That's It I'm Sick of Space Australia
Mar. 31st, 2017 12:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
highlyeccentricYanno, the memes about how earth as a whole might be ‘space australia’ (ie, terrifying and threatening to beings not from there, how the hell do people survive).
A LIST OF REASONS THIS IS A SUCKY MEME
- This meme only exists about Australia, not about any of the other alarming environments humans live in on earth. There are lot of things that can kill you in the amazon, for instance. People live in the Himalayas! People live in the Saraha! People live in the Arctic Circle!
Oh. Yeah. The meme isn’t ‘some climates are extreme’. Australia’s just the furthest-removed-from-Europe climate you can think of that WHITE PEOPLE live in.
- Only it’s not. I refer you to the entire Southern US. Aside from the hole in the ozone layer thing, these are pretty similar climates!
- You know what? Australia isn’t an uninhabitable wilderness where only the most intrepid lunatics survive. It’s pretty scary if you’re white people used to Europe, I guess? Indigenous Australians were doing just fine at living with the climate and the local fauna and flora before we showed up, and they still are!
My point is: the source meme about Australia being a terrifying deadly place is pretty terrible. It’s insulting to the entire population of the continent; it’s really ridiculous coming from Americans (I mean, aside from the fact that you guys have guns, your continent is pretty terrifying, too. You get BEARS in your BACKYARDS. Allligators in your drains! Rattlesnakes! Earthquakes! You keep living in New Orleans!). And there’s this not-very-thinly veiled level of racism, in that the standard of ‘hospitable environment’ is skewed massively toward ‘what do white people think is ideal’.
Then you go and add space colonialism. Either Earth being colonised FROM space - when did an inhospitable environment EVER stop an imperialist power from setting up somewhere? Here, a comparison to Australia would indeed be appropriate. Or you want to ‘send the Australians’ to an inhospitable desert planet full of poisonous things in space. I just know the Australians you’re picturing there are, well, me. White people who gave got used to sunburn from hell and think 44 degrees is liveable weather. (And if you were picturing Indigenous Australians... great, now you’ve got a fantasy about transplanting them off the entire planet instead of off their traditional lands. Unless you are indigenous, maybe don’t do that.)
This has been: Australia is a perfectly nice continent, and was a lot nicer before white people and climate change, will you please think for a minute before exploiting it as your source meme for ‘the worst place to live’.
Ony I'm not putting this on Tumblr because that would be an invitation to Discourse.
A LIST OF REASONS THIS IS A SUCKY MEME
- This meme only exists about Australia, not about any of the other alarming environments humans live in on earth. There are lot of things that can kill you in the amazon, for instance. People live in the Himalayas! People live in the Saraha! People live in the Arctic Circle!
Oh. Yeah. The meme isn’t ‘some climates are extreme’. Australia’s just the furthest-removed-from-Europe climate you can think of that WHITE PEOPLE live in.
- Only it’s not. I refer you to the entire Southern US. Aside from the hole in the ozone layer thing, these are pretty similar climates!
- You know what? Australia isn’t an uninhabitable wilderness where only the most intrepid lunatics survive. It’s pretty scary if you’re white people used to Europe, I guess? Indigenous Australians were doing just fine at living with the climate and the local fauna and flora before we showed up, and they still are!
My point is: the source meme about Australia being a terrifying deadly place is pretty terrible. It’s insulting to the entire population of the continent; it’s really ridiculous coming from Americans (I mean, aside from the fact that you guys have guns, your continent is pretty terrifying, too. You get BEARS in your BACKYARDS. Allligators in your drains! Rattlesnakes! Earthquakes! You keep living in New Orleans!). And there’s this not-very-thinly veiled level of racism, in that the standard of ‘hospitable environment’ is skewed massively toward ‘what do white people think is ideal’.
Then you go and add space colonialism. Either Earth being colonised FROM space - when did an inhospitable environment EVER stop an imperialist power from setting up somewhere? Here, a comparison to Australia would indeed be appropriate. Or you want to ‘send the Australians’ to an inhospitable desert planet full of poisonous things in space. I just know the Australians you’re picturing there are, well, me. White people who gave got used to sunburn from hell and think 44 degrees is liveable weather. (And if you were picturing Indigenous Australians... great, now you’ve got a fantasy about transplanting them off the entire planet instead of off their traditional lands. Unless you are indigenous, maybe don’t do that.)
This has been: Australia is a perfectly nice continent, and was a lot nicer before white people and climate change, will you please think for a minute before exploiting it as your source meme for ‘the worst place to live’.
Ony I'm not putting this on Tumblr because that would be an invitation to Discourse.
no subject
Date: 2017-04-03 11:22 am (UTC)