The outcome is only uncertain for those who disbelieve.

please stop reblogging sylvia plath poetry 

For ppl asking why she’s an anti black, anti Semite. She has used the n word and compared her depression to the holocaust

Even not counting her poetry her private journals are full of disgusting, overblown antisemitism. She didn’t just use Jewish people for her metaphors, she outright hated them irl and yet decided to use their suffering for her own gain

here’s a source with some quotes

okay, I’m Jewish and I appreciate this sentiment. and if someone wants to cut out Sylvia Plath, go for it, I get it.

But. by this logic we’d also need to stop reblogging TS Eliot, Oscar Wilde, and Shakespeare quotes. Virginia Woolf wrote anti-semetic things in her private journals, too. If you only want to read classic poets who liked Jews and black people, that’s fine, but like. good luck? Sylvia Plath isn’t an exception.

idk. Tumblr’s attitude of “consume nothing problematic” just doesn’t work if you’re part of a group that most culture-creators over the last few centuries have hated by default. For people actually in those groups, it’s not like the only two choices are 1) worship authors who hate you or 2) completely cut the majority of literature out of your life. You learn to read critically and acknowledge flaws where you find them.

anyway, as a Jewish woman, I would much rather see a version of this post that said “please read Sylvia Plath poetry critically because she’s anti black and antisemetic” than just “stop reblogging Sylvia Plath poetry.”

IMO, reblog Sylvia Plath all you want, just not unthinkingly.

I’m reblogging this now because I’m seeing anti-Virginia Woolf discourse lately due to the antisemitism in her journals and like… as a Jewish person who loves Virginia Woolf’s writing and an English teacher who knows that pretty much every writer of the classics is Problematic just…chill pls

The point isn’t to never consume media that isn’t ideologically pure. That’s never the point. Were that the goal, we would NEVER be able to consume any media. Nothing is ever ideologically pure, especially as time goes on and our social consciousness expands.

We should be telling people instead, “Be critical as you read this person’s work. They held bigoted views. Understand how that is reflected in their work, and be mindful of it. Be critical, be thoughtful”

Compelling others to not engage with something at ALL on ideological grounds is in the same vein as burning books. We should be compelling others to be critical and mindful, not narrow and willfully ignorant.

“Understand how it is reflected in their work, and be mindful of it.”

You know, a big part of purity culture is an inability to cope with your own mistakes, because in your mind, there’s no way to bounce back from serious errors. You can’t just apologize for doing something Problematic™ and then try not to do it again, because then you’re just Bad, so you’ve gotta prove that whatever you did was never bad to begin with. That you’re still Good and therefore did not actually do anything wrong.

So it kind of irks me when I see people acting like ‘purity culture’ is pointing out mistakes or debating about the implications of various actions.

That’s not purity culture, that’s normal culture. Purity culture is getting so overwhelmed at the prospect of ‘being bad’ that you can’t even cope with it and your only recourse is to fight against the implication tooth and nail, as well as the other, more widely understood issue of people refusing to let anyone else grow or change. Because the conceit of purity is that deep down, you’re either virtuous or evil. So there’s no room for forgiveness or for personal growth.

That’s also why you see it cropping up in social circles all over the political spectrum. Because it’s a fallacy that anyone can fall into as long as they have actual morals. It’s based in a belief that morality is a matter of innate nature, not active choices. Regardless of what your values may be.

Liking only good characters and 100% completely unproblematic things (which don’t exist) is not a replacement for actually being a good person

Hahahaha accurate

Basically.

cometocourtyou in response to asoiafuniversity’s post “Mod Note: To be critical of something is not to hate it” (via moniquill)

if i didn’t let myself enjoy problematic things, i’d end up with about 2 songs, 3 films, and the first 1/2 of a book on rice cultivation and i could probably still find some bone to pick about the author’s eurocentric bias.