Fyrehardt's Grotto

Of Children and Inkblots: Trayvon Martin and the Psychopathology of Whiteness

anticapitalist:

Read this whole thing

Write this down if you need to.

Tweet it to yourself.

Put it on your Facebook wall, never to be deleted from your ever-growing and cluttered timeline.

Memorize it.

Trayvon Martin is not an inkblot, the meaning of which is yours to interpret.

He is not a walking Rorschach, whom one is free to see however one wishes.

He was not put on this Earth to be deciphered by you, dissected by you, problematized by you, labeled by you, slandered by you, or shot by one who had done all those things to his seventeen-year old black body before you even knew his name.

He was a child. A child dearly loved by his parents and sibling. And the fact that he was black doesn’t complicate that. The fact that he wore a hoodie doesn’t complicate that. The fact that he had a tattoo, a partial gold grill on his teeth, and liked to play-act in front of a web cam from time to time, posing as a man, flashing cash and acting tough doesn’t complicate that either. It is the rare boy who doesn’t tough-pose in a mirror, making muscles for some imaginary admirer, or perhaps just for himself. But it is the rare child who, having done so, finds himself suddenly the recipient of so much contempt for his cold, lifeless body — a body whose now inanimate state has been blamed for that condition because of his swagger, his clothing, his minor disciplinary problems in school, anything so as to shift attention from the real issue; namely, that Trayvon Martin is dead because George Zimmerman decided to confront him. And George Zimmerman decided to confront him because he was black, and for no other reason.

That’s right: for no other reason. The fact that Martin, according to autopsy reports, had trace elementsof THC (the chemical found in marijuana) in his system means nothing. The amount of the compound was so minimal as to suggest that not only had Martin not likely smoked weed that day, but whatever he had smoked, whenever he’d smoked it, would not have been sufficient in quantity to have in any way affected his behavior the evening of his death. Which is to say that Zimmerman’s uneducated conjecture on that 9-1-1 call, to the effect that Martin looked like he was “on drugs” carries no weight whatsoever. All he was doing was walking, looking around as he did so, and talking on the phone to a girlfriend.

He wasn’t casing townhouses.

He wasn’t peeking in windows.

He wasn’t blazing up a blunt in the courtyard.

He wasn’t doing anything at all.

But being black. And male. And wearing a hoodie (in the rain, imagine).

And yes, I know: the autopsy report indicates Martin was shot at relatively close range (certainly less than a foot away given the stippling around the entrance wound in his chest), and Zimmerman’s wounds appear consistent with his claim that he shot Martin during a fight. And yes, at least one witness seems to confirm that Martin was, at one point prior to the shooting, on top of Zimmerman, punching him.

But is that all it takes for so many white folks to cavalierly dispatch with the otherwise inviolate right to life, which they would have extended (one hopes) even to Martin, prior to the release of that information? Does a black child, followed and confronted by an adult, have no right to be afraid of them? To fight back upon being accosted? To stand his ground? The claim that Zimmerman had given up on the pursuit of Martin and was returning to his vehicle when Martin blindsided him is corroborated by no one, was not believed by investigators on the scene, and is utterly discredited by Martin’s girlfriend, who heard the words exchanged between the two, and then the sound of shoving, 2-3 minutes after the end of Zimmerman’s 9-1-1 call. If one chooses to believe Zimmerman on this absurd point, it can only be because one finds the story so plausible based upon one’s own preconceived notions of black aggression, that the facts in evidence no longer matter.

Finally, does one have the right to kill a child, just because, having initiated all the drama to begin with, the first party suddenly finds himself not nearly as big and bad as he had long believed? Is getting one’s overly suspicious, meddling ass beaten a legitimate excuse for homicide?

Apparently so, if the victim is young, and black, and wearing a hoodie, and has a tattoo (even if it is a tattoo of his mother’s name), and a partial gold grill, and occasionally poses with macho swagger on a webcam, and has been known to smoke weed. Although none of these are officially listed as penalty enhancements within our nation’s justice system, let the word go out from this point forward that they have been elevated to virtual capital offense status on the streets, by a frightened, racially-anxious white public, always seeking to rationalize every death of black men, at the hands of cops, or just folks pretending to be cops.

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Lover's Super Strap

I am so damn excited! He finally let me order our crop. That is all :-D

Update: 11 year old trans girl lost appeal

everythingbutharleyquinn:

liz-the-wiz:

thatfeministdyke:

transawareness:

The above article is an update.  Her mother went to appeal to keep her out of the psychiatric ward and lost.  She will be institutionalized because of her expression of her gender.  She will be held until she conforms to male gender and then released to foster care, not her mother who was supporting her.

Please, if you haven’t signed the petition, sign it, reblog it, ask your friends to sign it. We’ve managed to get 40K signatures for a pageant model, we’ve only gotten 11K for a little girl about to have her life ruined.  Lets get on the ball and spread the word.

Sign It.

I want to throw up. I’m so fucking angry. Sign this shit.

signal boost because this is one of the most disgusting occurances invloving a child i have ever heard of. please sign it.

Sign this. It will take you 5 seconds. A CHILD is about to be institutionalised because her gender does not match the one society has assigned to her.  INSTITUTIONALISED.

STFU, Conservatives: Tumblr, a rape victim needs our help

stfuconservatives:

(trigger warning for rape, victim-blaming and negligence, slut-shaming, and suicide)

I received this email a couple of days ago. I redacted a few identifying details, which I italicized for reference.

Dear Jess or whomever,

I know this email is not some republican conspiracy theory, but as a…

PETITION TO REINSTATE JENNA TALACKOVA AS MISS UNIVERSE CANADA CONTESTANT

nefariousnewt:

ceasesilence:

ariestess:

ceasesilence:

ceasesilence:

ceasesilence:

Ms. Talackova has been disqualified from the Miss Universe Canada contest solely for being transgender. This is discriminatory, unjust, and quite frankly disgusting. She is a woman and deserves to be treated as any other woman would be. What kind of genitals she was or was not born with (and even what kind of genitals she has today) is completely irrelevant. This petition is to get her reinstated as a contestant, since she was unfairly disqualified.

There are only 7 28 signatures. WE CAN DO BETTER THAN THIS!

34! GO GO GO TUMBLR!

192! Now we’re talking :D 

SIGN AND REBLOG, PLEASE!

22540 total signatures now…

22,627. DAMN.

RE-BLOGGED and SIGNAL BOOSTED!