normalizing rape and racism with jokes

Hey everyone

So 2016 has obviously sucked. Badly. And there's a few things I want to say that have been on my mind since the election and afterwards.

Some of you know I was a big Beastie Boys fan back in the day, and I was incredibly saddened by the death of Adam Yauch. So you can imagine how upsetting it was to hear that Donald Trump supporters had vandalized his memorial with "Go Trump" and swastikas. Adam Yauch was Jewish, and a very spiritual man who cared about social justice.

And tonight Neo Nazis are doing the Nazi salute and yelling "Heil Trump" at their official gatherings.

We now have as a president elect, a man who was bragging about grabbing women by the pussy, and walked in on teenage girls in their dressing room. At his last rally, he had Ted Nugent up there with him, a man who wrote a song about raping a 13 year old girl. And Trump himself was accused of raping a 13 year old girl, but the girl got too many death threats and dropped her charges.

How did we get here? It's not like America suddenly turned into a bunch of racists, nazis and people thinking rape is okay. Those people were always there. Many people are saying "but now they have a voice".

But this all brings me back to the exact reason that this and other blogs were started, over 9 years ago, and that was because one band who always said "We hate racists and sexists and bigots", completely changed their tune and started behaving racist, sexist, and bigoted because they hooked up with Mindless Self Indulgence. I talked about this once before, it is called "Hipster racism" and "hipster sexism". When you are pretending that you're above racism and sexism and bigotry, but you are still writing songs called "F*ggot" under the guise of irony.

The people who put Trump into office always had a voice, and part of that voice, and part of the reason people are waving off these horrendous things, is because they are NORMALIZED in our society. They are thought of as funny for some people.

And why is that? "Ironic hipster racism" and rape jokes are a big part of the problem. White people who think it's "not fair" that white people aren't allowed to use the N word. White people who are "ironically" doing nazi salutes because it makes them seem "edgy." (Again MSI but those videos have been taken down.)

And obviously, adult men making songs about "Five Year Old Panty Shot" and lyrics like "cause my momma said to rape the very best one".

Obviously they are not the only band doing things like this, or profiting off using slurs in a "funny way" and making jokes about child rape. But they ARE the band that got this blog started so it all comes back to square one.

Well thanks, everyone who thought those "jokes" were funny. Because now they are real, and this is actually happening in America. We should not be surprised.

Usually I end by saying that I hope everyone is having a good year or will have a good year. But nothing good came out of this year at all so all I will say is that I sincerely hope we all survive, and that we will all maybe learn something from this.

It's been too long...

Hi everyone.

Damn... 2016 has been nasty. David Bowie, Alan Rickman, Lemmy Kilmister, Phife Dawg, Garry Shandling, Frank Sinatra Jr, Glenn Frey, Keith Emerson...

Alan Rickman hit me the hardest. But there have been many celebrity deaths this year and it seems like more than normal for only 3 (almost 4) months in.

Aside from that I hope everyone is doing really well. And I hope this year gets better.

2016 needs to stop acting this way!

RIP Robin Williams

Well I was a very big fan of Robin Williams and I just want to say how sorry I am for his family's loss. And his fans too though to a much lesser degree obviously.

Please, anyone who reads this, if you are suffering from depression and/or are having suicidal thoughts, REACH OUT. Someone, or maybe many people out there care about you and someone will be willing to help you. You are not alone.

I also heard about the abuse that his daughter suffered online after his death. I have always stood against that kind of behavior. Even when Gerard and Frank were sending violent tweets to fans and ex fans... it's bullying. It causes harm.

RIP Robin Williams. You brought joy to so many. It's a tragic shame that you couldn't hold onto enough joy for yourself.

Almost a year now

Almost a year since these fools broke up and all has been silent. The last thing I heard was that Mikey Way wrote a blog about how it wasn't his fault and that he didn't cheat. And then that his new girlfriend wrote a Tweet about how Mikey went back on drugs and she left him.

Any truth to that?

Everyone in this ex-band is just a big stupid mess.

Recently I got reminded that Lyn Z once said

 Funny that I'm totally ok with all things MSI but offended by watching most hip-hop videos. God bless the first amendment.

Uhm yeah. That's not "funny." That's you being a racist. 

Good riddance

MRC broke up. Good riddance to bad garbage.

But I really doubt that we'll stop hearing their self involved, sexist and racist tweets. Usually when someone in the spotlight says some sexist or racist thing, they get called out and they eventually apologize. Sometimes they are sincere and sometimes they're just catering to the masses to get the media and fans to stop harping on them. When you think of people like Mel Gibson and Michael Richards, they apologized. But do you really believe them? I don't think those people actually learned a lesson.

Did MCR learn a lesson? Definitely not. Frank Iero using the N word in Twitter, then telling people they were "imbeciles" when they told him that wasn't cool. Gerard saying vile and violent things to and about women on his Twitter and then getting his fan sheep to harass those women, with gender based slurs. And the gender based slurs he used to degrade women on Twitter and on stage. Frank Iero's abortion jokes. Ray Toro saying that women shouldn't be allowed to use public toilets. The list goes on.

These comments were never addressed. MCR breaks up and leaves this as their legacy to those of us who know better. They were never forced to apologize, because, I think, they were never famous enough in the media to garner a huge outcry.

And don't forget... MSI is still out there, spewing racist lyrics (and telling people it's okay for white people to do that, because it's "satire"), homophobic lyrics, and violently misogynistic lyrics, making jokes about sexual abuse of children... The two bands are exactly the same.

Yes, I am glad that MCR broke up, but they never apologized for their racism and misogyny. And they are still, sadly, the same exact racist, sexist people they were before they broke up.

BUT... at least they did break up! So go out and celebrate.  :-)

With that out of the way I want to wish everyone a healthy and prosperous spring season, or whatever season it is where you live.

Happy holidays

That last post is hard to scroll through but I hope some of you read it.

I decided to make a shorter post for easier access. This time just to wish you all a happy and safe holiday season. Congratulations to the women on this board who are pregnant.

Happy holidays to all of you and your families.

Chris Z performs spoken word with The World Is A Beautiful Place at the Webster Theatre in Hartford. This piece, entitled "Tyler's Big Day Out" is a response to the very negative and hate-speech laden online reactions to a workshop Chris ran in April, one specifically aimed at the use of the word "nigga" by a bunch of white people.

From his Tumblr: 

This is me.in April, i tried to hold a workshop in response to a white dude saying the words “get money nigga” at the end of one of his band’s songs. it didn’t go well. i was being “too pc” for people’s liking. they thought i was on a guilt tripping spree, trying to make them all feel racist.  these people were defending the band’s right to say “nigga” so, i gotta say, they were being racist. i got called retarded, a retarded nigger, a faggot, a nigger faggot, etc etc. fuck that.you seem to think that because you don’t/ wear a white hood & burn crosses/ that you aren’t racist./that your “black friends” and vaguely left-leaning political views pre-ordain you to a lifetime supply of good dude credits. in 2012 when a Black youth is 7 times more likely than a white youth to be punished for a comparable offense in school, we are colorblind right?[i]when college educated Black people make less than their high school educated white counterparts, they are just unlucky right[ii]? or maybe not trying hard enough.when white authority places no value on Black life (see police brutality convictions[iii], stop and frisk procedures, etc) it’s all wrong place wrong time right?in 2012 racism exists in a bubble. tiny pockets in the South, in Arizona, but not here. not you.if anything us here in the North East have become too PC right? because one night i decided to try and call racism by its name. because your friends think that word is archaic. it’s funny. no harm done.i did my research.  a study in 2011 (archaic) conducted by Penn State found that Black people often exhibit what they called Racial Battle Fatigue, or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder/ the Poverty Clinic found that micro-transgressions against People of Color had not only psychological but also physical effects.Robert Carter, relooked at ‘Carson’s Conceptual Model for Trauma’ as it related to Race and the million tiny slights whites commit without thought.and there’s the Perilla Study (2002), Glenn Miller’s The Trauma of Insidious Racism, so on and so forthbut  yet, when i tried to research the long-standing psychological damage of middle class white people being told to watch their fucking tongues… i was shocked to find none.but i guess what i forgot is: you are the expert right? cause people always call you…. oh wait. there isn’t a slur for you that denotes the 100’s of years of oppression,that indicates all the actions others commit that attempt to tell you that you aren’t even human, that triggers all the times your mother and grandparents ET ALL fought for the most basic rights and were continuously told they didn’t deserve those rights.that word doesn’t exist, does it?what i am getting at is, shut your fucking mouth you whiny goddamn overgrown babies and open your ears.because maybe you don’t wear a hood but defending the repeated saying of racist words under a guise not even as base as freedom of speech but that they aren’t harmful?well that’s fucking racism.

Someone tell Mindless Self Indulgence and My Chemical Romance.