My Half-Asleep Post on carefree white girl photography, blog history, bullying, diversity, discussion. Q. Achieving PoC solidarity and safe spaces on tumblr, is it even possible?

Hello lovely followers,

please bare in mind I am half-asleep writing this

1.  Thank you amazing people.

Just want to thank those of you that send me the “heads up” posts about problematic bloggers, tumblrs, commentary, etcetera.

2. I miss stuff. It’s hard to keep up with everything.

It’s easy to miss stuff, and honestly, I don’t keep up with tumblr…[what’s the world I am looking for]  I don’t want to call it drama,

3. because some of the shit that goes on is:

a) very legitimate and  b) calling it drama reduces some of the behaviour to petty fighting

see below

4, Doxxing, harassment, scamming, etc.

I am not OK with any of those things.

The community is already so exploited. It was once a sort of safe space, but it’s getting harder and harder to justify that now it’s even a semblance of what it once was. 

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5. History of This Blog

a) fancy white people artsy tumblrs : Carefree White Girl Photography

My first introduction to tumblr was very white. Everything was white. The first blog I found was called “tatielle” or something. 

 She’s probably still famous with like a million followers. Visting her  tumblr, though, the first thing you noticed was that all she posted was was artsy photography  carefree white girl style. 

I was bombard with images of whiteness. Carefree, happy, whiteness. 

Where were the rest of us? 

Ithought, why can’t we have one like that? Have our own blogs like this? 

b) Conundrums. I Want What They Have But For Us

I wanted to post artsy photos, or just the same level of HQ photography but with WoC as the subjects and photographers. I wanted us to be visible, in the same way they were visible. If that’s what it takes.  If that’s what it takes. If that’s what it takes.  If that’s what it takes.

Do I want them to emulate the privileged (oh but so candid!) capturing of careful white girl? No. But WoC photographers and subjects (I say this in the non-colonial context) needed to be more visible on tumblr. Even to the tumblrs of tatielle’s type of followers. 

As I mentioned earlier, I do also like  highly stylized photography and I wanted to see WoC more in this format.

Just. In General, you know? It didn’t matter their size, shape, skin colour, sexuality. Just…I want these women to be visible in art,  so that WE as WoC could see themselves/ourselves being represented in the same way. Is that messed up? Maybe. Just some reasons, among many. 

c) Starting the Damn Thing

So when I finally started my tumblr,  there were maybe one or two other PoC blogs at the time. The other blogs…they were model related, mainly dedicated to say, East Asian Models. Maybe or two very specific blogs (only blogged Black women, etc). They were all great, of course. But it wasn’t what I was looking for.

 I just didn’t think there were enough diversity blogs. 

So I started my tumblr. It was not received well, at fist. So many questions, so many opinions, demands, wishes, angry messages about ignoring white people. Those people eventually left. (Hence the long, long FAQs. New blogs do not seem to need these FAQs, so that’s, uh, nice.) 

d) a little bit of happiness

I posted people, and discourse occasionally  People didn’t like discourse. Well, those people left, too.  But I kept posting it anyways, and I guess, it drew in a different crowd. You lot! Who I love very much. We were happy, so happy…for a while. I got too comfortable, in what I thought was my safe space, you know. Ignored the signs of cliques and all sorts of things going on around different corners of tumblr.

e) Railroading on the same team. So much for solidarity. 

Once in a while, I would post, gasp, my actual thoughts. Add opinons here and there. I can appreciate different responses, critiques and love alike. But somewhere along the line, one post is reblogged onto another until there’s no context left. You get railroaded. By people supposedly on the same side, PoC, and by the tumblr KKK.  So I took a step back, again. 

Sigh.

Just. Why. 

Where are the safe spaces? I try and keep this tumblr a “safe” space as much as possibile, but it’s also hard to have discussion when there are pile-ons that really do no help anyone. Just further distance the groups. 

As it is, though. Tumblr isn’t a safe space, but I’ll try my best to keep it (at least here) as close to one as possible. I’m open to discussion, learning.  We’re always learning. Angry tumblr users, please, please keep that in mind. 

BACK TO THE HEADS UP I FORGET HOW I WAS NUMBERING THINGS

If you do send me a heads up- as much as I trust you all- please give me some context or links or something if you can. 

Unfollowing? Nicki Minaj? Uh, sure. And other stuff 

Also, for those of you who don’t want to see Nicki Minaj on your dashboard, uh, that’s great for you, I don’t need a message that you’re unfollowing.

I’m happy to say that the following for this blog, well, I’m happy there are just so many of you<3 Yes, a lot of you, given the medium. 

CHO CHANG

Also, concerning the Cho Chang thing, I had reblogged some responses on my tumblr, but I might as well share them here too.

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Hope you’ve all had a lovely-ish weekend, or Monday or something, wherever you are.

I am half asleep writing this, ahh. Sorry. 

PoC that have played Bioshock Infinite, what’s your take?

Also…are the main characters white?

Just under 24 hours left for “Shadeism: Digging Deeper” on Indiegogo!

Peace, folks.

Thank you for all the shares so far! We just passed the $12K mark for our #indiegogo campaign for “Shadeism: Digging Deeper”. 

Link: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/shadeism-digging-deeper

The campaign closes today, March 17th @ 11:59pm! At this point, we’ve raised just above 80% of our total funding goal of $15K and we still believe we can raise 100% of it with your support! 

Please continue donating where possible and please share with your networks (email, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, blogs, phone calls, face-to-face chats, etc). We are really trying to push hard this last week and raise the remaining funds needed for: 1) Post-Production Costs, 2) Curriculum Development, and 3) Self-Care Toolkit. 

Let’s please work together in this final last big push! Thank you for all your support the past 30 days! Here’s to hoping we reach that goal by tonight!

Respect,
The “Shadeism Team”