2022 closing strong

October 18, 2022 10:57 PM

TikTok’s Favorite Emu Is Sick With Bird Flu And Experts Were Alarmed At How The Owner Handled The Outbreak Zoonotic outbreak. Bird deaths. Little quarantine. Much cuddling. Still Tik-Tokking. (Previously, where the final comment links to a thread about Taylor Blake and how white (and non-black) lesbians appropriates black lesbian terminology)
posted by cendawanita (74 comments total)

And I only found out via Dr Sarah Taber's QT of @zhongnotes' tweet: Wait I can't believe Asians sat through decades of being insulted about our food and our relationship to various animals and white influencers that have farms can just chill with a bird that has bird flu for clout.

Taber's QT: you would never catch me alive or dead cuddling a bird with influenza but that's just me and my degree + 25 years in agricultural epidemiology talking
posted by cendawanita at 11:00 PM on October 18, 2022 [21 favorites]

On behalf of all the Australians, let me just say; what the fuck is anyone doing cuddling an emu
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 11:06 PM on October 18, 2022 [21 favorites]

look not like its a funnel-web emu
posted by away for regrooving at 12:26 AM on October 19, 2022 [32 favorites]

...but it is a war-winning emu, and Aussies are legendarily competitive.
posted by k3ninho at 12:55 AM on October 19, 2022 [1 favorite]

It's got fucking bird flu. Cull, don't cuddle. This is how that shit spreads.
posted by Dysk at 1:27 AM on October 19, 2022 [8 favorites]

Like, this hit her farm because wild birds flew through. You can "quarantine" (actually just self-isolate) all you like, but can you guarantee that no other birds will pass through?
posted by Dysk at 1:30 AM on October 19, 2022 [3 favorites]

'cuddle' and 'cull' do sound similar
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 2:25 AM on October 19, 2022 [3 favorites]

maybe she just misheard
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 2:25 AM on October 19, 2022 [5 favorites]

Ooo do we get to talk about her history of being wildly racist on main now?
posted by MengerSponge at 2:41 AM on October 19, 2022 [26 favorites]

Yeah sorry about the emu, but this person is a milkshake duck fr
posted by lazaruslong at 3:17 AM on October 19, 2022 [13 favorites]

With regards to how to reduce the spread of bird flu from wild birds, in the UK I know that people with chickens at home have added large mesh covers to their bird's enclosures. It doesn't stop droppings, but it does prevent direct contact between the animals.

The UK government has quite extensive advice here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/avian-influenza-bird-flu.
posted by Braeburn at 3:36 AM on October 19, 2022 [2 favorites]

Yeah sorry about the emu, but this person is a milkshake duck fr

Please tell me the emu tried to drink a milkshake at one point, that'd be perfect.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:50 AM on October 19, 2022 [1 favorite]

I saw a couple clips of this woman scolding Emmanuel a few weeks or months ago, took a spin around her historical internet presence (still feeling mad about the anti abortion rhetoric from the guy who draws aliens being cute with purring cats).

She is so unapologetically and openly racist.

I’m not into quiet dog whistle racism either, mind you.

This woman’s online behavior has been breathtaking in its audacity and if she had done anything to remediate her image from before…wow. And if she had done nothing to remove evidence of her racism then…also wow. I would bet a donut the receipts are flying around twitter this week.
posted by bilabial at 3:53 AM on October 19, 2022 [7 favorites]

Welp. That’s quite disappointing but good to know.
posted by eviemath at 4:01 AM on October 19, 2022 [2 favorites]

Never meet look up the past social media postings of your heroes.
posted by tommasz at 4:52 AM on October 19, 2022 [2 favorites]

Here's a horrible thought. Blake has mentioned how Emmanuel's internet popularity finally allowed her to buy health insurance for the first time. This bird, in particular, is her livelihood. If it dies, what does she do then? Having an internet career must be the most stressful thing possible.
posted by mittens at 5:00 AM on October 19, 2022 [6 favorites]

Counterpoint: Always examine the past behaviours of people in the public eye.
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:01 AM on October 19, 2022 [8 favorites]

> Never meet look up the past social media postings of your heroes potential patient(s) zero of the next pandemic.
posted by mmoncur at 5:04 AM on October 19, 2022 [1 favorite]

Never meet look up the past have social media postings of your heroes.
posted by SaltySalticid at 5:08 AM on October 19, 2022 [15 favorites]

(so what's the actual story on the racism? I'm poking around and not finding anything but everybody knows kinda posts.)
posted by mittens at 5:09 AM on October 19, 2022 [6 favorites]

(still feeling mad about the anti abortion rhetoric from the guy who draws aliens being cute with purring cats).

Ahhh, do you mean the Strange Planet guy?

Never meet look up the past social media postings of your heroes.

Just.. never. No heroes.
posted by curious nu at 5:09 AM on October 19, 2022 [11 favorites]

No heroes.
posted by signal at 5:13 AM on October 19, 2022 [7 favorites]

so what's the actual story on the racism? I'm poking around and not finding anything but everybody knows kinda posts.

bilabial may be able to share their search process but i just looked up on Twitter and the various nested threads, and here's one with screencaps of her previous career as a white girl doing stereotypical black acts.

In the comment I linked in the FPP, that thread further down also has screencaps of her posts
posted by cendawanita at 5:24 AM on October 19, 2022 [2 favorites]

Another one from back in August.

It does feel like a 2 for the price of 1 scandal but mainly i 'miss' the days even racists can understand science. Or basic agricultural practices.
posted by cendawanita at 5:30 AM on October 19, 2022 [2 favorites]

Distractify: The Internet Has Rediscovered Taylor Blake's Racist Remarks Amidst Her Emu's Illness
posted by cendawanita at 5:34 AM on October 19, 2022 [1 favorite]

On behalf of all the Australians, let me just say; what the fuck is anyone doing cuddling an emu

Fiasco da Gama, an American who I follow on Twitter (not the woman this post is about) has super friendly, cuddly pet emus. I was surprised!

(I've been menaced by a massive herd of emus running at me very VERY fast as soon as I got out of the car in the carpark of a national park - they wanted to see if they could mug me for sandwiches.)
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 5:54 AM on October 19, 2022 [2 favorites]

This story reminds me of an Australian man who was told by vets and government authorities that his beloved horse had Hendra virus[1] - a highly deadly non-rabies virus carried by Flying foxes -
and would need to be euthanised, and that under no circumstances should he have contact with his horse.

He ignored them, and tried to nurse his horse back to health.

Both he and the horse died, and it was only pure luck that he didn't get any other humans sick.

[1] "As of June 2014, a total of fifty outbreaks of Hendra virus have occurred in Australia, all involving infection of horses. As a result of these events, eighty-three horses have died or been euthanized. A further four died or were euthanized as a result of possible Hendra infection.

Case fatality rate in humans is 60% and in horses 75%.

Four of these outbreaks have spread to humans as a result of direct contact with infected horses."
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 5:59 AM on October 19, 2022 [5 favorites]

I think cuddling an emu without a license is illegal in Aus. Racial vilification also (that might be a state-level thing, given the existence of the NT Police and also Queensland?).
posted by pompomtom at 6:25 AM on October 19, 2022

This bird, in particular, is her livelihood. If it dies, what does she do then?

She's putting so many other people's livelihoods - and health - at risk by continuing to foster a source of contagion.

Sometimes things are bigger than yourself.
posted by Dysk at 7:13 AM on October 19, 2022 [11 favorites]

She is so unapologetically and openly racist.

I do not know if she has mended her ways since then, so I am not undertaking a defense of her here, but, since it's hard to tell from screenshots, I think for context it should be noted that those posts are from 2012.
posted by praemunire at 7:53 AM on October 19, 2022 [4 favorites]

This woman’s online behavior has been breathtaking in its audacity

*caucacity
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 8:22 AM on October 19, 2022 [7 favorites]

The milkshake duck has bird flu.

Or, actually, it's amazing that this milkshake duck somehow doesn't have bird flu yet.

I suppose the joke gets a bit grim when you cite the advice of scientists and doctors about what to do when the milkshake duck gets the bird flu.
posted by shenkerism at 9:02 AM on October 19, 2022 [2 favorites]

This woman’s online behavior has been breathtaking in its audacity

*caucacity

**caw-cawcity
posted by shenkerism at 9:02 AM on October 19, 2022 [3 favorites]

large mesh covers to their bird's enclosures

This was also something people in the US did during last year's avian flu epidemic--cover all bird coops, runs, etc. or confine all birds completely indoors while the flu was moving through wild populations. I follow one person on Tumblr who successfully confined her entire flock of a dozen plus peacocks in a barn for several months--no one was happy, but the birds stayed safe.

I'm glad that my pet species of choice are mostly things that can live indoors with me, where I can bar contact with wildlife, but also: look, avian influenza isn't anything to fuck with, not only because of the risk to humans but also because it is incredibly transmissible and dangerous to other domestic flocks and it spreads super easily. Obviously, it's harder to keep wildlife out of a large enclosure, as for an emu... but if avian influenza is known to be in the area and you know that you're having wild birds visiting without being able to cordon your own stock away from them, it's wise to either make peace with potentially losing your animals or to figure out how to corral them somewhere where they cannot come into contact with wild birds or their feces. Them's the breaks.

Especially goddamn geese, since waterfowl are some of the most likely spreaders of avian influenza.
posted by sciatrix at 9:07 AM on October 19, 2022 [5 favorites]

This over-sentimentalization of animals is something that's been hard for me to deal with on the wider internet; people not only treat animals as humans but sometimes seem to be causing them additional suffering by refusing to euthanize very sick animals. As the human in the relationship it is your responsibility to make the hard choices and do the hard things! That's the deal. Refusing to let go of a suffering animal to save yourself pain is not loving.

Possibly endangering yourself, lots of other people and animals because your sick animal is part of a serious viral epidemic is even worse.

But saying a lot of that on Twitter can get you brigaded by people assuming you want to mass euthanize any pets who get sick or something.
posted by emjaybee at 9:08 AM on October 19, 2022 [17 favorites]

Regarding Hendra--out of curiosity, what was the case with the man who died? Every human fatality case I can find from Hendra infection is either veterinary professionals exposed in the course of their work or a mess of Thoroughbred trainers that contracted the infection in the initial outbreak in the 1990s, before anyone could reasonably have been expected to predict it.

Mind, it's not as if you can't do anything about Hendra, either; quite apart from not pasturing your horses where fruit bats are known to roost, there's a perfectly effective vaccine for horses that has been out for about ten years now. There actually are things we can do for pet and domesticated animals to prevent disease from wild populations besides just culling them (or even the wild carriers) outright, which is what makes it even more frustrating when people do stupid things that risk the lives of themselves or others.
posted by sciatrix at 9:22 AM on October 19, 2022

Emjaybee, absolutely. Even worse in this case, as she may have been coddling the sick bird as much to get more clicks and extend her celebrity as to help the animal.
posted by tiny frying pan at 9:23 AM on October 19, 2022 [1 favorite]

Are there bird flu vaccines?
posted by eviemath at 9:40 AM on October 19, 2022

On that note, @Elasmo_Gal: The deeper you dive into Emmanuel's (the emu) owner and the whole brand, the sketchier it gets. Also reading all the bird experts being like...this is the opposite of how you should be responding to an avian flu outbreak is...sus fo sho. So that's been ruined for me lol

This one i have less clarity on, especially because I'm not giving her the clicks, but tracking the thread and related, it seems she's claiming all (?) of her birds are dead except for the star emu, as well as going ahead with her Emmanuel branded beer (physical) launch, and those who've been aware of her socmed career to date seems to be thinking she's prepping to swerve from this persona. Some claims that even the farm was a new thing (?) Anyway, I expect there'll be more development that we'll know about, since she seems to be one of those who lives in the limelight.

those posts are from 2012

One of the threads I linked in the comments (the one with hypertext 'further down') jumped on her appropriative language used in her current persona.
posted by cendawanita at 9:47 AM on October 19, 2022 [4 favorites]

No, for much the same reason that human influenza vaccines are... difficult: influenza changes constantly, and vaccinations have to essentially guesstimate how things are going to change across whole populations and forecast how the viruses will change far enough ahead of time to manufacture and distribute vaccines. Because so much of avian influenza is happening and evolving in wild populations, it's really hard to come up with a vaccination strategy for it. It's easier to focus very hard on prevention, quarantine, and aggressive biosecurity (which includes culling all birds on the property when it's discovered in domestic populations, at least in the US).

Note that avian influenza isn't only a huge problem because of the risk for bird-human transmission (although that is a very dangerous possibility, one that tends to result in particularly dangerous human flu strains), but also because avian influenza can absolutely decimate production poultry operations. This spring and summer, the turkey flocks in North America were hard enough hit by avian influenza that turkey is currently about half again as expensive as it was last year; chicken flocks were also badly effected, and poultry prices have risen in part because of the damage to the food supply. We're talking something like 50 million birds killed this year as a consequence of influenza infections. It is intensely hard on agriculture.
posted by sciatrix at 9:51 AM on October 19, 2022 [2 favorites]

Having an internet career must be the most stressful thing possible.

Oh god, quite aside from the fact that this woman in particular is apparently quite awful, I just can't imagine the stress that comes with being an "influencer" and literally monetizing and commodifying your own day-to-day life. One wrong move or opinion, which for most people would go unnoticed, can end your entire career and blow up your personal life at the same time.

But, in some ways, unlike more traditional celebrity types, the constant gaze upon you is one of your own making rather than an unfortunate by-product of being talented enough to become some sort of famous celebrity.
posted by asnider at 10:07 AM on October 19, 2022 [6 favorites]

Nearly half of the planet’s bird species are in decline, according to a definitive report that paints the grimmest picture yet of the destruction of avian life.

The State of the World’s Birds report, which is released every four years by BirdLife International, shows that the expansion and intensification of agriculture is putting pressure on 73% of species. Logging, invasive species, exploitation of natural resources and climate breakdown are the other main threats.

Globally, 49% of bird species are declining, one in eight are threatened with extinction and at least 187 species are confirmed or suspected to have gone extinct since 1500. Most of these have been endemic species living on islands, although there is an increase in birds now going extinct on larger land masses, particularly in tropical regions. In Ethiopia, for example, the conversion of grassland to farmland has caused an 80% decrease in endemic Liben larks since 2007. Just 6% of bird species globally are increasing.

Since 1970, 2.9 billion individual birds (29% of the total) have been destroyed in North America. The picture is just as bleak in other parts of the world – since 1980, 600 million birds (19%) have been destroyed in Europe, with previously abundant species such as the common swift, common snipe and rook among those slipping towards extinction. Europe’s farmland birds have shown the most significant declines: 57% have disappeared as a result of increased mechanisation, use of chemicals and converting land into crops. In Australia, 43% of abundant seabird species have declined between 2000 and 2016.

Dr Stuart Butchart, chief scientist at BirdLife International, said: “We have to stop these declines and start getting on track for recovery. Our future, as well as the world’s birds, depends on it. If we continue to unravel the fabric of life, we’re going to continue to place our own future at threat.”

Half of world’s bird species in decline as destruction of avian life intensifies -- State of the World’s Birds report warns human actions and climate crisis putting 49% in decline, with one in eight bird species under threat of extinction
posted by y2karl at 10:25 AM on October 19, 2022 [2 favorites]

The report is not all gloom. According to BirdLife, between 21 and 32 bird species would have gone extinct since 1993 without conservation work. It cites the creation of a new seabird haven the size of France in the North Atlantic, estimated to protect 5 million birds.

posted by y2karl at 10:37 AM on October 19, 2022 [2 favorites]

What a disappointment.
posted by Faint of Butt at 11:56 AM on October 19, 2022 [1 favorite]

In case there’s any confusion: there’s a totally separate emu influencer (the owner of Useless Farm, Karen, and Stanley) who has nothing to do with the above.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 12:32 PM on October 19, 2022 [7 favorites]

there’s a totally separate emu influencer

Emunfluencer? (Emunfluenza?)
posted by The Tensor at 1:33 PM on October 19, 2022 [1 favorite]

For people who want cute emu content without the racism or the cavalier approach to disease,

I recommend this twitter account:

Foxfeather Zenkova @foxfeather
Artist, falconer, yak-wrangler, beekeeper, owned-by-emus. Licensed wildlife rehabilitator and educator, focusing on vulture conservation http://Vultureconservancy.org

They take preventing the spread of bird flu very seriously, not least because they're a wildlife rehabilitator.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 5:44 PM on October 19, 2022 [8 favorites]

I’m not saying it’s not her, but am I the only one who’s noticed that the racist tweets come from a different account? There’s a one-letter difference in the account name. I haven’t seen anyone address that. (Although tbf, I haven’t been paying close attention to any of this, maybe somebody did do the research, or maybe she admitted it was her, I dunno.)
posted by MexicanYenta at 1:20 AM on October 20, 2022

She is contemporaneously using racial language on her ticktocks. I don’t know why people are so quick to jump to the defense of white women who they have no evidence have changed and just like a vague hope that in the absence of evidence that they’ve changed. Well, in this case, you can read many many black women talking about how the use of the word “stud” by white lesbians (as this woman is and does) is really fucked up and not ok. It ties into slavery and who gets to reclaim language, it’s not some benign version of appropriation.

That she has gotten clever enough not to put the n word on Twitter anymore is that she has gotten pushback from *white* people about that. The things she *continues* to do are things that only black and other POC have been calling out. That, in of itself, tells you what you need to know. If only the voices of white people will make you change your behavior, that is racism.
posted by Bottlecap at 1:45 AM on October 20, 2022 [8 favorites]

I’m not saying it’s not her, but am I the only one who’s noticed that the racist tweets come from a different account?

Someone asked the same question here, and fwiw, the reply directly under:This is her! I followed her during that era of her life and that’s exactly what she looked like/was like haha

ETA (clicked too soon): another reply with screencaps - they're the same person, it was her old account before blowing up on Vine

(I recall seeing similar comments in my twitter fugue state yesterday but this is a fresh search/trawling result)
posted by cendawanita at 2:14 AM on October 20, 2022 [1 favorite]

I don’t know why people are so quick to jump to the defense of white women who they have no evidence have changed and just like a vague hope that in the absence of evidence that they’ve changed.

I think some of it is that it's just hard to see the weight of an entire culture's racism being placed on the shoulders of a young person, and then being asked to make a moral judgment about the person. Like, I have no investment in this particular woman; her whole thing strikes me as just weird and ephemeral in a way I'm probably just too old to grasp. But the stuff people were posting about her past was so recognizable. White kids grow up in a culture that worships, despises, imitates and digests black culture, that provides them with an entire problematic vocabulary, and there's a learning curve and a choice there, and if you've spent your life on the internet, then your choice can always be called into question, because people can bring up the stuff from prior to that.

But it's hard to know what to do with Bottlecap's comment--essentially saying that Blake's growth is a trick. It could be true! We know it happens! How many times have we seen the tearful confessions, the promises to learn and do better next time?

Harder still is when people ask you to make judgments based on particular actions that reveal a difference in one's definitions and thresholds for what counts as a racist act. Can you imagine being a straight white person being confronted with the controversy over the word "stud"? A word that likely has no racial overtones to you at all, a word that is widely deployed without racial overtones by straight culture? "Here's this word you're not allowed to use to describe white lesbians." "But I can still use it to describe straight white guys?" "Sure." "And gay white guys?" "Certainly." "But not--" "No, never."

I imagine a lot of the white people confronting this, give up right there and say, "Fine, she's a racist," or, "That's ridiculous, no she's not," as a way of not having to think through the issues of appropriation any further. Or, the even easier choice, to pretend we're in a courtroom and be like, "I demand more evidence before we convict this innocent child of a heinous crime!"

These controversies always seem to ask you, as a member of the privileged class, to do the simple thing--to render the judgment and move on--in a way that doesn't feel particularly useful, because you don't have to think, you don't have to examine yourself, your own past, or your culture. You never have to engage on a deeper level. But it's kind of the perfect moment to spend some time thinking about just that, which to me seems like a more useful thing than, y'know, hating on yet another internet person.
posted by mittens at 7:10 AM on October 20, 2022 [8 favorites]

These controversies always seem to ask you, as a member of the privileged class, to do the simple thing--to render the judgment and move on--

I wasn't aware the synonym for "taking the word of a community that some actions are hurtful" is "rendering judgment and move on"?
posted by cendawanita at 7:48 AM on October 20, 2022 [8 favorites]

All of this hand-wringing about not knowing how to deal with/think through this type of appropriative racism would ring more true if more effort was given to listening to those of us that do not have issues dealing with/thinking through this type of appropriative racism.

Black folks consistently point out this type of anti-blackness and white folks consistently demand more evidence/the benefit of the doubt/education on how to process.

How many times can we say "I told you so," before we just say fuck it, and let you continue to not figure it out.
posted by anansi at 8:20 AM on October 20, 2022 [7 favorites]

I wasn't aware the synonym for "taking the word of a community that some actions are hurtful" is "rendering judgment and move on"?

I mean, when I read the links you posted earlier, "Alls I'm saying is, what does it take to be voted off the 'quirky content creator' island?" and "why y’all keep letting this racist bitch come back to the internet" sound like requests to render a judgment?
posted by mittens at 8:42 AM on October 20, 2022 [1 favorite]

Hmmm, yes i can see how the different register can throw you off. I've been reading them as information and learning (being neither american nor lesbian), but also to contextualize her online presence (because all that behaviour was in service of building socmed fame), such that her KISSING A DISEASED ANIMAL makes sense, for her.

But i want to emphasize, I'm neither American nor lesbian. I'm neither white nor black. What is it that I'm able to get, being also at least a majoritarian in my home country with our own racisms, that seems to trouble you (guys) so?
posted by cendawanita at 8:47 AM on October 20, 2022 [2 favorites]

Does anyone know exactly how Blake used the term “stud?” I haven’t been able to find her comment in the Twitter threads.
posted by Comet Bug at 12:02 PM on October 20, 2022

It's my understanding (and per Bottlecap's comment) her current active home is TikTok so if they happened it's there.
posted by cendawanita at 12:33 PM on October 20, 2022

I’m sure it doesn’t belong in the thread itself, but could someone memail me a link to alternate meanings of “stud” (or a starting point, at least - once I know some search terms to narrow down a search with lots of noise, I can follow links tolerably well)? Thanks!
posted by eviemath at 1:29 PM on October 20, 2022

Yeah, I think some disconnect is happening because it’s fucking HARD to find receipts on tictok (which is a reason a lot of people have migrated there - they’ve said as much!) so there’s less accountability than just being able to do a keyword search. You have to watch hours of videos thereby wasting YOUR time and also boosting THEIR relevance so more people get fed their content. So people wants tweets and then the tweets are old because all the current stuff is in video. So … I am not doing that and ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ it is what it is.
posted by Bottlecap at 1:33 PM on October 20, 2022 [5 favorites]

I don’t know why people are so quick to jump to the defense of white women who they have no evidence have changed and just like a vague hope that in the absence of evidence that they’ve changed.

Well, I'm not going to determine anyone is "openly and unapologetically [bigoted of whatever variety]" in the present day based on ten-year-old tweets from someone who must've been...what? 20? 21?...at the time. I don't actually think that constitutes a defense of that person (I think it's entirely fair that people continue to view her with skepticism), but I suppose you might disagree. At the very least, the information that those tweets are 10 years old isn't clear from the screenshots and is relevant if you're deciding what to think, which is why I thought it was worth noting. (Not that anyone was trying to be deceptive here; you really can't tell; I didn't know how old they were until I read the article, I had thought they were much more recent.) I'm still having trouble parsing the other links, but I guess that's the TikTok thing.
posted by praemunire at 2:10 PM on October 20, 2022

It seems like something people are missing is that “stud” in a lesbian context is not a pet name. It’s the label for an archetype, comparable to “bear” among gay men (with a different meaning). The term is exclusive to Black lesbians, which anyone who knows the term in that context would know. A white lesbian claiming that identity, if that is what happened, is not a subtle error.
posted by Comet Bug at 2:59 PM on October 20, 2022 [4 favorites]

That is exactly the definition or context that I, personally, was missing when someone brought up the term “stud” in this thread, having not clicked on any tictok videos and having never heard the term used in non-hetero-masculine contexts before. Still not fully understanding the connotations (though I don’t need to understand something personally in order to understand that someone is telling me it is negative or hurtful to them!), so still kinda hoping for help getting filled in on the relevant details. But, again, that’s not something that needs to be (or should be) in this thread.
posted by eviemath at 4:54 PM on October 20, 2022

I’m another cishet white guy who had no idea that “stud” is an insult (?) in the Black Lesbian subcommunity. I have lesbian family members who were partnered with black women for many years.

Should Blake have known this? The main admonishing tweet thread linked several times is a Black woman assuming Blake should have known this and she is obviously being intentionally racist. I’m not sure I’m convinced.

If my math is correct, she posted the concerning tweets from 2012 as a 14-15 year old.
posted by Warren Terra at 10:05 PM on October 20, 2022

I’m another cishet white guy who had no idea that “stud” is an insult (?) in the Black Lesbian subcommunity.

It's not. It's an identity term, in way analogous to 'bear' in gay male circles. This is clearly explained upthread.

And it isn't surprising that you, as a cishet white guy, don't know that. That someone outside of queer culture can't be expected know or recognise a thing is far from the same as it being necessarily true for an insider.

Then there's also the fact that you know, black lesbian women exist, and many are on the internet. Maybe she didn't know the first time. But there is only one first time, and my impression is that a lot of people who are much closer to the situation are saying it is part of a broader pattern, that she ignored people telling her it was problematic, and that this is typical of how her racist attitudes have operated in the past as well.

I get why so many people are knee-jerking to defensiveness. You look at this and see that you wouldn't know not to do this thing either (though really, are you in a group where this would ever come up anyway? like, maybe if you were queer you'd be less likely to not know this stuff?) but while anyone can make an honest mistake once, that doesn't tend to be when the stern dismissals come out. You're seeing the stern dismissals because it wasn't just once.
posted by Dysk at 10:32 PM on October 20, 2022 [8 favorites]

like, maybe if you were queer you'd be less likely to not know this stuff?

My ability to assimilate new happenings in queer culture dried up in approximately 1993, so what I learned as a result of this thread is, this isn't isolated to the emu person at all--apparently Black lesbians have been complaining about this a lot, around a whole subculture of white tiktok women doing essentially a masculinity minstrel act? (Echoes, then, of the way white gays hoovered up Black language and mannerisms, or at least stereotypes thereof, especially by way of drag balls?)

So you've essentially got not only the appropriation itself, on both an individual and a wider-scale level, but if those women are getting clicks and views, there's the social media pressure to continue and refine the work, and if you're not doing that act yourself, suddenly pressure to try it out. (Someone out there is saying well, yeah, where have you been and I'll just point back at the first few words of this comment.)

I'm really struck by Bottlecap's point about searchability. I'd been thinking, if you did your appropriation act on a searchable platform, it's there forever and even if you learn your lesson and change, someone can bring up your past actions anytime they like, but knowing the reverse is true--that your current bad acts can easily be hidden because the platform has no memory, is amazing. Like, we talk about nazi pipelines and stuff all the time, but here we've got, if not that, at least a ratchet mechanism by which someone can get more and more offensive without the larger public being able to see it. So bringing social pressure to bear becomes very tricky because you can't show people what's going on.

(I suppose one answer to that would be to create your own tiktok that quotes the offensive appropriation so it doesn't get hidden, but...that seems like an awfully thin and limited tool.)
posted by mittens at 5:45 AM on October 21, 2022 [2 favorites]

the emu girl is extraordinarily racist and there are receipts easily googleable from 2012, sure, and also 2015/2019/2020, probably more.

not surprised to see reflexive defense of racist white women in here, but it is embarrassing every time.
posted by lazaruslong at 7:16 AM on October 21, 2022 [7 favorites]

not surprised to see reflexive defense of racist white women in here

Having read the thread to this point, that's definitely the least charitable interpretation of the conversation. I read it as some people being hesitant to join yet another rush to judgment on a person with a lot of social media visibility, based on what other people say about them. It's not racist to simply not take someone else's word for it, when being asked to think terribly about another human being. Some in the thread have taken the time and energy to explain why this isn't just hearsay or a crowd rushing to judgment--and, importantly, why that might not be obvious to others, even when the receipts are presented--so that we may also see what you see. I am grateful to those commenters.
posted by LooseFilter at 7:37 AM on October 21, 2022

Why is the argument about the word "stud" when she also dropped a whole bunch of n-bombs, ignoring people who told her to stop?
posted by Selena777 at 7:56 AM on October 21, 2022 [8 favorites]

I’m not seeing an argument about the word “stud”? Personally, I asked for info out-of-thread about its use because I wasn’t familiar with that context, and didn’t ask about the n-word because I know the history and context there. I fully believe folks that she used it in a racist manner even without having that background knowledge myself.

I think the main point you were aiming for, though, is that a white person throwing around n-bombs should be more than sufficient on its own for everyone to understand that she’s acting in a racist manner? Which, yeah, hopefully that is obvious to everyone in the thread; though I suspect due to the discrepancy in number of mentions, some folks might have missed that detail. Sorry for contributing to said discrepancy.
posted by eviemath at 10:08 AM on October 21, 2022

The comment wasn't targeted towards you in particular, just the general direction of the thread regarding the matter. You did accurately interpret my main point, though.
posted by Selena777 at 10:36 AM on October 21, 2022 [1 favorite]

You know and I’m just gonna say - there’s literally so many white people who have never been throwing around n-bombs, ever in their entire life. There’s so many who have never defended doing so. It is ENTIRELY reasonable to feel wary of white people who have acted this way and never apologized for it. Like it’s weird the number of people acting like 2012 was a time in history when people didn’t know it was wrong to use the n-word.
posted by Bottlecap at 10:38 AM on October 21, 2022 [12 favorites]

It's not racist to simply not take someone else's word for it, when being asked to think terribly about another human being.

It's not! What's really...um, suspect...is leaping to defend someone you don't know online when other people are informing you of their racism. Go check it out if you don't believe sources here, but defending automatically is...genuinely...a bad look.
posted by tiny frying pan at 1:04 PM on October 21, 2022 [1 favorite]

Emmanuel the Emu Never Had Bird Flu
posted by blue suede stockings at 3:34 AM on October 25, 2022 [1 favorite]

How fortuitous! RIP to the rest of the (conveniently) dead birds of hers tho.
posted by cendawanita at 3:46 AM on October 25, 2022 [2 favorites]