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Amba Azaad

@ambaazaad.bsky.social

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Amba Azaad @ambaazaad.bsky.social · Nov 25

Old mutuals from Twitter - say hello or I might miss that you're (finally!) here :)
New folks - until I get around to writing a new bio/intro thread, be aware that I block for casteism, racism and transphobia liberally, and that I support Kashmir's struggle for freedom as much as I do Palestine's.

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Catalina Fernandes @catalinafernandes.bsky.social · 14h

Thousands in Berlin raise Palestinian flags in solidarity with Gaza after the end of the war, affirming that the voice of justice does not fall silent. @ryad.aref

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Catalina Fernandes @catalinafernandes.bsky.social · 14h

The joy of Gaza’s children continues as the ceasefire holds, while families place their hopes on Egypt’s role in delivering aid and equipment to clear the rubble, amid anticipation of international efforts to rebuild what the war has destroyed and to restore the city’s right to live again.

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Catalina Fernandes @catalinafernandes.bsky.social · 22h

Around 500,000 people participated in a massive demonstration in the streets of London, showing solidarity with Gaza and celebrating the ceasefire ending the genocidal war in the Strip.

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Catalina Fernandes @catalinafernandes.bsky.social · 22h

Amid the rubble, Palestinians insist on holding onto their land even as they face the harshest forms of injustice and humiliation. The words of this man are not merely an expression of anger, but a declaration of dignity and existence, and a refusal to migrate no matter how intense the suffering.

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Gauri @chachiiiii.bsky.social · 1d

Satya Vachan

Em 🏳️‍⚧️🦀 @msnook.xyz · 1d

"log kya kahenge" but the log are coming from inside the house

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Amba Azaad @ambaazaad.bsky.social · 1d

You wrote "this is a white woman" about a quote where the writer said that smelling natural was not an act of bad hygiene.
I get your frustration with that writing not accounting for the racist pressure PoC face. Can you get my point about the way the pushback has happened?

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imp @impertinence.bsky.social · 1d

Yep. You can highlight unfair double standards without reinforcing the idea that everyone who doesn't use a specialized product invented in the last hundred years is inherently dirty.

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Amba Azaad @ambaazaad.bsky.social · 1d

Yes. I'm aware of the context as I was when I quoted the original post as well. It's valid for people of colour in the global North to point out how whiteness benefits smell choices. But it's not wise on a global platform to say only whites would smell natural, or judge it an unhygienic practise.

Amba Azaad @ambaazaad.bsky.social · 1d

The post you quoted was making fun of an essay talking about natural human odours. Replies to that post were united in jeering at people who didn't use deodorant and calling them unhygienic.

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Amba Azaad @ambaazaad.bsky.social · 1d

Awww. A good profile by Sirin Kale who personalises what a first or second gen interviewer can bring to the table.

The Guardian @theguardian.com · 1d

‘To the men who ran the world, I was just a photo op’: Malala Yousafzai on growing up, getting cynical – and how getting high nearly broke her

The global icon of women’s education is ready to tell the full story of her turbulent recent life, from arguing with her parents to being ghosted by the statesmen who were once desperate to be seen with her

www.theguardian.com

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Indrapramit Das @indrapramitdas.bsky.social · 1d

Use nazi rhetoric on Indian Muslims at home while establishing ties with an Islamic fundamentalist regime.

Scroll @scroll.in · 1d

The home minister said that the BJP government will ‘identify infiltrators’, ensure their names are removed from the voter list and deport them.

scroll.in/latest/10875...

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Helen Whistberry @whistberry.bsky.social · 2d

Happy #Invertober Day 10!

Common earthworm (lumbricus terrestris)

Went for a different style as I wasn't sure how to make an earthworm aesthetically pleasing 😅

#Invertober2025

Black and white drawing of an earthworm in an S-shape on its side. The words would you still love me follow the curve on the left and the words if I was a worm follow the curve on the right. The background is an elaborate symmetrical doodle of teardrop shapes of varying sizes.

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Amba Azaad @ambaazaad.bsky.social · 1d

Yeah traveling in a Mumbai local or a Delhi metro will very quickly prove that even middle-class people are not using deo or perfume and that's FINE. We don't need to borrow insecurities from the West.

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RR📷 @roshn.me · 1d

I am not surprised. Majority of Indian content on the internet have caste biases. Majority of Indian GenAI users also display a caste-biased behavior.
www.technologyreview.com/2025/10/01/1...

OpenAI is huge in India. Its models are steeped in caste bias.

India is OpenAI’s second-largest market, but ChatGPT and Sora reproduce caste stereotypes that harm millions of people.

www.technologyreview.com

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Amba Azaad @ambaazaad.bsky.social · 1d

Judging and shaming how people smell has everything to do with maintaining class and caste heirarchies along with racial ones, so I would prefer not sneering at anyone's odour.

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Amba Azaad @ambaazaad.bsky.social · 1d

There is a way to talk about the social pressure that women of colour in the Global North feel to smell a certain way, without implying that only white women would choose to smell natural. The average South Asian isn't using deo and that's FINE.

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Amba Azaad @ambaazaad.bsky.social · 1d

I'm reaching across the isle here to ask please that people remember that the majority of non-white women live in the Global South, do not have the money to buy perfumes or deodorants, and are not ashamed for smelling like human beings. Which is the way it should be actually.

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SUPPORTING PALESTINE @apirus.bsky.social · 1d

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SUPPORTING PALESTINE @apirus.bsky.social · 1d

#palestine #israel

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Amba Azaad @ambaazaad.bsky.social · 1d

Yeah, so much of hygiene discourse is cultural and I understand that Black women in the US have been subjected to pressures that white women haven't. But it bothers me when comments ignore the reality of everyone in the Global South.

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s. eek smith 👻 @sesmith.lol · 1d

'At home, as a Palestinian in Jerusalem and Haifa, I trained myself to be silent. Expressing Palestinian identity can carry material costs: a police summons, disciplinary action at work or university, interrogation over a Facebook post, open-ended detention without charge, or worse.'

Between a revolution and a whisper

For Palestinians in Israel, our silence is the condition of our citizenship. Abroad, I forgot what it feels like to speak freely.

www.972mag.com

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mosababutoha @mosababutoha.bsky.social · 1d

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Amba Azaad @ambaazaad.bsky.social · 1d

You and your family and your community and your people have done nothing wrong and deserve only freedom and safety and security and justice. Inshallah you will grow up to a world where you all have it.

Amba Azaad @ambaazaad.bsky.social · 1d

Counterperspective: the majority of people living in this world do not use deodorant. In my part of the world even the very poor do take a bath every day, but eliminating body odour is not a demanded social goal.

Kendra "Gloom is My Beat" Pierre-Louis @kendrawrites.com · 1d

I'm going to start calling essays like this "odes to whiteness" because the underlying premise is that they are like this because they don't anticipate any social cost to smelling bad.

This one is v. frustrating because it tries to lump in perfumes with the broader (problematic) beauty industry

I’m turning 50 next year. I rarely wear deodorant anymore. Many women I know have stopped, too. We don’t talk about it, but I catch it in the air — a faint musk of onion, goat, curry, mustard, salt, sage, fennel, ozone, and the muddy wet marrow of the earth itself. I’m kind of obsessed with this collective stink: the animal symphony of skin, of women being women, punk and unfiltered, taking up space with their scent. Raw, unapologetic BO. The more I live among it, the more I see it not as a hygiene failure but as a radical act of self-acceptance. It’s not polite, but it’s honest — and that feels hot. Hotter, even, than anything a Guess ad ever promised.

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Indrapramit Das @indrapramitdas.bsky.social · 2d

Indian support for Palestine has been pretty pathetic generally, but when courageous people do step up it's completely ignored by the media & violently suppressed by the state. Wouldn't even know about this if I hadn't seen it on Twitter:

Adv Rukhsana Sayed on X: "#Delhi Just look at the Delhi Police and how they treated students. Why were there no female police?😡 Delhi University students demonstrating in support of #Palestine were attacked by members of the ABVP (Hindu student organization); protesters say the police also beat them, https://t.co/KEsxJM0eyv" / X

#Delhi Just look at the Delhi Police and how they treated students. Why were there no female police?😡 Delhi University students demonstrating in support of #Palestine were attacked by members of the ABVP (Hindu student organization); protesters say the police also beat them, https://t.co/KEsxJM0eyv

x.com

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