#kyriarchy
You know Dating Cis men has actually showed me something that makes me really mad. Yall are way to mean to guys, like regular guys. They are litterally so insecure and it makes me mad ok. i dont think we realise how much pressure they actually feel to be like ridicuously muscly in order to be attractive. We all keep saying that the beauty standards they are held to are “power fantasies” but i think just because its not what women actually find attractive about a guy doesnt mean that they dont feel like they have to meet that standard. not to mention there are lots of girls that do hold them to that standard.
i just think its absolutely crazy how mean we are to guys about their looks. and then theyre also made fun of for being insecure like all the time??? i see so many woke women tell men that they are ugly and worthless and then make jokes about men being insecure. like youre contributing to the problem?
i dunno its just heartbreaking when i tell a guy they are actually good looking and they dont beleive me. I think if we started complimenting and hyping up men more they might not always mistake it for flirting
“along the axis of gender, kyriarchy systemically privileges sufficiently ‘masculine’ men” and “individual people never fit perfectly into socially-constructed roles (and the role you’re assigned won’t save you from the consequences of deviating from what you’re told to be)”
“La sirena y el pescador,” Elisa Chavez.
Hey all! This poem is part of my chapbook Miss Translated, which I produced in a limited run as Town Hall Seattle’s Spring 2017 artist-in-residence. The main conceit behind this work is that to accurately portray my relationship with Spanish, I have to explore the pain and ambiguity of not speaking the language of my grandparents and ancestors. As a result, these poems are bilingual … sort of. Each one is translated into English incorrectly.
The poems I produced have secrets, horrific twists, emotional rants, and confessions hiding in the Spanish. It’s my hope that people can appreciate them regardless of their level of Spanish proficiency.
oh shit. my spanish is pretty shaky, but i’m pretty sure “te perdono” is “i forgive you.” wow understanding just that much is pretty chilling.
and something about…blood? and transformation? oooh yikes. she didn’t want legs in the spanish version did she. and it was a painful process.
so this poem is about…misunderstandings leading to pain for the person misunderstood? whish is really effective with the way it’s written, wow. this is the most meta poem form i’ve ever seen. wow.
#reblog#photoset#poetry#i later ran it thru google translate to confirm my theories#won’t post said translation or say how right i was#cuz i feel like that’s missing the point
<— This right here is AMAZING. Look at the journey this person went on reading my poem! Secret fact, I have been stalking tags and reblogs of this because what I wanted more than anything was to provide an experience for people and LOOK AT YOU ALL GO. Your engagement and enthusiasm is amazing and so humbling for me.
Holy crap, this is incredible. As a natively bilingual Latina woman, allow me to dive into a full analysis.
First, I should tell you my experience of reading this. I didn’t even look at the English at first, because I didn’t know that the mistranslation was the point, and of course I didn’t need it. So I read the whole poem in Spanish and thought it was really sad and moving. Then I looked at the English and my eyebrows went right up to my hairline. Why the hell would you translate it this way, I thought.
Then I read the caption and realized that this is a genius way of demonstrating how translation into English can be an act of colonization and violence.
I would translate the first two lines as “The mermaid rose from the sea / To see the dry world.” They’re very neutral lines. She was curious about the dry world, so she went to check it out. That’s a very different connotation from the mistranslation, which tells you that the mermaid preferred the land to the sea.
The second two lines I would say mean “She found a fisherman on the beach / this beautiful fish without a net.” She’s the one with agency here, not the fisherman, and she thinks of herself as a free fish, unconstrained by a net, not as a fish without a home.
The next three lines by my lights read “She had a gleaming tail; scales / that covered her breasts, arms, and face / and a wake of lacy waves.” Again, it’s from her perspective, not the fisherman’s, and she thinks of herself as having a gleaming rather than oily tail, a lacy wake rather than a frothing one.
Next stanza: “The fisherman caught her by the tail / and cut it in half.” From her point of view, the fisherman has committed a sudden and senseless mutilation. Then he goes, “’Now,’ he said to her, ‘you have legs. / Why don’t you walk?’” It’s almost like an accusation. You have legs now, why don’t you just get up and walk?
My read on the next stanza is: “The mermaid began to sing to the sea / for aid, her blood transforming / the sand of the beach into rainbows.” The sea is her home, not the land, and she’s crying out to her home in pain as she bleeds.
Then the poem ends with “She sang to the fisherman, ‘I forgive you, I forgive you, I forgive you.’”
The reason this mistranslation is so brilliant is that it takes a story about a mermaid trying to forgive a man who’s committed senseless violence against her, and turns it into a story about a man who uplifts a woman to a better life out of the kindness of his heart. And the thing is, that’s exactly what happens to so many stories from colonized cultures when they’re adapted by the oppressor. Translation into English, and further the cultural language of the oppressor, can be an act of violence and erasure rather than one of respect.
This is why I have worked so hard to translate poetry from Spanish to English that has previously only been translated by white Americans who learned Spanish in college. I can bring something to the translation that they can’t. It’s usually not this extreme, but this exists to some degree in all translations by people who don’t truly understand the culture that produced the work they’re translating.
Post link
Your favourite actors, singers, comedians, millionaires, etc. are not invested in revolutionary politics – even the ‘political’ ones.
They are just as entrenched in misogyny, racism, ableism, antisemitism, homophobia, transphobia, and all the rest as any other random person. They have no reason to be any more invested in liberation as anyone else, and they often benefit even morefrom systemic oppression than the average person, because having a voice in this society requires a position of power in a system built on myriad forms of oppression.
Even if they experience one or more forms of oppression, even if their art comments on oppression, it does not mean they are invested in revolutionary anti-oppression efforts, certainly not across the board. Even if they make the attempt, their efforts will not be automatically useful or even harmless.
Celebrities and content creators do not automatically have better intentions, information, politics, or praxis than any other random person.
Sometimes people make great media/art, sometimes that art even speaks out about some form of oppression. But that does not mean that art is going to be free of the influence of other forms of oppression, and it does not mean that the same art condemning one form of violence isn’t at the same time supporting oppressive structures.
It can be incredibly affirming to see parts of your own experience reflected back to you. It’s one of the things that makes people connect strongly with art and media. That experience can be great, and it doesn’t automatically mean you endorse the way that person or media handles every topic.
But if you hold up celebrities, or the media they are involved in, as Pure Unproblematic Beacons of Liberation, if you shout down anyone who says, “This media is reinforcing the values that lead to the suffering of real people; this media is portraying harm against a vulnerable group as excusable or funny or just; etc; etc. –” If you demand that the media or celebrities you like receive only praise and never honest criticism just because the elements you like are important to you – that’sendorsing the bad shit.
Go enjoy what you like! The search for art/media/etc with no stake in oppression is futile; anything that is allowed to flourish in an oppressive environment has a stake in perpetuating that oppression. The answer is neither to stop engaging with culture entirely or to plug your ears and pretend your affinity for something means it can’t be harmful.
Like what you like. But be a critical consumer and pay attention to the ways the media you consume and the people that produce it are invested in maintaining and perpetuating certain ideas about vulnerable groups and the forces that oppress them. You can think something or someone is amazing for its/their handling of certain things and also acknowledge the ways they’re/it’s harmful to people who experience forms of oppression you don’t.
You don’t have to pretend something is Pure and Unproblematic to enjoy it.
Stop pretending your faves are infallible, stop throwing a fit anytime anyone critiques them, and just enjoy them for what they are; flawed but relatable/entertaining reflections of the oppressive society that produced them.
(And before you think I’m vagueposting someone or something specific – this issue comes up every single time a person or piece of media becomes popular among people who think of themselves as progressive. It’s constant, this drive to pretend anything you love must have no flaws. Look to your own interactions with these things.)
![projectqueer:[image source]Roland Emmerich: "You have to understand one thing: I didn’t ma](https://64.media.tumblr.com/4736de0b3fc1b4d9f1cab3e2a223cf87/tumblr_nv94irIFf21qb8zwko1_640.jpg "projectqueer:[image source]Roland Emmerich: \"You have to understand one thing: I didn’t ma")
Roland Emmerich: "You have to understand one thing: I didn’t make this movie only for gay people, I made it also for straight people,” he said. “I kind of found out, in the testing process, that actually, for straight people, [Danny] is a very easy in. Danny’s very straight-acting. He gets mistreated because of that. [Straight audiences] can feel for him.”
Post link
Roland Emmerich: "You have to understand one thing: I didn’t make this movie only for gay people, I made it also for straight people,” he said. “I kind of found out, in the testing process, that actually, for straight people, [Danny] is a very easy in. Danny’s very straight-acting. He gets mistreated because of that. [Straight audiences] can feel for him.”
Post link
