverished, KILLED so that we could stand on our high horses and be proud of growing up in the enlightenment they made for us. Any one of us unlucky enough to have been born 100, 200 year ago would like 99% be racists, anti Semites, and probably misogynists (yes, even minority groups, because anti Semitism and misogyny have long histories in black culture too) because the only way to not be all that in a world where it was so normal it was like believing in gravity was to be exceptional. I mean, beyond your time philosophical genius kind of exceptional. For any of us to believe that we would just magically be all enlightened and woke if we hadn’t had the benefit of a world around us teaching us not to be is an insane level of arrogance. It would be like trust-fund Brad insisting he would still be a success even if he hadn’t inherited 80% of a company to start. No, Brad, someone did all that work before you were born buddy.
Even the amazing people who were taking leaps to end various discriminations a century ago are still problematic. The white abolitionists were definitely racist by our standards, just not racist enough to want slavery (and most of them were insane Christian fundamentalists who had no tolerance for any other creed). But it would be insane and a gross dereliction of historical duty to just ignore these people and pretend they didn’t exist because they couldn’t magically meet all our privileged standards 170 years ago.
Tag Archives: racism
When someone tries to tell you that you have to be pale to be goth, just remember this picture.😘
Bringing this back! Someone actually stole this post (as in with my quote, I didn’t make the picture) but took the time to cut my username out and now its being shared all over facebook, ruuude~ So here is the original.:P
I have a little doubt, are ricean vampires racist?
Y’know, that is a good question but also a tough one to answer. I’m sure there are academic articles on it (here’s one I skimmed, looks intriguing, thanks to takemetocoffin-or-losemeforever for the link!), and I did a movie!IWTV kill tally (according to the tally, 73% of the on-screen mortals killed were Caucasian).
I percolated on this with coldinhumanity, and the short answer is: Maybe, but if so, it’s unintentional. These are 200+ yr old vampires, and they have outdated conceptions of things.
In movie!IWTV: Louis kills Yvette, a poc, it was accidental. We see him struggling with it and trying to make Yvette leave him alone, but she seems to actually care about him, “Are you still our master at all? You must send away this friend of yours… they’re frightened of him. And they’re frightened of you.” I headcanon that they had a good relationship prior to his turning, maybe the best possible relationship under the circumstances.
Not saying that Louis was a fantastic slave owner, but we aren’t told negative things about him in that role, only that movie!Yvette (and I think it’s in book!IWTV, too) NOTICED his daytime absence in the fields, and seemed to want him back out there.
I think Anne Rice attempts to consider political concepts and weave them into her work if possible, but it’s not her main focus. Akasha’s idea for world peace was presented, and refuted. Was Akasha a misandrist? That’s not racism, but it’s hatred of a group of people who all share a certain characteristic having and/or being a dick, and AR strove to show us how impractical it was to try to remove them, 40% of the world’s population, in order to “improve” the remainder.
In the books, I’d say that:
- Anne Rice began the first one in the style of the Victorian-era gothic novels she loved, and emulated the way those novels exoticised anything that could be exoticised, such as, exotic people.
- The whole series are basically white men from the capitals of Europe.
- She has had some non-Caucasian vampires (I won’t spoil anything by mentioning them by name), who are typically from places that western history acknowledge as good and impressive, like Ancient Egypt and India.
I don’t think she intends to be racist, and her characters rarely have dialogue that would explicitly state such. In the narration, however, one could argue that there are implied racial opinions.
I-want-my-IWTV 