I'm Cheeza Ryuurei, a Belgian lolita interested in elegance,literature,anime,
manga,
visual kei,harry potter,ect.
This tumblr gathers everything that I like,that made me laugh or that inspires me and also my personnel life.
first off, note-a-bear has a great post on how those dreadlocks that the Celts were supposedly wearing actually weren’t dreadlocks as we define them today. that’s when shit like historical context and knowing of what the fuck you speak come into play.
but here’s the thing. the Celts were a really long fucking time ago. and it was one ethnic group amongst MANY of ancient Europe. now, i don’t do Ancient European Shit so i’ll leave it to someone who does to be a bit more detailed but at the end of the day, if you as a descendent of Europeans (i.e. if you as a WHITE PERSON) can only name ONE. ethnic group. that you are more than likely not directly descended from? that invalidates your argument that dreads/tats/body mod was a European “thing.” Just because ONE group of Europeans at one point did it, *does not make it a part of the culture*.
conversely, how many ethnic groups in Africa practice scarring, or piercing, or tattooing, or wear dreadlocks? How many indigenous groups in the Americas? In the Pacific Islands? hint: WAY more than just ONE. a SHIT ton. *more than* europeans ever did.
thusly, dreads/tatts/mods is NOT a european cultural tradition. it’s just not. repeatedly referencing the exception to the rule does not make the exception the rule. it just makes you an supremacist, appropriating jackass.
like, if dreads/tats/body mods really was a European thing, wouldn’t we have seen MORE of that shit? like, wouldn’t maybe early modern Europeans *at the least* still be into it? but no. you don’t see dreads/tats in Renaissance artwork, you don’t see it being worn by King Henry or some shit, you don’t see any baroque-era symphonies with “tattoo” in the title or some shit………like, throughout the cultural products that modern europe has put forth since rome fell, dreads/tatts/mods are nowhere to be found, and that would be the place that they would be found.
but you know when europeans did start writing about tatts? when they starting going to places where brown and black people lived. and there’s a long history behind tattoos and colonization specifically that i’m not going to rehash here, but what do you think made tattoos taboo in western society to *begin* with? it was the fact that the only people who got tattoos were those savage, bestial, filthy natives and the heathen sailors who steered the ships to and fro. racism + classism. plus empire, because colonization was the reason why there were white folks in them brown folks house to begin with!
i mean, what cultural European tradition has been taboo in the west? the ballet? the english language? straight hair? like, think about it. if this really was a european heritage, do you really think it would have been as marginalized in western society as it has been?
i always think about Woodstock. like, if white folks were ever going to support dreadlocks en masse, *that* would be the time you’d see it. but you don’t. at. all.
you know when you do see white ppl starting to rock dreads, tho? after Bob Marley became an international mega superstar. but it’s not appropriation. right.
seriously, if you can find me a picture of a group of white people (from either the U.S. or Europe) wearing dreadlocks *before 1965ish*, and they *weren’t* consciously setting themselves off from the mainstream in some way (i.e. a religious cult or something) but wearing them as a cultural expression of their own culture, you win. you win everything, actually. because i’m pretty sure you’re not going to find it.
but don’t worry. i’ll wait.
ETA: i guess maybe the vikings had “dreads” too? even still, two(ish) ethnic groups a continental/racial tradition do not make. see: the rest of my post.
I’ve never come across any contemporary sources that describe Celtic hairstyles in terms of what we would understand to be dreadlocks. The descriptions I’ve read pretty much just describe them as braids or pigtails, thereby creating the lovely image of a heavily-armed hulk with a beard like a bramble patch sporting the kind of hairdo most of us would identify with schoolgirls. Same goes for the Norse. I would be very suspicious of anyone trying to claim there was a white tradition that incorporated anything like dreadlocks. Outside of Africa and places that have a large concentration of people with African heritage, the only traditions I know of that incorporate anything vaguely similar are Hinduism and some of Aztecs’ priesthood. Though I did read in an article on modern Buddhism that some Tibetan monks are now apparently favouring dreadlocks over the more traditional shaved head.
The only European thing I can think of is what’s called a Polish plait, but that doesn’t look so much like dreadlocks as it does a hairy loaf of bread.
I accidentally grew dreadlocks when I was younger. I’d finally given in to my desire to look like I belonged in an Astérix book and got all of my hair put into braids. Problem was, my hair’s near-ovine curliness gathered the tripartite braids into uniform locks before I had a chance to unbraid and wash them. I still get small ones appearing on the back of my head because I miss spots when I’m brushing my hair.
As to tattooing, that is definitely something that at the very least existed in some Norse cultures, and I know because I remember reading in Ahmad ibn Fadlan’s book that some of the Norsemen he encountered had extensive blue tattoos that I think were supposed to look like trees (probably Yggdrasil). The process probably died out when Christianity turned up, because a whole lot of cultural babies got thrown out with the so-called ‘Pagan’ bathwater. I read that there was an Irish druidic tradition of meditation that sounds incredibly similar to the meditation practiced in Zen Buddhism, and that got the chop as soon as the Roman church started throwing its weight around in Ireland. It’s a bit of a shame that a lot of practices in various European cultures that were mostly cultural were supressed in the name of misplaced religious fanaticism.
OH CHRIST WHY ARE PEOPLE STILL DOING THE “CELTIC DREADLOCKS” THING SIT DOWN AND LISTEN YOU BASTARDS
What this refers to is the IRISH - not pan-Celtic - practice of wearing their hair long at the front and short at the back, with the front part comprising of a matted lock of hair called a ‘glibbe’. And this practice is first referenced in 1596, in Spenser’s View of Ireland. So let’s just start with re-affirming the already-stated point: THIS IS NOT CELTIC. IT IS SPECIFICALLY MEDIEVAL IRISH. So if you’re claiming the ethnic right to wear dreads because you’re descended from Celts, unless you are referring to specifically people from Medieval Ireland, NO.
Now, allegedly, the Irish wore glibbes because the matting of the hair was so think they felt it basically functioned as a helmet. Quoth Spenser:
“their going to battle without Armour on their Bodies or Heads, but trusting to the Thickness of their Glibbs, the which (they say) will Sometimes bear off a good stroke”
Furthermore, the outraged Spenser alleged, the glibbes were “fit Marks as a Mantle is for a Thief”, because the Irish could simply push the glibbes back or pull them low over the eyes and so change their appearance totally in one second, thus allowing them to evade the law. This does, however, give us a pretty good idea as to style. This means if you want to wear traditional Irish glibbes, there’s the style to do it in. If you’re just wearing long dreadlocks like Bob Marley, NO.
And to be honest, the jury is still a little bit out on whether or not glibbes were specifically matted hair, or if Spenser the Racist Englishman was just trying to mock the Irish for having curly red hair that was therefore quite thick. It was probably matted, because he also goes on to lament English people appropriating the hairstyle.
But otherwise, all Celtic hair traditions revolved strongly around plaiting styles, and most likely that’s what the Romans’ ‘snake-like hair’ comment refers to, which is the other bit of 'evidence’ people like to try and cite. So yeah - if you want to have matted hair because of Cultural Reasons of Being Celtic, then first of all, you’re going to need to be descended from a very specific Celtic grouping, and secondly, you’re going to need to grow an extremely specific style. Otherwise, NO. You are just doing cultural appropriation.
One thing I will say though; while I agree with the overall message of the OP’s post and the vast majority of the details, they’ve overlooked that white people have historically oppressed each other as well as other ethnic groups, as Matty has in fact touched upon above. Nothing on the scale of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade or the Holocaust, but dominant white groups have always indulged in all forms of oppression of other white groups, up to and including genocide. While hair matting - and to my knowledge body modding - have never been aspects of any white European cultures, tattooing very much was. Again, the precise hows and whys and such are a bit garbled because historians were not good at this, but it did definitely happen among several cultures that were subsequently forced to abandon doing so by colonial incoming white groups (who considered it savage and bestial). And Celtic cultures are a good example of this.
The Insular Celts tattooed a lot, albeit not, as everyone and their dog thinks, with bloody woad, which is an astringent and will result in you having basically given yourself semi-permanent bruising if you attempt to use it. That particular myth actually came about in Elizabethan England when people realised that there was indigo in the New World, and all of Europe scrambled for reasons to lay cultural claims to it. Elizabeth One decided to say that the Celts had specifically tattooed themselves with woad, a relative of indigo, and therefore she, a Welsh queen (now that it suited her grumble grumblemutter), had a cultural claim to the new lands. Didn’t work. The Spanish pinched those ones.
But that’s an aside - the Celts probably used iron oxides. They were incredibly skilled metal workers and knew damn well what the various compounds created in their forges could do, although admittedly, they never quite worked out the copper thing. Caesar described the Picts as traditionally 'marking their faces with iron’, which scholars took to mean they scarred themselves for a long time, but probably he was referring to the tattooing.
Now - given how long ago the “Celts” lived, do their descendants still get to lay claim to tattooing practices? That’s another question. I would say yes, because the Celticness of Wales is not just a vastly important part of our national identity - it’s specifically what the English have spent a very long time trying to erase in every way they could, starting with legal systems and language and finishing these days in the wholesale appropriation of resources, both natural and cultural. We’re an oppressed group. Again, not remotely in the same way as POC, and I won’t for a minute claim otherwise. But we get a lot of micro aggressions, and a lot of more obvious prejudice even today. My parents once tried to live in Birmingham in England. It took them three months to find a little shitty flat to live in, because my Dad had a Welsh name. Landlords and estate agents would be all keen and all systems go until it came to taking details; then my Mam would give her name, fine; then my Dad would give his, and the landlord would tell them oops, sorry, the flat actually went five minutes ago. Forgot. I’ve known people be kicked out of shops in England for speaking Welsh in them. I’ve known people not get jobs for either having a Welsh name, or for having a Welsh accent come the interview.
All that said though, of course, I think it’s indescribably important to be careful of exactly what you get tattooed onto your body. I knew a girl in uni - Welsh - who, in our first year, decided to get a tattoo. She went for possibly the most culturally-appropriative thing I’ve ever seen - a “tribal” design with an ugly coloured jewel in the middle, on her lower back. It meant nothing; it was just a pretty design she liked. I think it was probably inspired by Maori art, but Christ on a bike I doubt the Maori ever designed anything that ugly.
Whereas I’ve got another friend whom I’ve long talked to about cultural appropriation in tattoo culture, and how your tattoos should at least thematically link in some way if you get more than one (that part’s merely personal opinion), and when she eventually decided to get tattooed she therefore went for Celtic designs in dark blue ink, and meticulously researched the meaning behind each as best we know. When she adds more, they’re always the same - Celtic designs in blue. Plus she now looks like a fucking warrior naked.
And I think that’s completely okay. We’re of a culture that was banned from doing such things by our overlords, but has spent about a millennium and a half stubbornly adhering to such things because we refuse to fade away. It’s relatively modern that tattooing specifically has become a part of that defiance, but for us, that’s what it is. That’s for those of us who still live in such ethnically-oppressive systems, though - I actually don’t know much about the treatment of the various Celtic diasporas around the world or how their identities work, and so I shan’t offer an opinion.
The general response I get when discussing my place on the asexual spectrum is incredulity. Often well-meaning, but the barrage of questions are laid at my feet as a challenge and I am expected to take on the burden of countering those attacks which are veiled within curiosity. As a group, we are expected not only to defend our non-heteronormative sexuality, but also the reality of our existence, even within the queer community. After all, why should our “lack of a sexuality” matter?
“Asexuals, demisexuals, and aromantics are just late bloomers and lonely virgins whining for attention. They don’t face any of the struggles like the real queer community–”
Asexuals are expected to prove a negative to be considered valid. Until we have met every single person in the world, we are told that there is the possibility that we will “find the right person.”
Demisexuals are told that their sexuality is irrelevant once they’ve “found the right person” and that they were gay/straight/bi/pan all along.
We are constantly told that we are doomed to be unhappy without another (as if sex is necessary for romance and as if a person cannot live a worthwhile life without romance. Or, in the case of aromantics, that sex without romance is something amoral and unfulfilling).
“What a shame–”, “What a waste of a beautiful woman–”, “You don’t know what you’re missing–”, “You’re just picky–” STOP.
If we are not sex-repulsed, we are told we are not asexual.
If weare sex-repulsed, we are told that we are broken or traumatized.
If we were traumatized, we are told that our asexuality is something that we should seek to fix.
^^^Take a moment to reflect on that trinity of bullshit.
Asexuals can be victims of “corrective rape” and other forms of sexual assault due to the idea that we can be fixed with sex and that our bodies’ arousal response overrides the validity of our sexuality and the need for consent. This is an assault not only on our bodies, but on our right to an identity.
When I revealed my sexuality to an inebriated friend, he just thought I needed to be kissed properly to be “fixed.” Luckily, he took “no” for an answer.
Asexuals are told that we are outside the queer community even though heteronormativity tells us that we are alone in our lack of sexual interest. It isolates and intimidates us with pressure to conform. We are all harmed by it.
Before learning about asexuality, I was convinced that my complete disinterest in sex and lack of reaction to porn meant that I was a prude or was somehow less human than my peers. My younger self could have benefited greatly from the ace community.
Finding a name for my identity gave me a sense of peace, rightness, and validity. It’s not just a trendy name, it’s a label with resonance. That’s why so many people are “suddenly” coming out as asexual. It was the term that we didn’t know we needed until we heard it. Our terminology may be new to the mainstream, but does not make us any less real.
Libra Ravenclaw Moodboard:
All Ravenclaws are intellectual, but Ravenclaw Libras have their heads in the clouds more than most (Pisces Ravenclaws may have them beat, but not by much). They are romantic and idealistic, and prefer to live in the world of pure theory rather than in the messy world of action. While social and pleasant, they are still quiet and shy, and rarely make the first move when in a group of people. In the classroom, they tend to wait to be called on, or raise their hands when they are sure that no one else knows the answer, but they do tend to be the teacher’s pet on a fairly regular basis. It’s hard to hate them for this, because they are so pleasant to everybody. Ravenclaw Libras are the most speculative (and indecisive) of all Libras, because they have the intellectual capacity to explore all ramifications of every action and reaction.
As mentioned on Dansou Revolution, Fudanjuku is a crossdressing idol group, and chenmen is their word for crossdressing. Click the first link for more info!
2,561 notes
becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys
so-treu
