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Thread: *VIDEO* The mercommunity and it's approach to mers of color and cultures.

  1. #221
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    Quote Originally Posted by AniaR View Post
    relevant:

    https://mic.com/articles/150173/cons...fly#.6dhMN3h3M

    Matt Damon cast in film about the great wall of China. -_- there's more asians in the world than whites. Tell me again how they couldnt find a chinese actor...
    I have similar qualms about a film I saw a few years back called "The Forbidden Kingdom". At first I thought it sounded cool: Jackie Chan and Jet Li in a movie set mostly in in a fantasy version of ancient China. How awesome! Then to my disappointment I realised, while actually watching it, that it was about this white dude in modern-day America who gets whisked away to said fantasy ancient China and has to rescue it (with Chan portraying his mentor and Li as the main antagonist). I could have sworn I read somewhere that the film was originally supposed to be about a Chinese-American kid who learns more about his heritage and gets to save that fantasy land. If that's true, why didn't they stick to that? Seeing the Mighty Whitey cliché in action again really ruined an otherwise very enjoyable film for me.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Forbidden_Kingdom
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  2. #222
    Let's not forget the travesty of the casting for the Ghost In The Shell live action movie

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  3. #223
    Thanks for letting me know about the MerMania protocol. Also I like that idea, to write in mermaid as a race lol.

  4. #224
    I'm paler than the average member of the Cullen family, but I do think the mer-community has some diversity issues to work on. I remember mentioning to a friend a few years ago how the three most famous professional mers(Hannah, Melissa, and Linden) were all conventionally attractive, thin, white blondes, and how I'd like to see more diversity. This is something I have personally always kept in mind when writing my fiction and when I do stuff like the Birthstone Mermaids I made with a dollmaker. There's simply no good reason why merfolk, or any other fantasy creature like fairies, centaurs, whatever, have to all be caucasian. In my FictionPress series, both the heroine's love interest is Latino, her best mermaid friends are Latino and part-Japanese, and her best human friend is black, plus I fairly recently did a new revised edition where I "retconned" the aforementioned part-Japanese mermaid to also be transgendered(she was born biologically male, but was transformed to the female she felt she was inside upon request by the goddess of the sea) and a couple other character's sexual orientations are kind of ambiguous too and I also changed some of the wording to be more inclusive of different body types too, and when I made my Birthstone Mermaids virtual dolls, I tried to make about half of them mermaids of color, I would've included more body diversity too, but the dollmaker only had one body type unfortunately. Looking back, I know I could've made even more diversity in my series, such as more dark-skinned mers and maybe more LGBT and disabled inclusion too, but at least I tried. I encourage anyone here who's a writer, or an artist, or whatever, to try your best to include diversity in your work. Like, if you're writing about or drawing a trio of mermaids, try not to make them all white. It's such a simple thing to do but it could have a positive impact on the self-esteem of people reading your story or looking at your art to see magical creatures who look like themselves depicted.

    Someone up-thread mentioned the Frozen show at Disney California Adventure's color-blind casting, which I personally was all for. I don't care what color Elsa's skin is as long as she can knock "Let It Go" out of the park !
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  5. #225
    I LOVE Hannah, but I can totally understand how casting her as an African goddess is super-problematic. What's done is done now, but I hope and the circ learn from the criticism they got. There are so many different mer-goddesses in mythology all over the world that would've been a much better "match" for her to play, and considering what that goddess represents, I can see how it could be hurtful.
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  6. #226
    Hello hello, I am back again to ruffle more jimmies! I'm bringing this thread back from the dead for multiple reasons, the main one being that since I was quiet on the forum multiple instances of natural hair being banned has occured (that one is for all you "It's just hair " people). Secondly because a community member has showed her transphobic behind because she was so angry that people were speaking out on appropriation (I have been asked to post the interaction between the mer and question and the merman she interacted with.)

    I would preface this with: It's okay to realize that in the past you may have done something racist, transphobic, homophobic, or appropriative. What isn't okay is refusing to learn and listen to the groups telling you how you can stop being those things and instead take it upon yourself to tell THEM aka the opressed group, how they should feel about being opressed. It's like telling the caged bird how to feel about being in the cage.

    Since I've been in my cave:

    Courts ruled it legal to discriminate against dreads in the workplace: Link Link
    Kentucky school bans black hairstyles. Link (after protests from parents and students the ban was lifted in August of this year)
    South African school bans afros because they are "untidy": Link

    Happened before I went into my cave, but I'm trying to add something that is about other cultures too and being native this is one I remember the most from when it was first published: Boy sent home from school for traditional hairstyle: link

    Now I'm sure more has happened since I've been in my cave, but I also was very inactive on the internet period because was busy with my mid life crisis. But anyways onto the other section of this post:

    Now I and the other mers knew we would rustle jimmies with our videos, but we still chose to speak out because even if you don't see it these things negatively affect us. Most of the community took in the videos with open arms, others attempted to argue with us. This is an example of the latter. I was also contacted by this mermaid via instagram but I'm posting on my laptop and the screenshots of the convo are on my phone.(I'll post screenshots of it if you want to see them, my convo with her wasn't as rude as this one below.)

    1) The transaction started with a post she made to her personal account where 2 mers of color commented. One native, the other African American/black. (names blocked out except mer I have permission from)
    Name:  screen3.png
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    The problem with this post: Mocking of people protecting their cultures, insensitive.

    2) JV blocked the mermaid after he commented and she then PM'd him. While this could have been a perfect time for the mer to learn more and apologize for being insensitive instead she didn't.
    Name:  screen2.png
Views: 273
Size:  371.8 KB

    What's wrong with the message: Instead of saying sorry for offending she sent a message that basically read as " I'm not sorry for what I said, I'm sorry YOU took offense to what I said and I have the right to say what is and isn't appropriation."

    3) After blocking her, JV got a message on they're instagram. Some background here: JV is bigender, he goes mostly by male pronouns but not always and loves makeup (and is bomb at it too).
    Name:  screen1.png
Views: 336
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    What's wrong with this: Transphobic! Wearing makeup is appropriating women??? What? since when? Not only that but sending him this link reeks of "you aren't a REAL woman" to me. Who's to say the person wearing the makeup doesn't identify as a woman? Or just likes makeup?

    JV made a video discussing this:


    Why did this need to be put out there? It is NEVER okay to confront someone with transphobic and homophobic things just because you're wearing the shoe that multiple videos by mers of color laced up! If you find yourself doing any of the things that were mentioned in one of the many videos when is it okay to throw a hissy fit at the mer who's trying to make sure a community they love is welcoming to them and others like them?

    I shared this and was asked to share because it illustrates part of the problem with the community, people have come forth trying to make the community welcoming but instead we get things like this, belittled and attacked because we tell someone that they stepped on our feet and need to say sorry and not step on our feet again.

    This is unacceptable, I wanted nothing but a community that mers of color weren't afraid to come into because of microagressions they seen against their race on the forum. If you want to help make the community more inclusive, try to talk to other mers who're making it a hostile environment for those who are already afraid of being chastised by non mers and larger society. I have been using the tag #inclusiveforeverymer to make posts on various social media showing inclusive merfolk, You are more than welcome to join me!

  7. #227
    I'm glad you included the links. I think a lot of the resistance comes from folks seeing and genuinely appreciating aspects of other cultures, without realizing that the folks from those cultures are still being punished for expressing their own culture. Not just ridiculed (which is bad enough), but threatened with job loss and potentially denied an education.It's all right there in the links. Yes, we can and should appreciate other cultures. So wouldn't it be more productive to show our appreciation by encouraging acceptance of those cultures by building up and standing up for their members, rather than jumping in and taking the sparkly bits for ourselves? (Or posting passive aggressive hyperbole.)

    Yes there's room for discussion, but perhaps one shouldn't jump into that discussion until they at least acknowledge the problem first.
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  8. #228
    Whoa...I'm very disappointed in this mer She's someone I've always respected, but wow...that's some ignorance there
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  9. #229
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    that is really confusing. Didnt she tell you that you were appropriating because of a princess jasmine costume? So why is she complaining about the appropriation police if she's been acting like it.

    Gender is fluid, a spectrum. Therefor it can't be appropriated.

    I'll try to put aside my personal experiences/ opinions

  10. #230
    Yeah I'll try to put aside my personal experiences too, because I've personally had good experiences with this mer in the past tbh...but that doesn't justify her hurtful ignorance here.
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  11. #231
    Forgot to reply to this ^ Yeah it was hard for me too, some of these mers that I have talked about in this thread I looked up to quite a lot and it really felt like a knife in the heart when basically they said they don't really care about hurting people like me.

    At some point we all had to learn something, even I would say homophobic , fatphobic, and ableist things but I learned and I wanted to better myself and I wanted to make sure that I never contributed personally to bringing someone else down for whatever reason, and other people can unlearn these behaviors too but only if they want to.

    Me calling you out (for the mers I've called out if they are still reading or any mers I may call out in the future) isn't me condemning you to hell, it's not me saying I hate you with a passion and you're scum of the earth, it's me plain and simple calling out your problematic behavior in the hopes that you'll change. Much in the same way I can say and apple pie has too much salt but that doesn't mean I hate apple pie forever, it just means take out some of the salt and maybe it'll taste better.

  12. #232
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    Haha our mer community doesnt work that way, TRUST ME MOMO I KNOW lol you simply can't point out something that's incorrect without people believing you are now trying to ruin their life lol

  13. #233
    Quote Originally Posted by AniaR View Post
    Haha our mer community doesnt work that way, TRUST ME MOMO I KNOW lol you simply can't point out something that's incorrect without people believing you are now trying to ruin their life lol
    ain't that the damn truth..LOL

  14. #234
    Coming back to this thread years later and i am amazed and proud of how the community has changed since then. People are speaking up about things now when they see it and most mers have no tolerance for others who do or say problematic things.

    The community still has some tough spots to smoothen over but I'm excited to see where it'll go from here. Thank you everyone ego listened to those of us who are minorities and standing with us.

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