[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.
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Sorry I wasn’t aware of the origin of that phrase and I removed the comment.
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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.
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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
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Random story of my childhood cuz tangentially relevant:
I grew up in buttfuck suburbia, bout 50/50 black white. A lot of white flight was going on in my 'hood and the caps were gettin nervous about it. We had a HyperMart (the first Walmart super stores) that banned durags, all red or blue outfits, blasted country music loud enough that you had to raise your voice to talk to your buddy. Oh of course this had nothing to do with race, just "gang violence". Anyway punkracka highschooler me decided to test that theory.
So i head down to the place with a roll of quarters for aladdin's castle in my tommy hilfigers and a black bandanna on my dome like a cap and ride my bike over.
There were pigs at the entrance to check compliance and one of em stopped me saying "the rules are no gang colors or rags". I said "but this isn't gang colored" and it's just my fav bandana and he just... let me go in.
Anyway i had planned to make it in and flaunt how cool i was getting around the rules (or something? I dunno i was a dumbass) but the black people inside were not amused. Two or three separate cats came up to tell me i was gonna get in trouble, and got pissed when i told em i had permission.
I still didn't get it back then, but i took off the bandana
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.
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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.
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