Case (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
case) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomsecrets2012-03-06 06:53 pm
case) wrote in fandomsecrets2012-03-06 06:53 pm
[ SECRET POST #1890 ]
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
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Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 05 pages, 108 secrets from Secret Submission Post #270.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 1 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 1 - repeats ]
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments and concerns should go here.
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It also doesn't help that every time I see cis, all I can think of are self-righteous social justice warriors.
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That said, a lot of the ideas there have really opened my mind to the great variety of ways in which other people experience the world, as well as problems they may run into because of those different perspectives, which might be completely outside my experience and something I was aware of--and in some cases, something I was inadvertently contributing to. I've said ignorant things. I've hurt my own friends. Sometimes they didn't even have the courage to tell me, and it wasn't until years later when I understood things better that I thought what my words must have meant to them and winced. And that understanding--and that prioritizing the comfort of someone whose comfort is trampled every day over that of those doing the trampling--is what I think the social justice movement is about.
It comes down to basic empathy and understanding and consideration for others. And I think those are really good things! And I think the basic idea of just being excellent to each other is something pretty much everyone would be willing to get behind. But to do that, we have to take a long, hard look at all the ways in which we're socialized to be dicks to each other and don't even realize it. I mean, there's heaps of statistical evidence that prejudice happens, and it's not just ten rich white guys smoking cigars doing it all. It's a society-wide problem. And that's when it starts getting personal, because the implication is that if you're doing something different from what you believe to be good, that makes you a bad person, and no one likes to be called that, especially when they really are trying their best to be good.
tl;dr: While I don't actually consider myself to be a social justice activist/warrior/IDKeven (I'm much too faily) I think education is good, and listening to other people helps us understand them and understanding helps us to, you know, not do douchey things which we may or may not realize we're even doing. Which is good.
Also, if there is anything in particular you'd like to discuss, I can try my hand at explaining or linking helpful things. I am not an expert at All Things Social Justice, and may say something stupid, but I have done a lot of reading and listening and am pretty good with the patience thing most days, so I can at least give it a shot. Plus I promise to always use logic rather than "it's so because I said it's so, STOP BEING PREJUDICED YOU BIGOT!" which is a tack that I...understand why people do it, but have always found frustrating, because I'm unable to accept things on faith.
(sorry this is so long omg. .___.)
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(Anonymous) 2012-03-08 08:38 pm (UTC)(link)There are a bunch of good things, and I'm going to list them for the sake of being balanced:
-Educating people
-Giving a voice to minorities that might be too small to be heard otherwise
But there are a bunch of problems too, particularly in the rhetoric that is common:
-There is only one answer: This is a big problem when they deny people, even of that minority, a different opinion. It doesn't matter if a woman finds the word "bitch" generally acceptable, she is wrong because they have decided it is an unacceptable word for her. If she disagrees, she can't disagree for a real reason, it's only internalized sexism. (This is true for any and every other ism.)
-Intent isn't magic, but it's still important. If someone breaks your foot - it's broken whether they meant to do it or not, and that's an important point to make. However, if someone meant to injure your foot, that's still a lot more hurtful than if they did it by accident. (There's a reason why they call it "Adding insult to injury.") We acknowledge this again and again in the justice system from degrees of murder, to attempted murder, to hate crimes.pow-SJ Opinions are never wrong. Everyone makes mistakes, even in their primary field, particularly on first impression. SJ often ignores context or explanation - if it offended someone it is offensive and wrong. No one can ever overreact, according to them.
-Words change, except when they don't. SJ types are very quick to declare a word offensive, if they have at any point been offensive. (For example, "lame," I have never, ever heard this with regard to a person in modern times. Similarly, "moron," etc.) However, they are very happy to point to a word that has gained a potentially offensive meaning.
-Power + Prejudice defintions.
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(Anonymous) 2012-03-08 08:57 pm (UTC)(link)-Power + Prejudice definitions. Again, a very important thing to discuss. (So consider this a positive too.) However, institutional isms are not the only problem. That basic prejudice is the real problem, and most people call that basic prejudice the ism. What's humorous to me, is that when they declare all men are sexist because of the system, in the next breath they call him sexist as an insult. They just said he is sexist by being male, but then insult him for something he can inherently not change?
-I am offended by x automatically means x offensive. To me, "offensive" is something that people should generally find worthy of offense. There are terms marked "offensive" that I doubt anyone is actually offended by. No one has taken a poll on whether a given word offends the minority it might offend.
-Offending someone is not the worst thing in the world. The whole internet isn't a safe space, nor should it be! Sometimes artistic vision takes precedent, and many people act like if something is offensive it should be removed at all costs, and I disagree with that. To go to the "stepping on someone's foot" example that's commonly used, what if you step on someone's foot while dancing at a club? I mean obviously you apologize, but that doesn't imply that what you did was automatically so horrible that you need to stop dancing? As a side point, do ever wear a fragrance? Many people are allergic to them. What about eating peanut butter in a public place? You aren't a horrible person for doing either of those things in general. (Now if we're talking about doing it deliberately around someone who is allergic or ignoring that allergy, then yeah, you're a jerk, but just going about your daily life? No, not at all.)
-Tone does sometimes matter sometimes. If you're offended, they're right, you don't have to be nice and explain what happened for the benefit of the idiot who offended you. However, you can't be a jerk, and expect change at the same time. You may be 100% provably right, but no one's going to listen to you when you're screaming every name in the dictionary at them. It doesn't matter if you're giving away free cookies, at some point, you drive people away. And of course you can be right and still be an asshole.
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I think the special terminology is good in that it gives people the words to talk about things that previously may have been hard to give voice to. But it can also be a sign of cliquishness, especially when the blacklisted words seem to change every month. It can be very challenging for someone whose first language is not English, for someone who is autistic or for whatever other reason has a lot of difficulty picking up on those kinds of "invisible cues," or even pretty much anyone who is made to feel like an outsider to that clique.
I also think that it can devolve into bullying. There's nothing wrong with telling off people who say offensive things. But I think that a lot of marginalized people have been repressing their anger--especially about their marginalization--and been silenced for a long time, which is a really bad thing. And they're rediscovering their power, which is a really good thing. But sometimes the feeling of being in a pack, of getting to be angry, can just feel so good that it becomes about that rather than about actually being offended. This is not to invoke the "You just like being offended!" trope. I don't think people reacting in anger to offensive things just like being offended. But when people start joining wank comms, looking for excuses to be angry, living for the wank and looking for ways to misinterpret people rather than actually listening to what they're saying...yeah.
For reference, when I was fifteen, two police officers removed me from my home and handcuffed me in stress positions for hours while laughing at and mocking me. I pleaded with them, saying, "This isn't right!" One of the cops was white and the other was black, and I am white. They deliberately chose to mishear what I said as "This isn't white" and accused me of racism. I have no idea why they did this ("this isn't white" doesn't make contextual grammatical sense, ffs) but apparently it was just a way to fuck with me and make me the bad guy. And maybe make it seem like I deserved what they were doing to me? (My crime, for the record, was truancy, and what they did was illegal on several counts. They were never reprimanded for it.)
An encounter with social justice activists shouldn't leave me feeling like those cops did when they deliberately misheard me, but sometimes they do. I don't mind being called out when I'm honestly just missing some unfortunate implication, but willfully reading things I didn't say into my words just so they can have the pleasure of bullying me leaves me feeling pretty awful. I've said offensive things in the past. I've never once said that rape only happens to asexuals. But I've had people tell me I've said this. Considering this is an absurd statement I could never even imagine myself thinking (or anyone, ever thinking), I feel almost like I've had a gun planted on me.
And then there is their habit of splitting things into very black-and-white terms. A person who says some good things is a "flawless individual," but let that same person make one misstep, and they're irredeemably stained. This goes beyond calling out--their entire character as a person is defined by that error, that flaw, regardless of all the good they may have done. I mean I get that if the "flaw" is something huge like murdering people, but in most cases it seems like an inability to see human beings as complex and nuanced, who may have some good features and some bad ones. Everything becomes defined in absolutes. Of course, not everyone does this in every situation! There is no SJ hive mind. I've just noted that it's a direction the ideology seems prone to.
All that said...
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Something like "bitch" being a bad word...I consider myself a feminist, and I use the word "bitch." But there's a difference between using it among friends who know who I am and understand my usage of it, and just using it out there on the internet where anyone can read it.
...and okay, I'll be honest, I think this pearl-clutching over profanity and censoring words is a bit silly. I like the idea of making us think about what words we use and what they mean and where they come from, because it's a way of challenging unconscious, invisible ways of thought that we take for granted. But it reaches a point where it seems like it becomes about the words instead of using the words as tools to get at the thoughts behind them. And words, on their own, become meaningless.
"Bitch" is a sexist word. So's "cunt," when applied to a person. But usually when I hear either of those words, it's because I'm standing up for myself to a sexist man. So I've come to have a certain amount of pride about them. I'm a bitch and a cunt. But when I'm on tumblr and see a female character in a TV show I'm enjoying described in this short post: [female character's name] = cunt. That is all," (this is an actual post, sadly) yyyyeah I'm going to call sexism.
Context is like, a thing. Some feminists think there's a context in which these words can be reclaimed. Some don't. See? Disagreement!
I think intent does matter a lot. Of course it does! Try being an unapologetic racist/sexist/everythingist in a SJ community, and you'll see how much intent matters.
But I think one of the most frustrating things about privilege is how closely it's tied to ignorance. My partner and I have even been defining privilege as not having to know. Being white is never needing to think about race. Being a cisgendered man is never needing to think about gender. It's not just stepping on people's toes. It's your entire group having a dance move that steps on people's toes every other step, and only after years of toe-crushing, going, "Oh my gosh! Was I stepping on people? I had no idea!" The people with the crushed toes are not very inclined to be sympathetic at this point.
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And actually, you can be angry and expect change. Lots of times angry yelling has produced change in history. I don't think the marginalized are obligated to ask politely and hope the nice privileged people will make things all better for them. I think they may have to stand up and take a lot of the things that they want, and more power to them. Remember that angry yelling is still peaceful protest. It isn't a form of violence. I am not going to tell marginalized people that their peaceful protest wasn't polite enough, so no equality cookies for them!
I think the tone argument sort of rests on the idea that the privileged people still need to be appeased for anything to really change. I think that's kind of the opposite of change, though. Maybe just for once it can not be about privileged people's needs. Maybe the logical next step when no one is listening to you is to shout.
And imagine how frustrating it is to try to explain that someone stepped on your toes, only to have them say things like, "I'm sorry you think you were hurt," and when you give a detailed account of how the nerves in your toes carried the pain signal to your brain, and yes, it hurt, they go on to wonder if nerves even exist, I mean, given how we're all dust in the wind. At some point, you're just going to shout at them.
And actually I wish people would think more about the odors they spread in public places. A good jolt of perfume can make my mom sick all day. Imagine how it goes over if she's wheezing all day at work and her productivity is way down and has to tell her boss it's because some inconsiderate ass on the bus took an entire bath in perfume. With me it's cigarettes. I can't stand when people smoke within 20 feet of anyone else with lungs. (And sometimes further, with a good wind.) I've been out riding my bike, only to have a plume of cigarette smoke waft over to me, and suddenly lol I can't take that hill because I can't breathe. And what really kills me is if I hack and give them a filthy look, I'M rude.
People who can't handle substances like that are in the minority, yes. But I think it's time we stopped privileging the majority. The majority aren't the only people who go outside. The majority aren't the only people who use the bus (thankfully cigarettes aren't allowed in spaces like that anymore, though you can still get a pretty good chokefest going at the bus stop, but perfume?). It'll never be a safe space, but the world should be as accessible as possible to everyone. No one's denying that wheelchair ramps or streetlights that beep to let the blind know when they've changed are a bad thing, right? If we can make the world a place that is friendlier and easier to live in even if you're not in the majority, I say that's a damn good thing, and worth making a few minor changes in our thinking and routines.
And I like the power + prejudice definitions, because it's institutionalized prejudices that are doing the damage. Saying that a person of color hating white people is just as bad as a white person hating people of color is a false equivalency. They don't exist in the same context or do the same damage, and they don't even come from the same place. The PoC's hatred is probably from resentment of how white people's power has been used in the past, and in many cases, it doesn't mean that they hate individual white people, but rather the construct of whiteness, and how that power is used to harm. Saying that both people in this example are "racist" makes the term arbitrary rather than focusing on a real problem. This is...one of those things that's kind of hard to see until you "get" it, so if I'm not explaining it well let me know and I'll try harder.
Okay, I think I covered all the points you brought up? I hope that was comprehensible, I'm pretty fucked up on cough syrup right now. x___x
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(Anonymous) 2012-03-11 05:53 pm (UTC)(link)A world where I am not allowed to smoke in a public area is not a friendlier world to me and who are you to decide your rights are more important than mine? I hate tomato. I dislike the smell of it with the fire of a burning star. But people have the right to eat them and all I can do is move away or be a grown up and deal with it.
I am sick and tired of people thinking that their way is the correct way. I am sick and tired of people thinking their culture and their norms are the only valid ones.
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Legality doesn't have shit to do with morality. I've seen women with babies in their arms stealing baby supplies from Wal-Mart, and I turned the other way even though it wasn't legal. I don't judge people who tell me they use drugs, because it's none of my business what they put in their own bodies.
I draw the line at them putting something in MY body, though. And cigarette smoke does not stay put. It meanders off in foul, toxic plumes. It burns my sinuses and makes my eyes water. It disrupts the functioning of my lungs. DAMN FUCKING RIGHT I AM GOING TO JUDGE PEOPLE FOR DOING THAT TO ME.
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(Anonymous) 2012-03-11 09:28 pm (UTC)(link)You are not putting anything in your body, you are living in a society where you do not get the make the rules. You live around other people and have to learn to deal with it when people do legal, moral stuff where they are allowed to.
You judging people for wearing perfume or smoking (again, legal and morally acceptable acts) makes you a horrid person.
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I knew a woman who smoked all over her kids every day, even when they came down with respiratory ailments and started wheezing. It was legal. It was also child abuse.
When I have neighbors who smoke, it comes through the fucking walls and chokes me in my own home. I feel trapped, not safe in my own bed. It's hellish. They don't even know they're doing it. And I have no idea what they're eating, because FOOD IS A SOLID.
(Are you anorexic or something? Seriously? FOOD bothers you? Get therapy.)
Fine, I'm a fucking horrid person. Not like the people with their perfume on so heavy it made my mom unable to function for the whole day and endangered her job. Not like the people giving other people (including their own kids) fucking cancer. Me.
Enjoy your cognitive dissonance as you piss everyone around you off with your disgusting, immoral, but quite legal habit that's a risk to public health. I hope they pass a law banning it once and for all.
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(Anonymous) 2012-03-11 09:53 pm (UTC)(link)Smoking is not immoral. And it's just as disgusting as a lot of stuff people do all the time, like eating certain things. Or chewing gum with your mouth open. They would never pass a law against smoking in a public, open space because they would have to pass a law against eating or drinking. Do you see how it wouldn't work?
Wearing perfume? Not dangerous, not immoral, not illegal. Smelling good is a pleasing thing for most people. And yes, sometimes, the majority is important.
Food triggers panic attacks on me. It's a trigger. It's just as an important part of my life as my allergies. And yes, I do therapy. And yes, I do have an eating disorder. So go you, for being a jerk to someone who has a mental illness! Where's your "making the world a friendlier place" and all your SJ rhetoric? Or it only applies to things you approve of? You are an hypocrite.
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I have trouble with people who have EDs sometimes. It's something I have to work on.
However, eating is healthy.
Cigarette smoke does measurable, physical harm, though. And it absolutely does come through walls. I'm lucky enough not to live in a place like that now, but there were times I could tell exactly when my neighbors lit up. It got so bad that I started smelling from it and people would ask me if I smoked. I couldn't shower it off. I couldn't keep it off my clothes. It was hell. And it was damaging my body, because that shit is TOXIC. Yes, it was secondhand smoke. It wasn't really much different than if they'd come into my bedroom and lit up. Shit was THAT STRONG.
Living here, the neighbors all seem to smoke outside, which would be great, except I'm on the ground floor and it just blows right in our windows. Again, it's just like they were smoking in my bedroom.
I don't mind people smoking in theory. If they could design a device that only got the smoke in the smoker's body, and not everywhere, I'd be cool with it. Or if the smoker was off in the wild yonder smoking where no one else could smell it, that'd be fine. I have a problem with other people selfishly damaging my health.
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(Anonymous) 2012-03-11 10:06 pm (UTC)(link)And I am sorry that you have to experience something like that. I have... bad experiences with people who act like that towards smokers because they are usually really rude about it.
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I am actually pro-decriminalization of drugs, because I believe in choice. I don't think anyone owes it to anyone else to be healthy. And I think a lot of the drugs that are illegal are not immoral...I actually have a lot of problems with the law. As long as you're not driving or operating heavy machinery while high, I don't see the problem.
I endured various people smoking all over me in silence for years. (Seriously, smoking in a car with closed windows and kids in the back should be against ALL THE LAWS.) Realizing I could get angry about it was like a revelation. That actually, they'd been rude to me first, and there was no reason I should suffer for their pleasure, that that was grossly unfair. I wasn't consenting, but I was being included in their drug use. (I feel the same way about having to breathe in other people's pot, especially since that stays in your system a while and could cause me to fail a drug test.)
So, I get kind of ragey....but it's because it's years of built-up frustration. And also asthma. And I don't stop and read people the riot act, I just sort of hold my breath and glare as I hurry past them. Just going down the street is like navigating an obstacle course. Hold breath here, run to get ahead of the person there. (And if I fail, have fun wheezing and not being able to run, lol!) At bus stops, I have to position myself upwind of everyone (and then always someone lights up like ten feet upwind of me and they're not even waiting for the bus why are they standing there??)
tl;dr: have fun doing whatever you like to your body, just leave mine alone and we're good.
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(Anonymous) 2012-03-11 10:29 pm (UTC)(link)no subject
I'm not doing anything illegal.
Sometimes people get glared at. Such is life.
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(Anonymous) 2012-03-11 10:32 pm (UTC)(link)no subject
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(Anonymous) 2012-03-11 10:46 pm (UTC)(link)