“Your name is Tasbeeh. Don’t let them call you by anything else.”
My mother speaks to me in Arabic; the command sounds more forceful in her mother tongue, a Libyan dialect that is all sharp edges and hard, guttural sounds. I am seven years old and it has never occurred to me to disobey my mother. Until twelve years old, I would believe God gave her the supernatural ability to tell when I’m lying.
“Don’t let them give you an English nickname,” my mother insists once again, “I didn’t raise amreekan.”
My mother spits out this last word with venom. Amreekan. Americans. It sounds like a curse coming out of her mouth. Eight years in this country and she’s still not convinced she lives here. She wears her headscarf tightly around her neck, wades across the school lawn in long, floor-skimming skirts. Eight years in this country and her tongue refuses to bend and soften for the English language. It embarrasses me, her heavy Arab tongue, wrapping itself so forcefully around the clumsy syllables of English, strangling them out of their meaning.
But she is fierce and fearless. I have never heard her apologize to anyone. She will hold up long grocery lines checking and double-checking the receipt in case they’re trying to cheat us. My humiliation is heavy enough for the both of us. My English is not. Sometimes I step away, so people don’t know we’re together but my dark hair and skin betray me as a member of her tribe.
On my first day of school, my mother presses a kiss to my cheek.
“Your name is Tasbeeh,” she says again, like I’ve forgotten. “Tasbeeh.”
ii.
Roll call is the worst part of my day. After a long list of Brittanys, Jonathans, Ashleys, and Yen-but-call-me-Jens, the teacher rests on my name in silence. She squints. She has never seen this combination of letters strung together in this order before. They are incomprehensible. What is this h doing at the end? Maybe it is a typo.
“Tas…?”
“Tasbeeh,” I mutter, with my hand half up in the air. “Tasbeeh.”
A pause.
“Do you go by anything else?”
“No,” I say. “Just Tasbeeh. Tas-beeh.”
“Tazbee. All right. Alex?”
She moves on before I can correct her. She said it wrong. She said it so wrong. I have never heard my name said so ugly before, like it’s a burden. Her entire face contorts as she says it, like she is expelling a distasteful thing from her mouth. She avoids saying it for the rest of the day, but she has already baptized me with this new name. It is the name everyone knows me by, now, for the next six years I am in elementary school. “Tazbee,” a name with no grace, no meaning, no history; it belongs in no language.
“Tazbee,” says one of the students on the playground, later. “Like Tazmanian Devil?” Everyone laughs. I laugh too. It is funny, if you think about it.
iii.
I do not correct anyone for years. One day, in third grade, a plane flies above our school.
“Your dad up there, Bin Laden?” The voice comes from behind. It is dripping in derision.
“My name is Tazbee,” I say. I said it in this heavy English accent, so he may know who I am. I am American. But when I turn around they are gone.
iv.
I go to middle school far, far away. It is a 30-minute drive from our house. It’s a beautiful set of buildings located a few blocks off the beach. I have never in my life seen so many blond people, so many colored irises. This is a school full of Ashtons and Penelopes, Patricks and Sophias. Beautiful names that belong to beautiful faces. The kind of names that promise a lifetime of social triumph.
I am one of two headscarved girls at this new school. We are assigned the same gym class. We are the only ones in sweatpants and long-sleeved undershirts. We are both dreading roll call. When the gym teacher pauses at my name, I am already red with humiliation.
“How do I say your name?” she asks.
“Tazbee,” I say.
“Can I just call you Tess?”
I want to say yes. Call me Tess. But my mother will know, somehow. She will see it written in my eyes. God will whisper it in her ear. Her disappointment will overwhelm me.
“No,” I say, “Please call me Tazbee.”
I don’t hear her say it for the rest of the year.
v.
My history teacher calls me Tashbah for the entire year. It does not matter how often I correct her, she reverts to that misshapen sneeze of a word. It is the ugliest conglomeration of sounds I have ever heard.
When my mother comes to parents’ night, she corrects her angrily, “Tasbeeh. Her name is Tasbeeh.” My history teacher grimaces. I want the world to swallow me up.
vi.
My college professors don’t even bother. I will only know them for a few months of the year. They smother my name in their mouths. It is a hindrance for their tongues. They hand me papers silently. One of them mumbles it unintelligibly whenever he calls on my hand. Another just calls me “T.”
My name is a burden. My name is a burden. My name is a burden. I am a burden.
vii.
On the radio I hear a story about a tribe in some remote, rural place that has no name for the color blue. They do not know what the color blue is. It has no name so it does not exist. It does not exist because it has no name.
viii.
At the start of a new semester, I walk into a math class. My teacher is blond and blue-eyed. I don’t remember his name. When he comes to mine on the roll call, he takes the requisite pause. I hold my breath.
“How do I pronounce your name?” he asks.
I say, “Just call me Tess.”
“Is that how it’s pronounced?”
I say, “No one’s ever been able to pronounce it.”
“That’s probably because they didn’t want to try,” he said. “What is your name?”
When I say my name, it feels like redemption. I have never said it this way before. Tasbeeh. He repeats it back to me several times until he’s got it. It is difficult for his American tongue. His has none of the strength, none of the force of my mother’s. But he gets it, eventually, and it sounds beautiful. I have never heard it sound so beautiful. I have never felt so deserving of a name. My name feels like a crown.
ix.
“Thank you for my name, mama.”
x.
When the barista asks me my name, sharpie poised above the coffee cup, I tell him: “My name is Tasbeeh. It’s a tough t clinging to a soft a, which melts into a silky ssss, which loosely hugs the b, and the rest of my name is a hard whisper — eeh. Tasbeeh. My name is Tasbeeh. Hold it in your mouth until it becomes a prayer. My name is a valuable undertaking. My name requires your rapt attention. Say my name in one swift note – Tasbeeeeeeeh – sand let the h heat your throat like cinnamon. Tasbeeh. My name is an endeavor. My name is a song. Tasbeeh. It means giving glory to God. Tasbeeh. Wrap your tongue around my name, unravel it with the music of your voice, and give God what he is due."
Many of you have probably heard of Paul Dini’s interview on Kevin Smith’s Fatman On Batman podcast, where Dini comments that shows on Cartoon Network with large female followings were actually being canceled, because ‘girls don’t buy the toys.’ So the network wants shows that appeal primarily to boys, at least in the superhero genre.
This is incredibly ignorant on many levels. Girls don’t buy genre stuff? Are these people THAT out of touch?
I have experienced some of this myself. A couple examples that spring to mind are:
1) The Wonder Woman animated film did not make as much money as some other DC animated films at first. However, over time, it outgrossed many of the other DC films. Keep in mind, it was competing with animated films that had major live action movies going at the same time…Batman, Superman, Green Lantern, etc. It outgrossed the Green Lantern animated films. But for inexplicable reasons, that is never mentioned…all that is ever mentioned is that it didn’t hit big right out of the gate. Neither did MOST of the animated films, but for some reason, only Wonder Woman is held accountable, despite making more money over time.
2) I also experienced some of this in talks with Disney right before they purchased Marvel. They asked me to develop tv ideas for them, interestingly NOT because I was female, not for a female audience, they wanted a BOY audience, and they felt I could help deliver that with good action stories. I bring this up because it’s interesting…people who are mad there’s no Black Widow film in the planning,(understandably) are upset.
But my meeting with Disney tells an interesting picture. The executive I spoke with put it very bluntly, to his credit. He said that at one time, Disney OWNED the boys’ adventure market on television. But over time, they had more and more success with programming for girls. To the point where boys actively started avoiding the Disney brand.
You think they bought Marvel and Star Wars for purely the intellectual properties, you would only be partially correct. They bought those properties to make Disney cool for boys again. To own the boys’ adventure market like they felt they already owned the market for girls’ progra…
This idea that girls don’t buy toys is completely and totally ridiculous even now. The companies don’t even have to change anything!
I was working at Pixar when Disney bought them and brought John Lasseter in as Chief Creative Officer, and the rumor was that Disney said he could make any changes he wanted to … except to the Disney Princesses line, because selling those toys and merchandise basically paid for everything else.
Girls already buy toys! I understand there’s this “Barbie” doll that’s pretty popular. But we’re not trained to look for them in the same way and the same places boys are.
I’ve heard in several places that Young Justice was cancelled because lack of toy sales, which producers blame on the female audience, but I never saw a single toy commercial when I watched the show (there’s a reason for this*). The only reason that I knew the toys existed at all was because my husband collects toys. Once I found out about them, though I was the reason we collected every single one.
And let’s be real, the YJ toys barely even “action figures” — the toys have less articulation than a Barbie doll, so if a girl buys a Barbie doll why wouldn’t she enjoy something along the same lines with these guys? (Not that I’ve ever heard anyone go “ew I can bend his knees.”)
We just need to know they exist and that *gasp* they’re in the toy aisle that isn’t coated in pink.
*But what’s really unfortunate is that companies can’t advertise toys for a show while the show is airing - if YJ is the only show girls watch, it’s impossible for them to see toy commercials for YJ toys. What networks need is MORE shows that appeal to both boys and girls so that they can catch those eyes later and advertise, for example, YJ toys (they could have gotten us during Green Lantern, btw).
Sorry, rant over. I just owned all the Turtles and She-Ra/He-Man stuff as a kid, and I’m pretty sure girls today would join me. :(
Oh. My. Fucking. God.
Networks, do you know why girls don’t buy the toys? It’s because NO ONE MAKES THEM.
Mattel, as far as I know, still straight-up refuses to make action figures of non-movie-versions of the Avatar characters. Outside of custom sculpts and mods, you cannot find a non-movie Katara, nor Toph. I have looked. I have been looking for years.
Because it is trickier to completely omit the title character than just half the main cast, there are still no Legend of Korra action figures. None. Can you imagine how much they’re losing in revenue because of that? But they would rather completely skip the market than risk making a toy based on a female character.
Think about that. Do you know what A:TLA’s viewership and subsequent readership stats were? Do you know what A:LoK’s are? And they still refuse to make toys, because “female action figures don’t sell.” And then they cancel shows because girls don’t buy action figures that are designed, picked, and marketed to exclude them as thoroughly as possible.
Just like girls will read comics if the comics are worthwhile and well marketed, girls will buy toys if the toys are fun and engaging and linked to properties they care about. Fuck, boys will buy toys linked to those properties, too—look at My Little Pony. Look at the number of worn-out and beloved Princess Leia figures in shoeboxes in my peers’ parents’ attics.
Networks, IP owners, the reason girls don’t buy those toys is that your licensing partners are shitty at their jobs. Ditch them, not the shows. And certainly not the audience.
so not only did she not take what you said about how you feel into account, but she also invaded your privacy. i am very quickly coming to dislike this woman.
There are a lot of problems facing social justice movements today, but this is the biggest one. Because it’s holding us back internally. People learn and read about social issues and oppression and abuse online and suddenly they think they know everything. And of course they’re angry - there’s a lot to be angry about. And yes, it’s a great, wonderful thing that they’re aware and are working to better themselves.
But omgosh, please just stop trying to teach it and spread it because you are doing it wrong. Lashing out and yelling out buzzwords and SJ jargon and calling people racist and sexist and writing people off with no compassion - these are literally the opposite of what we should be doing. Anyone who’s actually been trained in social justice, SJ communication, facilitation and dialogue sees that and gets embarrassed to be associated with that form of “social justice.”
Because it’s not social justice. It’s not fighting racism and sexism and classism and homophobia. All it’s doing it’s turning people off, closing their minds further and making everyone who knows what they’re doing look bad. All it’s doing is spreading more hate, more negativity and generally making everyone feel like shit about themselves - except of course for the OP, who feels great about themselves for supposedly doing their part and helping the movement.
But they’re not. All they’re helping is the oppressive structure holding everyone back.
I’ve been there. I’ve been pissed off and angry and lashing out at everyone and everything. And it bit me in the ass more times than I can tell you. So I stopped and I learned. I was trained in social justice education by the university that developed the most widely accepted program for social justice education. I have practical experience, both in my daily life and in dialogue, that proves that these methods are not only better, but the only ones that actually work.
That showing compassion for agents and those who are uneducated gets you much farther than writing them off as hateful assholes and refusing to teach them in a way they can understand. That listening to where a person is coming from is far more important than listening to what they say. That we must all understand that most *people* are not maliciously racist/sexist/classist/ableist, but the society we were all raised in *is*.
We are all trying to work within this structure set in place long before any of our great grandparents were born and we all have our own starting point on the journey.
The other, possibly biggest and most widespread problem among the untrained crowd is the complete and total lack of understanding of teacher/learner. You do not know everything. You only know your own experiences. That’s it. In order to actually teach someone about social justice, you have to teach them about your own experiences. In order to do that, you must be willing to learn theirs, too. You must have compassion and empathy or you will get nowhere. This is literally the most important thing I ever learned and it’s the one that I see lacking the most in online SJ.
Now this is specifically directed at fandoms (and more specifically the Teen Wolf fandom, which I call home) but this is a message for everyone. It pains me to see the field that I am so incredibly passionate about get dragged through the mud because people who consider themselves to be a part of it do such horrible things in such horrible ways. Online SJ has a bad name because it has earned it and I cannot tell you how much I hate that. Social justice is not only my work, but it is also my life. I will not stand any longer for people abusing it and using it to spread hate.
THIS.
OPEN LETTER TO EVERY FUCKING FANDOM ON TUMBLR/TWITTER, GODDAMMIT. GET A GRIP, FUCKING HELL.
Oh god can I just reblog this once a week so EVERYONE gets to fucking read it?
Tumblr “social justice” is a fucking travesty that values self-righteous fury as an argument sufficient unto itself and devalues careful, measured reasoning as “coddling bigots.” That praises and rewards the shutting-down of communication. That teaches smug superiority and frowns on compassion and empathy. That took “lashing out in anger is an unproductive but somewhat excusable reaction to injustice, and is not a reason to dismiss a sound argument” and dragged it into the realm of “everyone subject to systematic oppression has an absolute right to lash out in anger to whatever extent they please, and no one else has the right to criticize their behavior or be hurt by it,” and thence into an echo chamber where performative displays of anger become the goal of communication.
I’m not pretending to sainthood here. Getting patted on the butt for a righteous smackdown is dangerously seductive, especially when you have a short temper on certain subjects. And the danger of this particular echo chamber is that it’s easy for normal, intelligent, well-meaning people to get sucked into it. But it’s not a healthy model of communication. Healthy models of communication (a) encourage empathy and reasoned dialogue and frown on incoherent rage explosions, and (b) treat anger, rudeness and cruelty as undesireable but sometimes excusable—in proportion to the provocation and the circumstances. Tumblr “social justice” rejects any notion of proportionate response and has its priorities in communication neatly reversed.
My friend who did actual work in social justice long long before the internet gets really embarrassed and disturbed by what gets called social justice around here sometimes.
well not every show needs 25 straight white carbon copies of the same characters from every other show ever aired in the history of television yet here we are with ten thousand of you on tv and one of me if I’m lucky
how dare you eat a feast, throw me a bone while I’m starving, and then tell me to be happy that I’m finally equal to you you spoiled entitled brat
hobbits physically need the sun in order to survive. and during the journey bilbo was barely able to get a decent dose of sunshine, so when the company is at beorn's, he walks to a secluded place in the garden -where pesky dwarf are not going to bother him- and takes a lovely sunbath. thorin, who was also taking his daily majestic walk of sulking, happens to encounter a very naked and satisfied hobbit laying in the grass. and bilbo is too happy to feel shy so he is all like 'sup'
