Unfortunately Not a Real Pony

The boss who fought tooth and nail to get HR to acknowledge my transness and change my name (and failed because HR was a bunch of cissexist jerks, but that's a story for a different day) was also extremely racist and would not have done nearly as much for me if she'd known I was mixed.

The teacher/coach who helped me work through some of my horrible depression was very openly one of those Catholics who despises queer people, and would not have helped if she'd known I was trans.

The psychiatrist who helped me get antipsychotics that allowed me to stabilize myself was disdainful of addicts; if she'd known I'd been one, she would not have prescribed anything to me.

You either die closeted or live long enough to see all of your heroes disown you, I guess.

You put a Latina woman in your work. You write her getting reasonably angry at something. The fans scream at you for putting in the angry Latina stereotype. You write her remaining totally calm all the time. The fans scream at you for not letting her show a full range of emotions.

You put an East Asian woman in your work. You write her having sex. The fans scream at you for objectifying her. You write her not having sex. The fans scream at you for perpetuating the sexless East Asian stereotype.

You put an Indigenous Australian/Torres Straight Islander woman in your work. You write her as engaging with her culture. The fans scream at you for making the book too incoherent. You write her as not focusing too much on her culture. The fans scream at you for making her assimilated.

You put a Black woman in your work. You write her focusing on family. The fans scream at you for making her a misogynist stereotype. You write her not focusing on family. The fans scream at you for implying that Black women can't be good mothers.

You put a Pasifika woman in your work. You write her single. The fans scream at you for making her undesirable. You write her in a relationship. The fans scream at you for the assumption that she's only good for romance.

You put a South Asian woman in your work. You write her book smart. The fans scream at you for making her a South Asian engineer stereotype. You write her not book smart. The fans scream at you for implying that women can't do math.

You put a Middle Eastern/North African woman in your work. You write her wearing a hijab. The fans scream at you for making her a victim of patriarchal expectations. You write her not wearing a hijab (or maybe not even being Muslim). The fans scream at you for not doing your research on religion in the MENA region.

You put a Native American woman in your work. You write her religious. The fans scream at you for doing the spiritual Native American stereotype. You write her not religious. The fans scream at you for separating her from her people and their religion.

You put a Jewish woman in your work. You write her making her faith a big part of her life. The fans scream at you for appropriating her religion. You write her not being particularly observant. The fans scream at you for making her Jewish for woke points.

You put a South or Eastern European woman in your work. You write her as struggling with her patriarchal culture of origin. The fans scream at you for stereotyping South or Eastern Europeans as sexist. You write her as not struggling with patriarchy in her culture. The fans scream at you for acting like South or Eastern Europe is a-okay when it comes to women.

You put an Inuit woman in your work. You write her hunting animals or working with fur. The fans scream at you for promoting animal brutality. You write her avoiding hunting and tanning. The fans scream at you for stripping away her culture.

You put a Caucasian woman in your work. You write her identifying as white. The fans scream at you for white-washing her. You write her identifying as a Woman of Color. The fans scream at you for trying to have your anti-racism woke point cake and eating it with your white fetish.

You put a Pagan woman in your work. You write her facing discrimination for her religion. The fans scream at you for implying that pagans face the same discrimination as other religious minorities. You write her not facing discrimination for her religion. The fans scream at you for not understanding how difficult it is to be pagan.

You put a Southeast Asian woman in your work. You write her as working class. The fans scream at you for stereotyping her into the wrong profession. You write her as rich or maybe even just middle class. The fans scream at you for perpetuating the model minority myth.

You put a Romani woman in your work. You write her as attractive. The fans scream at you for objectification. You write her as unattractive. The fans scream at you for treating Women of Color as undesirable.

You put a Saami woman in your work. You write her as struggling to reclaim her culture. The fans scream at you for appropriating Saami pain for diversity points. You write her as not struggling to reclaim her culture. The fans scream at you for not understanding the Saami experience.

You put a mixed race woman in your work. You write her strongly resembling one of her races. The fans scream at you for faking her mixed race. You write her looking an equal or so mix of her races. The fans scream at you for enforcing the patchwork kids trope.

You put a Central Asian woman in your work. You write her working with horses or perhaps carpets. The fans scream at you for insinuating that this is all there is to Central Asian womanhood. You write her not working with horses or carpets. The fans scream at you for not understanding Central Asian culture.

You put a Buddhist woman in your work. You write her eschewing material things. The fans scream at you for doing only cursory research into Buddhism and grabbing the low-hanging fruit. You write her enjoying material things. The fans scream at you for not understanding how Buddhism works.

You put a Siberian/Russian Far Eastern woman in your work. You write her identifying as Russian. The fans scream at you for not understanding Russian identity and the difference between Rossiyane and Russkiye. You write her not identifying as Russian. The fans scream at you for separating her from her nationality.

(Who'd I miss?)

You do your research, you look for the middle ground, you make your female characters diverse. The fans still scream at you. Sometimes they scream at you from both extremes. You give up and only write generically white and vaguely Christian women. The fans scream at you for not being diverse enough, but it's quieter screaming.

...why is it that when I hear white anti-choicers talk about abortion, I get the feeling that they only care about white people getting abortions?

Oh, right, I know why. It's because I've talked to them and a number of them did all but outright say that.

I found a fairy tale anthology that matches my memory: about the right size and color, and published in time.

Turns out that my memory was faulty though. It wasn't a book of Eastern European fairy tales. It was a book of Eastern Bloc fairy tales: Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Central Asia, Siberia, and the RFE.

So basically, she denied me access to a part of our heritage because the same book might make me empathize with those people. Guess she hates People of Color more than she loves our ancestors.

Someone asked me how I managed to remain so calm while a white supremacist was yelling particularly vile white supremacist crap at me.

I'm pretty sure "a quarter century of abuse means that I can dissociate on a dime" was not the answer they were looking for.

Honestly? I don't understand why, if some right wing shithead says "I hope Trump deports you and bombs you, filthy communist" that's ethnocentrism, when they say "I hope Trump deports you and bombs you, filthy Zionist" to a Jew, that's antisemitism, and when they say "I hope Trump deports you and bombs you, filthy terrorist" to a Middle Easterner, that's racism. The fucktrumpet doesn't draw a distinction between the three of us, so why are we making these exclusive little clubs when we could be building a giant coalition that probably outnumbers the fucktrumpets?

I mean, if people tell me "don't call it racism when it's against Slavs, Hungarians, Romanians, Jews, [etc]" then I won't, but I'm still left asking myself why.

I decided to look at my town in the Megan's law database. Some thoughts:
-yeah, cops and judges here are racist, not surprised
-it's generally men old enough to be my father, most of them not conventionally attractive at all; cops and judges are also lookist here
-some charged with rape, a couple with possession of child porn, and a distressing number for sexual assault of a preteen (for the sake of my sanity I'm not looking up any more details than what's given on the website); zero charged with, like, public urination or sex work, which I thought got you on the sex offernder registry, I guess the law changed
-rational brain: most sexual abuse is performed by people the victim knows; emotional brain: WE CAN NEVER LET OUR KIDS GO OUTSIDE AGAIN
-I have serious concerns about jail as a way to prevent crime, but most of these people served little to no time at all, for things like "continual sexual abuse of a minor under 14", and that says something about the justice system
-seriously, I zoomed the map out as far as I could, and there was like, one woman for every hundred men on this list, there is NO WAY that is accurate
-I'm not going to be able to sleep tonight

Okay, so. I'm white-passing and generally nonthreatening. If I see a cop berating a brown kid, what's the right course of action?

(I stood about thirty feet away and watched - should I make it clear I'm watching or pretend I've stopped to write a text? Does recording it on video make it better or worse for the kid?)

It always makes me scratch my head when a list goes something like "Asian, German, Swedish, African, Native American, Slavic, Italian, Polynesian..." Like, my friend, are you listing races, nationalities, or ethnicities, because they are certainly not the same.

I've been trying to find the right words for this for a month and can't, so whatever, have poorly formulated words.

In the Sims community (and others where you can easily create large numbers of your own characters, probably, but this is the one I'm most familiar with), I've noticed two interesting trends.

"A sim who looks white and doesn't have visibly non-white ancestors in their family tree* has to be white."

"All People of Color are basically white people with brown skin or ethnic hair/accessories/clothing/names."

I feel like these two are somehow related, but I can't get my arguments together. (I have not seen anyone espousing both beliefs simultaneously, though.)

*Sims made in the character creator or spawned as NPCs by the game don't come with family trees unless the player makes one.