The Danish health minister should “get on a plane and visit” some of the thousands of women thought to be living with the consequences of being forcibly fitted with the contraceptive coil as children, Greenland’s gender equality minister has said.
In an attempt to reduce the population of the former Danish colony, at least 4,500 women and girls are believed to have undergone the medical procedure, usually without their consent or knowledge, at the hands of Danish doctors between 1966 and 1970 alone.
The total number of those affected by the procedures, thought to have continued for decades, is understood to be far higher. Victims and their lawyers say generations of Inuit women were left traumatised and suffering reproductive complications, including infertility, as a result of the Danish state’s policy.
Earlier this month, a group of 143 women sued the Danish state over the alleged violations, but they have yet to receive a response from the government, despite the Danish prime minister visiting Greenland – now an autonomous territory of Denmark – soon after.
Oh okay, so let’s listen to what other white people have to say on the matter.
According to that article that I already linked you and which you apparently didn’t read:
Reverse racism is such a fringe conservative belief that only a tiny minority of conservative white people even believe it, and amongst democrats it’s barely more than a rounding error.
So only a tiny group of fringe reactionaries believe this bullshit, but here you are claiming it’s supposed to be a leftist position.
That is fucking ridiculous.
Literally not even close to the issue I was addressing, but I’ve dealt with enough racists like you to know it’s hopeless.
Fucking hilarious. You have to be intentionally missing the point here.
Also, be careful, because apparently pointing out racism is the real racism, and you accused me of “whitesplaining”, so apparently you were being anti-white racist, which I hear you really care a lot about as an issue.
*Note for the mod who inevitably gets this as a disingenuous “racism” report, I am being sarcastic.
If you couldn’t read the bitterness in
I can’t help you.
But anything to denigrate minorities who don’t have your views., huh? People like you only listen when it fits your preconceptions.
You literally told me how this issue affects you as a mixed race person, and it clearly doesn’t affect white people.
Either you can put that together or you can’t. If you can’t, it’s because you don’t want to. I’m done here.
And you literally didn’t listen, instead opting to reiterate your own preconceptions on what mixed-race people experience and why.
If there’s anything I got wrong about what you were saying about your own experience, I would honestly like to understand.
If that’s sincere, I’ll be happy to explain again.
Again, I must emphasize, I am by no means under the delusion that anti-white racism is anywhere near the scale or severity of anti-POC racism. In terms of resource allocation, there is an obvious and overwhelming preference towards which one needs to be fought. I, as someone who has experienced genuine emotional distress, am speaking as to the personal effects of racist behavior, specifically, slurs and othering, against whiteness, even (though not exclusively) when the person in question does not necessarily or primarily identify as white.
Calling people slurs based on their ancestry or socially constructed racial identification, ‘actual’ or perceived, is bad. Period. The N-bomb is worse than ‘Jap’, and ‘Jap’ is worse than ‘cracker’. But none of them should be given a pass, and all are capable of creating an environment of othering and hostility.
You feel confident and secure, and so you don’t feel racist slurs are capable of harming you - if so, great for you. I’m sure you grew up in either a great community (which there are many of!), or an overwhelmingly white one. That, however, does not reflect experiences universally, and many white kids (not even getting into biracial individuals) who’ve grown up in majority-nonwhite communities can attest that anti-white racism feels like shit. “In the greater scope of things, white people rule everything!” doesn’t mean jack shit inside the context of individual communities, where our psyches reside and rely on for validation and sense of belonging. And those wounds don’t go away when you emerge into a white majority society.
The sin in calling me an anti-white slur is not because I’m mixed-race. Being mixed-race just means I have nowhere to retreat from bigotry in general. If I escape anti-white bigotry, I’m inevitably exposed to anti-Asian bigotry - and if I try to escape from both, I am inevitably exposed to both. There is a great deal of racism inbetween POC communities.
For mixed-race people, often, there is an additional effect in that is that we feel invalidated in total by being denigrated by one of our racial origins. When someone calls me a cracker or like slur, I don’t feel part-shitty, I feel 100% shitty. When you call a white person a cracker, it doesn’t matter if you imply with a wink and a nudge that, OF COURSE you don’t mean me, it still feels like shit just by fucking proxy. Yeah, I’m Asian. But I’m also white. Being called a cracker doesn’t hurt me because I’m part-Asian. It hurts me because I am white. Apart from self-identification, as generally I have little interest in my whiteness except to recognize when it privileges and advantages me, there is the acute knowledge that others see you as such, that you are seen in some way, or in some degree, as deficient, grotesque, or inherently contemptible.
If I’m harassed for being white, do you think I feel only part-deficient? Part-contemptible? Do you think that I feel different about being harassed for being part-white because I’m also part-Asian? That if I was wholly contemptible instead of partially, it would feel better? Would I not feel othered if I was only white and being called a cracker? Considering the escalating racial hostility as children age and feed the mutual racial antipathy, and my own experiences talking with white friends, I doubt it. Just because “Oh, this won’t matter when you look for a job or a promotion” is true doesn’t mean “This isn’t something that creates a deep and abiding rift between individuals and communities as a matter of rejection of people based on their innate and unchangeable qualities. This isn’t something that creates psychological scars as attempts to refute or combat the accusations escalate against an unshifting bigotry and constant undercurrent of enmity.”
The essential, degrading, othering, and hostile effect of calling someone else a slur based on their immutable characteristics is universally bad, and it’s astounding to me that a left-wing culture that has (very positively!) become increasingly sensitive towards other issues of mental and emotional health, bullying, and self-esteem, seems so keen to overlook this. Much is said, and rightfully so, on the severe and lasting psychological effects of bigotry on individuals. Why is this bigotry excluded?
It’s not a problem that needs a national campaign or a government program to address it. But it sure as shit shouldn’t be dismissed or encouraged simply because it’s not as important as the more significant and material effects of racism on POC.
I’m legitimately done now, because now I’m fucking depressed.
I genuinely appreciate your openness and I agree that what you’ve experienced is bigotry, it is othering abuse. Thanks, I understand it takes a lot to lay all that out and I don’t take it lightly.
I cannot tell you that the trauma that you’ve experienced is lessened by who or what you are, and this is an issue that leftists should take seriously. I understand you face a unique intersection of discrimination, and that your whiteness has contributed to that.
I still have something to say about where we differ here, but I won’t unless you tell me you want to hear it. I promise to be respectful regardless of what you decide.