MMW thanks Carmen for the tip!
This is a t-shirt from ThreadPit.com’s online clothing store:
The caption for the shirt reads: “The desert has many hot things. Unfortunately, in Southwestern Asia it’s mostly limited to roads, recently discharged firearms, and bombed out pre-fab metal buildings.”
I hate racism/sexism that poses as irony.
File this under “Douchebaggery.” I can just see some jackass walking around wearing this shirt, pants that are too damn tight, and a kuffiyeh.
Wanna complain? Check out their customer service.
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Yuck.”I hate racism/sexism that poses as irony.” Well said.
I don’t know why people think it’s ok to use snarky t-shirts as a cover for their intolerance. Just because it’s a cool font and clip art doesn’t mean it’s ok to be an asshole.
That is vile. I have complained. I’ve actually bought t-shirts from there before, since my husband likes snarky shirts – snarky, though, you know. Not racist or abusive.
how could anyone find it anything but offensive and pointless?
While I don’t find it funny or insightful, calling it racist is weak. Even assuming that Islam is a race (which would likely make apostates a race by applying the same criteria and would make Islam a genocidal ideology for strongly implying that death for apostates is appropriate sentence) or that “South West Asia” is a race, what is being ridiculed here is neither of them specifically.The shirt mocks the priorities and culturally conservative, tribal values of these states. If dehumanizing women, firing guns in the air as an act of celebration, and sacrificing the education and economic future of one’s citizens so as to promote an ideology and “tradition” are acts that can not be ridiculed without being “racist” then I hope you all get a chance to live in these cultures as soon and for as long as possible.
anonymous, these shirts are racist because they generalize the experiences described in the caption and the clothing style profiled in the t-shirt to all west Asian countries and the women who live in these countries. It’s just as racist as assuming all east Asian women work in rice paddies or as geishas.