I said at the bottom of last entry (not FL as of now, but not of general interest), "See you next entry for a few ideas I think were held by 'the other side' and I think are particularly erroneous and/or hurt-causing."
The quotation marks are because even in RaceFail, I think I agreed with those who grew to deplore my comments much, much more than we disagreed. However, both in the entries in RaceFail and in the entry on men & rape in
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cereta's LJ, a number of people seemed to hold a number of beliefs that I find not only wrong but also pernicious.Statement 1: If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. Silence is consent.
Yes--once an idea is endemic in a culture, if you don't directly resist it, you are in some ways being complicit in it. So the former statement is a lot more true than most excluded-middle statements. However, applying this idea broadly still creates major problems:
A) This approach doesn't take into account limits of time and energy. People have to rest, do other things, without feeling they aren't doing enough. "Silence is consent" can be an especially exhausting belief. In fact, most people on mammoth LJ discussions probably would not only be better off but probably also do more good if they didn't exhaust themselves.
B) I really do think that just not being an asshole is worth a great deal! It's important that people do more, and that we encourage being part of the solution, but we should acknowledge that just not being part of the problem is SOMETHING. Many people have to LEARN how not to be part of the problem, and that's a good thing to encourage.
Statement 2: When people are alienated by being told "Go away and educate yourself," They'd never be real allies anyway.
This sour-grapes response is appealing to those who feel burdened by Statement #1 and don't have it in them to educate just then, but it's almost certainly not true.
(A) For one thing, "Go away and educate yourself" is not only NOT helpful, it is ANTI-helpful, much more alienating than just not responding to the comment at all.
(B) Many people will listen to you explain things who will not seek out the reading on their own. Our enthusiasm is greater than their motivation to learn on their own and hence is an invaluable resource, within limits of time and energy.
(C) Not only is there more motive to learn with help, there may be more ability. This is quite natural, and the help is one good thing about the massively awful American education system. Can you imagine learning calculus or Old English on your own? Some people do, but there is a reason for having a class--even online--instead of just selling textbooks.
Assumption 1: Invoking The Tone Argument--Any objection to the way in which anti-racism, feminist, or other comments are made is not valid, but an excuse.
Now, I 100% agree that The Tone Argument, a slimy way to shut up advocates of various challenging positions, DOES exist. For example, many people, a feminist's tone is NEVER right--it goes right from mollifying to "abrasive." Also, demanding certain kinds of word choice or writing is at least de facto racist and classist.
Also, a DEMAND for a gentle, sweet tone IS an unjustified and unrealistic imposition, especially when such demands are made of people who are hurting because of stigma and oppression.
However, in these discussions anger can slide over to abuse. Also, when some comments are meant to say "ouch!" or to give good advice, those comments are sometimes seen as making a demand, as The Tone Argument.
Often what is at issue here is not an ever-rising bar no one can pass, but a reader's refusal to put up with anger being directed at hir personally--and no matter how much privilege one has, such anger is never pleasant and MAY be unendurable. Also, unlike Latinate words, perfect grammar, and complicated syntax, kindness is not a limited commodity that is distributed unfairly. We can all be nice. And flies, no matter how often they are told they are perpetuating The Tone Argument, will come to honey more often than they come to vinegar.
Assumption 2: We can address the feelings of the oppressed, OR we can address the feelings of the oppressors.
This seems really implied by "You're putting the feelings of the oppressors ahead of the feelings of the oppressed." Because if the assumption were true, of course the feelings of the oppressed would have to come first: the oppressed by definition have fewer people speaking up for them already, they have more hurt to address, their hurt may be invisible--so it's only justice.
But is the assumption true? In some situations, yes, but in others, no. Especially when one is an ally (not so personally hurting), and double especially when one is one of many allies (so others are taking a stronger tack and/or reassuring the oppressed), perhaps a little energy can be spared for the feelings of the oppressed. They also hurt, no matter what privilege they have; and there is a selfish benefit in appealing to their fly-like positive honey tropism.
Most of all, saying "all Xs do Y" or even "Xs do Y" should be discouraged as untrue as well as alienating, while "some Xs do Y," "many Xs do Y," "society encourages Xs to do Y," or "no one can automatically tell if you are an X who does Y or not" are more accurate as well as not as likely to upset Xs who do NOT do Y.
Assumption 3 Based on assumptions 1 and 2, The oppressors are responsible for how the oppressed receive their comments, but the opposite is not true.
Likely, the only working system is one in which BOTH parties are 100% responsible for their comments. Paradoxical-seeming but practically, I think, unavoidable.
This has long been my view of marriage, which is such an awesome and demanding relationship that if each feels 50% responsible, and as a result concentrates on what "is fair," odds are the marriage will not last. In defiance of arithmetic, the best approach is for both (or more) to feel 100% responsible. Then, if the fates are kind, when one partner just can't be understanding, the other can, and in every situation SOMEONE will give. It can't always be the same partner, or the marriage is not healthy.
Anyone can make mistakes and be offensive, through ignorance or deliberately but just because it was a bad day. If unkindness begets unkindness, and the latter unkindness is excused because it's "only fair"--in ANY situation--we end up with a mess.
I'm happy to discuss all this, and can and will modify my own views, but I think these are vital concerns. I have indeed been very clueless about some of the discussions in which I brought this up; other times, I have to say, I think people just didn't want disagreement.
Anyone may link to this. Comments are open, although I will friends-lock comments if (1) people get mean, and/or (2) I just can't keep up with discussion. I will delete comments that are just nasty, but if anything I err on the side of taking seriously & answering testy comments.
Mood: communicative, a bit preachy; amazingly enough my shoulder arthwrongus doesn't hurt
June 12 2009, 04:01:41 UTC 2 years ago
This approach doesn't take into account limits of time and energy. People have to rest, do other things, without feeling they aren't doing enough.
How many times, in how many ways, have I said that? I don't know--maybe the younger folks spend 24-7, except for work hours and a few sleep hours, fighting some wrong or other, but I can't manage it. And even if they do, even if I could--every hour you spend fighting one wrong is an hour when you aren't fighting all the other wrongs.
June 12 2009, 04:48:03 UTC 2 years ago
Yes! There's a lot of intersection--some of what I do for fat-rights advocacy fights racism, more fights classism, a lot fights sexism, a lot fights anti-disability stigma--but even I probably feel more guilty than I should for my concentration on fat rights! (And polyamory advocacy greatly helps fight sexism and often heterosexism.)
Also, I often say, even Jesus asked if the cup could be passed.
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June 12 2009, 06:52:21 UTC 2 years ago
There has to be more to life than fighting wrongs.
"If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution" - Emma Goldman.
June 12 2009, 04:26:15 UTC 2 years ago
I have a extremely strong (for me) view disputing "Silence is consent." Silence is silence. There are many reasons for the frequency of my own silence. They include the ones you mention -- in particular, I've seen all too many times, especially in heated electronic discussions, any words serving only to fuel the fires. That puts me in violent agreement with your observation that not being part of the problem has value, and that learning how to not be part of the problem takes effort for many and is to be encouraged.
There are many ways of helping to make the world a loving, healthy, fun place...for the benefit of ourselves and others, not for ourselves at the expense of others. Yes, I recognize that I'm painting with a broad brush here, one that can easily be deconstructed and refuted, word by word. But I believe the general thought is true and I would encourage any person inclined to criticize or berate another for their silence on one or more specific topics to consider the other ways in which that person might be making contributions that benefit the world and leave them to it.
Thank you for expressing these vital concerns, and for doing it succinctly and clearly.
June 12 2009, 08:05:17 UTC 2 years ago
It's dangerous, because more often than not, the REAL reason for the silence was simply that the other poster was offline or offsite for completely unrelated reasons. Nothing to do with the discussion at all.
Besides, when it comes to silence, I'm with Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons: silence is silence. Nothing can be construed by my silence, in and of itself. It is neither affirmation nor denial. Do not assume it is one thing or the other.
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June 12 2009, 07:03:43 UTC 2 years ago
1. Inability to distinguish between racist/sexist/etc. fail and ordinary human fail.
This is a guess on my part, but when people, especially newcomers, come away from environments such as Wiscon full of anger at the racist cold-shouldering there, I wonder if their experience with genuine racist impoliteness has sensitized them to the point where they can't tell the difference between being ignored for that reason and ignored just because fans are socially inept and/or are busy/distracted. A lot of their description sound exactly like what happens to everybody all the time.
Of course, they may say, "It doesn't matter what the intent was; all that matters is how I react to it," to which see your Assumption 3.
2. Members of the oppressor class don't need human validation (aka the "He does the dishes" rule)
When allies offer personal testimony of what they're doing to help or to raise their own consciousness, they're often taken as puffing themselves up, expecting the highest praise or even acknowledgment of moral superiority over the oppressed. Perhaps, however, what they are looking for is just a reality check: How are they doing? To draw a comparison: Writing workshop students are not expecting to have their stories praised as the greatest of all time; instead, they hope for a mixture of compliments indicating that they've accomplished something, with criticism that is helpful in showing them what to work on next. Wanna-be allies want the same thing, surely?
3. Criticism of behavior comes with absolutely no obligation to suggest what acceptable behavior would be like. You have to figure that out on your own, but you'll only get told about what you're doing wrong.
I've been told this, in basically so many words, more than once. One of the reasons I like Le Guin as an author so much is that she doesn't do this: her novels are full of examples of how privileged persons can behave well.
June 12 2009, 15:30:32 UTC 2 years ago Edited: June 12 2009, 16:36:05 UTC
#1: ABSOLUTELY! When this came up in RaceFail, I addressed the distinction in terms of "intent"--that wasn't a horrible approximation, but it caused too much communicational static.
The incident I was thinking of was a friend of mine, after going on an anti-depressant that really worked for her, saying, "All the time, I thought I couldn't get jobs because I was fat. Not it turns out I was depressed!" She wasn't 100% wrong to suspect stigma from being fat, I'm sure: especially in some of the corporations she might have worked for, if she and a similarly depressed, similarly intelligent and knowledgeable, similarly experienced woman "of appropriate weight" had been the only applicants, I would bet 100% who would have gotten the job.
But it wasn't ALL "Fat Fail." Here we have a controlled experiment, in a sense, in which nothing changed but the depression, and she got jobs; all socio-economic categories & sources of prejudice against her stayed the same.
I can say from being on both sides of this mistake (worrying about making it* & having it made about me--I don't know of any situation in which I made the mistake as revealed by future events*) that is DOES, 100% make sense to SUSPECT that an undeserved rejection could be the result of prejudice. However, one reason I have ALWAYS (as an adult) questioned such suspicions is that I feel I need my info to be correct.
And the way to clarify, I think, is just further interactions--careful and in some sense experimental--and ASKING, not so much "is the problem that I'm a woman" but more like, "No, my husband does the dishes. Why does it seem that I should?" I've been thinking for a while that "intent" was a somewhat-off paradigm for this; it's really just gathering more and more evidence from behavior and speech, to gain CONTEXT.
Of course, the more the remark could have various reasons, the more such interactions are a good idea. When someone on the subway platform with me yells, "You're so FAT!" at me, I have a pretty good idea that at least SOME sizism is involved. ;-) (My response, which drew applause, was, "And you are SO WASTED!" Which he was, alcohol and/or drugs, I dunno and don't care.) So, sometimes you don't NEED much more evidence and you just want to SHUT THE PERSON UP. Also, time & energy to find out further data may be limited. These are both important caveats.
On balance, though, in my experience, on LJ most staunch advocates of equality, of fighting one kind of oppression or another, tend to err on the side of just assuming they can tell how much the comment was due to oppression and how much (often, not at all) due to ordinary fail. And the community, as you say, has some ideas that ENCOURAGE erring on that side FURTHER--and THOSE, I think, are very counter-productive ideas.
I'm more ambivalent about points #2 and 3-- Continued on next
rockcomment.* Actually, when I was in h.s. and college, I probably attributed a lot of results of my social ineptness to stigma against intelligence, in a kind of weepy, self-pitying way; moreso with attributing the results to fat, but in a self-hating, of-course-that's-deserved way. "Just worrying about" mostly in past 25 years or so.
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June 12 2009, 11:57:58 UTC 2 years ago
I also have the example of having seen all the same stuff a while back in The Great Minicon Fail. With stakes so much lower, the excesses just looked excessively adolescent.
June 12 2009, 15:54:25 UTC 2 years ago
June 12 2009, 16:02:15 UTC 2 years ago
Thanx. Clearer? Also, I guess I should say that I think this is a necessary GOAL, because as I said, we're all only human and WILL fall short sometimes.
June 13 2009, 17:17:56 UTC 2 years ago
I think that if there's a problem endemic in the culture, you are part of the problem whether or not you're also part of the solution. And I also think this means blame isn't a good idea because it distracts people from addressing the problem in favor of fighting among each other. However, I am not blaming anyone who might be doing this, because blame isn't a good idea.
I don't agree that silence "is" consent. However, silence can certainly be taken as consent and can look like consent, and it's important for people to be aware of this, when choosing what to do or not to do.
"Go away and educate yourself" is not only NOT helpful, it is ANTI-helpful, much more alienating than just not responding to the comment at all.
I don't agree with this. I am grateful to have encountered the notion, and it has helped me. Sometimes it is alienating because it's said in anger, but in that case I think it's the anger that's alienating, not the concept. And not responding to the comment at all? Well, that brings up the question of "what does silence mean?" Not responding is a very different choice.
The rest of your arguments about this statement don't seem to actually address the issue. "Go away and educate yourself" means "I do not have an obligation to educate you" and "Unless you show some willingness to learn my point of view, I don't want to engage you." It does not mean "Learning about this by talking to people who are willing to talk about it is wrong."
(I would like to respond to the rest, but I don't have the energy right now.)
June 14 2009, 00:31:32 UTC 2 years ago
On "educate yourself," though, I think we disagree. Unlike no comment, it implies that wanting help in learning is at least presumptuous and at worst an arrogant imposition; as it often is used, it's not "I don't have the time and energy" but "that is your job, not anyone else's." The way that phrase is used in such discussions, it seems to me, does at least imply that if you ask others, they'll probably also say "educate yourself," rather than maybe they'll be more helpful.
I do really see your perspective about no comment maybe being read wrong, but the way that "educate yourself" is used seems to me a lot more alienating than "I don't have time for more, but here are some links" or even just "I hope that others have time to answer, because I don't."
Also, "educate yourself" as response, I think, encourages others to say the same, instead of encouraging people to respond if they do have the time and energy. Hence, I think my other remarks, about the usefulness of guidance when learning something, are relevant.
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June 13 2009, 17:18:03 UTC 2 years ago
Part 1 of 3
Often what is at issue here is not an ever-rising bar no one can pass, but a reader's refusal to put up with anger being directed at hir personally--and no matter how much privilege one has, such anger is never pleasant and MAY be unendurable.Well, I would hope that the moderator would step in if someone was getting abusive, or if not the other participants, but if no one is then I'd argue that either the reader is seeing abuse when there isn't any (c.f. "mollifying to abrasive"), or the environment itself is toxic enough for the reader that the reader should just leave, stop reading.
I'm not convinced that a significant proportion of the times the Tone Argument is used is in response to actual (rather than perceived) abuse--it's been my experience that the more someone understands the privilege and -ism under discussion, the more they realize that "that angry black woman" or "the man-hating feminazi" (or whatever) they were reading as angry and hateful earlier really wasn't, and the more likely they are to realize that what they thought was anger directed at them personally was anger directed at the system, &c. But either way, the response is still the same: it's a lot easier to simply get away from abusiveness (particularly on the Internet--unless you're dealing with the type of people who bring it to your door, like W!ll Sh!tterly and KC and 4chan, but your typical feminist blog commenters aren't likely to send you death threats) than it is to get try to get the abuser to change their tone. And it's a more productive response if it is a false positive.
Assumption 2: We can address the feelings of the oppressed, OR we can address the feelings of the oppressors.
See, I think this one's true. The very nature of the oppression is that we're conditioned to give more weight and attention and empathy and so on to the oppressors than to the oppressed, and we're conditioned, if we're oppressors, to dominate the conversation (because we think of ourselves and our concerns as important) and if we're the oppressed, we're equally conditioned to undermine ourselves and not speak up as much as we should. Look at how often conversations that are explicitly not about the oppressors' feelings and experiences become about them anyway (pretty much always); look at how often that happens in reverse (pretty much never). It's possible to have both conversations, but not at once. "Women need to learn to interrupt"--because men (in general) already do interrupt, mostly women. And it seems like every time Black History Month comes around it's time for all the white people to write editorials going on about "where's white history month, hmmm? Reverse racism!" because it would never cross their minds that the 99%-white-by-volume history they were taught in school was, perhaps, a bit racially biased.
June 13 2009, 17:18:50 UTC 2 years ago
Part 2 of 3
Which brings me to the other reason why conversations about oppression that try to simultaneously address the views of the oppressors and the oppressed are doomed to failure: we already talk about the views of the oppressors all. the. damn. time. That's what it means to be an oppressor to begin with: your views on things are front-and-center, always, because you're the neutral view, you're the objective view, because not all white people/men/straight people &c. are expected to feel the same way about race/gender/sexual orientation, while you only ever need one token minority person to address all of the views of that minority (and sometimes some others as well--one Chinese-American can speak for all POC), if you bother at all. We don't need to ask how Dane Cook or David Letterman is affected by sexism; we already know: it's how they make a living.Maybe I'm jaded because of the atmosphere of the school I go to, but it seems to me that if you follow around Random Straight White Guy for a week, you'll learn everything you need to know about what he thinks about sexism, racism, homophobia--and if you're not a guy, or not straight, or not white, chances are you can get the same information from one or two conversations with him, because you've been trained by society to know what the oppressors think pretty quickly.
The views of minorities? Not so widely publicized, not so much a part of our culture.
Assumption 3 Based on assumptions 1 and 2, The oppressors are responsible for how the oppressed receive their comments, but the opposite is not true.
Well, I think that that gets back to the social training thing. I hear how guys talk all the time: it's on my television, on my radio, all around me at my school (which is way disproportionally male). I have to be able to interpret guy-speak in a way as close as possible to what they actually mean; I have to be practiced at giving guys the benefit of the doubt as much as possible except when I am explicitly discussing an -ism with them. My default response is cookie-dispensing, because it has to be, because otherwise I would be unable to function in any conversations about anything else out of sheer despair for humanity. (This is not very much of an exaggeration.) I've had to learn how to filter out casual misogyny in order to function in an environment where it is common. And I've had an up-close-and-personal view of How Guys (Are Conditioned To) Think.
The opposite is not true. Guys, by and large, don't have to filter out feminism from their daily experience, even if they're misogynists who would gladly do so if it was an issue. Guys don't have to know the first thing about How Women (Are Conditioned To) Think, because we don't have the systemic power over them that they as a class do over us. Guys can (and frequently do) go their whole lives refusing to watch any show or movie with women main characters, but the reverse makes for a very sparse viewing experience. (I've never heard anything meant to appeal to guys referred to as a dick flick. Which sounds like it would refer to porn anyway--and chicks, as all dudes know, aren't really into that icky sex stuff anyway, which is why there are never any sex scenes in those gross girl-cootied romance comedies and soap operas and whatnot they studiously avoid. /snark) I have a pretty good idea what guys talk about when they're on their own (not least because the fact of my presence seems to elude certain men of my acquaintance--it's safe to ignore women and to make rape jokes in a public place, because our opinion doesn't matter), but guys don't typically have any frame of reference for what women talk about on our own, unless we tell them: they don't see it in film or on TV.
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June 14 2009, 00:59:41 UTC 2 years ago
Re: Part 1 of 3
Re #1: You're right about avoiding abusive online situations; I was thinking more about one way in which it seems some online conversations grow toxic that they don't have to. I think I now understand a bit of why I was insensitive to people growing upset with me on cereta's LJ (mostly linked to how I grew a thick skin to do online fat-rights advocacy). Well, in the same way, I think DEFAULT to The Tone Argument responses makes a lot of nice people act more like abusers than they would ever consciously choose to.For instance, it it totally person A's responsibility to avoid taking it personally when anger at the system seems to be directed at A personally, or is it also person B's responsibility to clarify that the anger isn't meant to be directed at A? I think if A says, "Ouch! Actually, you're complaining about ideas I personally refute rather than support," that is SOMETIMES taken to be invoking The Tone Argument, and it isn't at all.
As to #2, I'm a woman who is somewhat male-acculturated in conversation, and I do believe that women should learn to interrupt more, rather than just expecting men not to interrupt them. And add in to this that LJ is a very level playing field--for one thing, many people may not know what your race or even gender is--and is multi-channeled, so that even in comments to one entry, many kinds of discussion can go on at the same time. Taken together, this is why I disagree with, "It's possible to have both conversations, but not at once."
Many (not most, maybe; certainly not all) of the people I know who got branded "racist" in RaceFail actually do know about the dominant vs. minority cultural discourses, and in fact feel the `overall cultural balance needs to be shifted further to the ones that are currently under-represented. That's what's so absurd about "We need a white history month"--that is about the whole culture, which, despite what many people say, has many, many miles to go before the balance is even equal, let alone tipped towards the culturally devalued.
However, my view is that even if the culture as a whole is still unbalanced one way, a single LJ discussion can still be unbalanced in the other way. Maybe others disagree with me on this, which could be one reason that there was a lot of dogpiling in RaceFail. But I saw a number of discussions in which one side was indignant over what is seen as attempts to quell them, but actually there was no real chance of quelling, because they outnumbered the "more powerful" side 3:1 or more. And if anything, the quelling went the other way. Not the assholes, who will not be quelled, but nice people who DO mind upsetting others.
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June 16 2009, 17:19:01 UTC 2 years ago
Re: Part 1 of 3
Well, I would hope that the moderator would step in if someone was getting abusive, or if not the other participants, but if no one is then I'd argue that either the reader is seeing abuse when there isn't any (c.f. "mollifying to abrasive"), or the environment itself is toxic enough for the reader that the reader should just leave, stop reading.I think leaving it up to the moderator is placing a HUGE responsibility on the moderator. I'm just getting a small taste of that on this entry, and I worry what could happen if I can't keep up.
As far as other participants--what if they are told they're just perpetuating The Tone Argument also?
What I see here, what I wanted to address as Assumption #1 is--inadvertently, I really do believe--potentially insulating oneself from potentially helpful criticism. That is never a good thing! If The Tone Argument is applied as a default, or in a blanket way, then if one does go over the line and unnecessarily alienate people, how would one know? If those on your side say so, but then, if even THEY are falling for The Tone Argument, maybe they're not REALLY allies!
I fear this isn't clear, but I hope it is. In fact, I think that over-application of objection to The Tone Argument can help lead to a situation so toxic that many people just shut up and leave.
Is that a good thing, leaving discussion space to those who are confortable with raging anger directed at them? I do think that beign comfortable being the object of raging anger can be a good thing, but I don't think it should be required for participation in an LJ discussion. Even more importantly, I think, that LJ discussion will lose out on a lot of good insight.
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June 16 2009, 09:38:43 UTC 2 years ago
from Kathryn Cramer
Back in March, Womzilla exerted considerable pressure on me to remove my post explaining my side of the story. I complied. By now, I am past trying to correct the record, since so much else about me has been fabricated in the meantime. But I have for the most part held my piece out of deference to the awkward situation in which Womzilla found himself.Thus I am REALLY upset to see the matter hauled into this discussion by Womzilla and Nellorat, and then elaborated on in delusional ways, seemingly without contradiction, by dysprositos, a person with 6 LJ entries and no history.
What is it that you people see in LJ that is worth preserving?
June 16 2009, 13:02:08 UTC 2 years ago
Re: from Kathryn Cramer
I'll give you a hint: Sparing the delicate feelings of published authors is not one of our top priorities.2 years ago
June 16 2009, 15:59:26 UTC 2 years ago Edited: June 16 2009, 21:37:31 UTC
Re: from Kathryn Cramer
First, while I do admit my partial responsibility and am putting a lot of effort into clearing things up, I don't feel I dragged your name in here. The purpose of this entry is to talk in general ways about what could be done better, not to hash out each interpretation of each event. More than enough of that has been done, and I didn't see it doing much good.As far as why I didn't answer dysprositos: please see insidious statement #1 in this very entry. Silence on my part was not consent with what she said or how she phrased things. For one thing, as you can see, dysprositos wrote very many very long comments in a very short time, and I could not address all the points I really WANTED to address and felt were ABSOLUTELY RELEVANT to what I wanted to discuss.
If she were that delusional, I doubt the comments that I did respond to would make so much sense. As it was, the comments I did respond to made sense, but I thought they were still partly wrong. dysprositos and I disagree in some ways, agree in others (NOT about your actions): we were--are--having a discussion. I am, in fact, deliberately working on having LJ discussions in which I focus on what I think is central (including areas of agreement) and ignore certain things I disagree with (if I think they are not central, even if I think they are 100% wrong), to make me more able to communicate with more people.
So I did not respond. In fact, I only skimmed those areas and didn't even look carefully at the names involved. SILENCE =/= CONSENT. If one takes the opposite approach to the Internets in general or LJ in particular--that everything MUST be answered--the result is at best exhaustion, at worst real psychological trauma. It's a belief I can understand fully, but I cannot afford.
Because, to address your final comment, I see very much in LJ worth preserving. Since travel by air is both more expensive and more difficult, it has become a good semi-substitute for visiting sf/horror friends in other parts of the country. Since my work schedule is the opposite of many, it is often better than the phone or in-person as a way to communicate with people when I can, and better than e-mail because many people can see what I write & respond if they want.
In many ways, LJ is for me a substitute for apas, which have been a large part of my life since 1976 and which are now largely replaced by online venues like this. I like how apa/LJ discussions are information-heavy yet also very conversational. I like how in an apa/on LJ, I can get responses to a few one-liners or to a whole semi-essay. As in apas or at sf conventions, only moreso, I can meet sympathetic souls and people who share my concerns, from all over the world.
Now, of course apas can go bad. So can zines/conventions. I went through both the TAFF Wars and the Apa-69 Wars. Those didn't sour me on sf fandom, and this hasn't soured me on LJ.
One of my basic insights regarding RaceFail is that LJ is a medium, not a community. So, first, if I think of it as a community, my expectations will be off and lead to some counter-productive reactions on my part. More importantly here, if I kept getting obscene phone-calls--well, I did at one point, and I still didn't give up my phone. I did take out the phone in my bedroom so I wasn't awakened at night, a practice I liked so much that I have kept it up ever since.
I think LJ is a medium, like the phone or TV: it can be good, or it can be crap. I am very interesting in discussing how to use it better, how to make the most of it.
Kathryn, I do think that outing people is a crap thing to do. If you want to discuss that in e-mail or phone or in person, I'm 100% open--but my view is pretty strong.
As far as more discussion here: please, this entry is not about that. I let dysprositos go on when I probably should have said something--not in disagreement (Silence=/=consent) but just, hey, that's been talked about more than enough and not much good happened, so that's not what I'm talking about. I'll clear this mess up as well as I can. I hope NO ONE continues this exact topic further.
June 16 2009, 19:45:44 UTC 2 years ago
June 18 2009, 19:39:11 UTC 2 years ago Edited: June 18 2009, 19:40:14 UTC
June 19 2009, 23:40:12 UTC 2 years ago
here via metafandom
When people are alienated by being told "Go away and educate yourself," They'd never be real allies anyway.Why is this a "sour grapes" response? The thing I love about "Go away and educate yourself" is that it takes the responsibility off the less privileged party and puts it on the more privileged party, while simultaneously re-centering things in terms of the less-privileged party's needs, energy, etc., not the more-privileged party.
And the thing is, trying to be an ally involves a lot of discomfort and painful looks at one's own preconceived notions, the least of which is that which comes up at, "Go educate yourself." If you're not ready to feel alienated and be really uncomfortable and have everything society told you get turned inside out, then... yeah, probably not ready to be an ally.
I've found, in a lot of these conversations, that there are a lot of people out there with little to no interest in dealing with systemic -isms, but a lot of interest in Stating Their Opinion Because It's So Important, For The Love Of God. It's a hot button issue, they want to say their piece, argue, and go back to their own world. That's been my experience when it comes to a lot of pre-Anti-Oppression-101 commenters, anyway. And it's not the job of people with less privilege to placate people with more privilege so that maybe, maybe they see the light.
June 20 2009, 01:31:12 UTC 2 years ago
Re: here via metafandom
If "Go away and educate yourself" works, then great! My impression--as I said in the entry, and as I developed further in some comments--is that it often doesn't, and that giving a little education, or even just an open hand, can win over some of the people who would otherwise be driven away--at least in the areas I'm familiar with, which don't include racism as much but do include feminism, fat rights, and non-sanctioned marriage.I'd say "educate," not "placate"--and I'd say that whether it should be the oppressed job or not, often it just is, because they/we are the ones who benefit.
Also, I'm not sure that becoming aware of privilege and learning enough to become an ally needs to be all THAT traumatic. I'm really embarrassed by a few instances of heterosexual privilege/assumption-making in my past, especially one, but once I thought about gay rights and heterosexual privilege, those topics made complete sense & didn't make me feel particularly uncomfortable or alienated. Racism is tougher for me, but I mean really, there's a level of old habit but mostly it's PRIVILEGE that doesn't make sense when you think of it. I think most of my friends are much more like this than not, though I know I do select for reasonable, open people to be with socially, in person and on LJ.
How do you distinguish between people who are just asserting their own views and people who are in the opening stages of genuine dialogue? This is a serious question! Personally, my approach is to assume the latter until I get sufficient evidence otherwise. This may waste a bit of my time, but even then I get practice in how to put things, and I know I haven't turned away a potential ally. Also, I feel you never know what other people might be getting good ideas for how to communicate, getting encouragement, or whatever.
Everyone has limits of time & energy, I know! However, just because I don't have the energy and choose not to engage doesn't mean that doing so wouldn't help. I do attend to my own life, and I don't believe in wasting energy, but I think selling a cause helps, just like selling anything else.
June 21 2009, 01:51:53 UTC 2 years ago
via shewhohashope
A few brief impressions/thoughts after reading the post and comments:- I really think you're missing the factors beyond sarcasm or insults or cursing at people that can make a tone incredibly hostile and off-putting. During RaceFail, the vast majority of obvious personally directed anger I saw from POC was directly in response to extremely rude behaviour, whether the original "aggressor" was entirely aware of her rudeness or not.
- While you're obviously not proud of your contribution to cereta's post, IIRC you were doing the same sorts of things in RaceFail - derailing the conversation, ignoring people's emotional cues to an extremely insensitive degree, monopolizing people's attention, and centering things around using tone that made you comfortable and appeasing the privileged. You were using a non-hostile, amicable, sometimes inappropriately friendly sort of tone, but your tactics and implications were rude and reactions reflected that.
- The core of "it's not my job to educate you" is the exact denotation. Perhaps Mr. Clueless would benefit and eventually come around if someone spent ten comments explaining things to him gently. But no one owes him that. It's an exhausting waste of resources for someone feeling half-broken by the issue. Demanding it is, again, very rude and often rooted in privileged ignorance of the fact that educating the privileged is not the only purpose of such conversations. People talk about the results of bigotry for solidarity, to inform decent people of the hurt done to them, because they can't stand not talking about it anymore. Someone coming in demanding to be catered to is a slap in the face. It's assuming the person has nothing better to do with her day - and often that disadvantaged people are there for one's edification.
- Thinking about what's effective within a movement is not remotely the same as tsk-ing over the tactics of one you're not part of.
- There is not one tone that magically makes people learn. In my experience, people who care more about homophobia than their egos will try to understand my anger; those who don't will get to the same place of privileged defensiveness if I am scrupulously nice and nonthreatening. It just takes longer and hurts more.
- When you say "not being an asshole is worth a great deal" - a great deal of men, white people, etc. who don't think of themselves as assholes aren't just silently passive, they are actively contributing. Laughing at asshole jokes, nodding sympathetically along with someone while ignoring their invective... it fuels it and it hurts a lot of people to see. In a toxic culture you don't need to be "an asshole" to do asshole things.
- I'm no psychoanalyst, but your concern over tone, presenting "unkindness" as the archetypal bad result of these discussions, centralizing your own hurt in a way that, warning you, could be and HAS BEEN offensive and hurtful to WOC who have read this, is very much the way white women, including me, are socialized to deal with conflict; if everyone tried to be nice we often don't think there would be a conflict. It feels nice and inoffensive and peacemaking to relate like this, and it makes us feel virtuous and undeserving of any anger we get, but it really does hurt and silence and enrage people. For valid reasons that we can't fix with more of the same.
June 21 2009, 03:46:33 UTC 2 years ago Edited: June 21 2009, 03:48:51 UTC
Re: via shewhohashope
Re RaceFail & me: Yes, I did a lot not only on cereta's post but also in RaceFail that I would not do again. The main accusation I freely cop to is "ignoring people's emotional cues to an extremely insensitive degree." One important thing I only recently realized is that I have deliberately developed certain reactions that keep me calm during heated discussions, especially online; but that as I result, if a discussion grew tense, I became tone-deaf. This is a very bad effect of otherwise useful changes/approaches, and I am working on it.However, if I'm right about "Thinking about what's effective within a movement is not remotely the same as tsk-ing over the tactics of one you're not part of," you're wrong that this post is an example of that. I've also seen these ideas in practice in advocacy of feminism, to which I am committed, and fat rights, to which I give a MAJOR amount of my time and energy. I think these ideas are understandable but in many ways counter-productive responses on the part of many oppressed groups working for equality.
Also, while I did need some education, people on RaceFail hardly ever helped. Stoneself finally gave a few links that I found very useful; people have been wonderful in my own LJ. Mostly, people in RaceFail (much more than on cereta's LJ) told me I was wrong, wrong, wrong, but that was it. I can understand about time & energy being limited, I really, really do! But I also saw people being CHEERED for saying "educate yourself," whereas I was the only one who thanked stoneself for giving me the links. This just seems like counter-productive behavior when it comes to making allies.
If the side of (almost all) PoC and their allies in RaceFail was actually NOT trying to win allies--in fact, didn't care if they drove many potential allies away--then my comments in this entry don't apply. I know many people in many movements who ARE trying to make allies, including me, so thought about how to do that better seemed worthwhile.
Also, this entry is really only partly about my hurt--in fact, not so much, since I better understand what went on & do not feel hurt. If you feel that there was no Fail on the PoC side, then we just disagree. I personally have never seen anything become THAT big of a mess due to only one side, unless that side had a credible threat of force.
In my experience, people who care more about homophobia than their egos will try to understand my anger; those who don't will get to the same place of privileged defensiveness if I am scrupulously nice and nonthreatening. It just takes longer and hurts more.
This is not so much supported by my experience, which includes the event at the last Popular Culture Association conference that I mention in this comment and this comment on this entry. I'm not sure why our experience is so different: the cause(s), the person, the people being addressed, the situation(s)--maybe all. Some people I know have reported experience more like yours, and others I know have reported experience more like mine, across many various causes.
As far as not being an asshole, I think someone laughing at an asshole joke in indeed, in that small way & in that moment, being an asshole.
And as far as some other points you make here, keep in mind that I do not think that silence=/=consent: there are some ways in which I feel you are deeply wrong, but I can't see the point of discussing them. I'm really not nodding sympathetically, though; just refraining from arguing.
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