[CW: Fetishization on the Basis of Identity (Race, Transness, Etc.)]
I’m mainly talking about this in the context of race, but it applies to other categories such as trans people as well. My main issue with this is that this type of openness to accepting fetishization on the basis of identity enables toxic tendencies.
What I mean is that, for example, I’ll sometimes see black men play into disturbing tropes like the “BBC” shit and this idea that they can tie their race into the notion of being some kind of sex god. And it’s worse when you get white women who unironically identify as “snow bunnies” as a way to entertain this trope (which is just racist), and these black men who don’t realize the problem with this will eat it up.
This isn’t pleasant; it’s just dehumanizing. This isn’t just a problem for straight people either. Gay men, for instance, can have this toxic shit going on too. I understand that, especially when you’re a part of a marginalized group, it can seem tempting to celebrate what seems to translate to you being a desirable person, even if it’s on the basis of a creepy fetish, but that will ultimately do more harm than good.
I just hope these people come to realize that they’re not taken as being a desirable “person” in these circumstances, but rather, a desirable object. These fetishists do not care about their humanity, and it is, first and foremost, their fault that this is a problem to begin with.
Fanon even mentions this in Wretched of the Earth.
Side note: I also hate it when people talk about how good looking biracial babies are like they’re fucking dog breeds.
Side note: I also hate it when people talk about how good looking biracial babies are like they’re fucking dog breeds.
Out in crackkkerland the only biracial people they see are on the TV and so they mistake “TV showing me good looking people because that’s what TV does” for “all biracial people are attractive.”
It’s even worse when an entire community is dedicated to this under the guise of being a safe haven for a minority group.
A prime example of this is Reddit’s 196, and its adjacent communities. They built their entire modus operandi around *supporting" trans and GNC people, but in reality that support consists of lots of fetishization. Plenty of trans people will sadly join in on it, because they think they found an environment that isn’t hostile to them. But whenever one of them steps out of line and actually points out the blatant fetishization, they get surprised that those who pretend to be their allies will suddenly attack them.
It’s the classic mistake of thinking fetishization means that you’re being seen as an equal. Fetishization and oppression often go hand in hand. It’s been a common theme throughout history.
196 and “genocides are bad when I am not the one doing it”. I could tolerate other bullshit but “I will vote for my fuhrer Joe Biden until he comes to kill me” was really bullshit. Does anyone know any other active(extremely online) leftist shitpost places?(I still miss you r/cth my beloved)
/r/gamingcirclejerk has a similar culture and is much more aligned with Hexbear’s politics. /r/sharkpark is basically 196 but they never post about politics at all so it’s just the same kind of meme with no libs but also no based posts. /r/thedeprogram is also a bit similar but because the community is explicitly political and most of the memes are about economic topics I think it’s just inherently less humorous. Not to mention that the demographic is so young that it often devolves into childish things and people posting about getting banned from other subreddits. /r/TrueAnon is the best subreddit left IMO but it’s not as active as the others. /r/acidmarxism, /r/blackwolffeed, /r/blackepsteinfeed are out there if you wanna look at the comments for leftist discussion. If you really are a content hog then there’s also /r/theadamfriedlandshow and /r/redscarepod but those subreddits are full of straight up chuds and are just generally even worse than 196.
oh no
I should’ve just recommended /r/tankiethedeprogram
I’ll do better next time
/r/acidmarxism is private
It’s the classic mistake of thinking fetishization means that you’re being seen as an equal. Fetishization and oppression often go hand in hand. It’s been a common theme throughout history.
Seeing this was perfectly timed with that ruffled person posting the hexbear trans poll and being like “they’re not the safe space 196 is the safe space”
I hadn’t seen that post yet, but yeah.
That’s another aspect of the fetishizing “ally”. They think they get to make the call on who is real and who is fake. Because surely the real ones would not only believe in the same things as I do, but they would also be grateful for all this acceptance I’m showering them with!
What I mean is that, for example, I’ll sometimes see black men play into disturbing tropes like the “BBC” shit and this idea that they can tie their race into the notion of being some kind of sex god.
I knew a black guy once who said the problem with the well-endowed black man stereotype is that if you take it out for a girl and it doesn’t hit the floor, she’s disappointed.
And it’s worse when you get white women who unironically identify as “snow bunnies” as a way to entertain this trope
is that what that means? I saw some recommended video about a guy meeting his ideal snow bunny and I thought “oh she spends a lot of time on the slopes, he’s into skiers I guess.”Which, besides the dehumanizing of marginalized groups, devalues earnest interracial couples. Like it makes it look like the relationship must be about fetishizing and not, oh hey maybe these people actually care about each other and love each other.
is that what that means? I saw some recommended video about a guy meeting his ideal snow bunny and I thought “oh she spends a lot of time on the slopes, he’s into skiers I guess.”
Having spent a brief stint living in a ski town, everybody always used “snow bunny” to mean “white woman who can’t really ski, but goes to the ski lodge to hook up with the cute rich white guys.”
But in recent years, I guess The Youths have decided it means “white woman who exclusively dates black dudes.” Language is weird.
Yeah this is the moment i had to update my internal urban dictionary too. Im having a bit less trouble than with the asl update (at least that one made sense) but its like how come we can’t just make a new name for this? Dagum kids ruinnnnnnnin
with the asl update (at least that one made sense)
American… Sign Language??
oh are you a 10k’r? Lucky! Besides sign language (lol) ASL was age/sex/location for early chat rooms but is now used to mean “as hell” like “i’m mad asl right now”.
At first i was mad at the change (yaarghlebargle hell doesn’t start with L) but then i thought the original A/S/L was truly obsolete and ready to be appropriated. Go youts!
I remember a/s/l being used on Omegle as a teenager, but I’ve never seen “asl” being used to mean “as hell”.
yaarghlebargle hell doesn’t start with L
But yeah that reminds me of how I’d make my mom mad as a kid, when I would make this one TTS program say “bloody L”
Uh… I followed your link and didn’t understand a thing in there. Can you explain like I’m an idiot?
Try scrolling to the top of the page.
In any case I was just making sort of a “the more things change” type joke, that even Romans in the days of Late Latin were complaining about the ways that youngsters would speak and write.
Snow bunny has had the “white woman who only likes black men” meaning for at least 30 years or so. I’m 40 and recall hearing it as a kid, but it was in Alabama
Fair enough. I guess it’s taken a few decades to spread to places that actually have snow.
The Blahaj instance and their chasers come to mind.
Could you elaborate on that a bit? I haven’t heard of blahaj.zone having a large amount of chasers.
Mostly the 196 comm. I honestly am not sure that the comm itself is gonna have many examples of chaser behavior, but if you go to /r/196 on reddit you’ll always see a bunch of chaser posts on the front page, and the comm was meant to be a lifeboat for the subreddit. The weird thing about them IMO is that there used to be some pushback against chasers, but eventually there was a bad faith tactic of painting chasers as puritans who just didn’t want to see any horny posts, so now anyone who points out the chaser behavior in that community is accused of being a transphobic puritan or something to that effect.
deleted by creator
No one is making you use aave if you hate it.
Sorry I wasn’t aware of the origin of that phrase and I removed the comment.
Cool 👍🏽
Did you respond to the wrong comment?
Othello is referring to Lenin’s Cat calling “pick me” an “awful term” — the term “pick me” originated in AAVE, as do probably way more words and phrases than you’re consciously aware of. AAVE words and phrases start getting used by whites, this leads to semantic shift as the words are used outside of their original context and purpose, and this in turn leads to the actual histories of these words becoming completely forgotten by whites.
Frankly, I had never given a moment’s thought as to who exactly might’ve first coined the term “pick me”, so literally as I’m writing this I’m becoming aware of the term’s actual history.
I also was never aware that the term “pick me” originated in AAVE. That’s something new I learned today.
You may also like to know that the above definition is the appropriateated one. Pick me originally had nothing to do with Marginalized people. It was exclusively a term for women who enjoyed shitting on other women in a public setting, because she thought it would make her more attractive to men. For example, a woman who constantly talks about how She shaves every single day because body hair is absolutely horrible and disgusting, Like constantly and only in front of men. That’s a pick me. And then white people decided to steal the word and make it about marginalized groups. It’s really not that deep. It’s just about annoying girls in your friend group. Obviously definitions and words can change and grow, but it’s extremely annoying to see people shit on a word that’s been stolen from Black people And then actively offer the incorrect annoying definition to people Actively furthering the problem. It’s just so brazenly ignorant. If you don’t like using a term, you don’t actually have to use it.
Unless you simply are not around Black people I guess.
i was the only black kid in my school and there was an assembly where they announced the banning of bandanas and durags
so excited to leave this suburban hellscape
Oh yeah, I edited that out because I figured crackers might get upset. But yeah, The suburbs are like a freaky alternate dimension.
I was only aware of the original meaning of the word (women who shit on other women to try to be more attractive to men). I’m not American, so that probably explains why I didn’t know it originated in AAVE. Thanks for the history! Personally I disagree with Lenin’s Cat that ‘pick me’ is an awful term. It’s a very self-descriptive term that gets the concept across very easily - more words in the English language should be like it.
That’s fair, also, that means you had the correct definition in mind already so that’s good actually!
Wait, it’s all AAVE?
Thank you for explaining to them. I assumed it would be obvious which word I was referring to and why, if not by knowing pick mes origin but at the very least context clues. Also, that is not the correct definition of pick me. That is the appropriated definition. Regardless, it’s extremely ignorant to call it a stupid term when you don’t even know what the word means.
Yeah, I was going to ask how you’d define “pick me” yourself, but I see you’ve already done that in other comments. When trying to look up the original meaning of “pick me” I was met with some amount of contradiction, so I wasn’t sure what to think.
But yeah, we have already a myriad terms for “appealing to the fantasies/expectations of the oppressor”, so the only upside of using “pick me” with that meaning is how evocative it is of specifically putting others down for one’s own sake… And yeah, it’s not inherently a bad thing for a word to be used only for its evocation, for a word to spread and change meaning — but it becomes a bad thing when the context of this exchange is one of inequality between groups.
No, It’s the exact same, same as when people complain about the word woke on here.
I largely agree but my only hesitation is ive seen lots of examples lately on the shitty bird app of trans women and other femme presenting people being accused of “self-fetishizing” and thereby damaging the rest of the community for totally innocuous things. Or for posting sexy selfies or for being sex workers.
Things like PhilosphyTube posting an old screenshot of her character from some video game in some vaguely fetishistic costume and saying she should have known at the time she was trans, and people shitting on her until she deleted it because that was apparently like playing into stereotypes and shit.
That… uh… that bothers me that people will shit on innocuous forms of self expression and self exploration like that.
On a related note. Anybody know why this recent wave of fetishizing “femboys” (not sure if that is the best term for it) comes from? Maybe I was not online enough, but it feels like this fetish wasn’t so common before covid. I actively saw subs and feeds I was in going from having nothing to do with that stuff to over the years becoming softcover porn essentially. I have a hypothesis that covid combined with the intensification of oppression in the us is the cause.
Also, I am now feeling horrified at the thought that Germans during nazi times might have fetishism Jews similarly.
A lot of transfems credit the “lockdown” as giving them space to explore and experiment with gender expression.
I fear everyone I encounter that shows some sort of interest is a chaser, which makes me less keen to stick around since I start double (and triple, quadruple, etc) all our interactions looking for the dehumanizing edge that shows them mask off, they don’t see me as a peer but entirely as an object.
I see you as less if you think someone like me is actually hotter than actual hot people. You are fucking pathetic. I take pity on your ailment. No place for hate in this heart, just pity. You should be crushed like the bug you are.
Bit idea: instead of giving a blowjob, picking it up like a big microphone and doing a newscast for BBC News
I pretended to do a standup routine, but otherwise…
STOP HAVING FUN
Nobody is telling you what type of porn you should consume. This is a discussion forum and not a church.
This is just a spin on the “I’m entitled to my opinion” fallacy. I’m not telling anyone what they’re “allowed” to do or like, but I’m speaking on legitimately problematic implications of certain forms of fetishization. Quite frankly, this just reads as someone who engages in this nasty kind of behavior trying so damn hard to cope with the criticism of how problematic it is. It wouldn’t surprise me. Equating being ABLE to do something with it being RIGHT to do that something is a very common cope, hence me referring this to a form of the “I’m entitled to my own opinion” fallacy, a fallacy that serves that exact purpose.
I can see it being nice to have roles you can play and not have to worry about stuff. Especially for people who are used to being outside thr normal social order.
