Anonymous
Anonymous asked:
CONFESSION: I am a babybat and have recently been told that being a Victorian Goth is racist because the Victorian times were racist. I really love being a Victorian Goth but I really don't want to be racist. What do I do?Is there anything people can’t shame others about? /sigh
Well, I obviously can’t blame you for not wanting to hurt people or genuinely offend them. I guess you have compazion… something like that. I don’t know how to spell or pronounce it.
While I appreciate you’re concern, I feel confident telling you to dress as Victorian as you want.
Let’s be honest; you aren’t being historically accurate. Unless you failed to mention it:
- You aren’t dying of Typhoid, Tuberculosis, or Influenza
- You aren’t living in a rat and flea infested tenement with 10 other people
- You aren’t waiting for one or more family members to die so you can gain a title and/or some inheritance
- You don’t have 3-5 siblings who died before they reached puberty
- You don’t work in a factory where people are injured daily
- You didn’t work as a child and develop Black Lung at the age of 15
- You don’t know anyone who was “pressed into” military service or “Shanhaied”.
Also: while Victorian culture across the globe was generally racist and in all other means bigoted and violent, there *were* non-racist Victorian people ahead of their time. That’s how the abolitionist movement started in The States, The Women’s Suffrage movement first took root, the peasant revolts, and the abolition of serfdom in Europe came about, for example.
In fact, the Romantic period artists, writers, and poets you likely enjoy were some of those very egalitarian people who concerned themselves with other’s rights. (Byron, Shelly, Tolstoy, Dickens, Wilde, Zola, and most to the point, I think,- Harriet Beecher Stowe.)
So next time, just tell them you are a humanist visionary. ;p
