A Note On Commenting.

Right, so… I’m afraid I have to follow the recent examples of other bloggers and shut down comments alltogether for a while (…CENSORSH…!!1!).

Obviously, I moderate anyway but a) that’s no fun and quite exhausting (lately, excitment over many new comments has been replaced with ominous apprehension – sadly, I’m usually not wrong here), and b) my inner educator wants to respond to the same BS over and over again, and that’s just as useless. So, two lessons for me: 1. It doesn’t matter what one writes, people don’t read it or don’t care anyway (also, they really, really want to use racist slurs towards you, it’s a bit of an obsession, apparently) and there’s no special snowflake exception for me here, 2. Don’t link to almost-mainstream blogs – within mere minutes there’ll be a number of terribly well-intentioned dudes mansplaining to you why it obviously makes total sense to use N* in this particular circumstances, blablabla (nope, can’t be bothered to dispute that again and again).

Pingbacks will remain possible, and comments will open again in a little while. In all honesty: many thanks for reading, and I hope to hear from (some of *ahem*) you soon :)!

[CN: (parody relating to) misogynistic, heterosexist, racist comments.]

Summer Outing.

Dear all, I will Turn Off The Internet for about six weeks from today, so no more rambling through summer (you’re welcome!). Many thanks for reading and commenting, enjoy the sun (or shade) and, hopefully, “see” you back in late August :)!

Here: I’ll leave you with cookies (fresh out of the cookie cave oven!) and cute animal content!

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“Graffiti With Punctuation”: A Narcissistic Anniversary Post.

My blog is a bit of a public diary. On Sunday, it’s one year old – and while the book’s spine is quite alright, it’s a gotten a little fuzzier ’round the edges.

Despite the intrinsically political nature of the topics talked about here (and yes, the old classic: how can you separate them from the “private” ones anyway…?), it is a public diary.

The personal detachment I pictured myself having from the posts and the supposedly “objective” [sic] political analyses did not work out in the least; apparently, this is not what personal blogs are about, no matter how much some people might want to make me (and you) think it is.

Not having come to this meager realization is probably the main reason for actually having followed the wild impulse to start a blog by registering this one in October 2010, but taking more than 6 months to get to the point where it became clear that social network rants are not enough for whatever latest incident, and that I could actually write something about it…

Incidentally, the more personal posts are also the most popular ones, because people seem to be able to relate to them more, I presume. I get it – I like pieces of writing, be it personal and/or political, that are honest, straight forward, and connect you to the author in a sense – I suppose this is simple psychology and a more intriguing writing technique.

Don’t get me wrong: my blog is aggressively unpopular and extremely tiny :)!

I basically get the traffic of other bloggers’ “Tuesdays” in an entire year, and yet (or maybe: because of that), I have virtually met very interesting and awesome people through blogging here and am grateful for that.

The name, “Stop! Talking.”, was the poor attempt of a self-ironic double entendre… It, first and foremost, means “Stop! We’re gonna talk about that now.” It (…increasingly so… ;)) means: “STFU, you’re making my head hurt, and this is why…” And, obviously, it’s showcasing the fact that calling a blog “Stop Talking” makes little to no sense, because virtual talking is all I do here, all the time. Simple – no hidden agenda, that’s all, despite the need of some people to muse about it… Subtlety was never a strong suit of mine, a fact that cannot have escaped anyone.

Keep Right, Except To Pass.

Skin color is a funny thing. Despite the fact that we talk about it so much (yes, that includes me), explicitly and, much worse, implicitly, it is inherently meaningless. It tells you absolutely nothing, except for a vague ratio of pigmentation an individual can call his/her own. It is completely arbitrary, unreliable and unstable what kind of fictional “race” and its fictional meaning people have linked and continue to link to someone’s skin tone, and despite such delightful historical artifacts like “The One Drop Rule”, the concomitant construct of “miscegenation” and the fact that people still think of “mixed” “race” children as the progeny of two people “mixing” their “black” and “white” blood, for example, there is no inherent genetic marker of “race” other than what people have assigned to certain phenotypes. And yet… As always, disclaimers like this one simply have to be followed by actual experiences that show time and again that people cannot be bothered with logic or actual importance or decency.

I am a light-skinned Afro-german person. Not that this should matter, but it actually does. Having been raised in a white, small town family with middle-class aspirations, this proved to be somewhat of a problem. And what’s the german way of dealing with those? Right: denial! Denial in the form of years and years of not addressing the simple fact that I don’t look like the rest of this side’s family, of dressing me in super-frilly white dresses, of never allowing to let this “unruly” hair be unbraided, of teaching me poems of every dead white literary person one can think of, and of making sure this foreign looking kid is extremely well-behaved, to not stick out more than she already does.

The thing is: I actually believed I was white, or like everybody else, and would emphatically deny that I am also Black when people would ask me why I have all that pigmentation going on (…to somewhat paraphrase). Friends of mine would emphatically defend my whiteness, saying that I was not Black, but “Brown” (which is so much better, apparently), and others would give me “compliments” about being so light, because, obviously, things could have gone a lot “worse”… All in all, I was extremely embarrassed when being called out for that apparent difference from the enforced norm.

Fighting Windmills.

The thing is: you can let it go. You can shut down your browser, or throw away that newspaper, or turn off your radio and TV, or walk past that poster, or end the conversation – and forget all about it. You can publish a statement about why everyone else is wrong, and countless media outlets will print it word for word, because they do not see the need to investigate a little or even ask what a marginalized person might think of any given situation. You can laugh off the comments on those articles mocking the “oversensitivity” and “political correctness” of other people.

I can’t. By externally defined (and imposed) apperance default. It haunts me, and this is neither my choice nor within my control.

I hate “concernment”-centred victimization olympics debates. I hate it when people say that some discriminatory behaviour has “hurt” them and, therefore, the discriminating person should apologize. I’m all for a big ol’ Fuck You, for anger and outrage and argumentative pulping of said discriminating person, because their behaviour, to me, is not about making other people feel sad-faced, but about discriminatory structures they perpetuate through their words and actions and, you know, their racism/sexism/heterosexism/ableism. This is not about an individual “sensation” of discrimination. This is about the fact that someone is racist as hell (like the Schlosspark Theater, for example…), and what most people take from that, is, that these Black people over there feel kinda sad about it. No, goddamnit, I’m pissed. I’m not a special snowflake who clutches her pearls because someone has hurt her “feelings”. This is not about personal comfort zones. I’m freaking angry because someone is a racist. And so should you be. This is not a personal wellness issue.

And yet… As mentioned at the beginning of this post: the personal effects of discriminatory behaviour differ greatly. The white people who felt the need to come into the Schlosspark Theater debate (or every other debate about, you know, little controversies like Blackface or not hiring Black people on principle or naming your newest Dresden Zoo monkey Obama as a “tribute” to the President) can leave unharmed. These racists have made what they believe is a point, and after repeating it for ca. 500 times and expecting to be respected as teh individualistest individualists who say things like “german-speaking Africans” (you know, Black germans are non-existent), or “There simply were no ‘Black actors'” to hire, or “Random people on the internet, no matter how brown, do not define what racism actually is – we do”, they throw a tantrum when they get pushback and then they flounce out. End of story. Nothing has changed. Goodbye.

You can do that. Because your identity was not questioned or declared as actually non-existent. You don’t have to fight a daily battle for recognition and for being treated with even an ounce of the respect that the defenders of white privilege expect from their critics. If you say something, it is not put into question because of the colour of your skin and ridiculed as mere brown oversensitivity, and your demand or plea to be treated as a full human being is not brushed aside as a bid for exaggerated “political correctness.”

You do not have to answer the same pseudo-arguments over and over and over again, because some racist thinks that they simply have to make this very original point that some other racist has already made and you have refuted 50 posts or minutes ago. You are not expected to cater to the every need of a privileged person because said person wants you to do what they say or need right now, and your duty is to educate them. You will be believed that someone has deleted their former post or has actually said something they now deny to have said, and will not be told that you are making things up in your irrational rage or are incapable of reading comprehension, whereas the actual problem and strategy is gaslighting.